A room for Pythagoras

Ridiculous hotel number two: Near the clock tower, Aleppo, Syria. I would tell its name but I’m not sure it has one. Let’s call it Triangle Hotel for posterity’s sake.

We found it as one usually finds things in Syria, through a combination of sign language, phrasebook prodding and meeting a man who knows a man who knows a man who knows a man.

“Cheap otel? Nice otel?” we say, in an attempt to stray from the Lonely Planet trail.

“Oh yes, yes, nice otel, cheap otel. I give you good price, but you no see because room full at moment. Check out 12. I show you other room. Same same but different.” We approve of the room and the deal is done.

So after a hard day of wandering the back streets of Aleppo, we ambled back to the otel for a siesta.

But to our surprise, we found the room in a state of much confusion. This room didn’t have four walls like a normal room, oh no. It was a triangle room. A TRIANGLE. Not only a triangle, but an extremely tiny isosceles triangle.

To give you an idea of precisely how angular it was, we couldn’t even close the curtains due to the ceiling fan rhythmically slapping them into a whirling red frenzy.



Add into the mix some truly gaudy orange seventies wallpaper, polyester leopard-print bed sheets, shutters containing centuries worth of dust, and a fan that sounded like a harem of sparrows being strangled, and sleep is not your friend.

Aleppo and a brand new baby

We’re now on day three of life in Aleppo, sat by the Sheraton swimming pool admiring the higgledy-piggledy city from the monolithic and hideous - but calm - walls of the hotel. It hasn’t all been like this.



Upon arrival we utilised our very smooth Arabic skills - “Salaam alaykooooom! Errrr, do you know errr cam-errr-ahhh shop? Can-non? We buy where?” (Yes. Our language skills are on fire) - and following an exhaustingly hot goose chase around town, we finally struck gold in an underground warren of shops stuffed wall-to-wall with spare car parts and tyres. Well, where else?



Sat behind a filthy desk, smeared in what I assumed to be oil, sat a rotund man who knew a man, who knew another man that owned a shop nearby in which sat a dusty and forlorn looking Canon digital camera.

After some equally smooth haggling, we took the replacement camera baby to explore the new city of Aleppo. I say new city, but what I actually mean is ‘newer city’.

Aleppo is reputedly one of the oldest inhabited cities in the world and the Al-Jdeida quarter was built during the Ottoman era, which makes it approximately 600 years old. Pretty old for a new guy.

So fuelled by a novel breakfast of fava bean soup and raw onions with flat bread, we set off down the crooked alleys to find an almost indecent abundance of photography opportunities.




It was a Friday so the streets were shuttered and peaceful; devoid of women, pavements dotted with turbaned and sleepy men languishing in the shade.

The covert operation

We’ve finally arrived in Aleppo, Syria. A country where Facebook is illegal, the women are veiled, yet you can buy fluffy, pink nipple tassles in the street. A perfect combination some might say.

Let me tell you how we got here. After surrendering my broken camera baby to Murat the Mullah’s capable hands for a couple of weeks, we left the sumptuous gaiety of Akdeniz Otel, Adana, and ventured east towards Syria.

The Turkish border guard swept us through, no problems. I cynically wondered what would happen next... and then, during a toilet stop at the duty free shop between the Turkish and Syrian border posts, we hear a very strange noise indeed. Much like a thousand people furiously wrapping and un-wrapping Christmas presents. Surely not, it’s only June. And isn’t this a Muslim country?

We moved a little closer to investigate and spotted a darkened room at the end of the entrance hall (I say room in the loosest sense of the word: It was actually entirely made of cardboard).

A woman in full Syrian dress waddled out of the “door” towards us, walking as one would if one was hiding a sumo wrestling suit underneath a burqa, eminating an odd rustling sound. Curiosity wetted, we move closer and our eyes were met with a wondrous sight.

It was like a cigarette factory in rewind. Giant cartons of cigarette boxes lay across the room, with thirty, maybe forty, people frantically grabbing and taping single cigarette cartons, and even entire boxes, around their arms, legs and torsos, before replacing their clothes, picking up their luggage and casually strolling towards the Turkish border.

Brilliant. It literally made our day, as we stood there with our ice-creams and sun hats watching them execute the most ridiculously overt smuggling operation known to man. Although, it has to be said, we probably looked equally as ridiculous.