Greetings from Palmyra, Syria, with its once-grand hotel named for a warrior queen

Far-Flung Postcards is a weekly series in which NPR’s international correspondents share snapshots of moments from their lives and work around the world.

Battered and bullet-ridden but still standing! It doesn’t look it now, but this was one of the most elegant hotels in the Middle East. The Zenobia was built in the 1920s. It was named after Queen Zenobia, the legendary ruler of ancient Palmyra who annexed part of the Roman Empire when the city was a key stop on the Silk Road.

I took this photo in late January, when I went back to Palmyra for the first time in three decades for a look at how the iconic site and city had fared over the years of war when it was inaccessible to tourists.

I’d stayed at the Zenobia in the ’90s and it was glorious — quirky and full of life and possibly even ghosts. A three-hour-drive from Damascus — longer in a dodgy taxi — the ancient Roman city rose up in the distance like a desert mirage. The hotel itself had certainly seen better days, but oh, the wonder of having even a bad Syrian glass of wine in a dining room literally steps away from the ruins. An equally short walk away were the caverns with underground springs for adventurous bathers.

I didn’t see ghosts but if there were, perhaps Agatha Christie, who stayed there with her archaeologist husband a century ago, might have made an appearance. Or djinns — the supernatural beings said to favor living in the desert.

They would have plenty of solitude. Syria is recovering from 12 years of civil war and Palmyra itself changed hands twice during fighting between the Syrian regime, Russian forces and ISIS.

You see the part of the sign with missing letters? It used to read “Cham Palace,” the Syrian hotel chain that ran it. No news on the hotel’s future, but people here are looking forward to welcoming tourists again.

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