On the bus to Syria we came in contact with two Darth Vader fans. They were fully dressed in black, black dress, black gloves, scarf, hejab, veil, the whole kit and caboodle so that you couldn’t see a single part of them.
“Don, don, don, dondon, don”
Hannah laughed at my Star Wars theme music as they both glided past us. I did it a bit quiet though just in case Anakin heard me and released the force to strangle me.
“Mika don’t look so scared, it’s not Darth.”
“Shhh, he can hear you.”
“Mika how can it be Darth, they are both women.” She pointed out.
“I don’t know that big one is pretty big and I think the other one is his monkey butler.” I replied as I shivered, “look how they glide they don’t even walk like normal people!”
I looked around for someone with a light saber but to no avail.
“Stop holding that stick like it’s a light saber!” so I dropped the stick quickly and ran to the bus.
At the border the border guards barked, “Show me your face” to Darth.
I turned to Hannah, “No Darth won’t die if he removes his mask.”
Lucky for us all the guard was of a weak mind.
“It’s a woman, it’s my wife.” As if that meant something. Then I swear I saw Darth move his fingers. His feeble mind tricks didn’t work on me and I wasn’t fooled but the guard was because he left it at that.
“Mika, stop moving your fingers ridiculously and asking strangers for their wallets.” I suspect the only reason it didn’t work was because they couldn’t speak English because all I got were blank stares of incomprehension.
Once in Damascus we got a Taxi and foolishly asked for a cheap hotel which he knew of and got taken to this crappy hotel which was not in anyway cheap. We learnt a good lesson though, never trust a taxi driver. One which we didn’t learn all that well. Lucky for us though Archeologist boy had given us the name of a cheap hostel. The taxi driver didn’t know it so he got lost but he kindly took us on an extended tour of the city. One which he charged us for. Stupidly I paid being a traveling novice and all. Also Hannah had been getting angry at me getting angry at people taking us for a ride.
“What is getting angry going to do? Nothing.” She would say.
I personally thought it was going to do 2 things.
1. Make me feel better
2. Make them know that I know their game
But seeing as there was a third undesirable thing, making her angry, I tried to be more reasonable from then on.Hannah had my ring on and whilst walking around eating our Falafel a man came up and kissed her hand with a loud slurp, saw the ring, thought we were married and game my hand what was suspiciously like a lick. I think he was trying to come onto Hannah then got worried I was about to give him a broadside of the old cannon, Mr. Right Bicep and Mr. Left Bicep, for coming on to my wife so pretended it was some sort of unisex Syrian greeting. So all in all I am not sure if Hannah wearing my ring was a good thing.