Syria

26 January 2011 In the Syrian city of Al Hasakah, a Kurdish man douses himself in petrol and sets himself on fire. A crackdown on dissent by the government then leads to civil unrest in Daraa. Protests are initially peaceful, but the brutal response of the Assad regime starts a downward spiral into extreme violence.

1 December 2009 I arrive in Damascus

In the Great Mosque kids are chasing each other around the pillars, screaming with delight and excitement. The columns catch my eye: they are Roman and were repurposed seventeen centuries ago into a Byzantine cathedral, then 500 years later into a mosque. Outside in the bazaar there's a shopping arcade that was once a street built by Alexander the Great's army. Now it's lined with stalls selling sexy ladies underwear, spices, and sacks of dried figs and pistachios. I sit in a cafe, drawing on a nargileh pipe and sipping coffee. It all seems so idyllic, but there's troubling news. My guide tells me that a bomb has gone off that morning killing four people. Officially they are saying it was a tyre exploded. "That was not a tyre," he says shaking his head, "What kind of tyre targets Shi'ites?"

I can't decide about this guide. Is he sent to show me around, or is he a spy? Are his veiled criticisms of the government an attempt to elicit conspiratorial confessions from me. 'Yes, I am from MI6. Where does Assad keep his chemical weapons?' On the other hand, maybe he wants to come clean: 'This is a police state. I'm in great danger. Help!' Everyone knows that the outwardly peaceful face of Syria, one that has endured for several years, is a mask. The country is run on fear, although everyone is too frightened to admit it. But then it has probably been running on fear since forever: since when the Great Mosque was a temple to the rain god, Haddad.

We head north for Aleppo, taking several days to get there. At Hama we stop next to the famous waterwheel in the town square. I leave him sipping coffee from a bicycle cafe and go off exploring.

In a side street I hear the clacking sound of a hand loom and peering through a low window see a room packed with weavers. I go around the building and find a shop selling towels with a short stocky young man at the counter. Abdulmuizz is full of smiles and rather unexpected English.

"Get yourself in here, kiddo. Chuffed to bits. Magic. Like to see some towels? Fair-do's. No problemo."

On his own admission, Abdulmuizz learned English by watching the television show, Top Gear. He is a fourth generation weaver, one of eight brothers who are all weavers.

"We Arabs invented baths, soap and towels here. In the thirteenth century there were 500 looms working flat out. And what did you have in Britain? Precisely sod-all, my friend."

There is a shopping experience here that has all but vanished in Europe. The shopkeeper's patter, luring you in, the glass of tea that appears, swept in on a tray on the shoulder of a youth who has been summoned by some invisible, inaudible communication network. You sit. You talk. The goods are fetched down off the high shelves. More upon more. Layer upon layer. No time to consider. The outside world fades away and all that is left is this convivial cave filled with lovely things. Not a word about money. Do you like this colour? We have 800 colours. What could be more civilized than a discusssion with an old friend about the colour of towels?

And then, suddenly, he's gone all Shakespearean and is quoting Midsummers Night Dream...

"I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows"

He sits down, serious now. 'I cannot understand it. An ox is a cow, isn't it?'

His copy of the play is a battered schoolboy edition. It's not easy to understand the bard when your only teacher is Jeremy Clarkson, but his eyes shine with enthusiasm. "I love reading this stuff. It's the dog's bollocks."

I buy two towels and Abdulmuizz throws in a scrubbing mitt.

Reunited with my guide we drive on through the afternoon to Aleppo, stopping in a ruined city populated by sheep and shepherds. In one ancient site a temple has been made into a shelter for the animals and on the walls are inscriptions in Greek.

In Aleppo souk I wander aimlessly, admiring all the textiles on show. "You want to buy a scarf? This is antelope wool."

The merchant shows how soft it is by pulling the scarf through a ring that he takes from his finger. "We have silk too. You buy antelope for the woman you want and silk for your mistress."

"And my wife?"

"Polyester - it comes with divorce papers."

Next door they are selling soap, cutting bars from huge cheeses of the stuff. As it ages the soap's colours withdraw deeper into the heart and become more vibrant, and more expensive.

The following day is Sunday and I decide to visit as many places of worship as I can. We start at the Church of the Forty Martyrs, listening to lovely choral singing in Armenian as the priests swing their censers. Nearby we stop at the Church of the Holy Cross where there are only a few old ladies in black listening to a service in Syriac, a language related to the Aramaic that Jesus reputedly spoke. The Latin Church is busier with about 100 worshippers and a sermon in Arabic: 'You must dream not for yourself but the whole world, and know that those dreams may come true.'

The Maronite Church has the youngest congregation with lots of young lads and the women all in black.

We take breakfast at an upstairs cafe. Little cheese pastries, fata'ir, and grilled lamb with yoghurt and mint followed by sahleb, a milk pudding sprinkled with pistachios and coconut. Outside men are selling from sacks: flowers, parsely seeds, walnuts, thyme seed mixed with sesame, and hibiscus.

We jump in a yellow taxi that weaves through the throng of carts and donkeys to the shrine of Husayn, grandson of the prophet Muhammad, who was killed in the Battle of Karbala in 680 AD. This was where the Islamic martyr reputedly laid his head on a stone, leaving a mark. The place is busy with Iranian pilgrims who have brought a small baked tablet of clay from Karbala which they place on the floor then pray, tapping it firmly with their foreheads so it leaves a mark.

The guide and I have become friends now. He seems less guarded and more open. I'm carried away by the cosmopolitan atmosphere of the city: all the languages, faiths and professions living peacefully side by side in a wonderful cornucopia of diversity and colour. So when he asks what I do, I reply truthfully. "I'm a journalist. I work for a newspaper in London."

His face betrays no reaction, but it's a mistake. A short time later, he makes a telephone call and then informs me that a family crisis has come up. His wife is sick. He must leave me and go to Damascus. Within twenty minutes, he's gone, leaving me wondering what really happened. It's like a chilly wind on a late summer night, the portent of a change in season that is about to come.

Fifteen years after my visit it is painful to go through my photographs and see all the old men and women who must have died seeing their world fall apart, and all the children who, if they are alive, have never known peace since that time.

Shepherd boy and his favourite lamb in the City of the Dead near Aleppo