To Reach the Crag, She Had to Navigate Military Checkpoints, a 16-Year-Old Map, and Land Mines

Fatima Ayoubi was staring at a 16-year-old climbing map when she was hit with a burst of familiarity.

I know these places, she thought. It was March 2024, and the 29-year-old was at her computer in Cleveland, Ohio, trying to dissect a static, black-and-white JPEG of southwestern Syria. Ayoubi had only been rock climbing for a year, but it had already inspired a change in her lifestyle. Weekend trips to the Red River Gorge and New River Gorge had given her a taste of some of the East’s best sport climbing: clipping bolts from textured sandstone, the wind in her hair, unlocking sequences far above the treetops.

Eventually, her mother, who still lived in Damascus, angled for a visit. “You’re climbing everywhere else,” she said over one Whatsapp call. “Why don’t you climb in Syria?”

Her mother had a point. Ayoubi knew that the capital city was surrounded by limestone cliff bands, but she couldn’t find much information online about climbing routes, except for one map published anonymously by a Swiss expat in 2008. A red dot indicated the location of each crag.

A few of the town names were familiar—the ones just outside Damascus. As a child, Ayoubi spent her summers at her grandparents’ orchards in Zebedani and Bludan. Some of the indicated crags were just a few miles away.

She knew she could find the routes.

A few days later, Ayoubi landed in Damascus and drove toward the suburbs with a few family friends, ready to track down the bolted routes on the 2008 map. The Swiss expat hadn’t responded to her emails or requests for more information. She didn’t know if he was even still around.

Syria in 2008 was very different from Syria in 2024. More than 13 years of civil war had left its mark on the suburbs, which historically opposed the dictatorial regime of Bashar al-Assad. There were military checkpoints everywhere, and the suburbs looked like ghost towns. Even though the fighting had died down, Assad’s forces still maintained active control over the roads.

Ayoubi drove toward what the map had called Monte Rosa, and soon saw it: a half-mile-long band of 100-foot-tall limestone cliffs at the top of a grassy plateau. Compared to Wild Iris or Ten Sleep, Monte Rosa was slightly slabbier. With sharp features and even some large cracks, this crag could fit dozens of potential new routes.

At a checkpoint near the cliff, her driver explained to the soldiers that they wanted to hike up to the cliff. But the soldiers refused to let anyone get out of the car.

There were mines over there, they insisted. Nobody could approach the cliffs.

Was there another way they could approach?

No.

Could they at least get out of their car to look, just for a few minutes?

Also no.

If she couldn’t get to the crags, she would take as many photos and videos as she could. As they traveled between the sunny clifflines—some steep and shadowed, others gentle and textured—Ayoubi saved GPS coordinates of any spot with gorgeous climbing potential. She left them in her photo album, unsure what to do.

At least, someday, when she returned, she’d know how to find them.

In Ayoubi’s recollection, the war’s end came out of the blue.

Seven months after her scouting mission in Syria, she watched from her home in Cleveland as the Assad regime suddenly collapsed, and the ex-dictator fled to Moscow. Political analysts were caught off guard by the sudden turn of events. After 14 years of war, one man’s control over 24 million people was finally broken.

In Damascus, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets to celebrate, throwing up peace signs and waving Syrian flags. It was a new era: one of rebirth, freedom, and a people reclaiming their country through community-building and new programs. Everyone, Ayoubi explains, was suddenly part of an NGO.

For Ayoubi, the end of the war also meant that she could return to the crags she’d scouted. There was just one problem: she still didn’t have partners.

In August, she got an email from the Swiss expat who owned the 2008 map. He introduced her to two Syrian brothers, Moaz and Yasseen Tasabehji, who’d been living in Squamish since 2010. After Assad’s regime had fallen, they moved back to Damascus and were working to develop a vibrant climbing community there.

In October, Ayoubi flew to Damascus to climb with them. The brothers were going to Monte Rosa, the same cliffline that Ayoubi had driven past the year before.

On the morning she was heading out, her parents pressured her to not go because of the danger of exploding mines. According to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, mines had killed at least 3,521 civilians and injured 10,400 during the war, and many were still active. But by then, she had seen videos of the Tasabehji brothers climbing—and she was determined to join them.

Later, she learned that the brothers had spoken with goat farmers who regularly herd their goats in the fields beneath Monte Rosa. If there were any active mines, they reasoned, hundreds of hooves would have stepped on them by now.

When I meet with Ayoubi over video chat, she’s three corporate meetings deep in her morning, but she still beams when she talks about her recent climbing in Syria.

After the day of sunny sport climbing at Monte Rosa, Ayoubi decided to extend her trip to help the Tasabehji brothers train a group of first-time climbers from all different parts of Syria. The group brought 17 young adults, including people whose home areas had been in conflict during the war, and taught them how to belay each other on top rope. When Ayoubi noticed the partnerships and trust forming between the climbers, she realized that climbing could help unite people in Syria’s new, peaceful era. The potential for healing and unity deeply resonated with her. How could she take part in this?

When the Tasabehji brothers told Ayoubi about their plans to climb in Wadi Rum, Jordan, with some of the Palestinian climbers who starred in the documentary Resistance Climbing (2023), she jumped at the opportunity to join. Traveling to Jordan, however, underscored just how hard it is for Middle Eastern climbers to move throughout the region. “I can drive for six hours [from Cleveland] and be in the Red River Gorge,” Ayoubi explains. “It’s the same distance from Damascus to Wadi Rum, but Syrians are not allowed to travel to Jordan without a formal visa.”

Both Ayoubi, and the Tasabehji brothers are dual citizens—she via the United Kingdom and the brothers via Canada—and it was only through their non-Middle Eastern passports that they were given freedom of travel to Jordan, the only nearby country that both Palestinians and Syrians can climb together.

“Being Syrian, I can’t visit Palestine because I can’t pass through Israel, and for them to come to Syria, they have to apply to special authorizations,” she says. “It’s actually funny. If you’re a Westerner, you can visit Syria, Palestine, Jordan, and Israel, but if you have one of those passports, it’s really hard to visit each other.”

Climbing with her Palestinian friends in Wadi Rum, Ayoubi says, carried a unique feeling of belonging. “It was amazing to be in Jordan, climbing together on Arabic rocks. Pre-colonialism, it was all just one region.” The Palestinian climbers offered to help bolt routes in Syria if they ever get authorization to visit. “I hope we come together again as a community of climbers and push against political barriers that restrain us.”

Now that Ayoubi has returned to the U.S, she hopes to meet like-minded climbers as she travels across the states, but she still wants to support the up-and-coming climbing community in Syria—and not just on the cliffs outside Damascus. “The biggest challenge right now is that we’d really like to expand toward more areas in Syria, which are up north,” she says. “What’s beautiful about that is that when you go up north, you’re on the Mediterranean coast. There are cities like Latakia and Tartus, and they have beautiful limestone, but it’s even less charted.”

But after 14 years of war, land mines still pose a significant threat to climbing in Syria. “If you look at the map of where mines have exploded, it’s in very critical mountainous areas—the border areas that were previously in conflict,” she says.

While the Tasabehji brothers lead climbing trips around Damascus, Ayoubi is determined to support their efforts from abroad. She recently started a nonprofit to raise funds to bring experts who can help demine Syrian climbing areas—which, she admits, might not be the top priority for government-led demining.

“For us in the Middle East, we’ve learned to not necessarily just rely on our government. We, too, can find the resources that we need,” she says. “That’s one of the beautiful things I’ve seen here: There’s so much collaboration and willingness to get work done between people. There’s almost this mindset of ‘Yeah, we can figure it out. We just need to do it together.’”

Reflecting on her last two years, Ayoubi adds that climbing in Syria reminded her that climbing isn’t just about sending—but about the deep connections that sport can create. “Funnily enough, this would just be the story of how I found my belay partners,” she muses, taking a pause. “But then it grew into so much more than that.”

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