Observations and impressions

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  Damascus, Syria
Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Today marks for me three weeks in Damascus. Time has certainly sped by, but I'd now like to put the brakes on for a few moments to share with you some of my observations and impressions so far. I begin on the streets where, in stark contrast to Yemen, I have been surprised at how few kids I see during the day. There are some of course, but they do not appear in such sufficient numbers as to raise eyebrows. Perhaps the fecundity of the Syrian man compares unfavourably to his Yemeni counterpart; though, with an overall literacy rate 26% higher in Syria than in Yemen, I suspect it says more about the comparative quality / availability of schooling here. What's more, Syria shares a similarly crazy statistic about its population age: in Syria, 50% of people are under the age of 16; in Yemen, 50% are under 14!
 
That is not to say the streets near me are empty. In fact my passage to the Old City each day is instead filled by a thousand burqa-clad, qur'an-wielding, old Iranian women piling in to the nearby Iranian mosque to pray furiously. One might think they would be gentle, harmless old biddies, but each day I brace myself for a scrum of Samoan proportions, holding on for dear life as I am swept along forcefully in a tide of Persian worship. All it needs is the dulcet tones of Morgan Freeman commenting upon the chaos and we would have a live re-enactment of March of the Penguins!   
 
Secondly, and most disappointingly so far, I have to say the cuisine here sucks. I did not think, after Yemen, that I would find another country in the Middle East more devoid of culinary inspiration: behold Syria... a black-hole to even the most insipid taste-buds. Yemen at least had a selection of about four dishes (main meals), all of which were rather nice, but grew tiresome within a couple of weeks. Syria does not even appear to have one dish upon which I can slake my appetite. Yes, the starters - hummus, falafel, kibbeh etc. - are very nice, but I just can't get a decent, filling, hot meal here it seems. I spend each evening resolutely roaming the streets looking for restaurants, yet all I find are chicken shwarma stands (chicken kebab to you Brits and me, the like of which one consumes at closing-time after a heavy night out) - pretty tasty, but not what you want or need for a main meal each night, and it doesn't even come with chips as in England. Even when I have found a restaurant and ordered something from its 'mains' menu, it invariably ends up being a glorified chicken shwarma anyway!
 
That said, I have to pay tribute to a bakery in the Old City (to which I am a disturbingly frequent visitor) which bakes the most beautiful and huge chocolate croissants in addition to some very passable custard-filled chocolate doughnuts. I'm hoping, however, that the impending hot weather will temper the desires of the fat-girl within me who begs me to go there at all hours of the day, else I will return to England cutting a rather rotund figure. Excellent too are the juice stands where a large glass of 'fuwakih' (fruit) will deliver you several of your 'five a day', and tastes delicious.
 
Sticking on the theme of food, I have to mention too the emetic smell that emanates from some of the bakeries. To my nose it actually smells like vomit, and I find myself holding my breath through stretches of streets until the wave passes. I don't know what emits this odour, but think perhaps they use some dodgy milk in the cooking process.
 
Away from the cuisine, the traffic in Damascus is entirely chaotic and a constant hazard to one's life. Getting a taxi is like jumping in to a live game of Mario Kart, where the cars drive at dangerous speeds on busy streets and swerve in and out of lanes at will and with no care for anyone around them. The constant stream of traffic, and the profusion of unhealthy old cars within it, means also that parts of the city suffer badly from air and noise pollution. Around the 'President's Bridge', past which I travel to university each day, pandemonium reigns supreme: think of the M25 in rush hour mixed with the incessant car-horn honking of New York City and you're somewhere close to realising the scene. Crossing the street too is a dangerous art-form that (after a beginner's course in Yemen) I am learning as I go, but once you take that tentative first step into the road, you'd better be committed to crossing in one go, however circuitously - actually it reminds me of a Seinfeld episode in which George crosses a busy street holding an arcade machine of his favourite game Frogger (on which is stored his high-score from childhood) in a live re-enactment of the game itself.
 
Even out of the busy city the roads are dangerous. Indeed, on a recent day trip to a nearby Aramaic village in the mountains, the bus in which my two friends and I were travelling missed a nasty accident by inches; only the quick reactions of the bus driver saving us from a pile-up. A car in the outside lane of the motorway had clipped the barrier and spun round in to the middle lane where, now facing the wrong way, it met an oncoming car with an almighty crash, the second car then careering in to our inner lane where our bus screeched and swerved to avoid it, scraping the inner barrier in the process but able to carry on unscathed. A little scary it was.
 
Away from the traffic, I'm developing contempt for Bab Touma, the bustling Christian Quarter. Firstly, it is mostly full of foreigners and as a result has needlessly inflated prices for ubiquitous items such as fruit that anyone with half a mind would buy elsewhere. The profusion of Westerners also reduces one's ambitions to converse in Arabic, and, for that reason, I will refrain from spending much time there. Secondly, in the evenings (particularly on the weekends) its narrow streets heave under the weight of a bibulous rabble of Syrian youths out for a good time, and of Syrian girls too who cover needlessly their natural beauty under an Everest of make-up and whitening foundation to make them look less Arab. It is to my mind a crying shame, but is perhaps little different from a white Westerner's desire to tan in the sun. Either way, Bab Touma's streets become for me a no-go zone at such times.
 
Finally, I must mention the Damascene accent, which is a wonder of the Arabic language. I cannot describe it better (and it's a woeful description) than to say that they hold the final word of each sentence, the intonation of which gradually rises. It makes for comical listening to the ears of an outsider and student of the language such as me. Maybe I will develop this intonation in my own Arabic during the course of my time here, but I don't know how it would be received elsewhere in the Arab-speaking world.
 
Anyway, without meaning to, I've delivered a bit of a diatribe here (whoops!). Fear not, however, I'm still enjoying this new chapter of my life and will continue to take both the good and the bad in good humour.

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