Maalula

It is surprisingly easy to make day trips from Damascus, because there are always buses running there. To get to Maalula—a charming city about an hour’s ride away—we took a minibus. Minibuses are basically white vans that give you good prices for shared rides to various Syrian destinations. They can be hot and cramped, but they are very efficient and shuttle back and forth so frequently that it is rare to be stranded anywhere for long. They are also a great place to witness the overall honesty and kindness of Syrians, because when everyone haphazardly passes money up to the front of the bus to pay their fares, you can rest assured that someone will still pass back the correct change. A Syrian police officer personally saw to it that we boarded the right bus and bade us a friendly welcome to his country. In fact, just about everyone we meet—from shopkeepers to little kids in the street—asks where we are from and, when we say “America,” replies with a very warm “Welcome!”



Maalula is an attractive place, but its main draw for Dan and me was its relationship with St. Thecla. Though she is underappreciated now, Thecla was a major player among saints in Late Antiquity. Once a well-to-do young woman engaged to a well-to-do young man, Thecla heard Paul’s teachings about chastity from her bedroom window. Fascinated, she clung to that window “like a spider” in order to hear more. It wasn’t long before she ditched her fiancé and risked martyrdom a few times to follow in Paul’s footsteps. My favorite Thecla moment is definitely the one where, in the middle of a beast fight in a Roman arena, she decides it is time to baptize herself and leaps headlong into a pool full of carnivorous seals. (Fortunately, God causes a lightning bolt to strike the water and kill all of the seals before she lands, then surrounds her with a cloud of fire to protect her modesty and prevent her baptism from becoming a wet tunic contest.) Anyway, Thecla’s main claim to fame after this is that she was a woman who preached and baptized just like a man. One of the icons at the Convent of St. Thecla even depicts her dressed as a priest and gives her the masculine label of “Mar Thecla,” instead of the expected “Mari.”



At the Convent of St. Thecla, you can see Thecla’s tomb, which is usually filled with devout pilgrims hoping to address prayers to her. The cave is serene, with a mossy ceiling and a floor parted by the trunk of a gnarled tree. Inside the inner sanctum, where you have to take off your shoes, you can see some interesting icons and listen to the whisper of fervent prayers. Just outside the convent is the gorge where, according to local tradition, the rocks parted for Thecla as she fled from Roman soldiers sent to execute her. If that doesn’t interest you, there is also plenty of Christian wine made in this area, which leads to awesomely kitschy wine bottles decorated with the saints!



Inside the convent, Dan and I were entrusted with a mysterious and sacred mission. The sister in charge of monitoring the church (to prevent women with bare shoulders from entering) found out we were from America and showed us some guy’s business card, with an address in Connecticut. She begged us to take a gift shop icon of Thecla back to the USA with us and send it to him, which we gladly agreed to do. She was strangely secretive about the whole thing and didn’t want to pass on the address or the icon in front of other visitors, which leads me to wonder: Who is this guy? A forbidden love? A brother? An old friend? I don’t intend to ask, but it’s hard not to speculate. A quick Google revealed that he is a spiritually-inspired artist as well as president of a design company.

After visiting a few more churches, Dan and I decided to move straight on to Mar Musa, a monastery not far from Maalula. I was absolutely terrified, because these are the exact instructions provided by Lonely Planet:

“To proceed to Mar Musa, grab a Damascus-bound minibus and ask to be let off on the Damascus-Aleppo Hwy (a 10-minute ride away); there, flag down any bus or minibus going north to Homs or Aleppo and ask to be let off at Nebek.”

On what planet, lonely or otherwise, does getting dropped off on the highway and trying to flag down a bus sound like a good idea? Dan insisted it would be easy. I was convinced we would get stranded and the idea of being indefinitely stuck by the side of a Syrian highway freaked me out so much that I have to confess I cried. Fortunately, my fears were unfounded—the minibus driver knew to leave us at a bridge designated for just such drop-offs and pickups, and Dan and I were snapped up and headed north in no time. When we got to Nebek, a cab driver knew exactly what we wanted and drove us straight to the foot of the mountain on which Mar Musa is perched. To finish the journey, you have to haul yourself up a pretty significant number of stairs. As I have learned on my travels, there is no holy place worth visiting that doesn’t require a miserable, sweaty climb.