When I Left New York And Peeked Into Syria

I left my life in New York and tried to go to Syria for no good reason. My thoughts are largely irrelevant in the vast sea of this tragedy, but I felt compelled to share.

Jesus. I'm in Istanbul now, which has become a sort of home, or at least a center of gravity, having returned from Syria today. Well a few feet from Syria. I stamped out of Turkey and made the long walk to the Syrian side of no man's land, saw some Al Qaeda soldiers looking at me while speaking into walkie talkies and nervously turned back.

The differences from the last time I was there in March were pretty stark. Far more people were coming from Syria, with far more belongings. Before, more things were going in, where supplies were sparse. But people intended to live there. Now there's leaving without looking back. Cars packed with everything families own. Women, children, old men. Both here, Bab al-Salameh, and Bab al-Hawa, west of Aleppo, there were thousands of trucks — no less — waiting for entry. The town of Kilis, in Turkey, is much busier than it was then. The streets are full, and there are even Syrian children begging at the stoplights, a la New Delhi.

I saw a body return at Bab al-Hawa yesterday. The men in the truck were laughing as I took pictures. This was hardly something new. At Bab al-Salameh today there was an ambulance heading towards Turkey, back door open, with a man wrapped in a blanket in the back. A tiny fraction of the hell inside. I'm left wondering just what it looks like in there. How bad is it? How widespread? What percentage of Aleppo is war zone? Is there life as usual anywhere?

I meet many interesting people along the way, too. In the passport line returning to Turkey I befriended Kemal, a medical student working at a hospital in Aleppo. He is, or was, studying to be an orthopedic surgeon. He is leaving Syria for the first time in his life, to visit his family who have fled to Jeddah. When we exit, he offers me a ride into town and introduces me to Abu Islam, a former engineer helping in the hospital. Abu Islam has a long beard, but is otherwise young looking. His English is impeccable as he tells me stories of hell in Aleppo. The driver interrupts with news that Al Qaeda has executed 120 civilians in a village near the border. Allahu Akbar, Abu Islam says as he translates. This is the norm. They won't let me take a photo, for fear of the regime, but invite me to dinner.

Samer, a friend who is doing odd jobs in a hostel Istanbul, was one of twenty doctors and pharmacists who pooled together with the aim of helping victims in Aleppo. Today there are three left. He says death is commonplace, nothing out of the ordinary. When he gets a call saying so and so is dead, he says 'okay,' and hangs up. He doesn't feel much. If he dies, it will be alright. Just so long as the women and children don't suffer.

Just three years ago, these people were living a normal life. Mundane. Pathetically mundane. Beautifully mundane. Now when they see us, the normal people, I wonder what they think. When the Syrians among us, the Syrians whom I sat next to on the minibuses, who walk the airports in Antep and here in Istanbul, who see us sipping our coffees and playing on our phones — just two days earlier they'd killed a man, or dragged their limbless friend home — what do they think?

Kilis was still relatively normal, as compared with Reyhanli, the other border town close to Aleppo. Reyhanli has been overrun by Al Qaeda. There are literally Al Qaeda gift shops every other store. One sells guns and knives. The other sells camouflage and flashlights. The latter store had an Al Qaeda t-shirt hanging outside. I decided to see if they would sell it to me, but when I tried the door it was locked. The lights were on and the contents were gripping. Stuff for war. Sold on the street corner, right next to the halal chicken.

There is so much more to say, but so little. The stories are tiny and meaningless in the scope of the devastation, but they are so human it hurts. On the bus from Kirikhan to Antep, I sat next to a middle aged man. He looked tired. He'd just returned from four days in Aleppo, to help in whatever way he could, he explained. He was now living in Saudi Arabia and working for a media company. His family is settled in Kilis and he was on his way to visit for a few days before heading back to work. In his lap was a laptop bag. As we struggled through a broken English conversation he gave me an example of the help he gave. A man asked for his laptop. A man he didn't even know. A man who said he worked for the news. His sleek brown laptop bag was empty. I held his hand for some time after he opened the laptop bag to show me some stray cables. All the pictures, everything on it, gone, he said. You re-calibrate life in war.

This is not the first war, I was thinking on the bus today. We've done this before. Destroyed cities and rebuilt them. But everyone should come to see war, or even take a walk along the fringes, to see for themselves. It will change the way we vote. Change the way we watch television. Change the way we work. The way we live. You cannot see these precious children, with their dirty faces and brilliant green eyes, and not care.

Maybe that's not why I go. Maybe there is no noble reason. Maybe it's the thrill. But when I am here, I feel it. I see the bodies. I see the hurt. The mundane reality of the hurt. The absolute trivial nature of the suffering endured. It's a daily reality. Twenty-four hours each day. All day, every day. That takes the movie climax out of it. It's now just life. The same way you may have to get up at 7:30 on weekdays to catch the Q train into the city.

I don't have an answer. The groups have splintered, from my discussion over Kebap and Baklava with Sasha, who is trying to get surgical supplies in and briefs the State Department regularly. Al Qaeda is mounting a comeback and the inter-rebel violence is spreading. He described an ISIS group three hundred strong armed with three tanks and other heavy weaponry that has wrought devastation in and around Raqqa. The sheer money and arms in Al Qaeda hands has changed the game. Next week Kerry and Lavrov will convene for Geneva II. Who else is coming is unclear. There is no leverage against Assad, the way things are going. Russia will never let him go. I'm not sure what the US and UK think will happen. Iran may be a wildcard, but there really seems to be no answer.

That's the hard part. To look these people in the eye after they tell you a story. To hold their hand and say I'm sorry. Because that's all I can do. There is nothing else. I have no words to say. I can hold your hand. That's it. You find that they want to talk. They want to tell you their story. I feel they want someone to listen. The world isn't. If it is, you can't tell.

As I write, a man is shouting at the top of his lungs at Turkish Airlines staff. He is threatening to call the police over an unknown travel debacle. Meanwhile, at the next table are two Syrian parents and their twenty-five year old son. They are off to somewhere. Their son is probably heading back after dropping them off. Our lives are on a relative scale. Pray to god yours stays as pathetically narrow as it is today.

I'll sign off without much else to say. I have pictures that capture a fraction of what I've seen. The pictures of the little boys serving me muddy water coffee (which I drank) on the Syrian side of the crossing. Without passports, they are relegated to traveling the mile-long strip of no-man's land ad nauseam, dragging bags twice their size filled with the life accumulation of the passport bearing families heading to safety in exchange for a few coins. Soon I'll be back in New York drinking a flat white and complaining about something I shouldn't be. I hope my strange wanderings serve to remind me that life is too short to work on anything other than serving humanity.

God bless Syria.