Tower of heads

The tranquility of this park a block outside the old city walls belies its bloody history. Damascenes say that when the Mongols sacked Damascus in 1400, they stacked the heads of the slaughtered residents here, forming a "tower of heads."

Today, there is no trace of the heads, but the name remains.

Another restaurant

What to do with a large, deserted, half-crumbling, centuries-old Arabic-style courtyard house in the old city of Damascus? Turn it into a restaurant. This one will be around the corner from my house. Opening next month.

Over the past five years, more than a dozen new restaurants have opened within a few minutes walk of each other, all offering the same experience: a stone courtyard, a fountain, traditional Syrian dishes and the plaintive voice of the Lebanese diva, Fayruz.

The restaurants are pleasant and bring money and life to the old city. They also mean old houses are being restored that otherwise might sit vacant. But some locals, and even foreigners, complain of gentrification, that the old city is losing its authenticity.

But there are still plenty of pealing walls, flaking plaster and cracks in the sidewalks. Damascus is in no danger of becoming another another Prague or Venice -- at least not yet.

The Jews of Damascus

Amid the busy store fronts, the bustling markets, the twisting alleys of the old city and the drab apartment blocks of the new city, there is order. There are lines.

Damascus is divided into countless communities organized mostly by religion. Damascenes mix in public spaces, but when they return home, they return to their own.

One of the smallest and most invisible communities are the Jews. They are no more than 60 left. (The community once numbered in the tens of thousands, but two waves of emigration, mostly to America, one in the early 20th century and the other in the 1990s have all but wiped them out.)

There are two functioning synagogues in Damascus, guarded by uniformed and plain clothes Syrian police officers. "We have to worry about terrorists," the rabbi told me, in Arabic. At one recent service, there were just five men in attendance.

Down an unmarked alley of the Jewish Quarter stands the franjiyah synagogue -- franjiyah means "Frankish," or foreign, in Arabic, probably called such because it was founded by Sephardic Jews who settled in Syria after their expulsion from Spain in 1492; they joined the existing, ancient Syrian Jewish community. The synagogue was built in the style of Old Damascene houses, with wooden beams and roof, and black basalt pillars and walls. It is a simple design, leaving the ornamental brass, copper and silver, and wood carvings to stand out even more than they might have. It was beautiful.

The National Museum

Outside the National Museum, which houses a nice collection from Syria's ancient past, is a virtual graveyard of Roman urns, capitals and headless maidens. They are arranged on grassy rows, under a canopy of old trees. There are benches and fountains. It's an unusually peaceful place in the center of a noisy, polluted city.

Some go there to see the stone carvings, some to read, some to take photos of each other posing behind the headless statues. A Syrian friend of mine goes there to think.

My breakfast

The bread comes from down the street -- I walk to the baker every morning for a fresh raghif for 10 cents -- the lebeneh madabbleh (dried yogurt balls) comes from a dairy shop on Bab Touma Street, the dried mint from his neighbor, the olive oil from Serjilla, in northern Syria, the akadoonias from the tree in our courtyard and the coffee from Brazil.

My coffee seller in Qasaa tells me that Brazilian beans are the best for making Turkish coffee. Colombian comes too bitter. I buy a quarter kilo ground with cardomom for $1.30. Lasts me for a month or six weeks.