Nine Months in Syria

Tower of heads

2007-06-13T04:36:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-11T07:25:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-08T08:53:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-06T05:07:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-05T00:36:00.000-07:00

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.

97 percent

2007-05-30T11:35:00.000-07:00

The billboards changed overnight from campaign to congratulations. This one reads: "Congratulations; Congratulations; Oh, our country; To you, our Asad." Or, "To you, our lion." In Arabic, asad means lion.

Bashar Al-Asad won a second term – somehow three percent of voters disapproved – and the city was awash in more parades, fireworks and street parties, both planned spontaneous rallies and planned planned rallies. The president himself briefly appeared at one yesterday.

(Erring on the side of caution, the U.S. embassy evacuated yesterday afternoon because one of the marches was headed past its front doors. Nothing happened.)

If Syrians associate one thing with democracy it may be bad traffic. With all of the celebrations, most major traffic circles and downtown streets have closed.

On Saturday, a merchant in the old city told me the story of his brother-in-law, a physician, who was driving home from work, a distance of 8 kilometers. It took him four hours.

"We hope that after tomorrow, this will all return to normal," he said, never mentioning the presidential referendum. "Inshallah," I replied. God willing.

He's still waiting. Word spread of more official celebrations today.

My new house

2007-05-29T12:01:00.000-07:00

Weery of the kitchen construction, the perpetual car horns from the busy street below my room, and the early-morning sun from the east-facing windows, I moved.

About 10 minutes walking from my old house, in the Muslim neighborhood called Qaimariya, which speads along a straight, cobbled road from the Umayyid Mosque, I found a new house, which I share with five other foreigners. My room is the largest, with a ceiling high enough for a basketball hoop.

This is my view, from the two upstairs windows.

In the late mornings, Abu Tareq, the elderly caretaker who wears the same blue sweat pants and white t-shirt, or brown galabiyah, comes to water the many plants and vines in the courtyard, occasionally wash the dishes, and clean the common areas, including the liwan, the large outdoor covered patio, which is frequently bombarded by birds who nest in the wooden beams above. It's designed to be the coolest part of the house -- as every liwan, it faces north, so receives the least direct sunlight -- but sitting there brings unique risks.

Syria: Not just sand

2007-05-28T01:54:00.000-07:00

In my continuing effort to deconstruct the image of the Middle East as sand dunes and camel caravans, I offer this view, from the Syrian coast.

Reelecting a president

2007-05-24T04:59:00.000-07:00

Presidential campaigns without an opponent are short. But this one was to the point.

Two weeks ago, the bus-stop advertising appeared with the Syrian flags and a new portrait of the president, introducing the slogan, minhebbek – we love you, in the Syrian Arabic dialect.

Then, the billboards with the new portrait, and the slogan, Hamat al-diyar aleykum al-salam – "Defender of the homes, upon you peace," or, more loosely, "We salute you who defend the nation." It's the opening line of the national anthem; here, the defender is understood.

Then, the banners, and more billboards, and more slogans and signs and flags, and yet more portraits, the largest of which spans four stories, hanging from the front of the finance ministry, an iconic building in the center of Damascus that is featured on the 25-lira coin. The portrait is framed by two long banners, one the Syrian flag, the other the pan-Arab flag.

Then, a new ode to the president on government radio, Sawt al-Shabab, Voice of the Boys. The chorus: "Bashar, Bashar." And the jingles between radio segments, "Minhebbek, Minhebbek."

Then, the tents, festooned in the national colors, in every neighborhood, with stages for bands to play their latest Arabic pop songs honoring the president, and complimentary tanoori bread and shawarma sandwiches for the merry-makers.

Then, the poets, who performed at the university, reciting their latest muse in praise of the president.

Then, the coverage in the government dailies. Al-Baath, taking its name from the ruling party, led Monday with a story on the upcoming election. "Yes, for the symbol of pride, power, and dignity," read the headline, in bold type. On Wednesday, the lead was similar, but different: "Yes for he who strengthens the power of the homeland and secures the country's foundations."

Today, the parade. The government declared Thursday an official holiday in order to allow bureaucrats, undercover security agents and students alike to express their support, providing free bus transportation to and from the event. Responsible parties noted the names of those who might have forgotten to attend.

Tens of thousands – official accounts will tell us hundreds of thousands – of participants crowded downtown, waving likenesses of the president and nylon Syrian flags that were already frayed by 10 a.m.

They chanted, "God, Syria, Bashar, and that's it," and, the ever-popular, "With our blood and our souls, we sacrifice for you, oh, Bashar." In Iraq, they used to chant the same, substituting Saddam for Bashar, of course.

On Sunday, the ballot choice will be simple: yes or no. Bashar al-Asad is seeking a second seven-year term under a constitutionally-mandated presidential referendum, which produced his landslide victory in 2000, and landslides five times before for his father, Hafez.

Another weather story

2007-05-17T12:30:00.000-07:00

On average, Damascus receives one-tenth of an inch of rain in May. So, it was strange that it rained all day here. And all of last Thursday, too. Strange, I told the sandwich seller, all this rain.

He smiled. If God wills it, it will rain.

On Friday, God has more rain in mind, according to the Internet weather forecast. On Saturday, a cloud, then Sunday it's sun and 91 degrees.

On average, the long-range forecast is mostly sunny and hot, until roughly Oct. 20. The average annual rainfall in June is .03 inch and in July and August it has rained so little in recorded weather history that the statistical average is 0.

But, that's up to God.

Jewish Quarter revival

2007-05-16T02:37:00.000-07:00

In the Old City's quietest, most neglected neighborhood, a collection of crumbling, once-grand homes known as Harat Al-Yahud -- the Jewish Quarter -- an artistic revival of sorts is underway. It is now home to a dozen Syrian artists, who have converted old Arabic-style courtyard houses into studios and sometimes galleries.

(The Syrian government continues to respect the deeds of the absentee owners, most of whom emigrated to New York in the early 1990s, which makes renewal a slow process.)

This art colony of sorts is anchored by well-known Syrian scupltor Mustafa Ali, who four years ago moved into the former home of the Bukais family, Jewish silk traders. He uses the house to exhibit his own work, as well as that of other artists, and occasionally hosts free music concerts and dance performances. On Sunday, the young Syrian jazz singer, Rasha Riziq, performed to a packed house.

Poison wind

2007-05-14T12:16:00.000-07:00

From the deserts of Egypt and Arabia, the poison wind -- riha al-summoom -- visits Syria every May, carrying sand so fine it can be perceived only by taste and by the film it leaves on our sweaty limbs.

Friday's cloudless, sepia-tone sky was either the poison wind, or the end of the world. We're all still here, most of us, and we've since showered and dusted off.

Cedars of the Lord

2007-05-09T02:18:00.000-07:00

Towering cedar trees once shaded the whole of Mount Lebanon, according to the ancient sources. But, a parade of ancient civilizations -- Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Phoenicia, Egypt, Israel, Rome, Byzantium -- exploited the trees, finding the long, straight timber suitable for building ships and temples.

Today, old-growth cedars number just a few hundred, and are concentrated in two areas. Above Kadisha Valley in the north, Arz al-Rab, or Cedars of the Lord, more than 6,000 feet above sea level, were first protected by Queen Victoria, who ordered a wall built around them in 1876. Scientists estimate that 12 of the cedars there are more than 1,000 years old. They are also large in girth, as demonstrated by this guy (my dad).

The cedar is exploited these days by competing Lebanese political interests, which drape themselves in the Lebanese flag, emblazoned with the image of Lebanon's national tree.

Truffles

2007-05-08T02:45:00.000-07:00

This truffle season was the best in years, this man told me at the Baghdad Cafe, in the Syrian desert, near the road to the Iraqi border. Bedouin wisdom says winter thunder and lightning brings truffles. This was a stormy winter in the desert.

In the spring, herders scour the rocky moonscape for the delicacy -- called kema in Arabic -- and carry it to markets, like the Baghdad Cafe. In Aleppo, I ate a truffle kebab: alternating slices of truffle with tender chunks of ground lamb. Mmmmmm.

Desert rainbow

2007-05-04T06:27:00.000-07:00

On a recent drive through Syria's Eastern desert, known as Al-Badia, it was raining. Patches of rain mixed with sun.

The kitchen and Abu Mousa

2007-05-02T23:55:00.000-07:00

Since he returned from America, Abu Mousa had moved back into the kitchen, against the family's best efforts to keep him out. His granddaughter, Lena, says old people like to be near food. He avoided his own room and slept in the kitchen and cooked there, leaving dirty dishes and often molding fruit and vegetables.

The solution: Build a wall through the kitchen so it's too small for a bed, forcing Abu Mousa elsewhere. He wasn't happy. True, it was often filthy. But, I've enjoyed many meals there with Abu Mousa. Now, it's too small for a chair and a table, as well.

"Allah yarhamo," I said. God have mercy on it, oft-repeated to express respect for the dead. "Indeed," Abu Mousa said. "Allah yarhamo."

Spring

2007-05-02T02:36:00.000-07:00

Between the cold, damp winter and the hot, dry summer is the Syrian spring. It was slow in coming this year, which means it will be shorter than usual. Short sleeves and sandals are close at hand.

Dappled with the gentle sun of a Damascus spring, rabia, Syrians sipped cappuccinos and Lebanese draft beer last Friday, the Muslim day of rest and the start of the weekend, at the fashionable Steed Café, in the Christian district of Ghassaneh.

Easter

2007-05-01T10:28:00.000-07:00

Christians in Damascus place greater significance on Easter than they do Christmas, which, my American friends here who know about such things tell me, is how it's supposed to be.

This year, the Eastern Easter and the Western Easter coincided (three weeks or so ago) and the Christian quarter of the Old City was a tableau of parades, fancy dresses, fig-filled sugar cookies, even children dressed as Easter bunnies. The Orthodox churches went first, with services starting at midnight; the Greek Catholics offered two, at midnight and 5 a.m. Others observed the anniversary of Christ's resurrection at more civilized times.

The 10 o'clock Anglican service was followed by a cascade of balloons in the church courtyard. Kids grabbed them to pop and moms snatched them up to decorate the house.

The blood of Adonis

2007-04-25T04:03:00.000-07:00

In April, the blood-red anenome, or poppy, flowers across Syria. Officially, Anenome Coronaria; in Arabic Shaqa'iq Noaman, or the sisters of Noaman.

According to legend still told in Syria, the flowers first sprang from the blood of Adonis, the Greek god with Semetic origins. After his death on Mount Lebanon at the tusks of a wild boar, Aphrodite sprinkled nectar on his body and each drop of his blood turned into a red poppy.

Every spring, the blood of Adonis infuses the landscape of Greater Syria.

Little Armenia

2007-04-24T05:05:00.000-07:00

Tucked among the green mountain peaks straddling the Syrian-Turkish border are 13 villages settled 900 years ago by Armenians who ventured south from their homeland. The majority of their descendents have since emigrated to the United States, mostly in the 20th century, when Armenians faced genocide, expulsion and, later, rising Islamism.

Those who remain retain their peculiar dialect called Kasabli, named after the largest of the villages, Kasab, which is located in Syria. The language is not mutually intelligible with modern Armenian, having evolved in isolation over the centuries.

Today, Kasab is one of Syria's premier summer vacation spots, and manufacturer of famed laurel soap. It also boasts dramatic coastline -- mountains plunging into the sea, hiding beaches amid their folds. Last weekend I hiked with friends to one such beach, photographed above.

Democracy

2007-04-19T14:15:00.000-07:00

Campaign season is in full bloom across Syria. Candidates for the People's Council (national parliament) and their supporters have covered nearly every available surface – walls, trees, fences, light poles – with posters bearing their likenesses. Handmade banners hang above busy streets and across traffic circles. After a windy day, their message is lost in twists and furls. One Syrian friend dismissed the proliferation as an eye-sore.

As opposed to campaign posters in the West – where a name is often the image – political marketing in Syria always features a photo of the candidate. Sartorial choices may help potential voters choose: turban or business suit; head scarf or blonde highlights.

The parliament is elected every four years, and although minor party candidates may run, they are required by law to accept the leadership of the Baath Party. A majority of the 250 seats are guaranteed for the National Patriotic Front, which is comprised of Baath Party candidates and their allies.

The election is Sunday.

Tool ma al-nasrani sayam, al-bared 'ayam

2007-03-31T01:23:00.000-07:00

As long as the Christian fasts, the cold lasts.

Damascenes of all stripes are eagerly anticipating Easter because once it arrives, winter have officially ended – or so says one of the many proverbs by which many people here live their lives.

During lent, Syrian Christians refrain from eating meat, a form of fasting. They attend weekly Friday night church services dedicated to Mary. Every evening, church youth bands rehearse in preparation for Easter Day parades. And daily, Christians light candles at the many Christian shrines built in nooks along the alleyways of Bab Touma.

Shades of green

2007-03-28T03:44:00.000-07:00

Damascus -- like Cairo, Baghdad, Amman, and most Arab capitals, I suspect -- gives the impression of desert. The natural landscape, beyond small parks tucked amid low-rise apartment blocks, like the buildings themselves, is shades of brown.

But, just three hours to the north, the desert gives way to green, as far as the eye can see. Syria's bread basket, the plains surrounding Homs and Hama, is another world -- more so after winter rains. At the Roman ruins of Apamea, in the countryside northwest of Hama, which I visited last week with Syrian friends, stone columns and scattered remains of a 2,000-year-old city are nearly engulfed by rolling green fields.

Along the edge of a graveyard of ancient building blocks, boys directed their sheep, in search of yet greener grass.

Putting on special clothes

2007-03-27T03:56:00.000-07:00

The Umayyad Mosque, also known as the Great Mosque, is the Notre Dame of Damascus. It's an architectural gem and still a center of worship in one of the oldest Islamic capitals. The Sunni Muslim mosque is open to followers of all religions -- John the Baptist's head, buried inside, is of interest to Muslims and Christians; Hussein's head, of interest to Shiite Muslims.

But in order to visit, female visitors, Muslim or non-Muslim, must obey this sign at the entrance.

Many Syrian women arrive properly dressed, wearing the floor-length abayeh, as they do everyday, but foreign women are often woefully unprepared. Thus, the special clothes: a gray, hooded cloak of modesty, which can be rented for $1. Some call it the Jedi robe. Men enter without restriction.

Mother's Day

2007-03-23T08:04:00.000-07:00

It was Mother's Day here on Wednesday, which was made a national holiday around six years ago, as people remember it. All government offices, schools and universities close on March 21, but most businesses remain open. (Private companies often don't observe national holidays, even ones that are meant to be patriotic.)

Aside from the official recognition, the day wasn't much different for Syrian mothers. They mostly still cooked and performed household chores as they always do. (Few Syrian men know how to cook, as women -- first their mothers, then their wives -- have always cooked for them.)

For students and bureaucrats, it meant a day to relax, to drink fruit juice at Abu Shaker in Salhiya, to stroll in Tishreen Park, and to gather in the courtyard restaurants of the Old City and the fashionable sidewalk cafes of Shaalan.

Palmyra

2007-03-21T03:52:00.000-07:00

A friend visited last week for a week vacation, giving me the chance to see the Syria of postcards and guidebooks. (I also introduced him to the Syria I know, my friends and favorite places.)

We explored the Roman ruins of Palmyra, an obligatory stop on any tour of Syria. At sunrise, we walked across the vast landscape of scatted pillars and colonnades, fragments of stone temples and towers, and over the remains of the city walls, across the desert, tinged green after winter rains, and up to a 17th-century castle, sitting atop a rocky perch overlooking the ruins, pillars appearing as toothpicks and the palm-studded oasis as an island.

Capricious spring

2007-03-20T02:49:00.000-07:00

Spring made a brief, welcome entrance last week across Syria. (It's since turned cooler.) In the north, outside Aleppo, the wildflowers were in bloom. Here, they spring from a rocky face below the ruins of a Byzantine church at Mushabak.

Arba'aeen

2007-03-19T05:50:00.000-07:00

Saturday before last was the culmination of the annual Shiite commemoration of the anniversary of the traditional 40-day mourning period after the death of Hussein, who was killed in 680 in a battle for succession of the leadership of Muslims. The event set about the permanent split between the sects. Shiites remember his death by inflicting physical pain upon themselves. The often bloody self-flagellation ritual is repeated at shrines holy to Shiites across the Middle East.

About 15 miles east of Damascus, the tomb of Seyda Zeinab, the sister of Hussein, drew thousands of Shiite pilgrims from Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, and south and central Asia. (Mainstream so-called Twelver Shiites are a tiny minority in Syria.) They gathered to recite the story of Hussein's death, speaking in the tongues of their native lands; they touched the gilded shrine to Zeinab; they wept and they prayed to Mecca.

Dozens of barefoot and bare-chested men chanted and rhythmically beat their chests and whipped themselves with chains tipped with small blades. Some reopened the scars of past flagellations. Their backs ran with blood and it glistened in the sun. As they rocked and flailed, blood splattered nearby onlookers, who didn't seem to mind. It was as much performance as religious practice. A throng surrounded the men, packing a street by a side entrance to the shrine, and recorded the proceedings with cell phone and video cameras.

(Sunnis call the ritual heretical. Later the same day, a Syrian friend, who is Sunni, apologized over dinner for the impression that the event may have given me. Cutting oneself has no place in Islam, he said.)

Names of the dead

2007-03-08T00:28:00.000-08:00

The walls of the city's churches and mosques are plastered everyday with notices of the dead. On one page, sometimes framed around a picture of the deceased or a cross or a crescent, are the details of a person's life, often condensed to dates of birth and death, and of funeral arrangements and burial.

There is no obituary page in Syria.

New deaths cover old ones; they line up side by side, with time flaking from the sun and rain. Sometimes they peel off completely, revealing an old death, announced anew.

Zahmeh

2007-03-07T12:26:00.000-08:00

Like in most cities in the world, folks here complain that the traffic has gotten worse. It's a simple formula: more cars and the same roads (plus no new transportation alternatives) equals more traffic. The Damascus taxi driver's most-repeated word is zahmeh – (traffic) jam.

There are no posted speed limits in Damascus – on one of the two "autostrads," which lead out of town, there is a sign politely requesting drivers – "Dear driver," it starts – to moderate their speed – but, in truth, there is little need for speed limits or traffic police to enforce them. There are so many cars on the streets at virtually all hours of the day that it is impossible to drive fast.

An old plan to build a subway in Damascus has been shelved indefinitely, pending funding. But four rail lines are scheduled to be rebuilt starting this year for high-speed electric trains, with suburban stops.

There are also plans afoot to tear down a 15th-century neighborhood – historic preservation often takes a backseat to progress – to make way for an autostrad through the center of the city, with traffic lights on either end. One European expert advising the project, however, told me in a chance encounter at my neighborhood watering hole that it will do nothing to ease traffic congestion.

Star of the Prophet David

2007-03-06T16:08:00.000-08:00

In the Judeo-Christian Western World, the six-pointed Star of David is the symbol of Judaism. Since the formation of the Jewish state, it also carries political freight – it is the central feature of the Israeli flag. In the Muslim World, the six pointed star is a Muslim symbol.

From Yemen to Egypt to Syria, it was incorporated in Islamic architecture from the first centuries of Islam. David is considered a Muslim prophet (along with Moses and Jesus); the six-pointed star in Islam is also called the Star of David.

Last weekend, a Syrian friend invited me to his family home in Homs, Syria's third largest city. We visited one of the city's oldest mosques, located in the labyrinthine souq. Under an archway and down a few well-polished stone steps from the market bustle, black, metal doors opened into the serenity of the mosque. The doors were decorated with a familiar symbol: a repeating Star of the Prophet David.

Save your biggest coals ...

2007-03-02T01:37:00.000-08:00

There's a saying Syrians take to heart: Kheli fahamtek akbar laamek ithar. Save your biggest coals for your uncle, March. Another version warns of saving the largest logs.

The sun is warmer these days, and the nights not as cold, but that can be deceiving, they say. Winter's not over yet. Nowadays, it's diesel, not coal or firewood. Better catch the diesel man when he comes honking.

You can always tell when he's in your neighborhood from the sound of his horn. Most wandering venders, their wares – fava beans, steamed corn, banana crepes, goldfish, strawberries and apples – borne aloft push-carts or bicycle baskets, advertise their goods by shouting. The diesel man is silent. He is accompanied by the clip-clop of his horse and his helper, who marches 20 paces ahead, honking his horn at his side.

Kash hamam

2007-02-28T06:16:00.000-08:00

On nice days, locals and visitors alike flock to the plaza in front of Damascus' most famous gathering place, the Umayad Mosque, to see the pigeons. Old women toss them handfuls of seeds and children run in their midst as they peck the cobbles. They nest along the crenellated walls of the mosque and, every day, swoop down for food and attention.

The pigeon has long captured the imaginations of Damascenes. Pigeons are pawns in an ancient, secretive sport, long since banned, called kash hamam. Men known as kashash own flocks of pigeons and compete with one another by trying to steel away each other's pigeons as they circulate in the skies above the old city. The sport is banned because it is considered a form of gambling, forbidden in Islam. The kashash also draw scorn from society as they are believed to be voyeurs, operating on rooftops, which often offer views into upstairs windows.

Some say the final blow to the sport was the bird flu scare two years ago, which prompted the government to crack down on the kashash. Still, I often see flocks of pigeons circulating above the rooftops of the old city, and wonder to whom they belong, if anyone at all.

Matar al-kheir

2007-02-26T02:12:00.000-08:00

Contrary to Western attitudes toward a rainy day, Arab sentiments range from tolerating it – without complaining – to embracing it. Instead of "rain, rain go away," it's the oft-repeated, "Matar al-kheir" – Good rain.

In the Middle East, where rain is scarce, everyone, from farmers and sheep herders to city dwellers, whose water supply is dependant on rain, notices when it rains and when it doesn't rain when it's supposed to rain.

Rain comes between October and March; the other six months are dry. This year, rain has been thin; as a result, the city cuts off tap water most days by 3:30 p.m., unusually early, especially for winter.

Yesterday it rained. A lot. The people were happy.

The once mighty Barada

2007-02-22T01:47:00.000-08:00

The modern traveler often wonders why Damascus, one of the oldest cities on earth, is where it is. Framed by brown mountains on one side and brown fields at the others, the city is dry eight months out of the year, save for a trickle of water, known as the Barada River, which runs through the city center.

The Barada was once worthy of being called a river, swelling during winter rains and flowing year round, supporting vast orchards just outside the city. In ancient times it was like an oasis; The prophet Mohammad is said to have refused entry, explaining that one can only enter paradise once.

Today, most of the river's waters are siphoned at their source, a spring in the mountains northwest of the city, and used for public drinking water. The remainder makes its way down a trash-strewn concrete canal, picking up raw sewage along the way. The stench is particularly strong just west of the old city, as it passes the old horse bridle market.

Occasionally, work crews wade through the water with rakes, collecting the garbage. The next day, it always seems to return. Syria has a poor environmental record, as the non-governmental organizations here to help clean it up will attest, and the Barada is a constant reminder.

Lebanon: skiers' paradise?

2007-02-21T02:48:00.000-08:00

Was it a looming civil war or a weather forecast that called for clouds -- Lebanon's skiiers are known to be fickle -- that kept people away? We didn't search for answers. Instead, we skied.

Saturday's sun, fresh powder and no-wait lifts kept us on the mountain all day. Not even a break for lunch. How could you stop with conditions like that?

Sprawling across three peaks in Lebanon's northern mountains, Faraya-Mzaar compared favorably with Colorado skiing. We found plenty of wide, steep faces with enough virgin snow to carve our own tracks all day long.

One of the unique aspects of the ski area are the views it affords. From atop Dome du Mzaar, with an elevation of 8,087 feet, the snow-capped mountains give way to brown hills and villages, which unfold toward Beirut and the sea. On a clear day, it is said one can see the shores of Cypress.

Garbage collection

2007-02-07T04:26:00.000-08:00

In a practice that must date to the construction of the city walls, Damascus residents are fond of throwing their leftovers, banana peels and any especially stinky trash, over the edge. The cats consume it below.

Abu Mousa taught me how; it ran against my American, anti-littering instincts, but now I do it, too. There's a little strip of unused ground – very little space in Damascus is unused – which runs between the old city wall and a fence, sidewalk and road. Cats roam down there and they feast off of whatever the humans don't want and discard below.

One day, I caught a cat, which had snuck through the open door, crouched on the kitchen table, gnawing through a raw fish that Juliet had bought to cook for lunch. I brought this to her attention; she shooed the cat away and then asked me to throw what was left of the fish over the wall. Too stinky to put in the trash can.

I dutifully tossed the half-eaten fish over the wall. I wondered if the cat was smart enough to know where he could find the rest of his lunch.

(We toss the refuse from the terrace, between my room, the triple windows on the right, and the kitchen, on the left.)

Takasi

2007-02-05T09:48:00.000-08:00

At first blush, all Syrian taxis are the same: small, boxy, and with very little leg room. But, look closer, and you'll notice a dozen or more makes and models, a virtual showroom of minis and compacts, built and sold often exclusively to the developing world.

Perhaps the most common is the Iranian SAIPA Saba. (I rode in one today.) SAIPA stands for Societe Annonyme Iranienne De Production Automobile, and began in 1966 producing a two-cylinder Citroen mini passenger car, as well as versions of the Renault.

Also common are the Romanian-made Dacia Solenza and Dacia SuperNova, which comes with a stylish racing fin on the back.

Then, there's the Russian Lada Samara, which was sold in Russia under the name "Sputnik." The Samara started production in 1984 and enjoyed modest success in Western Europe (one common glitch, according to a Web site, was that the hazard and reverse lights would often illuminate when the driver applied the breaks, which was known as the "disco lights" problem). But after 1997, it was sold mostly domestically, as well as in countries with lax emissions standards.

Then, there's the Fiat Palio, which is known as Fiat's "world car," aimed at developing countries; the Turkish Sahin, the Chinese Chery; the South Korean Daewoo and Kia; the Japanese Mitsubishi and Toyota.

Finally, there's the Chinese Geely (pronounced with a soft "G") whose parent company began making refrigerators in 1986, then motorcyles, and later became the first independent automobile manufacturer in China. It exported its first cars in 2003. It expected to begin selling cars in North America in 2008, according to the Wikipedia Web site, but test vehicles failed U.S. crash and emissions test; so the roll-out date was pushed back to 2009.

Mahareeeem!

2007-01-24T03:14:00.000-08:00

Once, paper products were so scarce in Syria that only rich families could afford them. Fathers bought each of their children one notebook for the entire school year.

During the 1980s, Syria was isolated economically because it sided with Iran during the Iran-Iraq war. At the time, no Syrian factories produced paper and it suddenly became a precious commodity.

Entrepreneurs sold black-market paper towels, smuggled from neighboring countries, by pulling them on carts from neighborhood to neighborhood and shouting, “Mahareeeem! Mahareeeem!” Maharem can mean paper towel, paper napkin, toilet paper or tissue. In Syria, they are often the same thing.

Today, those trade sanctions are long gone, Syria produces its own paper products and they are available in any corner store. But the itinerant maharem salesman remains, doubled over from the weight of his cargo, plying the streets and shouting rhythmically like some specter from Syria’s austere past.

Time for a Shawarma

2007-01-23T09:51:00.000-08:00

The hummous is good, and the mohammara is better, but perhaps Syria’s greatest gastronomical gift is its shawarma. Ubiquitous in Damascus, shawarma comes in two forms: chicken and lamb. The best shawarma stands offer both.

Once I discovered Syrian shawarma, I could barely go a day without it. In Abu Mousa’s absence, the Al-Raie shawarma restaurant has become my home away from home. For lunch or dinner (unfortunately, shawarma is not available at breakfast time), I order my usual: one chicken sandwich, one beef and to wash it down, a bottle of ayran, a Turkish salty yogurt drink. It comes to 90 lira, or $1.80.

Shawarma is meant to be eaten standing. Outside most shawarma eateries, between 10 p.m. and midnight – dinnertime in Syria – crowds form, some eating their sandwiches, others waiting for their turn to order.

Once a fellow foreigner asked me, as we were enjoying our shawarma, “I wonder how they make the shawarma? How do they make it stick together?” I thought for a moment, and decided they were questions best not pondering.

The shawarma sandwich is shaved meat rolled in pita bread, which is almost always dipped in the grease that runs off the spit. It is then heated on a skillet until crispy or seared on the gas flames that cook the meat. A dollop of garlic mayonnaise comes at the end, the cherry on top of the cake that makes it taste that much better.

I like Al-Raie because they add sliced tomatoes to the usual pickles in the chicken sandwich. The lamb comes with tomatoes and parsley. I also like it for the quality of the meats. The lamb is so good that some people forgo the sandwich trappings and simply order a plate of meat.

But Al-Raie, which means “the shepherd,” is a 10 minute walk from my house, so I sometimes settle for the inferior local shawarma stand, which offers only chicken. The Kurdish shwarma chef there knows my order: one large sandwich with hot sauce and dibis romman (pomegranate extract) and one ayran. That comes to 65 lira, or $1.30. Mmmmmmmmm.

hajjaj

2007-01-19T08:08:00.000-08:00

Since the spread of Islam centuries ago into southern Europe, the Caucuses and southern Russia, Damascus has served as a gathering place for pilgrims from these lands, as they travel to and from Mecca on the annual hajj.

This year is no different. The pilgrims congregate in a southern neighborhood called Zahira, which means, “radiant” or “shining,” parking their busses, trucks and campers – dozens of them – and set up a black market of goods from their homelands to sell and help pay for the journey.

Mostly from Russia, they sell fur hats, plastic jewelry, clothes and crystal, spreading out their wares on the sidewalks, or displaying them on shelves from the backs of trucks. In decades past, they would sell highly-coveted handmade carpets, but those have given way to brightly-colored, factory-made imitations.

Damascenes come to check the prices and, often, to buy.

These days, the hajjaj are parked in Damascus on their way home, having already performed the pilgrimage. Sleeping on their busses, they typically stay for a few weeks on the way down and sell their remaining goods on the way back. The other day, the Russian crystal was flying off the shelves.

Yemen

2007-01-14T02:01:00.000-08:00

From December 28 to Jan. 8, I visited Yemen, a beautiful country of friendly, if drug-addled people. (Most Yeminis are addicted to the psychoactive plant, qat, which they spend hours every afternoon chewing. Tekhazen? Do you chew? Literally, do you store?). I visited the capital, Sanaa, a UNESCO World Heritage Site; cloud-draped mountaintop villages to the west of Sanaa; and the Red Sea Coast, where daytime temperatures reached the upper 80s.

Everything feels ancient in Yemen, as if little has changed in hundreds of years. Men still wear white robes and daggers sheathed in ornamental belts, or outside the capital, Kalashnikovs, and houses are made of mud brick or stone. There is very little sign of Western intrusion. That can be refreshing for the Western tourist searching for what some call the real Arabia, although Yemen's preservation is also its curse: isolated walled stone villages with spotty electricity, no phone lines and unreliable hot water survive intact only because poverty and lack of opportunity keep people there. Still, Yemenis are proud of their traditions and their strong faith.

On the day before the start of Eid al-Adha, one of two eid festivals Muslims celebrate, the boy pictured above sits with his lamb (or is it a goat?) in the back of a pickup truck in Sanaa's Souq al-Milah -- the Salt Market -- the largest in the old city, which today includes much more than salt. All families slaughter their finest domestic animal, usually a lamb, but sometimes a cow or goat, to honor profit Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son Ismael for God.

A few days after the start of the eid, I came upon children playing in the street with the skin of a cow's head. I'm sure the meat was good.

Snowbound

2007-01-11T06:19:00.000-08:00

For all of the cold in Syria, snow is rare. I happened to experience, in greater intimacy than I would have hoped, the season’s first snow. On Christmas night, an American friend and I traveled to Aleppo, where it was cold and rainy. We stayed two nights. On the way back to Damascus, we visited Syria’s famous crusader castle, Krak de Chevalier, which sits atop a mountain near the Lebanese border. There, it started snowing.

We made it to Homs, Syria’s third largest city and an important crossroads, where we caught the last bus to Damascus, normally a two-hour trip. After one hour, the road became icy and snow-packed, and traffic came to a halt.

The bus driver and passengers engaged in a 45-minute discussion over whether to turn back or continue onto Damascus. The driver favored returning, but the passengers convinced him there was no sense in turning back as the road was surely slow-going both ways. There are hotels in Homs, the driver said. Keep going, the road will clear, the passengers said. I was among them.

Over the next 17 hours, we moved perhaps a kilometer. Finally, facing a second night on the bus and missing a flight to Yemen, we ditched the bus and hired a passing taxi, which ran on mud tracks beside the highway until the road cleared, some miles later.

Incense, icons and a message of peace

2007-01-11T05:52:00.000-08:00

Sometime ago, the Orthodox churches in Syria agreed to celebrate Christmas on the same day as the Catholic and Protestant churches. (The Western churches, the story goes, were to agree to move their Easter to the same day as the Eastern churches, but decided against it. In Syria, there is one Christmas and two Easters, except every fifth year when the Easters coincide.)

So, Syria’s two million Christians – Armenian Orthodox, Greek Orthodox, Syrian Orthodox, Greek Catholic, Syrian Catholic, Maronite, Chaldean, Protestant – celebrate Christmas on the same day – Dec. 25 – unique in the Levant, and perhaps the world.

I attended midnight mass at the Greek Catholic cathedral called Al-Zeitouna (the olive, or olive tree) with Juliet, Basil, Lena and Mimi, along with a couple American friends. The church, a short walk from our house, just across Straight Street, near Bab Sharqi, the old city’s Eastern gate, is an impressive stone edifice with marble floors and lots of iconography on the walls. The two-hour service was in Arabic and featured incense and singing by a choir that I couldn’t see as my view was obstructed by a (beautiful) stone pillar. It was broadcast on state television.

Presiding was Gregorius the Third, Patriarch of Antakia, Iskanderia (two predominantly Arab cities in southern Turkey, historically part of Greater Syria) and Jerusalem (also once part of Greater Syria). In his homily, Gregorius prayed for peace in Iraq, Palestine, and Lebanon, never mentioning Israel, and said that man, inspired by God, must build peace on the shoulders of reconciliation. He also sought common ground with the country’s majority Muslim population, saying that Syrian Muslims and Christians both pray to the same God.

Afterward, a youth marching band played American Christmas carols in the church courtyard. The crowd slowly dispersed and headed home, as did we, into the freezing cold, and it felt like Christmas.

Clark W. Griswald

2006-12-23T08:18:00.000-08:00

In the middle class Christian neighborhood of Qasaa, not far from where I live, the spirit of Christmas, or at least the spirit of putting up gaudy Christmas light displays, is alive and well.

The wattage from the lights, strung along apartment balconies, is enough to light up the streets. Icicle lights are mandatory; if they blink, all the better. The best displays include flashing bells, as if ringing; flashing stars, as if shooting; flashing reindeer, as if prancing.

Some spell Christmas greetings, always in English. Others include, “2007"; in one display, the "6" blinks to "7".

Protest or party?

2006-12-19T03:12:00.000-08:00

A young Lebanese man, hoisted on the shoulders of his friends, leads chants on Friday night calling for a new Lebanese government. (Among other names, he called the pro-Western Druze leader Walid Jumblatt a donkey, an insult in the Arab World.) The ongoing protest, in downtown Beirut's Marytrs Square, has taken on a carnival-like atmosphere. Some five thousand Lebanese are camped in giant white tents. At night, they sit around bonfires, some singing and chanting, while vendors sell food and souvenirs under a nearby highway overpass.

The protesters -- mostly Shiite Muslim and Christian -- come from Beirut, as well as villages from the far corners of the tiny country. Their tents are painted with the Cedar tree symbol of Lebanon. Both sides in this political struggle (the government coalition is backed by Christians, Sunni Muslims and Druze) have adopted nationalist iconography to boost their claims to power.

What is most remarkable is that such a protest is taking place at all. Lebanon, for all its problems, protects freedom of expression in a part of the world where such freedoms are virtually non-existant. The protestors and their leaders have said they will stay until the government resigns. What happens next is anyone's guess.

On my way home later that night, our taxi driver passed by the protestors and called them zabaleh. Garbage. And who do you support, we asked. I'm Druze he answered, smiling. I'll show you. He flipped open his cell phone, which flashed a photo of Walid Jumblatt.

Long-distance runners

2006-12-18T02:20:00.000-08:00

For three decades, a fleet of mid-1970s Dodge Coronets has plied the taxi routes between Damascus and Beirut and Damascus and Amman. Long and expansive, while retaining the muscle-car styling of its origins, the four-door Coronet comfortably carries five passengers -- two on the bench in front next to the driver and three across the back -- for $10 a person. The twin round headlights, roaring engine and ever-forgiving shocks conjure carpools of years past.

The system of acquiring passengers at the parking lot terminals in Damascus and Beirut is a delicate art that often escalates into fighting matches and occasionally fisticuffs.

This is the Coronet I took on Friday from Damascus to Beirut. The driver averaged 120 miles an hour on the gradual rise to the Syrian-Lebanese border -- if the speedometer was to be trusted. (These Coronets, unlike American car brands imported to the Middle East today, register only miles, not kilometers, per hour. Often, as on the ride back yesterday, the needle was missing all together.) The driver settled for about 100 miles an hour on the Lebanese side, as the curves and traffic can, thankfully, limit speeds. Passing on the wrong side of the yellow line on blind mountain curves is another skill entirely.

Passengers are typically strangers, usually from various Arab countries. They strike up interesting, even if predictable, conversations, almost always turning to politics: American imperialism is a favorite topic, as well as intra-Arab rivalries. On the ride back yesterday, a young Lebanese man in the front seat -- with a newly minted master's degree in Middle Eastern Studies from the American University in Beirut -- agreed with a Syrian man and woman in the back seat, sitting on either side of me, that Sykes-Picot, the British-French agreement that carved up the Levant after World War I, is their scourge and that they are really one people. In the next breath they drew sharply critical distinctions between each other and their countries: Syria's socialist economy, Lebanon's free market economy; Syria's large middle class, Lebanon's widening gap between rich and poor; Syria's wheat production; Lebanon's banking; Syria's meddling in Lebanese affairs, Lebanon's feudal politics masquerading as Democracy.

At the end of the ride, the driver thanked God for our safe arrival; the passengers asked God's blessings for the driver, they fetched their baggage from the Coronet's roomy trunk and paid the fare in any one of three currencies (American dollars are always accepted), then quickly bade each other farewell.

Abu Mousa's kitchen

2006-12-15T00:33:00.000-08:00

Abu Mousa left last Saturday for America. He'll be spending Christmas with his two sons and their families in California. His return ticket is in early March, although the notice he put on the kitchen door, temporarily closing his kitchen "restaurant" is a bit more vague.

His visa is good for two years. "I'm coming back," he assured me. "I don't even like America." Aside from the comparative high cost of tomatoes, eggplants and dates, which he has mentioned more than once, he said most of all the problem with America is that almost no one speaks Arabic.

Fries with that?

2006-12-12T12:14:00.000-08:00

I was too embarrassed to tell the taxi driver, "Take me to the nearest McDonalds," so I asked that he take me to a location near a McDonalds I knew. It could have been the farthest. The trip took about 20 minutes, but the fare was only about a $1.50.

I was in Amman last weekend and decided to indulge in the guiltiest of American pleasures: the Quarter Pounder with cheese. While I normally don't crave McDonalds -- I typically partake only on roadtrips in the States -- the absence of McDonalds in Syria seems only to make the heart grow fonder.

Sadly, the quarter pounder had been sitting under a heatlamp for a bit too long, as were the fries. Still, it was a familiar taste. Just as I remembered it.

A late fall afternoon

2006-12-07T07:09:00.000-08:00

It’s cold in Damascus, and I relish the strips of sunshine on the south-facing sidewalks in the early afternoon. The people complain that it hasn’t rained much at all this fall (low water supply, withering crops); I am secretly happy for the sun.

Daylight is in short supply, however. The maghreb call to prayer – exactly at sundown – now comes at 20 minutes ’til five.

The temperature isn’t cold by Minnesota standards, or even compared to winter in Kentucky, but it feels colder. A friend from New York who spent a winter here once told me that it was his hardest. You never really get warm, he said.

In the old Arab houses, the rooms are connected by an outdoor courtyard. In the morning, I wake up in a cold room, walk outside and into a bathroom that is yet colder. The toilet seat is the coldest.

At night, I twist the knob above my stove and set the diesel fuel trickling down a long shaft. I light a used Kleenex – no sense in using a new one – and drop it through the hatch. In no time, flames are lapping at the stove’s spider web window. I may yet learn to love the smell of burning diesel.

Going to Baghdad?

2006-12-05T03:15:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite signs in Damascus, on the windows of the Royal Jordanian airlines office, announces a special promotion for daily flights to Baghdad: "Choose your Own Valuable Present with Your Ticket."

There has been some speculation what that present might be, or what it should be. I haven't asked.

Mimi waits for the porridge

2006-12-04T02:10:00.000-08:00

Levantine Christians, Catholic and Orthodox, celebrated yesterday the annual feast of St. Barbara. In Damascus, children wore masks and families gathered to eat oatmeal. Some add raisins; Juliet put walnuts on the top as a sort of crust and baked it in the oven. Be sure to drizzle syrup on your helping before eating.

The wheat of the oatmeal symbolizes the wheat stalks that, according to local tradition, St. Barbara hid among before being discovered and killed by pagan rulers in early Christianity.

Children wear masks, invoking the black tar that she apparently put on her face while hiding.
In addition to the oatmeal, Juliet and daughter, Lena, made an assortment of helowiyat – deserts – also typical of the holiday. The qatayef, stuffed with crushed walnuts, were the sweetest and best I’ve ever had. I told Juliet so; she deflected my compliment by saying that’s only because they’re homemade. I replied by eating another.

If you would permit ...

2006-11-30T04:09:00.000-08:00

Public transportation in Damascus comes in the form of the bus and, most prevalent, the service taxi, servees in Arabic. Japanese-made vans packing in 12 passengers, sometimes more, run several dozen routes through the city, and to villages in the surrounding countryside. They stop at any point along the way to drop off and pick up, providing there is space. (In the early afternoon, when students and civil servants head home for lunch, it's hard to find one with an empty seat.) The cost for routes within the city: 10 cents a ride.

In other parts of the Arab world, there is just one, or maybe two or three, ways to request that a driver stop his taxi. In Damascus, there are more than a dozen well-worn expressions, most exceedingly polite. Damascene Arabic is known for its flourishes of politesse, and there is no better place to observe them than in the service taxi.

I take service taxis most days, often several times a day. I’ve kept notes on some of the ways Damascenes request a driver to stop:

*Let us down on the right, if you wish.

*On the right, if you would permit.

*May God grant you health.

*On the right, ballah.
(Ballah roughly translates to, "for God's sake," or, "I implore you." It is a way of saying, "please," while invoking God's name.)

*Let us down on the right, for God's sake, if you please.

*At the corner, zakatak
(Zaka is the almsgiving required by Islam. To say zakatak to the driver means that to stop the taxi and allow me to disembark is a deed akin to giving charity to the poor.)

*At the intersection, if it is possible.

*At this place, if you order it.

*Slow down, mo’allem.
(Moallem means teacher, as well as someone who is a master at his trade.)

*May God grant you success.

Fall colors

2006-11-29T05:38:00.000-08:00

I escaped the city one day last week with my Syrian friend, Itab, to hike in the mountains and visit some minor Roman ruins -- an aqueduct and cisterns. (In Syria, one is never far from Roman or Byzantine ruins.) In the Barada River Valley northwest of Damascus, where the air is crisper, the leaves are changing.

We hired a taxi to visit a valley of fig trees and the driver, Bakr, invited us to his home for tea and for breakfast -- in truth it was the afternoon, but the only food he could offer us was breakfast. I enjoyed some Syrian staples: labaneh, makdous, pickled olives. I left some food on the table, even though I was hungry, to which Bakr said, “You haven’t eaten anything. Eat! Eat!” So, I finished it.

Members of his family were harvesting olives in the terraces below the house. The harvest season started about a month ago and continues until the olives are collected -- for some families, the activity can continue into the new year. To Bakr's objections, we insisted on helping. His father, Abu Bakr, has 700 olive trees. He was joined by his two sons, their wives, two grandchildren, and us. Small black olives went in one basket -- for pressing -- and large black olives in another basket -- for pickling.

Itab and I worked for an hour or so, helping to harvest a half-dozen trees, then we plucked some pomegranates and sat down to eat them. As the afternoon sun began to ebb to the ridge line, we bid farewell and walked back down to the road to catch the 20-cent, 20-minute service taxi back to Damascus.

Dar al-Opera

2006-11-28T06:31:00.000-08:00

When you ask anyone – Syrian or otherwise – of their favorite buildings in Damascus, they will inevitably list structures built hundreds of years ago. Past civilizations, going back to the Umayyads, who ruled the Muslim World from Damascus in the 7th and 8th centuries – left a remarkable architectural record. The same cannot be said for the rulers of modern Syria.

One exception, however, is the Assad House of Culture and Arts, often referred to simply as Dar al-Opera -- the Opera House. Built only a few years ago, it is a monument to the nation’s commitment to the performing arts, and its reputation as a cultural capital – along with Cairo – of the Arab world. Performances there are free, subsidized by the Ministry of Culture.

Last week, I attended a performance of the famous Iraqi singer, Faridah Muhamad, who sings in the classical Arabic style, called Maqam. Her seven-piece band, which included a violin, an oud – the Arabic precursor to the guitar – and a table harp, were also Iraqi. Since 1997, they have been based in Holland.

The performance was riveting. After the first song, she apologized for her voice; she said that it felt tired – she had also performed there the night before – but I couldn’t tell. The man sitting next to me, a French literature student at the University of Damascus – whispered to me, “If her voice is tired now, can you only imagine …”

One of the loudest applauses came during a song, when she sent a "salutation from Baghdad to Damascus." More than a million Iraqis – by some estimates, three million – have fled to Syria, most to Damascus, since the Iraq War began. The influx has increased in recent months. The newcomers have strained Damascus city services and driven up rents. Similarly, Lebanese sought refuge here by the hundreds of thousands during the war with Israel this summer. And Palestinian refugees and their progeny have lived here since 1948.

A Syrian friend explained to me that Syria has become home for the hanan – those who yearn for their homelands.

Thanksgiving in Damascus

2006-11-25T12:48:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving came a day late in Damascus, but it was well worth the wait. The director of the American Cultural Center hosted a catered meal for the Fulbright students in his sprawling flat in an upscale district of West Damascus.

But for the absence of American football on television, it was an American Thanksgiving like any other: turkey, stuffing -- both cooked inside the turkey and separately -- mashed potatoes, gravy, steamed carrots and cauliflower, yams, cranberries. For desert: pecan and pumpkin pie. The harder-to-find-ingredients -- cranberries and canned pumpkin -- were obtained at the well-stocked commissary of the U.S. embassy in Amman. I ate two heaping plates of everything, then a piece each of the pies.

A few hours later, an American friend hosted a Thanksgiving dinner. Rarely one to turn down an invitation for food, or to lose my appetite, I attended. Her turkey was actually a large chicken, but it was a good substitute. She also served diced, sautéed potatoes, scalloped onions, stuffing and a wide assortment of wine and beer. I served myself just one helping, saving room for chocolate cake and Lebanese beer.

Casino Royale

2006-11-24T10:03:00.000-08:00

Syrians love James Bond. The twin-screen theater in downtown Damascus, which always shows one foreign film and one Arabic film, shelved the romantic comedy “The Break-Up,” which enjoyed a much longer run here than it did in America, for the new Bond film. It opened in Syria at the same time as in America.

An American friend who grew up in a household somewhat obsessed with Bond – his dad had a replica of the original James Bond gun – asked me if I wanted to join him for the movie.

We went to a matinee on Sunday, the first day of the work week in Syria. Despite that, there were about 50 people in the theater, mostly younger Syrians. The movie cost $3, a bag of popcorn $1. The seats were comfortable, but the theater was built before the advent of stadium seating, or at least before its advent in Syria.

The movie itself was great – if not for the storyline itself, which wasn’t bad – but for the strong dose of American movie culture. We made the mistake, however, of sitting close to Syrians.

Most Syrians, my Arabic teacher later explained to me, like James Bond for the action. Most don’t go to follow the plot – which would involve reading the subtitles, written in the formal and often stilted classical Arabic – so their attention span wanes during the dialogue. That’s when they talk.

Not just a word or two, but complete conversations. Not in whisper, but full voice. Men and women. Talking, laughing. My friend, who was determined not to spoil the experience for himself, shushed them repeatedly, to no avail.

Still, he enjoyed the movie and so did I. As all experiences in Syria, one’s enjoyment as a foreigner comes partly from what one learns of the culture. We learned that Syrians haven’t developed a movie-going etiquette – the vast majority of Syrians watch movies on television, or on pirated DVDs, less expensive than going to the theater – and that next time, we’ll sit in the front.

Abu Mousa's porridge

2006-11-19T03:26:00.000-08:00

This morning, along with my Turkish coffee, I ate a bowl of leftover Turkish porridge, which Abu Mousa prepared yesterday afternoon. Consisting simply of wheat, raisins and apples, along with some sugar and water, he calls it ashlamish.

Abu Mousa served a stint in a Turkish prison as a young man – the details of which I have yet to glean – but he says he learned a bit about Turkish cuisine while there.

The former president's shadow

2006-11-17T09:18:00.000-08:00

At every turn, Syrians are reminded of their former president, Hafez al-Assad, who died in 2000, after serving for 30 years. Recalled officially as the father of modern Syria, his likeness remains in villages and cities in the form of portraits, statues and car decals.

His son, Bashar al-Assad, president since his father’s death, has taken a more modest approach to the cult of personality. In government offices and school classrooms, Bashar’s head-and-shoulders photo in three-quarters profile often appears beside his father’s – son typically slightly larger than father –– but he has not commissioned statues at the rate of his father.

In Damascus, the father left his imprint on one of the central parks in the new downtown. He looms above Arnous Square, standing rigidly, wearing a western-style suit – the uniform of the secular Baath Party – and benevolently raising his right arm, not quite a wave, but more as if to pat a young boy on the head.

In the evenings, under the shadow of the former dictator, Syrian boys ride bicycles, young couples stroll arm in arm and old men sit on benches, talking. Recently, as I was walking through the park, I came upon two Chinese tourists photographing each other in front of the statue.

Al-Watan

2006-11-16T08:21:00.000-08:00

Syria has long offered its citizens political news from a choice of three government-run daily newspapers: The Revolution, The October, and The Baath.

Five years ago, however, the government began to permit independent media – up to a point – and last week, the independent daily newspaper al-Watan – the Homeland – was launched to some fanfare. It is routinely sold out at newspaper stands.

The 16-page broadsheet offers Syrian news written by journalists not employed by the official Syrian news agency. It also includes news from Israel, something not offered by the government dailies.

Al-Watan’s independent status is central in its marketing: on billboards and bus stops around the city, the newspaper is introduced as, “The first independent political daily newspaper in four decades.”

Still, the newspaper is subject to government censorship and it hasn’t taken on controversial issues that Syria’s opposition figures champion: political and human rights reforms. There are limits to Syria’s press freedoms: a popular, independent satirical newspaper launched recently was promptly shut down.

Diesel warm

2006-11-13T10:29:00.000-08:00

For the three months or so of winter (which has yet to arrive; the temperature reached into the 60s today), I will keep warm by the heat of a diesel-fired stove. On Saturday, Abu Mousa installed in my room the standard Syrian heating system, called a sobia.

The diesel, which I may replenish from a big blue drum on the terrace, sits in an enclosed, bowl-shaped receptacle above the stove. After lighting the mechanism by dropping a make-shift torch – Abu Mousa recommends a Kleenex – into the main chamber, I twist a knob above the bowl, which sets the fuel dripping down a shaft and into the stove. It only takes about five minutes for the room to warm.

The byproduct coils up through a stove pipe, which shoots out my window. As I stepped outside and watched the plumes of thick black smoke spiraling upwards, Damascus’ pollution problem came into clearer focus.

A few old-fashioned types, Abu Mousa including, prefer the wood-burning variety. In the kitchen on most nights these days, he sets firewood to blaze. Last night, he invited me in for mint tea, which he heated on the stove top.

Head of the Ghost

2006-11-10T05:17:00.000-08:00

I attended a Syrian play last night called Ras al-Ghoul -- Head of the Ghost. It was part of a government-sponsored theater festival this week, which comprised several dozen plays, mostly from Syria, but also from Palestine, Iraq, Tunisia and Morocco. (Plays, as with literature in general, are written in formal Arabic, so there are no dialectical differences between countries.)

Admission was free, which may not entirely explain the overflowing, enthusiastic crowd. When the seats were filled, people crammed into the aisles. The audience skewed young – next to me were three students in the college of mechanical engineering at the University of Damascus – and secular. Very few women were wearing head scarves and none were wearing the more conservative niqab, which covers most of the face. In introducing the play, the director honored the Syrian who wrote it, and died earlier this year.

I found the play itself very good – I understood it as an impressionist painting; I didn’t catch everything, but took in many of the principle points. As well, the guys next to me called it moomtaz. Excellent. It was a montage of social commentary and political criticisms, mostly addressing Arab leadership in general, but leaving some ambiguity as to the target of the critiques.

It addressed a pervading Syrian sense of uncertainty about the future, a lack of personal freedoms, as well as a fading sense of Arab nationalism. It criticized Arab governments’ treatment of Palestinians, the borders between Arab countries – an oft repeated theme in contemporary Arabic literature and film – and it put violence on trial.

In the end, the characters, who were frightened of most everything, were afraid of liberty as well. They wouldn’t allow her to join them. This clearly invoked a rising fear among Arabs, especially since the Iraq War, of democratic reforms. The status quo, though unappealing to many, is known. “Democracy,” as the experiment in Iraq has proven, can be much, much worse.

Dimashq

2006-11-08T07:11:00.000-08:00

Nobody knows for certain the origin of the word Damascus, in Arabic, Dimashq. The Syrian capital is considered the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world, dating from 8,000 to 10,000 BCE, and its name may be almost as old.

In Aramaic, the vernacular of the region during the time of Jesus, the city was called Darmeseq, meaning “a well-watered place.” However, scholars believe the city's name is older.

A Syrian friend who was born and raised in Damascus, and whose family traces its roots in Damascus – a fact which apparently gives him some authority to speak on the subject – told me the other day that Dimashq is in fact an archaic Arabic word meaning “to build a foundation.”

Perhaps in the ancient time that the city was first named, it was already home to the half-ruins of yet more-ancient times. They say you can dig a hole anywhere in the old city of Damascus and find the remains of earlier civilizations. (Roman Damascus lies roughly 15 feet below the modern city.) There are stories of people finding buried treasures, usually gold, under the courtyards of their homes.

To my American eye, Damascus looks plenty old on the surface.

The AIDS test

2006-11-07T02:49:00.000-08:00

The Syrian government recently decided to allow Fulbright students to register as auditors at Damascus University so that we may apply for residency permits. The first step in that process is the government-administered AIDS test. All foreigners seeking residency must be cleared of AIDS. Results of tests from other countries are not accepted.

This morning, we crammed into a room in a building that is dedicated to testing foreigners for AIDS. Outside, were several hundred people, including Iraqis fleeing the war, and a couple Russian prostitutes.

A man recorded our names by hand into a log book, gluing our passport-size photos next to each entry. The needles came from sealed plastic packaging, a good sign. A dead cricket was in the trashcan, which was used for regular garbage, as well as medical waste. Thankfully, the man who drew blood was efficient.

An American friend, who went separately, was less fortunate. The nurse probed her arm with a needle ten times before deciding, as my friend originally suggested, to draw blood from a vein on top of her hand.

The results come back in two days.

Grapes of Syria

2006-11-03T03:55:00.000-08:00

Every fruit has its season. In the summer, there are melons and mulberries. In the fall, cactus and pomegranates. In the winter, there will be oranges. And then, there are grapes, which have been plentiful since I arrived.

If Syria were to designate a national fruit, surely it would be the grape. Usually green, but sometimes red, and always with seeds, they accompany breakfast, and follow lunch and dinner. And they are offered with tea in between meals.

The other day, Abu Mousa put out the usual plate of grapes after lunch. I ate about 10, then declared, diameh, which means, roughly, “Thank you for lunch, I’m finished eating now.” Abu Mousa, still eating the grapes, looked at me and asked, as if his feelings were slightly hurt, “Why don’t you like grapes?”

“I like them,” I said, attempting a diplomatic retort. “But, perhaps not as much as Syrians like them.”

Marhaba?

2006-10-31T07:24:00.000-08:00

Speaking Arabic with a Syrian accent as a foreigner in Lebanon can be tricky business. During my most recent visit, last week, I was met with bemused smiles and retorts in perfect English or French.

The first thing to know about the Lebanese, or at least the educated classes in Beirut, is that they are proud to speak English and French well -- whereas the Syrians are proud to speak Arabic well. (Syrians are coveted as news presenters by the Arabic cable news channels because they are renowned for their flawless formal Arabic.)

The Lebanese reasoning goes: If I speak English better than you speak Arabic, why are you wasting my time with your Arabic. So when an American insists on speaking Arabic to waiters in restaurants, soliciting directions in Arabic on the street, the answer is never in Arabic, no matter how well he is understood. And if he speaks in the Damascene dialect, a barrage of English is often coupled with smirks, even outright laughs.

In Lebanon, Arabic dialects are linked closely to religious and national identities and tied to regional and sectarian strife. During the country’s long civil war, Maronite Christian militias were known to kill a man if he pronounced the Arabic word for tomato -- bandora, or is it banadoora? -- with a Palestinian accent.

The Damascene accent is that of the army that occupied parts of Lebanon for 30 years, until it left year. It is the accent of the government accused by many Lebanese of assassinating the former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri. And it is increasingly the accent of poor guest workers. (Higher wages in Lebanon attract Syrian laborers.)

I don’t blame the Lebanese for preferring to hear their own Arabic from a stranger, if any Arabic at all. The next time I visit Beirut, I think I might stick to English.

Abu Mousa goes to America

2006-10-30T02:24:00.000-08:00

The other day, I returned to the house and Abu Mousa practically came running. Wasalt al-visa! I received the visa! He proudly showed me the document glued to the first page of his new passport. He’s already planning his trip to America.

He would update me on the application process over foul or fattoush. He never asked for help. I offered to accompany him to the embassy to help translate. His son, Ghassan, who speaks flawless English, joined him. He submitted the application.

Then, the interview. He counted down the days with me. I e-mailed a contact in the embassy to ask if there was anything I could do, as an American citizen, to support his application. The answer, swiftly: no.

Abu Mousa said the interviewer, a woman, was very nice. He carried across his message in his village Arabic, peppered with his broken English: I wish to visit my two sons and their families in California. I do not wish to stay in America. My home is in Syria.

A week later, the embassy issued a two-year visa. He is planning to fly to California at the end of November and stay until early January.

Winter comfort food

2006-10-27T10:51:00.000-07:00

Winter is fast approaching in southern Syria, and with it, comes Arabic comfort food.

Yesterday, a Syrian friend fixed me lunch, which included steamed molokhiah -- it sort of comes close to spinach -- an egg, cheese and pea omelet, along with sliced tomato, cucumber, hommous, and an assortment of homemade foods she brought back from her mother's kitchen in the village where she grew up: pickled black and green olives, makdous -- cold, stuffed eggplant -- labaneh -- not quite yogurt, not quite cheese, my favorite Levantine food -- and delectably sweet apricot jam.

Today, I ate leftover potato and pea soup from Abu Mousa’s kitchen, followed by Juliet’s stewed okra, lamb and rice, and rice-stuffed zucchini. It tasted good on a cold, rainy day that approximated a Chicago fall.

Jesus, Bacchus, and modern-day reds and whites

2006-10-26T06:38:00.000-07:00

Lebanon, my Lebanese taxi driver said proudly as we left dry and brown Syria en route to Beirut, has the world’s best natural environment. It may be true.

One can experience four seasons in two hours, he continued. Winter on the mountain peaks, summer on the coast, and spring and fall in between.

The in between is the Beqaa Valley, a striking fertile plain framed by Mount Lebanon and the anti-Lebanon range. It is a stronghold of the Shiite militia Hezbollah, as well as one of the oldest wine-making regions in the world. Wine heritage here dates back 5,000 years to the Phoenicians. Later, Jesus turned water to wine in nearby Cana. In 150 CE, the Romans built a temple to Bacchus in Baalbek, today the largest city in the Beqaa.

I visited two wineries yesterday with a friend, as the Beqaa was drenched by a typical, cool fall rain, good for the grapes, I imagined. Lebanon ranks 47th in wine-production in the world, and its wines may be among the most overlooked. Influenced heavily by French techniques over the past 150 years, many of the grapes are French varieties.

Half of the bottles produced by the country’s largest winery, Ksara, is exported to Europe and the United States, our tour guide told us. Fortunately, it is also available in Syrian restaurants and liquor stores.

Waiting for the cannons

2006-10-23T03:51:00.000-07:00

Last night, Damascenes were anticipating the sound of cannon fire, which signals the end of Ramadan and the start of the three-day feast holiday, Eid al-Fitr. But, the night was silent.

The streets filled with people through the night, anticipating the cannons. There is an Arabic verb for staying up late -- saher -- and that’s what most folks, parents, grandparents, grandchildren, were doing -- shopping, eating, strolling. As I made my way home from a Syrian friend’s house at 12:30 a.m., the streets were as crowded with people and cars as they are at mid-afternoon.

But, the moon did not show itself to those charged with scouring the skies from the mountain tops for the first trace of the new crescent. So the fasters must fast one more day. And so, they say, Ramadan will definitely end tonight. Akeed. For sure.

Dinner for 3,000?

2006-10-23T03:38:00.000-07:00

Throughout Ramadan, the Umayyad Mosque -- also known as the Great Mosque, Damascus’ oldest and largest -- provides free meals at sunset to any comers. I came on Saturday evening.

I arrived an hour before sunset with an American Christian friend, dressed in the traditional Muslim black robe called the abayah, and black hijab. (All women must dress according to the Muslim traditions of modesty when entering this, or any, mosque.) We happened by chance upon some American Muslim friends, also taking part in the ritual at the mosque for the first time.

As we waited in line to enter the “family section” -- where men and women may sit together -- of the large courtyard, one of the mosque officials asked me where we were from. (I gave us away, as the only tall, pale-skinned person among us.) America, I responded. Come right this way, he told us. He led us to the front of the line. For our American friends, he said.

We were directed to one of hundreds of piles of food spread evenly in rows throughout the vast stone square, which is located in the mosque compound, but outside the mosque proper. As the courtyard filled, a group of ten men, wearing red tarboushes, stood on a stage and sang religious hymns, amplified through the premises. A television camera on a boom captured the scene, broadcast live throughout Syria.

Then, the imam began to recite the Quran, a signal to the faithful that the time to eat was close at hand. At the words, Allah Akbar -- God is Greatest -- the several thousand people sitting on the ancient cobblestones at once broke their fasts, some with dates, some with juice.

Each family received two large trays of rice, with peas and chunks of tender lamb, along with four containers of yogurt, bread and apples. The rice and bread were still warm, despite the wait. I ate as much as anyone else, despite the fact that I wasn’t fasting. Afterward, people filtered into the mosque to pray and poor people collected the leftover food to take home. And I walked the 20 minutes, through the Muslim Quarter, then the Christian Quarter, home.

Kentucky fried

2006-10-20T04:49:00.000-07:00

In a moment of weakness and desperation the other day, I dined at Kentucky Fried Chicken, the only Western fast-food restaurant in Syria. It was past 2 p.m. and finding my favorite coffee shop shuttered, as well as several other restaurants, on account of Ramadan, I spied the familiar white-on-red “KFC” letters, perched above a busy corner of Damascus’ answer to Massachusetts Avenue -- embassy row. The restaurant that locals refer to simply as, “Kentucky,” was open.

The spacious interior was virtually deserted, and I imagined that the “chicken” that I was about to order had been sitting under heat lamps for hours, if not days. I chose the three-piece dinner meal, original recipe, no super-size, which came to $5.50, quite a hefty sum for lunch in Damascus. You could buy nine shwarma sandwiches for that chunk of change and still have 10 cents left over.

I hadn’t eaten at Kentucky Fried Chicken for three and a half years, when, in a similar state of yearning for a taste of fried Americana, I sampled the Colonel’s secret recipe in Kuwait. My Syria experience reminded me why I had stayed away.

One of the reasons Syria is attractive to a Westerner learning Arabic and learning about Arabic culture is that it is still very much “Arabic.” There are no McDonalds or Pizza Huts, as there are in neighboring countries -- the Kentucky Fried Chicken, which arrived earlier this year, said to be owned by a Kuwaiti, is an anomaly -- and the walled old city of Damascus, a warren of bazaars, medieval churches and mosques, and Ottoman stone houses, is one of the gems of the Middle East. And not one Starbucks.

Ramadan, on American soil

2006-10-19T09:38:00.000-07:00

On Monday night, I attended an extravagant dinner affair, on the occasion of Ramadan, at the residence of the American ambassador in Damascus. The residence, which has been unoccupied since the United States recalled its ambassador from Syria a year and a half ago, is the envy of the diplomatic community here. It is a stately two-story residence with sprawling grounds, including a swimming pool, in the center of a city where virtually everyone lives in apartment buildings.

The party was attended by diplomats, journalists, Syrian doctors, lawyers and businessmen, as well as members of Damascus’ Jewish community. The spread of food was somewhat obscene, occupying one of the larger rooms in the house, and entertainment included an oud player, as well as Damascus’ storyteller. (See earlier item, “The Storyteller.”) A traditional coffee seller, dressed in Ottoman garb and carrying a giant tin coffee pot on his back, served up warm shots of Arabic coffee.

I snapped this photo from the front door as I was leaving, before a clutch of well-armed Syrian security guards rushed toward me shouting, “mamnoo’a al-tasweer!” -- photography forbidden. I quickly pocketed my camera and headed out through the front gate, guarded by dozens of security agents I could see, as well as many more I imagined lurking in the shadows of the well-manicured hedges.

No alley too narrow

2006-10-16T10:00:00.000-07:00

The city plan of old Damascus was drawn centuries -- millennia, really -- before the advent of the automobile. Streets are generally wide enough for pedestrians and donkey carts.

The many scrapes on the sides of the stone houses that line the twisting, narrow lanes suggest that cars don’t fit. That hasn’t stopped Syrians from attempting to navigate their cars, trucks and taxis through the old city streets, often forcing those of us on foot to press against the walls in order for them to pass.

The labyrinth of streets -- some truly too narrow for vehicles -- has a complicated, unmarked system of one-way directions, which sometimes converge, setting off a frenzied dialogue of honking and gesturing out of car windows in order to determine who must back-up and yield.

Crime?

2006-10-13T04:07:00.000-07:00

Many Syrians view the United States as a dangerous place. Their impressions are shaped by friends and family members who go to live and work there, and by Hollywood. Most Americans consider places like Syria dangerous.

There are no official crime statistics for Damascus, but when Syrians tell me that crime is rare, I believe them. At a security briefing at the U.S. embassy, we were told that no part of Damascus is considered dangerous for Americans, day or night.

Yesterday evening, I discussed crime with my Arabic tutor. I meet him at his home in a poor area, high on the side of the mountain above the central shopping and business districts. He said he had never heard of a robbery, by knife, gun or any other means, in his neighborhood. Is it true, he asked me, that America is as dangerous as they say. My good friend lives in Chicago, he said, and tells me that when he leaves his house, he never knows if he'll come back alive. Is it true? Well, not exactly. Depends on the area.

According to an article in today's Washington Post, an average of 11 robberies occur every day in the nation's capital, concentrated in some of the wealthiest areas. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/12/AR2006101201813.html?nav=hcmodule)

The only crimes reported over the past several years to the U.S. embassy by American citizens in Damascus, a city many times larger than Washington, have been pickpocketings in the crowded market called Souq al-Hamadiyyeh. And even then, an embassy official said, those reports are rare.

Talowath

2006-10-10T06:48:00.000-07:00

The air pollution in Damascus is bad, although not as bad as in Cairo, where, within 24 hours, every visitor’s snot turns black, the annual rain shower is the color of coffee, and after about two years, ex-pats start to lose their hair. Next time you’re in Cairo, count the number of bald people -- men and women.

I took a taxi with some friends the other day to near the top of Mount Qasyoon to view the sprawling Syrian capital from above. Depending on who you ask, the population is between three and five million. My house is a speck left of center.

Heloweeyat

2006-10-09T09:23:00.000-07:00

One of the best parts of Ramadan is the desert. For one month, sweet shops roll out their best varieties of creamy, nutty, cheesy delicacies. As each day progresses, the labor of Damascus' pastry chefs is piled on counters inside and tables outside their shops. They are typically mobbed in the last hour of the daily fast by men and children on errands to pick up the evening’s piece de resistance. They stay open late to satisfy any lingering sweet tooth. The other night, on my way home, I met Khaled, who offered me a Turkish cream-filled pastry called garbar. It was a gift, he said.

September's tail

2006-10-04T07:09:00.000-07:00

When I arrived here, the days were hot and so were the nights; now, finally, the weather is beginning to turn. Rhyming Syrian proverbs put it this way:

Ab al-lahaab (August is aflame).
Aylool danabo mablool (September’s tail is wet).

Yesterday, the rain came three days late. It was hardly a storm and the sun emerged after half an hour, but it began to clean a summer’s worth of dust off the city and signaled the changing seasons. The days are still warm, but the nights are cool; last night the coolest yet.

The Damascene courtyard, in progress

2006-10-02T08:32:00.000-07:00

Ghassan, one of Abu Mousa’s sons, is planning to move his family next year into the bottom floor of the house, currently rented out to students. Ghassan is a petroleum engineer in Abu Dhabi, and when he comes home to Damascus, he finances a home improvement project. He is mostly transforming the first floor into a new, old Arab house, tastefully constructing a marble fountain, and now, overseeing the addition of a new stone floor in the courtyard, made of basalt from the south of Syria and rose-colored stone from the north. The colors are banded in the style of old Damascene courtyards. Few craftsmen still know how to make these floors, Ghassan said. Later, he will sandblast the old stone walls, which Abu Mousa once painted white. For his part, Abu Mousa, wearing his long, white thob, proudly surveys the progress.

The two Beiruts (Beirutein)

2006-10-02T08:23:00.000-07:00

Beirut, more than ever, has become a city of contradictions. South Beirut has long been densely packed, poor and religious, home to Lebanese Shia and Palestinian Sunni. Downtown and adjacent Christian neighborhoods are bastions of European-inspired secularism, high-end dining and conspicuous consumption. Today, the contrast is yet more stark, after Israel’s 33-day war with Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militia that draws its support from South Beirut and South Lebanon. Destroyed apartment blocks lie in rubble, or have already been cleared away by Hezbollah’s fast-acting contractors. Cars weave around tangled ruins of highway overpasses, apparently, one of Israel’s favorite targets. Billboards announce in English, “Made is USA,” below photos of the destruction. Indeed, the United States made the bombs and Israel dropped them.

Just a few kilometers away, affluent Lebanese promenade on clean sidewalks, untouched by the war. All 12 Starbucks locations have reopened, as has TGI Friday's, the sushi restaurants and the wine bars.

Qana

2006-10-02T08:07:00.000-07:00

A friend and I escaped to Lebanon this weekend -- the U.S. embassy in Syria recommends against travel to Lebanon -- and hired a Shiite taxi driver named Hussein, who was bursting with pride over Hezbollah’s “divine victory,” to show us the detritus of the latest Arab-Israeli war. We toured devastation in South Beirut and made it as far south as Qana, the site of one of the most punishing Israeli airstrikes. Twenty-nine women and children, taking refuge in an apartment building, were killed. The site is now a cemetery for the victims. A girl, who said she knew those who perished, was praying there alone. The rows of stark, white marble tombstones were framed by the yellow and black flags of Hezbollah.

Fasting

2006-10-02T07:43:00.000-07:00

Fasting isn’t easy. Observant Muslims abstain from food, water, coffee, cigarettes and sex from sunrise to sunset for 29 or 30 consecutive days every year. I tried it on Thursday. Two Fulbright students hosted an iftar -- the meal that breaks the fast every evening. As part of the fun, I decided to come as hungry as anyone else.

Luckily, I don’t smoke, and I’m not addicted to coffee. The hardest part was the prohibition on water, or any fluids for that matter. My head began to mildly throb as the day stretched on. Concentration, which is meant to become easier, became more difficult. I was hungry to be sure, but not doubled-over hungry. Thinking ahead, I ate half of an extra-large pizza the midnight before.

The fast is meant in part to remind one of his or her relationship with God. I mostly was reminded of how great a cold glass of water can taste on a hot day.

Our hosts tuned their television to the state channel, with a live feed from the Umayyid Mosque. Most Syrians do the same. When the call to prayer goes out at sundown, the eating begins. I broke my fast with dried dates, which is how the Prophet Muhammad is said to have broken his fasts. Most Muslims do the same, then proceed to water and soup.

The iftar was potluck: some people made their own dishes and others, such as myself, bought them. I brought 20 cream- and walnut-stuffed pancakes, called qatief, a traditional Syrian Ramadan desert, and one of my favorites (I ate one of each). There were the predictable Middle Eastern rice and meat recipes, but my favorite was a pasta that was touted as a triple-fusion dish, combining spices from America, India and Libya. It looked and tasted an awful lot like macaroni and cheese, which I hadn't eaten since leaving America. I came back for generous seconds.

Starbucks?

2006-09-27T06:52:00.000-07:00

I’m connected to the Internet at one of Damascus’ trendy Western-style coffee houses which offer free wireless Internet access. The chain, inhouse coffee -- all lowercase -- which has no Arabic spelling of its name in its signs or logos, boasts five locations around the city.

I’m at the location in Malaki, a district of quiet, leafy streets to the west of many major embassies. The music is American, the coffee European. The menu includes an array of caramel, toffee, mocha and cinnamon flavors and any combinations thereof. Who needs Starbucks?

The storyteller

2006-09-27T06:22:00.000-07:00

During Ramadan, most Syrians, as most Arabs, spend the post-iftar food coma in front of the television to watch the latest telenovelas, in a ritual that has become as much a part of Ramadan as fasting. Television networks roll out their latest miniseries -- which usually fall into one of three categories: historical, religious or romance -- for the one-month fast holiday. Families gather in front of the television after breaking the daily fast at sundown.

One man continues to provide old-fashioned entertainment every night at a coffee shop in the shadow of the Grand Mosque in Damascus. Rashid al Halak Abu Shadi, apparently Damascus' last storyteller, starts after the 'isha'a prayer -- at around 8 p.m. -- and continues for about an hour. At the end, the cafe staff passes a tray for contributions to the storyteller.

Abu Shadi, his gray hair showing from under his Ottoman-era red tarboosh, tells serialized Arab epics of warriors, princes and princesses, told and retold for centuries. The other night, his voice was raspy and strained as he weaved a tale from the time of the medieval, Cairo-based Fatimid Caliphate. The room was packed with mostly men, seemingly familiar with the story, laughing and applauding.

The storyteller – al-hakawati – for his part, kept our attention by waving his saber, which could probably hurt someone if used properly, and occasionally, to emphasize a line, striking it against a metal table in front of him.

Ramadan

2006-09-24T01:43:00.000-07:00

It was the first morning of Ramadan in Damascus and Abu Mousa was making wine. Sitting alone in the kitchen, vigorously kneading a bowl full of grapes like a big ball of dough, he explained in one word, as I walked in to make my morning cup of coffee: wine -- nibeez.

While a good many of some 90 percent of the city’s inhabitants began the first of 29 days of fasting, Christians were apparently contemplating wine. Abu Mousa’s been making it this time of year since his formative years in the village, where all the Christian families produce their own wine every autumn. “There are many grapes in the village. Many.” Abu Mousa said, stressing, kiseer, many.

He described the process: First he sets out the grapes to soften in the sun for five days until they sour slightly, then he presses them by hand, removing the stems but not the seeds. The grapes are a mix, but mostly green since those are the most common, although he prefers “black” grapes -- what we would call red grapes. He then pours the pulp, skins and seeds into a large plastic jug, and covers it for 25 to 30 days. Then, he has wine. He started the first batch eight days ago. It will be my first Syrian wine.

Echoes of Nasser?

2006-09-23T06:17:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, in the late afternoon, as I was strolling through the Old City, the unmistakable booming rasp of Hasan Nasrallah, the Lebanese leader of Hezbollah, followed me from street to street. From the barber shops and the souvenir stores, the sweet shops and the scrap metal and screw store, even from the music store, the sound of his voice arose from small televisions or radios perched on sales counters, carrying through open doors, and turning the narrow stone streets in some kind of echo chamber.

The speech, Nasrallah's first public appearance since the summer's war, was broadcast from Beirut on all major Arab satellite news channels, as well as Syrian government channels, and, of course, the Hezbollah channel, Al-Manar.

Not since this summer’s World Cup, had one televised event captured the nation, and perhaps not since the heady days of the pan-Arab movement of the 1950s and 60s, when the radio broadcast speeches of Gamal Abdel Nasser, the former Egyptian president, captivated the Arab street, has one Arab leader drawn such a popular following across the Arab world.

Arabs like anyone who stands up to Israel and they like a winner. Nasrallah represents both. He is praised for defending Arab land from invading Israeli troops, refusing to give up what they came for -- two captured soldiers -- and countering an Israeli bombardment with an unrelenting barrage of his own.

In most Arab countries there is a wide gap between street-level support for Nasrallah and the official view, which is muted. As a rule, guerrilla movements anywhere are enemies to long-serving Arab despots. Not in Syria, where the official view on most matters of international affairs mirror the Arab street. The bespectacled, black-turbaned Hasan Nasrallah, usually in a toothy grin, appears alongside images of the current and former Syrian presidents on posters in shop windows, in cut-outs in the front of busses and service vans, across the back windshields of cars. Hezbollah flags flutter alongside Syrian flags outside shops, from Sunni Muslim areas to Christian areas of Damascus. (Hezbollah is a Shiite party.)

The poster photographed above is on a pillar outside the Grand Mosque. From left, the current Syrian president, Bashar al-Asad, his father, the former Syrian president, Hafez al-Asad, and Nasrallah. The caption reads: “The victory for the resistance.”

Grandpa knows best

2006-09-22T09:38:00.000-07:00

After three days of stomach woes, and with the wondrous Western remedy of Cipro slow in acting, I turned to Abu Mousa. He led me to the kitchen this morning and opened two jars of herbs. (One jar was once honey, the other once tomato paste. In Syria, you don’t buy herbs in the grocery store in neatly labeled jars. You go to the seed souq -- Souq al-Bizereeyeh -- and buy by the gram from large sacks, or harvest them from the fields or the mountains.)

This one, he said, is good for your stomach. It’s sweet. This one, he said, is better. It’s morr -- bitter. You know, morr? Yes, I know morr. Here, smell. First, he held the sweet to my face, then the bitter. It’s best to put both in the tea kettle, he said. Just one cup. He sprinkled into the water some of the sweet -- anise, in Arabic, yansoon -- and the bitter, shreeh, a Syrian mountain herb, which I have yet to translate.

Abu Mousa left and I set the kettle to boil. I filled my cup with the elixir and retired to my room. The bitter won out. It wasn’t tasty, but I finished it in time, and, not much later, my stomach stopped its shifting and gurgling. And my appetite slowly returned. I ate a banana, made some chicken broth, ate some chips. Basil, Abu Mousa’s grandson, grilled chicken and I ate some of that. I finally feel as if I’m on the mend.

Beware the toot shami

2006-09-22T09:25:00.000-07:00

On my first day in Damascus, after purchasing cell phone and beginning the search for a place to live, I set off in quest of the juice of the toot shami. I knew where to find it. I had tasted it once, on a whim, during a brief earlier visit to Syria, and I still remembered its natural sweetness.

I made my way through the long, covered Souq al-Hamadiyeh, the one with bullet holes in the roof from celebrations past, which today provide ambient lighting in the form of hundreds of tiny shafts of sunlight cascading upon the heads of the throngs ambling through the cavernous reaches; under the Roman arches with the Corinthian capitals, salvaged from the pagan temple by later civilizations, where, facing the Umayyad Mosque, and opposite the merchants of the Qur’an and the Hadith, are the juice vendors. In summer, they specialize in toot shami – literally, Syrian berry; in English, mulberry. I bought a glass, chilled with shaved ice, and gulped it down right there. An American friend later warned me that toot shami juice can be a Westerner’s demise. I should have paid closer attention.

In the days subsequent, I returned to the toot shami vendors by the mosque, and encountering others in my daily rounds about the city, I sampled widely the array of toot shami juice the city has to offer. All was well, until I drank one glass of bad toot shami. Maybe the berries had been sitting too long in the sun. Maybe they had just gone bad. Toot shami season is very nearly over. Some say it’s already past. Whichever, I landed on all fours in my version of the Syrian prison.

House of nuts?

2006-09-19T01:12:00.000-07:00

During my two-week Syrian dialect class, which ended yesterday, I’ve learned a few expressions, terms and proverbs, which may or may not open a window on the Syrian soul.

“Problems are the salt of life.” Salt in Arabic culture is highly valued. The Levantine colloquial word for “good,” or “well” -- mineeh -- in describing a state of being, is derived from the Arabic word for salt, “melah.”

“House of nuts.” In Syria, nuts, particularly pistachios, are also highly valued. This is a derogatory term for a family that compliments each other to the point of empty praise.

“What is better than honey? Free vinegar.” Said to someone who decides against purchasing something desirable but expensive, instead choosing something far less desirable but free.

“Sick, tired.” If you hear someone tell you this, it means you’re on your death bed.

“The age of hopelessness.” The Arabic medical term for menopause.

“The house of your mother’s sister”: Slang for prison.

“The coming of her mother’s sister”: Slang for a woman’s menstrual period.

The word for a woman who is well-reasoned -- museebeh -- also means catastrophe

“The horn from the neighborhood is not pleasing,” which equates to an English expression: “The grass is greener on the other side.”

“He who is not jealous is a donkey!” Some forms of jealousy are considered a virtue, not a sin.

To lend money -- deyan -- also means to make someone religious. To borrow money -- iddeyan -- also means to become religious.

“He who loans to another is a donkey and he who gives it back is more of a donkey.”

“God willing, He will bury me (before you)!” It said affectionately by a mother to her daughter, expressing hope that the daughter will outlive her mother. It is never said by a man.

Tit for tat

2006-09-18T09:24:00.000-07:00

You withdraw your ambassador, impose economic sanctions and accuse us of sponsoring international terrorism. Fine. We won’t allow your American Fulbright scholars to study at Damascus University.

I have become a political pawn.

Today, I learned at a meeting at the American Cultural Center, a branch of the U.S. embassy, that the Syrian government has decided to bar American students sponsored by the Fulbright scholarship -- funded largely by the U.S. Congress -- from studying at Damascus University. I had planned to take an Arabic placement test tomorrow at the university’s Arabic Language Center and start intensive Arabic classes next week. For now, I will look elsewhere for my Arabic training here.

Syria has little leverage to counter diplomatic pressure imposed by the United States. By limiting the scope of the U.S. Fulbright program here, Syria is returning the favor in its own small way. Whether or not this will matter or be heard in the corridors of power in Washington, and whether anything can be done, remains to be seen.

The Fulbright program is the last channel of meaningful communication between the two nations. If it is curtailed, relations can only deteriorate further.

California Dreamin’

2006-09-15T06:13:00.000-07:00

I went dancing last night. Yes, Syrians dance, too.

We arrived at around one o’clock at one of a handful of western-style dance clubs in Damascus. The parking lot was full of luxury cars, several with Saudi Arabian plates. (Damascus, as other Arab capitals, is a popular summer vacation spot for wealthy Gulf Arabs escaping the heat and strict social codes of Arabia.)

The club was packed with young Syrians, Saudis and a few Americans, including a couple male U.S. embassy staffers. Women, drinking and smoking, their hair highlighted in blonde, were wearing what they wouldn’t dare on the streets: tube tops, strapless dresses. The scene was Damascus' best interpretation of Beirut nightlife, renowned in the region.

The music was loud -- too loud to talk, to think -- a requisite for any dance club anywhere worth its salt. It was a mix of American, European and Arabic beats. Then, at about three o'clock, came a remix of “California Dreamin',” the 1960’s hit by the Mamas and the Papas.

All the leaves are brown and the skies are gray.
I’ve been for a walk on a winter’s day.
I'd be safe and warm if I was in L.A.
California dreamin', on such a winter's day.

I sang along on the dance floor with an American friend. The Syrians did, too.

As-salam auleykum?

2006-09-14T03:30:00.000-07:00

When I first arrived in Damascus, I greeted anyone I’d meet with the most common utterance in the Muslim world: As-salam auleykum -- peace be upon you. It is said from Albania to Indonesia. The words come from the Qur’an, but in most Arab countries, they are used so often they take on the function of “hello.” Even among Christians in Egypt -- home to the largest Christian population in the region, with roughly 10 million -- and in Palestine, the birthplace of Christianity, the greeting is exchanged on streets and in shops, Christian or otherwise, without a second thought. Not in Syria.

I was met with puzzled stares and bemusement when I pronounced the words in the Christian quarter of Damascus’ old city. An American friend said she cringed when she heard me say them. It is only used among Muslims here, my friend said, and even then, only among the most observant. The greeting is seldom heard among younger Syrians, no matter the religion. Instead, people exchange the more neutral, “marhaba,” which effectively translates to, “hello.”

Syria’s government is secular, and, despite recent incidents that might indicate otherwise, so are a good many of its people. Or, if not secular, then moderately religious. A very unscientific survey of women’s sartorial choices -- my occasional counting of the backs of heads on Damascus city busses -- reveals only about half of Damascene women wear the Muslim headscarf called the hijab. (A small number also wear the niqab, the black veil which covers all but the eyes, and a smaller number wear the burka.) That puts Damascus on par with pre-war Baghdad, at the time the most secular Arab capital.

Still, I do hear “as-salam auleykum” in more conservative Muslim areas of Damascus, particularly as one climbs higher on the side of the mountain, where the houses are more slap-dash and the people poorer. I use it there, too. It’s also a sign of respect for Islam, whether or not one happens to be Muslim. I’ll open the door to a mini-bus, quickly size up the crowd, and, as I’m climbing in, start with, “as-salam auleykum.” The response always come back: “Wa aleykum as-salam.” And upon you, peace.

Feast of the Cross

2006-09-13T13:09:00.000-07:00

A day after gunfire and explosions at the American embassy echoed across the city for 20 minutes, the local Christians are celebrating the annual Feast of the Cross -- with fire and the sound of explosions. At sunset, they began.

I was working in my room and I heard a loud crack. I jumped -- just slightly -- out of my seat. A car backfiring? As long as it’s not followed by another loud crack, I thought, we’re all right. Then came another. And another.

I noticed the fireworks out my window, launched from the vicinity of three blue neon crosses atop churches in the Christian neighborhoods to the northeast of the old city. Loud whistles and pops and the big thuds that follow the cascades of red and blue and purple and white. Then, they came from the other side, from the old Christian quarter where I live. One seemed to whistle over my room explode just outside my window.

I have since discovered that the holiday commemorates St. Helena's discovery in 325 in Jerusalem of the "true cross," or "holy cross" -- the cross upon which, according to Christian tradition, Jesus was crucified. St. Helena's servants, as the story goes, lit fires on mountain tops stretching from Jerusalem, through Syria, to Constantinople, so news of the discovery could reach the capital. According to my host family, in the ancient Christian village of Maalula, north of Damascus, the Syrian Orthodox and Syrian Catholic churches build competing fires atop the two mountain tops above the village to commemorate the day.

In the Christian enclaves of Damascus, bond fires are alight. I stepped outside, and a few houses away, an extended family sat around a large bond fire in a small courtyard, adults firing off bottle rockets and throwing sound bombs, and children running in circles yelling, "Saleeb!" "Saleeb!" Cross! Cross!

How I almost was almost in a terrorist attack

2006-09-12T10:29:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I went to the American embassy in order to inquire about obtaining a letter informing the University of Damascus that I am authorized, as an American citizen, to study there -- one of the several steps involved in registering for classes. After waiting in the sun for half an hour, and passing through two security checks -- one outside and one inside -- I was permitted entry to the consular section of the embassy. There, I learned from a Syrian man speaking perfect English from behind thick panes of plexi-glass -- reminiscent of Washington, D.C., liquor stores -- that I was to formally request the letter between the hours of 8 a.m. and 10:30 a.m. So, we will see you tomorrow, he said. Yes, indeed.

I set my alarm last night for 6:40 a.m., with the idea of stopping at the embassy before my Syrian dialect class at 10. The alarm went off and I reset it for 7, weighing whether I really needed to get the letter today or not. I drifted back to sleep. I was tired from my futile errand early the morning before in hopes of recuperating my lost (stolen) camera.

I didn’t go to the embassy today. If I had gone to the embassy, I would have narrowly missed the terrorist attack. It began at 10:10 a.m.

I received a cell-phone text message from the embassy this afternoon informing Americans in Damascus to “keep a low profile.” As a six-foot-six-inch white man that is hard to do here. So, I kept my afternoon appointment with my Arabic tutor, taking two 10-cent public minibuses to arrive at his house, and two more to return, stopping at a fruit stand on the way. Nothing felt different than before. But, now I know that as an American, I am a target. The sense of safety that Americans felt here -- surprisingly, there is a small American ex-pat community in Damascus, mostly English teachers and Arabic students -- has burst.

Westerners have not been targeted here as they have in recent years in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan, Egypt, Gaza, and, of course, Iraq. There was no State Department travel warning for Syria. The streets surrounding the U.S. embassy here are not closed to traffic as they are in Cairo and Amman. I suspect that will change.

It's gone

2006-09-11T07:09:00.000-07:00

I tested the limits of Syrian hospitality and goodwill, which is usually in abundance, the other night, when I left my digital camera at a restaurant. I departed somewhat hastily, having contracted the Syrian version of Montezuma’s revenge, -- Saladin's revenge?-- was it the Kabab Halabi (but they were so good!) or the hommous Beiruti or the matabbal or the fattoush? It wasn’t until the next morning that I realized my mistake. I rushed to the restaurant, a 20 minute walk from my house, and no trace of my camera. Come back at five, they told me, when the night shift opens the office. I returned at five. Still no camera. Please leave your number, sir, and we will call you if you we find your camera.

At one o’clock this morning, my telephone ring jolted me awake.

Hello, Mr. Bob. This is Ahmed from Restaurant Leila’s. We have found a camera.

Is it in a black case?

Yes.

I’ll be right there.

It wasn’t my camera. Abu Mousa says, “brooh.” It’s gone.

Fortunately, a colleage is arriving from the States on Friday. He'll bring me a new camera.

Jihad

2006-09-08T07:27:00.000-07:00

Jihad and the various forms it takes in Arabic has many meanings, both secular and religious, among them, “to wage holy war against the infidels,” according to my dictionary. It also connotes devotion, concentration and exertion toward a cause which has nothing to do war. It is also a name, both Muslim and Christian. I met a Syrian Christian monk today named Jihad. He lives with five monks and three nuns at Deir Mar Mousa al-Habashi, which means the Monastery of Saint Moses, the Ethiopian. The monastery is doubly unconventional: it is home to men and women, and it is ecumenical, both Syrian Catholic and Syrian Orthodox.

This tiny religious community, perched on the side of a cliff in the desert north of Damascus, is one of the few remaining of thousands of Byzantine monasteries once spread across the harsh landscape of the Eastern Mediterranean. The monastery is said to have been founded in the 6th century by an Ethiopian prince who refused the crown to become a monk and then hermit in Syria. It was abandoned by the middle of the 19th century, but brought back to life in the 1980s by an Italian Jesuit named Paolo, who was ordained a priest in the Syrian rite.

The monastery church features outstanding 11th century frescoes, as well as an 11th century inscription of the Arabic words, which precede every recitation of the Qur’an: “In the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate.” In the restored church, the inscription is repeated in a dedication to its reopening. Brother Jihad said the words resonate in Christianity as well as Islam. One of the missions of the monastery is to foster interfaith dialogue. Small numbers of Muslims come to pray in the monastery church, according to Brother Jihad, as they do at important Christian shrines throughout the Middle East. The church floor, which is not original, is covered with colorful Persian carpets, an Islamic aesthetic.

Today, the first day of the Syrian weekend, bus loads of Syrians, a few Europeans, and one American visited the monastery. It was impossible to tell how many Muslims were among them.

Abu Mousa

2006-09-07T11:05:00.000-07:00

Today, when I returned to the house at about four, having already eaten tasteless pieces of breaded, boneless chicken at one of Damascus' many shwarma and catch-all short-order restaurants, Abu Mousa asked if I was hungry. By God, I told him, I’ve already eaten, but it wasn’t very tasty. I cooked today, he told me, and there’s still some on the stove. Come, eat. I couldn’t refuse. There, in a covered pot was a large helping of Arabic rice with sliced potatoes and tomatoes and zucchini, still warm. It was delicious. I finished a plate, then another. There’s fattoush in the fridge, he told me. Fattoush is a traditional Levantine salad and one of Abu Mousa’s specialties: diced cucumbers, tomatoes, parsley, a bit of lettuce and pieces of fried pita, doused in olive oil and lemon juice. It was to his standard.

On other days, in the morning, he has invited me for lunch -- the principle meal in Syria, as in many cultures -- and I have accepted, but today he did not. Not wanting to take advantage of very generous hosts, I dined out with a friend. As I was finishing his rice and fattosh, Abu Mousa took a black marker and wrote in Arabic on a piece of blank paper: “Restaurant Abu Mousa welcomes you. Open night and day.” He posted it on the kitchen cabinet, his way of telling me that I am welcome to eat with him whenever I please.

Abu Mousa -- father of Mousa, his eldest son, a hotel manager in Palm Springs, Calif. -- was born in 1926 in a village in the mountains north of Damascus. The son of a shepherd, he spent the summers with his father and his sheep, sleeping under the stars. Fifty years ago, after having served in the Syrian army, where, incidentally, he learned how to cook, he moved with his family to the house where he still lives. He worked as a police officer in Damascus until retirement. During the summers, he sleeps outside on a simple bed on the second-floor terrace. It reminds him of those early summers in the mountains, he told me. He often returns to the village and brings back figs and grapes and sheep’s cheese, as he did last weekend. Everything is fresh in the village, he says. Now, he’s trying to visit America -- he’s been several times before -- to spend time with his two sons. He was recently refused by the U.S. embassy, but he’ll try again. Until then, I’ll join him for lunch.

My window on Damascus

2006-09-06T12:29:00.000-07:00

My plane touched down at 2 a.m. on the last day of August. By 3:30, I arrived at my hotel. Al-hamdoolilah as-salameh -- praised be God for your well-being -- I told the driver. He smiled and responded: Allah isalmak -- may God protect you. It’s a ritual exchange that completes every safe passage in Syria. I stepped onto the curb and into the warm summer early morning, taking with me my two giant duffel bags, leather satchel and hard-sided rolling carry-on -- my life for the next nine months.

Two days later, I moved into a room in the Christian quarter of the Old City. The neighborhood is called Bab Touma -- Thomas Gate -- and is home to some 500 foreigners -- mostly European students studying Arabic -- renting rooms in the ancient houses tightly packed in a warren of one-way cobbled streets and alleyways. My room sits atop the 13th-century city walls and its large windows overlook a Muslim cemetery, an old green-domed mosque and, beyond, Mount Qasyioun, the desert mountain that looms over the city.

A busy strip of pavement with an indeterminate number of lanes -- like most roads in the city, there are no painted lines -- runs 25 feet below my windows. During the day, the clip-clop of horses pulling vegetable carts mix with horns of all pitches and cadences, and the drone of city buses, minivans, mopeds, cars. At night, it becomes like ocean waves.

I live with Abu Mousa, the 80-year-old family patriarch who often wears a white dishdasha, the traditional Arabic robe, and cooks extravagant lunches for me as a stand-in for his two sons living in America; his daughter Juliet, who offers tea and candy and insists on ironing my shirts when she thinks they appear too wrinkled, and her son, Basil, an Arabic teacher and the only one of the family who speaks English.

On my fifth day, I started private Arabic lessons: Syrian dialect and Modern Standard Arabic. These will keep me busy until I begin classes at Damascus University in a few weeks. This begins my fourth year studying the language and its dialects. That’s a long time to apply to anything, much less a language that I’ll never perfect. As I once again plunge into the well-worn pages of my Hans Wehr Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic, every English- and German-speaking Arabic student’s best friend, I find myself asking why? A quest for mere competence? A yearning to discover more of the secrets of a beautiful language: its subtleties -- the myriad connotations behind a single word -- and its precision? The satisfaction that comes with conversing with a shopkeeper, a taxi driver, a Syrian on the street asking me -- me?! -- for directions? It happened again, today. A window -- my window -- on the Arab world.