158 | Cycling World
March 2017
12Stage
Gaziantep , Turkey – Tripoli , Lebanon
( 12 – 22 Dec )
Total miles cycled : 3,528 ( 5,678km )
The strengthening role of women , and civil society as a whole , is one of the ' great untold stories of the conflict ', I am told by another female Syrian activist , who works for an NGO called Ihsan . ' Before the revolution there were no NGOs in Syria ,' she says . ' Now there are hundreds . We are seeing a cultural revolution .'
That evening I walk home alone and get lost . It ' s dark and creepily silent , and suddenly I ' m petrified . I see a black Mercedes with tinted windows twice in ten minutes and am convinced it ' s some Baghdadi henchman at the wheel . I walk quickly and determinedly , hoping to look like someone with a concealed Kalashnikov rather than someone who dropped their rape alarm into the toilet a week ago . By the time I finally distinguish my tower block from the millions of identical ones , I am sweating and tense to the core . I ' m being foolishly paranoid , I know . But if I ' m beheaded by ISIS , I ' ll never live it down with my mother .
I spend Christmas Eve with a female CCSD activist , W , her family , R and a few others . We eat hummus , drink red wine from their Syrian village and listen to Arabic singers : Kadhim Al-Saher from Iraq ; Fairuz from Lebanon ; Dalida from Egypt . W ' s husband defected from the Syrian army and is now in Holland , I learn , and she hopes to join him there shortly . N , a Kurd from Aleppo , is scathing about both sides of the conflict . ' The FSA came to “ liberate ” Aleppo ,' she tells me . ' But they just gave the army an excuse to destroy it .'
At 2am on Christmas morning I find myself walking the streets of Gaziantep with W ' s brother-in-law , my chaperone home – which makes a change from the past 34 years , when I ' d be prematurely raiding my stocking for satsumas and Dairy Milk Buttons around this time . He used to work for the US Embassy here , he tells me , but quit because he was frustrated by their obsession with ISIS . ' Daesh Daesh Daesh , that ' s all they cared about ,' he says . ' They didn ' t care about the Syrian people .'
I awake a few hours later feeling tired and a little empty . It ' s my first Christmas away from my family and I suddenly realise how much I miss them , along with my boyfriend and friends . Fortunately , there ' s one thing I love more than all of the above , however , which E treats me to at lunchtime to help me through my gloom : a festive lamb shish . What a legend !
Final Turkish sunset before leaving for my 12-hour voyage to Lebanon