I have fond memories of Syria...

In the 1980's I walked through the streets of Damascus and sipped Turkish coffee with a man selling embroidered table cloths at a bazaar. I listened to the sounds of prayers coming from the minaret towers and ate tabbouleh under a canvas covering in a garden scented with jasmine flowers and citrus. I walked into ancient mosques in my bare feet, stood upon hand-woven tapestries and marveled at the intricate, colorful tile mosaics.

Later we drove across a vast desert in a van, forded the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers on our journey to Palmyra, the ruins of a once-great trading mecca along the ancient "silk road". There I walked along a colonnaded promenade, among sand-blasted pillars still standing as if in a final salute to their builder, the great warrior Queen, Zenobia, descendent of Cleopatra, who in the third century had the gall to challenge Rome. Palmyra was also known as Tadmor or "Palm City," because it was an oasis where caravans piled with the wealth of the ancient world once stopped to quench the thirst of their weary camels and horses. Zenobia, said to be as good with a sword as any man, rode with her generals into battle and fought against the armies of the great Emperor Aurelian. Her armies brazenly conquered many Roman territories, including Alexandria, before the armies of Rome burned Palmyra to the ground and Aurelian slapped Zenobia into golden chains and dragged her, naked, through the streets of Rome in triumph. Even so, the former splendor of one of the most wealthy trading empires in the world could still be seen, gleaming faintly as the setting sun cast long shadows on columned ruins and stained them pink.

I spotted a pair of Soviet MiGs hurtling through the skies above a ridge overlooking Palmyra, and was reminded that Syria was now a strategic location in the modern world, just as Palmyra once was in Roman times.

We journeyed through Aleppo to Northern Syria where we arrived at our destination, the ancient city of Urkesh, known as Tel Mozan. The Turkish border, only a kilometer away, was clearly visible, dotted with giant guard towers that occasionally were struck by lightening when a sandstorm rolled through, explosions brightening the storm-darkened sky. We were there to work on a significant archaeological find dating back more than 5,000 years and as we labored in the intense 48C heat, we sifted through sand for potsherds, ancient bones and mysterious cult objects from the temple we were excavating. There, we found two skeletons burned by a fire which had destroyed the temple untold thousands of years before our arrival, crushing the people inside under a fallen wall.

The Arab workmen, who helped us to remove large rubber buckets filled with sand, were curious about us, strange light-skinned visitors from the west, and asked many questions as we drank water or the terrible beer of the region which was called Al Shark and smelled like urine. They warned me with comments of "shway shway!" - "caution" - whenever I accidentally dug too close to hole of a camel spider. These strange arachnid-like creatures were as large as dinner plates and aggressive, sometimes sneaking into our barracks in the middle of the night where we smashed them with our boots.

Our small expedition of a dozen or so archaeological professors and students shared only one toilet, built in the Arab style, a porcelain grid in the dirt with only a hose to wash away our waste. The foreign food was problematic for most of us and so there was always a line of uncomfortably shifting people waiting for a turn inside the outhouse. One time, I sneaked onto the top of the Tel in the dark of the night to urinate, and discovered to my horror that I was squatting in the middle of a line of marching ants a meter wide! It was all I could do not to scream and alert the entire camp, as I jumped about and shook the biting ants from my pant-legs.

Despite the heat, we women workers did not uncover our wrists or ankles, nor expose our throats because we were told it might offend the Muslim workmen who labored alongside us. My hair was bound up in a keffiyeh or hijab which helped prevent the sun from burning my scalp.

We played volleyball with the Syrian and Kurdish workmen, who were distracted at first by the western women playing with them and seemed afraid to hit the ball, but, upon realizing that the women were winning too many games, they decided to play with us just as they played with the other men, punching and slapping the ball back and forth across the net. There, I saw a handsome Kurdish man holding his delicate, blond-haired daughter astride his neck, his surprising blue eyes filled with pride and love.

And now I wonder, what will become of all of that?

I have no words for the heartbreak I feel.