No jeans, no cigarettes on the bus from Beirut to Raqqa

BEIRUT - In Umm Mohamed's suitcase there is a neatly folded black abaya and niqab, while to the side of her seat she has piled a pair of shoes and socks. "All black," she smiled, holding up her handbag, also black. "I got it to make the trip, just to be on the safe side."

The 70-year-old woman firmly holds the bus fare that will take her from Beirut's Charles Helou bus station to Raqqa, the de facto capital in Syria of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

Before arriving to the first checkpoint manned by ISIL fighters, somewhere between Damascus and Palmyra, the bus driver will allow Umm Mohamed, the only female passenger on the bus, time to change out of her leopard-print hijab and into the black garb, then he will ask her to move to the back of the bus.

"I'm going to see my son and his family," said the elderly woman. "I want to go back to my own house; Syria might be finished but it's still my home."

She is not alone; there are at least 10 other passengers on the 50-seater bus making the same trip.

Moneychangers walk around carrying wads of Syrian currency, as passengers smoke argileh, drink coffee and wait for departure time. Bus drivers shout "Damascus! Aleppo! Raqqa!" to entice passers-by. A poster advertising the bus station reads: "Feel safe with us."

At around 7:30am, the engine roars; driver Abu Hamad calls on passengers still ambling outside to take their seats. A few minutes later the bus is gone, beginning a journey that spans anything from 20 hours to three days, passing by government-held territories and opposition armed groups-manned fronts, til it reaches the heart of ISIL-held territory.

In some ways, those who make the trip are the first to witness Syria's changing borders.

The Charles Helou bus station, completed in 1974, was meant to transform public transport in Beirut at a time when rural migrants, coming from different parts of the country, were moving to the city in hordes.
Located under the main highway connecting Beirut to the coastal road north, the station was designed to ease the flow of traffic in the downtown district. "The highway and the station were built across a bay, connecting two seaside outcrops," said Abdul-Halim Jabr, an urban planner. "The area was basically a cliff."

With the start of Lebanon's civil war in 1975, plans for the station came to a halt. "During that time we heard stories of people being thrown from the upper highway to the lower street," he said. "This bus station has a gruesome history."

Fifteen years after the war ended, and despite plans to rehabilitate the station, it appears to be a phantom of its original, buoyant, purpose: Bathrooms are unhygienic, management of the station is in disarray, and its most dedicated patrons are not Lebanese migrants, but Syrians returning to their embattled towns.

A ticket to Raqqa costs around $50. To stop off in Aleppo on the way, passengers pay $30.

"It's cheap because the people who go are often poor," Ghassan, a manager in the ticket booth, said. "All buses go to Damascus in transit."

Like Umm Mohamed, most passengers are Syrian nationals, typically workers, going to visit their families.

Ibrahim, another passenger, said he had spent a week growing a beard to make the trip to see his mother. "Without it, they [ISIL fighters] won't let me in," he said. He works in construction outside Beirut and sends his mother some of his earnings every few months.

"Life there is hard, but she doesn't want to leave," he said. "But life in Lebanon is hard too."

According to Ibrahim, men, too, will change into loose fitting pants before the bus reaches the first ISIL-manned checkpoint, knowing the disdain the ISIL fighters have for jeans.

On several occasions, young men wearing tight-fitted pants were ordered out of the bus and told to "walk back to Aleppo," according to Abu Hamad, the driver.

Ibrahim, who was sitting on the pavement chain smoking, will have to throw out his cigarettes. The bus driver is already prepared. A heavy smoker himself, Abu Hamad is armed with air-freshener to spray the bus before entering ISIL-held territory.

"Usually we have no problems with Daesh [the Arabic acronym for ISIL], because we come prepared," he said. "I pull over, they come into the bus, and check everyone's ID, and if they don't have a problem with anyone, we can go."

Haysam Sinno, is another bus driver. "Every time I go, I feel like it could be my last," he said. "You see the destruction, in the main roundabout you see the severed heads."

Ibrahim seemed unperturbed by the reception they might receive by ISIL fighters manning checkpoints; it's the sporadic shelling along the road that terrifies him most.

"If there is fighting, the Syrian regime soldiers make us stop the bus and wait until it ends," said Abu Hamad, speaking casually of the clashes, as though they were an inconvenient rainstorm barring his path.

"It's dangerous to go there, for sure," he said. "But what can I do? I have to make a living, don't I?"

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/12/jeans-cigarettes-bus-beirut-raqqa-isil-151208134756788.html