Another Voice

23 May 2009

Sleeping with Agatha Christie and the ghosts of guests past in Syria’s Baron Hotel

Do you believe in ghosts? I wish I did, for were I to entertain the flimsiest hope that some relic of a personality could haunt a place where once they were, then I should not have slept a wink last night, for the thrill of who might linger. But I slept soundly in Agatha Christie’s bedroom. T.E. Lawrence slept next door.

Where am I?

Well, if I tell you that any visiting Madame Arcati would expect to contact — besides those two — Field Marshall Lord Slim, Lord Hore-Belisha, H.V. Morton, María Teresa de Borbón and Princess Eugénie of Greece, do you begin to guess? Did I mention Peter, Prince of Greece, or Dr Schacht, the Nazis’ banker? Can there be anywhere in the world where more spectacular names can be found together in the same guest book?

I am in the Baron Hotel, in Aleppo, northern Syria. And when I ask whether there be any other point on the planet where, in space though not in time, so many famous lives have intersected, my question is not rhetorical. Maybe the Savoy in London? New York’s Waldorf Astoria? The British embassy in Paris? The Baron Hotel is in this league. For much of the 20th century there was nowhere else grand in this city for grandees, royals, statesmen and celebrities to stay. Everyone who was anyone, and passing through Aleppo, has laid their heads here.

And I do mean everyone. I’ve been leafing through the guest book and taking a note, while hotel staff (unnerved at my methodical transcription) hover in hopes of returning it to safekeeping. Many of them have worked here for decades, like Mr Walid, who hovers like a friendly spirit, ever anxious to assist, like a character from an Olivia Manning novel.

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