We hear a rumour of a friendly goat herder who lives further up the valley. Our morning is spent tracking the wadi further up than yesterday, attempting to locate him. We do just that as he jump starts his generator with the tractor. One bone shudderingly bumpy journey up the rocky road later on the back of the tractor, we arrive at his house and get to view his entire flock penned up at the back. He treats us to a nice cup of tea and a biscuit, as I look at his impressive array of shortbread tin lids which mostly focus on Eilean Dhonan, mounted on the wall. The man clearly has taste. He seems to enjoy the company of people from the monastery, which is probably a good thing as I think he sees rather a lot of them. His stellar satellite system with a zillion channels also keeps him company. I had to laugh when I saw it after my attempts to locate televised soccer in Damascus-It was all waiting for me rather biblically at the top of this mountain. As I admire the system, he tells me that he is often visited by monks during the World Cup, desperate to catch a game or two. Today, the farmer is happy just to watch some girls dancing around to music.
I drink my tea as Gerry falls asleep on the couch, the farmer throwing him a blanket as he does so. Minutes later, he's woken by a very noticeable bang which happens to gently shake the house. It transpires that they are dynamiting the quarry some three kilometres away.
As we say out thanks and bid our farewell, we are passed by a rather serious looking man we recognise from the monastery. Before we even get to the bottom of the stairwell of his house, we hear the sounds of a man sobbing from where we just came. if I were a betting man, I'd reckon that our herder friend has more than one flock to attend to most days.
When we arrived at the monastery yesterday, there were two large troops of young christian scouts from Aleppo here, and things were apparently a bit noisier than usual. They leave today, but not before they manage to surround and converse with me en masse after lunch. The chief spokesman's is a bright button called Elias. There are four other Elias' in front of me and three Georges- clearly the names to have if you're a Syrian Christian. They're all very interesting and polite, happy to talk to someone from another part of the world.
With so many people now departed, the evening is spent quietly celebrating the birthday of a regular visitor to the monastery( George, would you believe), a fine fellow who has been most friendly. The priests have even managed to find some cake and a bottle of red to aid the celebrations. With nowhere to go after dinner at 10pm, the day concludes with us all enjoying an evening without the sound of 5o adolescent Eliah's and George's queuing for the bathroom outside our window. The silence really is deafening tonight, and it's is almost spooky. Even the rare moment of Syria's laziest dog barking outside the church doesn't seem to alter my inevitable march towards slumber.
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