When traveling, one of the things that usually strikes me about a country is its colour. France has a fresh yellow green, Ireland is a darker, lush dripping green, Italy has burnt umbers and gold and green, Cuba is turquoise, England has a slate grey, etc.. Syria is warm camel brown with soft shades of pink and purple. The sky is a blue you'll never see in Canada, with day after day of cloudless skies. And the light is an active participant in the landscape, changing the mountains and desert from blues to whites to soft browns to pinks to purples. All day long you are aware of the sun moving across the sky. You can tell the time by it. And of course the moon should not be forgotten, as it does the same thing moving from the mountain on one side of us to the other.
Before coming to Syria, I had no idea how bright the moon could really be. You really don't need a light with you when walking, and the shadows have a completely different depth to them than shadows made by the sun. When you grow up in a city where the sky is seen from between buildings, or even camping when the sky is seen from between trees, the desert moon is a surprising and unforgettable thing. I saw all this last year when I was here, and I loved it. But then I came back to Toronto and my eyes returned to their usual palette. Greys, multi-coloured shiny shops, rich blue greens, darker blue skies with clouds seen behind and above buildings. They forgot the palette of Syria until I got back to Mar Musa, and now the colours feel so familiar it's hard to believe they are colours that I've seen no where else. They are inseparable now from my memory of Syria, one more patch in my colourful travel quilt.
Jovanna
Before coming to Syria, I had no idea how bright the moon could really be. You really don't need a light with you when walking, and the shadows have a completely different depth to them than shadows made by the sun. When you grow up in a city where the sky is seen from between buildings, or even camping when the sky is seen from between trees, the desert moon is a surprising and unforgettable thing. I saw all this last year when I was here, and I loved it. But then I came back to Toronto and my eyes returned to their usual palette. Greys, multi-coloured shiny shops, rich blue greens, darker blue skies with clouds seen behind and above buildings. They forgot the palette of Syria until I got back to Mar Musa, and now the colours feel so familiar it's hard to believe they are colours that I've seen no where else. They are inseparable now from my memory of Syria, one more patch in my colourful travel quilt.
Jovanna
