Palmyra

by ano on Apr.03, 2009, under everything

After a week and half of non-stop interviewing, filming, photographing, editing and translating, the project is nearly complete. In addition to the photodocumentary project I came here to do, I’ve joined forces with Adam Teale to wrap the photos in a short documentary film format. With the bulk of the work behind us, a first draft of the video completed and reviewed, we decided to leave Damascus and continue exploring Syria. Damascus definitely has a different feel and atmosphere from the rest of Syria. It’s a harsh, mean city where everything you try to do is a serious chafe and it seems everyone is out to get you. It didn’t help that I was living in the refugee camp, which is even worse than the rest of Damascus. After my fourth week there, I’m pretty excited to get out.

I’ve been pretty busy in Damascus with project related work. Aside from the refugee health project, I’ve also been working on my MD thesis, which is the physician workforce distribution and health policy research I did in the year between my third and fourth years of med school. The refugee health project is nearly complete, I just submitted the final version of my thesis (from Damascus and before the deadline!), and now I feel hugely relieved and free to travel.

Our first stop was Palmyra, about 4 hours by bus from Damascus and one of the most impressive archaeological sites in Syria. Although its mentioned in Assyrian texts from Mari dating to the 2nd millennium BCE, it was incorporated into the Seleucid Empire in the second century AD, and later grew in prosperity under Roman rule.