Before railways and motor roads, travel across the Levant was measured in days between one khan and the next. The caravanserai was a standard piece of infrastructure: a walled rectangle with a single gate, a courtyard for animals and loads, arcaded galleries, stores and stables at ground level, and rooms above where merchants slept above their goods. Khan al-Hilu belongs to this family of buildings, and the film uses it to reconstruct a way of moving and trading that shaped the towns of the region. The camera follows the logic of the plan — the gate wide enough for a loaded animal, the courtyard as the organising void, the shaded arcade, the stairs to the upper floor — and the qualities that make such buildings so photogenic: deep shadow under arches, worn thresholds, light falling into an enclosed square of sky. Restored khans have become cultural venues, markets and public spaces in several towns, and the programme closes on this contemporary afterlife, in which a building designed for caravans finds a new use in the life of a modern city.
