Cultural Learnngs in the Capital

  Damascus, Syria
Friday, April 27, 2007

Just a space filler until we can retype with detail

Damascus rocks

Today involved:

We arrived in Damascus this afternoon, a sprawling and beautiful city which, as our extremely patriotic tour leader keeps reminding us, is the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world.  Since we arrived on a Friday, which is their Holy day, most things were closed, so we had arranged previously to spend the afternoon at a centre for Islamic studies, where we were given the chance to speak with Muslims about their faith, the teachings of the Qu'ran, media slants on Islam in the West, and anything else we could think of.  We were greeted very warmly at the centre, the women separated from the men straight away and sent to put on long, black hooded robes before we went inside.  We had a discussion panel with several Muslim scholars, both from Syria and from Western countries including the States and Canada who had converted as adults and come to Syria to study.  After the discussion, we were invited to share lunch with them, as they were having a special feast to celebrate the recent elections.  The men were led into a huge, brightly lit hall, with tables of food stretching from one end to the other.  The women were led through the hall to a small, stark waiting room, affectionately referred to by us as the 'holding cell', where we sat sweltering in our robes for 15 to 20 minutes while the men started eating, then were led to a smaller table set up in the hallway outside the large room.   Everyone was very friendly, hospitable, and open to answering our many questions, and the whole experience was....eye-opening.  We learned a lot, is the best way I can put it diplomatically.

After a debrief discussion with our tour mates back at the hotel after a cup of chai (so the women found out what the men talked about [politics, law] and the men found out what the women talked about [families, marriage, children]) we headed out for fresh fruit smoothies and set off to explore the Old City.
 

Road to Damascus

The covered bazaar or souk in Damascus was amazing, stretching several hundred metres down to the Umayyad Mosque at the end.  Even on a quiet day, it was bustling with people touting their wares and families out walking.  Thankfully, though, there were no buckets of sheep heads like in the Aleppo souks!! We explored the back streets and got thoroughly lost, eventually finding our way back to the hotel just in time to meet our group for dinner.  We ate at a 17th century restuarant with a huge indoor courtyard, and feeling adventurous, ordered something new off the menu.  It turned out to be a sort of savoury porridge of pita bread, milk, chickpeas and herbs, which although quite tasty was served in a massive bowl and only seemed to grow larger the more you ate.

After dinner, our tour leader Bashaaar took us through the back streets to his favourite place in Damascus, a palace which was once a residence of a wealthy nobleman, then a school until the 1960s, and is now a 'Palace of Culture', not usually open to the public, but a small bribe to the doorman got us in to explore in the moonlight.  It was just beautiful, and had a series of courtyards filled with the scent of orange blossoms and flowers, with fountains in the middle of each one,  including beautiful hidden garden walks.  It was a lovely way to end our first day in this gorgeous city.

Palace Detail by Night