The Battle of Aleppo

Aleppo is in the newspapers.  Aleppo is in watering the houseplants.  Aleppo is the pigeon sitting on the windowsill.

It was on the bus from Qamishli that I first saw him.  By and large he looked as any passenger would, with the only distinction to his appearance being perhaps the keffiyeh in red and white check that he wore.  He was an Arab.  But the keffiyeh is common in Syria so even that couldn’t make him stand out in a crowd.

He may have had a sort of downy stubble that stretched down his cheeks but failed to reach the promise of a full beard, when I think of it, and from the thinness of his face his bones may have given a stronger outline to his features.  These traits, I suppose, lent him a look that was slightly avian.  But it’s easy to think such things now.  When he took his seat on the bus which was, by happenstance, next to mine, there really wasn’t any clue he was a man of the birds.

To read about, Aleppo is a war zone: a battlefront of street fighting, bullets and shelling, a growing list of human casualties.  But in the days of Hafez al-Assad when, in terms of daily life at least, normalcy seemed to prevail, the battle of Aleppo wasn’t that.  In those days there was a different type of battle, more of the feathered and wing variety, and it was limited to the rooftops and the Aleppite skies.  It’s that earlier battle that’s been waged in Aleppo for many centuries, the battle of the birds.

In rather broken English we talked and when I asked, he spoke of trading: a business of some modest arrangement involving the carriage of goods for sale from Qamishli to Aleppo, or more likely from across the Turkish border.  He spoke of his country, that once Syrians had been a people of great hospitality who prided themselves on hosting parties and socialising.  In more recent years, he said, the culture had changed, with the sense of community weakening in part due to higher prices and living costs.  Few people thought much about hosting celebrations any longer.

But it wasn’t these topics that engaged him and before much time went by he spoke instead of his passion, his pigeons.

When the bus reached the city I saw he was a man of boxes, unloaded from the undercarriage onto the footpath and likely of Turkish origins.  I asked how to find a hotel; it was already late.  He said if I wished I could stay at his house and I said if it would be no trouble I might just do that.  Or at least I tried to say that in singular vocabulary.  It was fine to be invited: perhaps he was in a small way recreating that older, more hospitable Syria.

His apartment was in an old building, sandstone-like and of the type that sort of half-says Aleppo is one of the world’s oldest continuously inhabited cities.  Inside it had a broken decorative railing to its stairwell.  He showed me to a metallic framed single bed in a longish room with a window at the far end.  I gather he usually slept there but on that night it became the guest room.  From the journey I slept easily.

The pigeon man (centre) with pigeon trader and his friend

It was in the morning he took me to the rooftop.  I found a space of perches and nesting boxes with a sizeable aviary on one side.  He introduced me to his pigeons, pointing out the special or rare ones that I have no hope of describing now.  They must have been of a different breed, with fluffier feathers or a fashionable colour.

I’m not sure why but that morning he’d shaved the downy stubble off his cheeks.  It can be that the stubble was a kind of feather-like reminder for when he travelled only, or he may have wanted to look his best for his birds.

He explained how he let his pigeons fly freely most of the time and tried to make their home aviary as comfortable as possible to encourage them back, and to encourage newcomers.  He showed in the sky that circling pigeons were an Aleppite signature.  Holding one pigeon in his hand, he held it up and then quickly dropped it down a little, giving rise to its instinct to flap its wings.  Still in his hand it flapped with vigour and I heard that this was another way to attract new birds to his rooftop.  It was the aim of every pigeon fancier in the city, to capture the best of the flock, in the more traditional battle for Aleppo.

I wondered at his enthusiasm.  It’s not that there aren’t worse hobbies, but what did it matter who had the best pigeons in the city? 

It seemed unusual how content he was to sit for several hours on that rooftop with his birds, how much anticipation there was for the day’s expected visitor, a pigeon trader.  I wanted to explore the city but I sat there too, in part enjoying the unusualness of finding myself on an Aleppite roof learning about pigeons and in part wondering what was the correct etiquette: when was too early to politely excuse oneself from pigeon adoration in order to be a tourist?

Eventually I took my leave to visit the city.

With not more than a few pots in the apartment in Dhaka it’s hardly a garden I have.  Each plant struggles through the periods of disinterest, wilting in the days and weeks of inattention drought; but they sprout anew when I decide to like them again.  It’s in the latter periods when Aleppo comes to mind.  When a leaf is worth taking note of, when a stem marginally lengthened is pleasing, it becomes easy to appreciate the man who loved his pigeons.

I wonder what he’s going through now.  

Disclosure: Author wishes to acknowledge having pet birds in the past.  Notwithstanding, there was never a pigeon man’s passion to it.

Syrian music band from Ottomon Aleppo in the 18th Century (image: wikipedia)

From birds on the roof, to accidentally farming buffaloes, or enjoying a little rodent tourism, or even running away to live with the kangaroos, animals keep us busy.


This article also published in Star Magazine, here: The Battle of Aleppo

In Ink, On Silk

Indian ink and colour on silk, 11th century Chinese painting (image: wikipedia)

To state that the artist takes inspiration from the landscape is to say nothing in the way that stating the obvious is nothing.  But could there be a landscape that takes its inspiration from artists?  If there was such a place, it might be the countryside along the Lí Jiāng, the Li River in China.

In the sixth century, art critic and writer Xiè Hè documented his six principles of Chinese painting in the preface to his book ‘The Record of the Classification of Old Painters.’  The first principle, ‘spirit resonance’ refers to the flow of energy that encompasses theme, work and artist.  Without it, Xiè Hè remarked, there was no need to consider a work further.

It’s a house of camel hump hills, the banks of the Li, an arrangement of karst peaks and fog that’s become renowned.  The water currents flow simply, with humility and the mist of cloud and rain rises slowly to reveal the white and pinkish hues of the limestone faces of the mountains.  There is sadness and mystery in their cliff expressions: perhaps they are images of old age.

And the theme?  It’s up the viewer obviously, but might I suggest it’s about eternity?  It’s worth considering if long ago histories and, like serving tea, the smallest traditions that have marked China’s millennia, aren’t on display in the mountainsides, caught up in the banded, uneven cliffs and rocks.  The sadness might be the usual result of longevity; of change and reformation and change.  The mystery might be of an eon, ritual and repetition variety where seeming stillness is in fact gradual evolution.  The Li might be the very portrait of China?  The spirit resonance is there, no doubt, and Xiè Hè would not dispute the need to further consider the Li.

His second principle is the ‘bone method,’ the way of using the brush.  It’s about the marriage of handwriting and personality, and calligraphy and painting were indivisible in his day.  It’s the texture and brush stroke of the picture too.

From Guìlín to Yángshuò the tourists go, by boat they float along the Li.  It’s the critic’s route to admire the work, a vista dabbed softly with a fog and stone admixture.  It’s more than pleasing to the eye.  Each hill is unique, standing like an expert stroke of Chinese calligraphy, in ink on silk.  It’s about the texture.  It’s about the brush.  Each hill is deceptively relaxed and straightforward as can only happen if it’s been rehearsed a hundred times beforehand.  Only then can it become so natural.

The third principle of Xiè Hè is ‘correspondence to the object’ which relates to shape and line, the depicting of form.  The Li has incorporated that challenge too, in the gentle unexpected curves, horizontally in the river’s chosen path, its repose, and in the lazy line of the tourist boat, as well as vertically in the ridges of the mountains that seem purposefully to bring to the sky no harsh outline. Only a master artist could have captured such gentleness, could have thought to capture such gentleness.

‘Suitability to type’ is principle four, concerning the application of colour, layers, value and tone.  It’s a mop of green brush hill-hair, the banded strips of cliff in grey and pink and the opaque darkening of the fade-to-distance-summits that the Li offers in response.  Colour is in the modern faces in sunhats too, viewing the offering through a screen and talking in many languages.  They come from many countries to admire the Li.  Layers are found in the flattened smaller motor boats, historical, to be privately hired from one or other bank, and the tone is brought to life by the contrast between the red and yellow Chinese flag fluttering about the boat’s back that screams ‘here and now’ and the hills beyond which again, make all human resolve appear small and impermanent.  China was, is, will be: what the mountain-art might be saying.  It’s about an older China, an old woman and an old man, a civilisation that runs beyond the glare of Shanghai's neon.

‘Division and planning’ is Xiè Hè’s penultimate principle, about composition, arrangement, space and depth.  There’s little to add to that, with each hill placed as though with astute deliberation in the formation, ink stroke by ink stroke, that in combination makes a character.  The Li has not overlooked this aspect.

Lastly, Xiè Hè considered ‘transmission by copying,’ a virtue which referred not only to real life but also from the works of antiquity.  Copying means learning and appreciating in an art form where new and original were not the sole desired elements.  It means being a part of bigger traditions.  And here too it cannot be said that the Li disappoints, since as much as each hill is unique so the downstream has learnt from the upstream, like newer from older, and the treasures of antiquity there are, in the passage of the message of eternity, from Guìlín to Yángshuò by boat.

As the boat pulls up beside the Yángshuò dock, it’s indisputable: with the Li, Xiè Hè could not but be pleased.

'Hill Growing to Green and White Clouds,' by Gaō Kègōng (1248-1310) (image: wikipedia)

Life: perhaps it's less of a legendary river and more of a little salt lake or a pitch black sea?  What do you think?