Maktab Anbar — spdl_n1

Whilst walking towards the Karee Mosque, I was intercepted by a local called Nasser. The people in Syria are amazingly friendly and honest, and Palmyra excepted, almost every invitation to drink tea or attempt to show you hidden houses or a request to practice English can be taken at face value. It's the polar opposite of somewhere like Morocco, where the majority of such encounters (in the cities, anyway) are usually linked to attempts to sell you carpets or drugs or whatever. That is of course entirely understandable, given the collision between extreme poverty and mass market tourism there - at the end of the day, Western tourists are rich, and an awful lot of Moroccans aren't. But I digress. It was simply refreshing in Syria to be able to let my guard down completely and converse and engage with locals without worrying whether I was being taken for a ride. After bumping into Nasser, a Kurd from Aleppo, he insisted on showing me the Maktab Anbar. The Maktab was built by the Ottomans at around the same time as the Azem palace, but is still in use as government offices. Despite (apparently) being open to the public, it's hidden behind an unmarked doorway in the Old Town which I'd already walked past without realizing what lay behind.