← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
A House in Damascus
00:27:48
What's happened to her house in the Old City in Damascus? Diana Darke hears how it's...
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Hello.
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This is a download of from our own correspondent.
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We make one edition of the programme
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for the BBC World Service, but this is the one broadcast on BBC Radio 4. Here to introduce it, Kate Ady.
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Hello. And in today's programme, as dark a day as I can remember, the governor of Arizona's comment after 19 men died battling a forest fire. It was once the leafy art deco capital of the Belgian Congo. Today, Kinshasa is the fastest growing city in Africa, law and orders fast collapsing there, too. We hear how President Assad's neighborhood committees are keeping a close eye on goings on in the old city in Damascus. And high in the Caucasus mountains of Georgia, our man joins a choir and takes part in a musical tradition that's thousands of years old. More than 3,000 people gathered at a high school football stadium in the town of Prescott, Arizona, on Tuesday to mourn the loss of 19 firefighters. The authorities promise a preliminary report into how it could have happened within days. But already it's clear that the men's escape routes were cut off when violent gusts of wind fanned the blaze. David Shookman's been finding out how these men and their colleagues have been trying to contain a whole series of wildfires during a heat wave in America's southwest, which has sent temperatures soaring.
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The road from Prescott to Yarnel would, in normal times, be a joy to drive along. It winds through wooded hills, each turn offering a new vista. The slopes rich in pine and shrub, and the blue skies stretch away on a scale that, to European eyes, is spectacular. I realize I risk sounding like a spokesman for the Arizona Tourist Board, but this is exhilarating country, and as we made our way through it, it was easy to forget for a moment why we'd come. Yarnel is the town where a forest fire raged unchecked last Sunday and destroyed half of the houses. One man who lived there, Pat Bernard, told me how he'd moved his family out, but then himself stayed a little longer. With his mobile phone, he filmed what looked like the aftermath of a bombing. Under a dark haze, dozens of buildings were alight. That was bad enough. But what Pat didn't know at the time was that firefighters deployed nearby to create a fire break found themselves at the mercy of a shifting wind. What should have been a routine operation of a type they'd carried out many times before went horribly wrong, and the fire they'd come to stop overwhelmed them. 19 were killed. Yarnel itself is closed now. The road towards it was so empty, we wondered if we'd got lost. A small truck was coming the other way, so we waved and the driver stopped. He was a utility worker, his vehicle carrying equipment. He looked exhausted. I first asked for directions. Just keep going, he said, and you'll come to a police roadblock. He asked where we were from. I have to admit that I did wonder whether we really had time to chat. We were in a hurry, with deadlines to meet, but the man seemed eager to talk, and when I offered some comment about the terrible news, he sighed painfully. He'd just come from Yarnel, and one of the dead men was the son of a friend of his. Tears welled up and ran down his cheek. I suddenly felt guilty. I was in a rush. But he was grieving. The roadblock was the closest we could get to the fire, the closest we wanted to get, because even from a distance we could see a vast cloud of gray smoke rising into the air. The unnerving thing was that while it usually blew to the north, advancing steadily in one direction, it would sometimes switch and burn the other way. Through a zoom lens, we could just pick out a menacing orange line of flame. An emergency official confirmed that the fire was still out of control. The disaster has led to a search for explanations. The heat wave, the months without rain, climate change, cuts to the budgets for fire prevention. I walked into a forest just above Prescott. Twigs snapped underfoot, dry grass lay on baked earth, and the wind was gusting first one way, then another. I'd heard the word tinderbox used here before, but only now did it make sense. In Prescott, in a small park near the courthouse, I met Laurie Canley, an elderly woman out for a morning stroll. She was heartbroken, she said, at the loss of so many lives. That's what everyone's been saying here. But then Laurie said something that really hit home. Prescott is ringed by trees, she told me, and when there's lightning, everyone holds their breath and watches the mountains. Prescott, which grew rich from mining, is surrounded by forest. To lose 19 men at a stroke is devastating, but when they're the very people trained to keep the fires at bay, that's a far greater tragedy. At Prescott's fire station, Number seven, where the men were based, the fence is jammed with flowers and messages. I watched a senior police officer march up with a sense of ceremony to plant a flag. 19 simple wooden crosses have been placed in a row. A Harley Davidson roared up. The rider in black leather removed his helmet and shook his ponytail free and knelt down to touch the cross labeled Grant. He'd known Grant McKee since school, he said, shaking his head in sorrow. He climbed onto his bike, but before he put his helmet back on, he reached up with the back of his hand to dry his cheeks.
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And that's David Shukman in Arizona. The American Secretary of State, John Kerry has said the United States and Russia remain committed to holding an international peace conference on Syria, but he doesn't. It can take place before August. The US and Russia have been trying for several weeks to organize talks between representatives of the Syrian government and the opposition. Diana Darke, who has written guidebooks about Syria, has owned a house in Damascus since 2005, but the ongoing conflict means she's been unable to go there for the last 18 months. But there is someone keeping an eye on it in her absence, and she's just been to meet him in neighbouring Lebanon.
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Dressed in his best shirt and trousers, my elderly caretaker, Abu Khalil has come out for the day from Damascus to meet me. Sitting together on a shaded terrace in Lebanon's resort of Byblos, he gazes wide eyed at the sea. How on earth did you manage it? I asked him, noting how gaunt and strained his face has become since I last saw him a year ago. It was easy, he said, beaming proudly. Easier than coming from my village to Damascus. He has no passport, and this is his first time ever out of Syria. At dawn, armed with no more than his ID card and some small change, he got into a shared taxi in Damascus and braved the regime checkpoints along the main road to the Lebanese border, then on to Beirut and Byblos. From my village, he went on, I have to come through four regime checkpoints and two Free army checkpoints to come to Lebanon. It's only four regime ones. The incentive for him to come was clear. I had brought six months salary in US dollars to protect against the crashing Syrian pound. It was a paltry sum by Western standards, but enough to feed his family till December. Financial transfers to Syria are banned, and anyway, like most Syrians, he has no bank account. I could have passed it on via Syrian friends. As before, he did not need to come in person. But he wanted more than money. He wanted to talk. Whenever the bombing in his village east of the city was intense, he explained, he and his extended family, up to 30 of them, along with other friends in a similar position, would move into my house in the walled old city of Damascus. Once the violence subsided, he returned to his own home and orchard to prevent them being looted. His daughter's home had been destroyed, so she and her children could not return a world away in carefree biblos Abu Khalil marvelled at the frolickers on the beach below. Lebanese of all ages, dressed in shorts and bikinis, running in and out of the waves. He had never seen the sea before, let alone the sexes mixing so freely in public. He is a devout Sunni Muslim, illiterate but wise. He understands the realities inside Syria, and I trust his judgment on most things. What do you think is going on? I asked him. Do you watch the news these days? He rolled his head upwards dismissively. I stopped watching. It's all lies now. Al Jazeera, the BBC, Syrian tv. I don't believe any of them. What do you reckon? I said. How many people are like you, stuck in the middle? Around 60%. More, he said without a moment's hesitation. In Damascus, maybe 75%, maybe even 80%. The armies fighting are only about 10% on each side. It was a sobering thought. Millions of people deprived of a voice, silenced by fear, the consequences of speaking out potentially fatal, whichever side you took. We talked about my house, about life in the Old City. Byblos has declared itself a war free heritage city, I told him, trying to save itself from the dangers. Too late for Aleppo. But what chance does Damascus have of being spared? Don't worry, he said. The free army will not come inside the walls. The price is too high. They know that thousands of refugees are sheltering in the ancient houses. If they come in, the regime will bomb us and thousands will die. Nobody wants that. He told me how tightly the regime controls the Old City. They are very strong. They know exactly who lives where, he explained, and come round regularly to search the houses for weapons. And now we have legend Shaabiyya, he said. Popular committees guarding the neighborhoods. How does that work? I asked. He told me how the authorities choose representatives from a mix of families they know to be loyal Sunni, Shia, Christian, whatever, and give them weapons. Of course they tell us they are volunteers, he said, but we know they are paid. Some are teenagers, but they all have guns and permission to shoot. To be honest, he said, sometimes we're more frightened of them than of the armies. Tears welled up when it was time for him to go back to his world. It is one of Syria's many ironies that he can come out, but I cannot go in. Next time in Damascus, inshallah, we said, struggling to smile. What a mess. But if I were Abu Khalil and had lived through what he has lived through, I would do the same. Look after my family and be silent.
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And that's Diana Darke. Few countries have had it as hard as the Democratic Republic of Congo, its people have had to endure civil war and revolution, disease, malnutrition and grinding poverty. Its capital city, Kinshasa, has suffered decades of mismanagement. It's Africa's second largest city. It's also one of its most dangerous. The police are overwhelmed by a tide of muggings, robberies, rapes and kidnappings. The authorities maintain they're trying to improve matters. But Johnny Hogg says rampant poverty remains, as well as growing disillusionment amongst the city's youth.
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I come across Mayenge fast asleep in the bushes next to the rusty expanse of the Congo River. Tatty handbag used as a pillow. Her young son lying next to her. When woken, she stands rubbing her eyes furiously, her face puffed and pocked by insect bites. She shakes my hand and ushers me towards an upturned barrel as if directing me to sit on a sofa. In suburbia. Here in Kinshasa's semi derelict port, against a backdrop of abandoned riverboats and haphazardly piled logs culled from the country's vast forests, people like Mayenge, a homeless mother of three and prostitute, can find respite from the hustle and hostility of street life in Congo's teeming capital. Already home to an estimated 10 million people and the fastest growing city in Africa, Kinshasa is facing an increasing problem from its vast disenfranchised underclass. Mayenge is one of countless women forced to sell themselves to survive. Her children part of an estimated 20,000 youngsters living in the streets. 350 more join them each month, fleeing abuse and poverty or cast out for alleged witchcraft. Even those with a roof over their heads are unlikely to find work in a country where three quarters of the population are unemployed. As Kinshasa's dilapidated and neglected infrastructure buckles under the sheer weight of numbers, so violent crime is on the rise. Machete wielding gangs increasingly fill the void left by poverty and and an enfeebled state. Whole districts are becoming no go zones after dark. And people like Mayenge find themselves on the front line. The gangs known locally as Kaluna steal her shoes, her clothes, her cheap gaudy jewellery. We're really suffering, she says. Yes, it's dangerous, but what choice do I have? I have to feed my family. It seems almost everyone in Kinshasa has a story to tell about the rising criminality. Nighttime muggings, rapes in broad daylight. Innocent bystanders shot by police, mistaking them for criminals. Each week there are new tales shared matter of factly, as if discussing the weather. But it wasn't always like this. Once the leafy art deco capital of the Belgian Congo and later the buzzing cultural heart of dictator Sese Seku Mobutu's Zaire, Kinshasa garnered a reputation for the good life, drinking and dancing in the sweltering heat to some of Africa's most irrepressible rhythms. Gangs or clubs of a rather different sort existed. From the pre independence cowboys who modelled themselves on spaghetti westerns and rode their bikes like horses, to the extravagantly dressed sappers, African dandies who can still be seen wearing ravishing clothes amidst the urban squalor. The warmth and energy is not entirely gone, but it is dissipating amidst the grinding poverty. The mini building boom the city is experiencing is largely restricted to the wealthy downtown, far away from the poorest and most densely populated districts. The kinshasa we knew 20 years ago is not the Kinshasa we know today, says Remy Mahfou, who runs an organization helping street kids. There's a revolution of violence being born amongst children. No one is listening to them, so they have to do something to show they exist, he says. Congo street children, known as cheges, traditionally survive through begging, trading or opportunistic pickpocketing. Now there is a growing temptation to resort to force. More and more people sport the ugly scars of machete cuts, and the violence is becoming harder for the authorities to ignore as it spills upwards into other parts of society. Kinshasa's chief of police is a round, jovial man with a teddy bear perched reassuringly on his desk. But even he looks somber as he discusses the problem. It's now or never, he warns. Tackle the issue, or in five years the situation could be unmanageable. It doesn't help that Kinshasa's police are very much part of the problem. More than 1,000 of them are currently doing time in the city's prisons. But corruption is still both visible and rampant. Most people agree in any case, that the solution cannot come from a security crackdown. Rather, cultural change. Tackle graft at the top of society, says one street kid. Arrest the corrupt politicians who lead by dishonest example. Kaluna en cravat or gangsters in ties, these leaders are called, with Kinshasa's typical jet black humour. In the meantime, Remy Mahfou says, parents must be educated, churches involved, employment found. Tackle child abandonment, house by tumble, down house, street by dusty street. After all, Remy says, the children are the future of this country. We must look after them.
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Johnny Hogg in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The circus continues to roll into various towns in Britain at this time of year, but increasingly it does so without the lions and tigers which were once synonymous with it. In fact, a total ban on the use of wild animals in circuses is on the way, at least in England. The Agriculture Minister, David Heath, said he hoped that in the meantime, circus owners would be arranging suitable care for their charges. Natasha Breed, who lives in Kenya and regularly films lions and other wildlife there, welcomes these moves, but is shocked that in some parts of Europe the days of performing animals aren't over yet.
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At the southern tip of Normandy lies the Parc Naturelle du Perche, a picturesque patchwork of French countryside seamed by winding streams and ramblers. Footpaths quilted with extensive forests and dotted with farms and orchards known for its tall Norman barns, local cider and the sturdy Persian draught horses used to pull heavy loads. It's a bucolic setting, very different from the savannas of Kenya that I'm used to. Yet here I am, in the middle of the perch and less than 10 metres away, is an adult lion. He's about four years old, with a thick blond mane and a nose that's still a youthful pale pink. And he's lying like a sphinx with his head up, looking at me. How many times have I seen a lion lie like this before? In the shade of a tree, gazing out lazily over the plains, or waiting expectantly as a lioness approaches to rub faces with him in that wonderful tactile way lions greet each other? Or closing his eyes in paternal indulgence while his small cubs clamber over his hindquarters and pounce on the tassel of his tail as his upper lip twitches into a gentle sneer. I've spent years working with wildlife film crews following lions in Africa, and I've learned to read the big cats moods in their eyes. Meeting the gaze of a lion, I've experienced that stomach lurching intuition that tells me if I make one wrong move, I'm toast. The pupils dilate and the gaze becomes 100% focused. And suddenly I've felt what it might be like to be a wildebeest coming face to face with his nemesis. But this lion's eyes barely flicker as I approach him. There's no gleam of interest, no unwavering intent, no spark of fun. Usually, for any cat, a moving target is always going to be fun to chase, whether it ends in a meal or not. He's not even wary of me as any self respecting lion in Africa has learnt to be. When a human approaches on foot, this animal is weary, dispirited and something I've never seen before. He's bored. I'd been driving to the local market town when I noticed the circus across a busy road. A McDonald's, a car wash and a DIY centre face a sprawling disused supermarket allotment. But today a huge candy striped big top and a semicircle of trailers arranged around the car park of the abandoned store. Some of the trailers have barred sides and I glimpse the familiar form of a lion standing in one of the cages. Then I notice the roadside posters on street lamps, bus shelters and litter bins beneath the headline Visit the Zoo. White tigers and lions leap through rings of fire or pose majestically for their portraits. I read that the circus will be in town for five days. I park, cross the road and approach the circus. A man is uncoupling a trailer from a truck and I ask if I can walk around. Squinting at me through a curl of blue smoke from the cigarette clamped between his lips, he nods. Four shaggy Bactrian camels stand in a roped off area of tarmac. No grass, no trees, just white lines where shoppers once parked and a single lamp post casting a narrow shadow below which, pitiably, the camels have congregated. Beyond is another trailer with more lions and tigers in it. Yes, there are white ones there. The 2 by 12 metre carriage, partitioned into stalls holds at least six big cats. Some sleep, others sit or stand up, staring out at passing traffic and pedestrians with dull eyes. How many big cats, elephants and other animals watch the world through the bars of cages without ever having known the infinity of wilderness, knowing instead the blurred scenery of tarred roads as they travel in gaudy procession from town to town, the frightening flickering flames of fire as they leap night after night through burning rings, or dance or perform headstands to the crack of whips and the clamor of applause, the tedium of their dreadful prisons and the hopeless monotony of interminable exile.
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That's Natasha Breed. I could mention drones, double drones, parallel fifths and even strong dissonances. But to understand the magnificence of Georgia's polyphonic singing, it's probably better you just have a listen. Plenty of examples on the Internet. Now Georgia is a place keen to move on from its history as a corner of the old Soviet Union. It's after EU and NATO membership. It wants to be seen as a modern, aspirational country, but its Traditional religious music is exceptional. I once stood for an hour in Svetiskovoli Cathedral as a circle of a dozen men moved round the building, all the while singing. According to UNESCO, this polyphonic singing is part of humanity's cultural heritage. Our Ajahn Duttar's been getting to know it.
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It's 6am and a dishevelled crew of 25 men pitches up in two weather beaten Ford transit vans to collect me. Their faces are etched by a lifetime's exposure to the elements in these raw subalpine climbs. They are swans, revered and once feared throughout Georgia as a warrior people. Behind them, dawn rays pierce the gloom and light up a snow capped mountain range, the Caucasus, that separate Georgia from looming, mighty Russia. It's chilly out here and the men in rough jackets and traditional rural headwear congregate in two camps, young and old. Tellingly, in a country where smoking seems as natural as breathing to many, very few of these guys are puffing on a cigarette. The voice is sacred and needs to be protected. But they have loaded up hearty provisions of meat, bread and crates of beer from the local store for the three hour drive along just 17 miles of bumpy dirt track. And then the long day that stretches in front of us. We all pile back into the two vans and huddle up. Now we're heading towards the high rock faces I've been admiring from below to get to Europe's highest village. Highest, that is, if you accept Georgia is in Europe. My traveling companions, having shaken off their dawn stupor, are now in full song. This is a musical tradition that's thousands of years old, predating Christianity. War feasting and hunting are regular lyrical themes. That is when these guys know what the lyrics actually mean. Some of the swinnity language is so obscure even the singers don't know what they're chanting. But they do so with gusto nonetheless, because this is a Georgian polyphonic choir, the pride of Swanetti, a region of proud people. Anyway, in a country renowned for its pride, which makes it pride cubed, I guess. Swanetti is known as the spiritual capital of Georgia, its very soul indeed, and this music is the expression of that. I'm told that in 1977 the spacecraft Voyager took up recordings of Georgian polyphonic singing as an illustration of the beauty man can contribute to the universe. Igor Stravinsky, the Russian composer, called Georgian polyphony more important than all of the discoveries of new music put together. The choir called Rico have just returned from a tour of France and before that Australia. They tell me in the van I'm sitting next to the generous figure of Waktung Pilpani, the choir leader and in his other life a building instructor. He's the son of Islam, the octogenarian founder of the choir, who is also in the transit with us, carrying his chonguri, a stringed traditional Georgian instrument, by his side. The van rattles over the bumpy dirt track alongside a glacial stream and then I hear the dreaded words from do you want to try? He attempts to teach me one of Rico's songs, a more contemporary, well, 19th century number apparently, about a village preparing to go to war with the Russians. I struggle ga go with the phonetics of the Swanetti language, with the dissonance and harmonies and with the scanning of the words G. Velik khlevu I warble gamely and rather feebly. And then I find out I'll be joining Rico for a hilltop rendition. In just a few hours time we arrive in the village of Ushguli, which has just endured a harsh eight month winter. There, while the choir tuck into their lunch, I wander off and meet an elderly lady Natella, who's seen half her family disappear off to the big city, but is determined to stick it out there herself despite the hardship. With typical Georgian hospitality, she and her husband treat me to lunch with several obligatory rounds of toasting involving local moonshine. By now the choir have changed into national dress and are ready to perform. Their rousing melodies summon a crowd and soon the whole village is resonating with Georgian polyphony. Halfway through the performance I'm shuffled into the row of singers and expected to join in. I do, kind of, but then I collapse into the harmony of the man to my left, which I'm not supposed to do, and rather inconsiderately, he doesn't change his tune. But hey, this is an experience I will never repeat. High up on the roof of the world, the hills alive with the sound of polyphonic music. A resplendent 25 piece Georgian choir belting it out in front of a snow tipped mountain range. With Russia so close, Age old traditions at the cusp of a new era in an epic landscape.
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Marvellous Rajandatta holding a note and bringing us tunefully to the end of another edition. I'll be here again on Saturday morning with more from correspondence far and wide. Until then, goodbye.