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We left Mardin for Diyarbakir - this proved to be a staccato start. Firstly, we couldn't get down the hill from our hotel as Mardin was gridlocked due to the road works - only the donkeys were getting through. We then found the bus, went 2 miles and were told to swop to another one (here a full bus is far more important than timetables). Finally we started, we only went half a mile and were stopped by the police who checked every body on the bus. It was a serious check point, backed up by the army in armoured personnel carriers with big guns! They were not interested in us, only locals, presumably looking for terrorists.
Diyarbakir looked a forbidding place - surrounded by 20ft high black walls. We checked into our hotel, a converted 15th century caravanserai (ancient site for merchants to rest up with their camels). It was a wonderful building but it was a bit tatty round the edges. We walked into town and had a quick look round. We found another Caravanserai that had been converted to restaurants. There was a lot of money being spent restoring various buildings in the town.
After dinner, we had our 1st bad experience. Walking home in the main street at 8:30 a youth shot out of dark alley and had his hand in Kens pocket and was gone again. His prize was a dirty handkerchief! Still it was a bit unnerving but the place has a bad reputation for petty crime so we vowed to increase our precautions.
Next day we went to walk around part of walls. These are supposedly the largest set of walls outside of China. They are impressive but walking on them would not meet UK health & safety standards. We then had the second problem, exactly the same happened to me. Unfortunately the thief got some small denomination bills (we made sure we had nothing of significant value on us). This unnerved us but we carried on to see an ancient church - 4th century Syriac church. We were shown round by the leader of the church who told us about how the community had been persecuted and was now down to 5 families. The church is maintained by the help of overseas donations by expatriate Syriac people who have left the area but it sounded a tough life.
We arrived at the main mosque to see the congregation streaming out from Friday prayers - there must have been 2000 people coming out. The mosque itself is very old - originally it had been a pagan temple, then converted to a church and then to a mosque. We decided to finish the sightseeing as we had become paranoid about people trying to rob us.
There was a wedding party taking place at the hotel. This was in the courtyard, with our rooms overlooking the celebrations. It was fascinating to watch. There seemed to be no food served and everybody was drinking water. There was lots of dancing and it was interesting to see the difference between the women in traditional dress (head scarves and full length coats) versus those in skimpy western style dresses. The only problem was the noise - the band was loud and we had an early start in the morning.
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