Caffe Avec

The Syrian milkman. Where is he now?

@brittarnhild

Five years ago I came back home from a travel in Syria with starts in my eyes, "Terje, one day I want the two of us to go to Syria or one of the other countries in the Middle East. I want to show you and experience it again with you."

 

It breaks my heart to think of Syria and its people today.

 

Here is a post from five years ago:

 

I have travelled different from what I use to this week. With a group, with a Norwegian guide and with a national Syrian guide following our footsteps from early morning till late night. We were 17 people in our group, all of us from the Church of Norway, we had only 5 days in Syria and we wanted to squeeze as much as possible into our days.

Of course we only managed small bits and pieces, even though we made our nights as short as possible. What I saw and experiences made me want to see more though. One of the first things I told Terje after I came home this afternoon was "Terje, one day I want the two of us to go to Syria or one of the other countries in the Middle East. I want to show you and experience it again with you."

There wasn't much time to walk around breathing in everyday life. Like I love to do for hours or days at a timne when I travel. But while walking from one place to another, just where you are there and then, glimpses can always be found, seen, lived, breathed.

Like when we passed this milkman in one of the narrow lanes of Damascus, outside Annanias' House. I stopped to take a photo and all of a sudden there were a dozen more cameras out.

The milkman beamed under the attention rays.

I collected an everyday memory for life.

 

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More posts from my week in Syria and thoughts afterwards can be read here.

December 2nd. Syria

@brittarnhild

My advent calendar this year will be a world trip, shown though my collection of nativity scenes, bought during my travels around the world. There is no spesific plan, no set route, the map will be painted as we go, and as the crips are set or hung somewhere in The House in the Woods.

Nativity #1 was from Haiti, and was the first creche in my collection.
Today´s crib is from Syria, bought in a monastery where only a few christian munks were still residing. 

I was in Syria for a week only, in October 2010, and though we sensed that the country and its people were having a hard time, we had absolutely no idea about what would come only a few months later.

How strange, how sad it is today, to think back, to know about the hell which happens every single day in this beautiful country. To remember souks, ruins, monasteries, churches, coffee sellers, children, mothers fathers......the people, most of all the people.

Yes, most of all the people.
We met Christians there, and even though the official guide who followed us aound the whole week did his best to hide information for us, we were told tales. Tales shared with tears. Tales which filled us with prayers.

Tales which are still filling me with prayers. And tears.

With photos from The Church of Simeon Stylites, I hang my Syrian nativity and I fold my hands in prayers for the people of Syria.