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Good-bye, Syria
Entry 29 of 120 | show all | print this entry |
I don't have too much to mention here. More than anything else, my OCD compels me to put this map-pin on my map because I didn't go directly from Palmyra to Jordan. I made a quick stop back in Damascus. Apart from a bit more wickering out, including a evening at the very posh Jayid House, I managed to see the Umyyad Mosque.
It was once a Byzantine basilica, and the architecture hasn't changed a bit. It is like a ruin that was never ruined - I'm putting it awkwardly, but every other Byzantine basilica of its style which have seen is in ruins. Now as a mosque, it's also the resting place of Ali, Mohammed's nephew. Everyone has an opinion about this guy: the main contention between the Sunni and the Shia has to do with his importance to Islam. However, I don't know the theological details. His tomb had a lot of pilgrims. I sat on a comfortable carpet and watched those who came to see him. I had never before seem pilgrims of the Muslim religion. Had I not known better (and perhaps I do not) they look just like pilgrims of the Christian religion, except the women wear more.
And then there's Saladin who has his own mausoleum just outside the main mosque. It is a small building with a high ceiling, all inlaid in marble. His tomb is also a place of pilgrimage. I think I have to count myself as a pilgrim here, in the historical sense. There are two sarcophagi inside: Kaiser Wilhelm II felt that Saladin deserved something more classy than a wood box (which he is still in). So the Kaiser had a more impressive marble sarcophagus made, and that lies next to the wooden sarcophagus (but someone decided not to move the dust that was Saladin). The experience was something like being by Napoleon's tomb in Paris; it is an experience of reverence and awe, with the knowledge that, here he is, this is where a man who shaped global history was laid to rest. It was a simple room for such an important historical figure, and I could not help but be impressed.
Later that night, I submitted to curiosity and went to a public bathhouse. It's the sort of experimenting that young men have sometimes to do. Alex cajoled me into going along, and I couldn't refuse. And best of all, so unlike Turkey, which has made them famous, baths are very affordable in Syria.
At the bathhouse Nur Ad-Din, we signed up to do the full program (patrons can pick and choose what they would like done to them). First, in a comfortable, carpeted room, we changed our clothes and put on a sort of cloth about our waists. Then we donned a sort of clog and walked into the bath. The first step was a sit in the sauna, which we skipped.
Then it was time to do some washing. With a bar of soap and a corse mess of a cloth or a bark (I couldn't tell which), we entered a very steamy room and washed. Instead of showers, one has a tin bowl and one douses oneself when it is needed between the scrubbing. We also went into the very hot room for about three seconds (no understatement), where steam is at about 200 degrees Farenheit (again, not a joke). For me, it was a quick chance to scald my face before I went to a basin and doused myself with freezing water.
By now dizzy from all the steam, I went into the next chamber where a beefy fellow scrubbed all of the dead skin off of my body. He had this coarse brush something like sandpaper, and with some degree of violence he scraped off the film of dead skin that has accompanied me for most of my trip thus far (probably since I gave up washing in Olympos).*
After feeling like I had been flayed, it was back into the steam room to recover. Alex and I tried to talk politics (as is supposed to be done in the steam room) but I know as much about the Swiss political situation as he does the Canadian one. So we vaguely discussed the EU before getting on to more interesting conversation.
The next stage was getting a massage by a steriod powered hulk. Actually that part didn't hurt that much, and after weeks of endless walking my calves felt better than they have in a long time. In case I had had too much fun during the massage, the final activitiy was a freezing cold shower where the patron rinses oneself off as quickly as possible. I did it pretty slowly. First my left arm, and then I had to warm up. Then my right arm. I am such a pansy. But I managed, and then back in the change room, the attendants gave me new cloths and towels, enough to make me feel like I had been wrapped up in a carpet. Alex came along a moment later and we sat and drank tea, until it was time to move on with the evening.
*that was a joke.
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![[02] Sayyida Ruqayya Mosque](/travel-photo/el_condor/asia_2005/1146067740/picture_036.jpg/tpod.html "[02] Sayyida Ruqayya Mosque")
