51�Թ�

A stone path winding through the village was full of diversion: ducks bathing in a stone canal; women stacking flatbreads into a tower; fast-boiling syrup in a metal pot.

The water lapped quietly at the stone canal walls beneath us; a group of friends biked past in a clump, shouting over each other in rapid-fire, guttural Dutch; the tiny boats, not much longer than me, half drowned in the canal; the smell of water that had stood too still for too long; his arm pulling me in; his real leg against my real leg all the way from hip to foot.

“Wet, dark, and creepy,” said Oliver, as he listened to a peculiar whispering noise made by the water as it glided along in its stone canal, the sound being repeated in a faint murmur from the sides and top.

Af ter three hours and a half slow march we reached the Orontes, near a spot where a large wheel, of the same construction as those at Hamah, raises the water from the river, and empties it into a stone canal, by means of which the neighbouring fields are irrigated.