The Trees Sleep Here

En Route to Homs, Syria

We boarded a small public bus, maybe the size of a small commuter van, which could hold about 8 people max. On the ride there, we stopped to pick up a Syrian military officer who had flagged the bus down.

He started chatting with me, first by having me proofread for him a text message he wanted to send to his girlfriend (in English). The message was about how much he missed her, and how beautiful she was, and that she was an "angle" (luckily, I caught this mistake...). After he saw how I could explain to him in Arabic why his mistakes were mistakes, he started asking me all sorts of questions--how do you say this in English? and this? and this? He told me how he really, really wanted to learn English, but that it was difficult for him to learn with no free time because of military service.

As we passed a long stretch of desert with trees lining the sides of the road, Kate and I noticed that the trees were all bent over clearly from strong desert winds over many, many years.

The officer turned to me and told me, "Yes, the trees here...they are lying down, and now they are sleeping."

And a couple hundred miles away, a war rages on....

Iskandar