'Just World News' with Helena Cobban

Returning to Damascus

Yesterday, I came by car from Amman to Damascus.  (And no, I didn't undergo any life-changing experiences along the way.) I had told my friends in Damascus that I'd be here by about 11 a.m. yesterday.  But since I didn't leave my hotel in Amman till around 8 a.m., that was wildly optimistic.  I came by share-taxi from the Abdali bus- and taxi-station in downtown Amman.  It took a bit of time to find a car to Amman that was close to filling up with passengers, but finally I bought two seats in a car to fill the complement and we set off from there at around 9:40.

The road out of the ever-increasing reaches of Amman was undistinguished, but fairly fast along a good highway.  Then we headed north, arriving at the Jordanian side of the border about an hour later.  There wasn't too much of interest along the road.  But it had rained some over the past two weeks so at least there was a bit of green in the median strip and along the roadsides, making a nice contrast with the dun-colored sand and rock of the surrounding arid hills.  We did pass two or three very new-looking university campuses along way: the Hashemiya University, the Al- al-Bayt university, etc.  And of course the numerous turn-offs to various other Jordanian towns and towards the Iraqi border.  I watched to see if I could see any noticeable military supply trucks barrelling along to Iraq, but failed to.

The border was a bit boring, with obligatory stops at both the Jordanian and Syrian sides.  The driver took the passports of my fellow-passengers-- a blind Syrian woman and her mother-- into the border-posts but I had to take my own in.  No problem either side.  (Good job I got my Syrian visa before leaving the U.S.)  The border guard guy who processed mine had a computer that worked, bringing up information from my visa application. 

Immediately after we crossed the broder the scenery changed.  Instead of the dun-colored rock and sand there was now reddish earth, marked by piles of huge, blackish volcanic rocks that must have been painstakingly gathered into these piles to clear the rest of the ground for planting.  In some places, the rock has been piled into low field-boundary walls.  But mainly the fields are undemarcated, but simply studded with the big rock-piles.  And there has been extensive planting: a lot of olive groves, plus winter wheat and in some places some vegetables.

I don't remember seeing such a noticeable contrast between the two sides of the border on my previous journeys along this road. The last one was in, I believe, 1998.

As we sped along further north into Syria, there were much larger rocky hills and distant mountains; and here, too, a number of new university campuses.  Including the one the Syrian Ambassador in DC had told me about, the International University of Science and Technology, which he'd said is an almost entirely Iraqi-staffed venture.  Also places like the Arab European University, the Syrian German University, etc etc.

As we came near to Damascus, about 80 minutes from the border, the traffic slowed down.  This was mainly for the pedestrian crosswalks that now started to interrupt the vehicular flow.  Since my time playing Extreme Human Frogger on the broad streets of Cairo, I've decided that one of the marks of a civilized city is that it have good accommodations for pedestrians (or perhaps, ideally, very limited accommodations for vehicles in a pedestrian-dominated universe?)  We took a small detour through  a very gritty part of the city dominated by car-repair shops, in order to drop off the other two passengers.  Finally, the driver-- a friendly Armenian guy called Abu George who spoke Arabic exactly like an Armenian (i.e. jumbling the gender assignations, which is what I tend to do, too)-- brought me near to the swirling, chaotic  maelstrom of cars that is the Damascus central long-distance taxi-station.  Abu George told me that since he has an Amman-licensed car, he would not be allowed to deliver me to the Omayad Hotel, my ultimate destination.  (Also, he really should not have diverted from his path to drop the other two passengers at their destinatin, either-- "But what do they want me to do with Blind Noura?  Drop her off in the middle of the main road there?  I think not!")  So his trick was to swirl around in that horrendous traffic and find a local taxi to take me onward; and then once he found one both cars briefly stopped while I and my wheelie bag made a quick dash between them amid the blare of horns from drivers behind, and before the omnipresent traffic cops could come over and force the target car to move on before I could hop in and haul the wheelie bag in behind me.

The Damascus long-distance taxi-station has always been horrendously chaotic, in my 30-plus years of having experienced it from time to time.  Another good sign of civilization would be to make it more rational, calmer, and more user-friendly... (Dream on, Helena.)

So the hotel is fabulous.  Very centrally located; hot water in the bathroom and wifi in the room.  Could one ask for more?

After settling in I indulged in the wifi for a short while, made a few calls, then decided to go to the downtown souqs (markets) to search for some new knitting needles.  I didn't actually know the word in Arabic, but took one of my remaining ones with me as a communications aid... (Soon discovered the world is sinara.)  The downtown souqs here are truly the locus of an amazing and resilient culture.  As soon as you go under the great arch that leads into the Hamidiyeh souq you're transported into a different world.  The central passageway down the Hamidiyeh is about 30-40 feet wide, paved with broad stone slabs, and all covered with a hemicylindrical glass roof. Along each side are extremely colorful little stores, their wares hung high alongside and above their bright windows.  The stores all have identically formatted signs above them, and many have wares that are very similar-- this is the Middle Eastern market version of extremely concentrated co-location of similar goods.  Along the main drag of the Hamidiyeh the specialties are soft home furnishings (mainly, very intricately decorated polliw-cpvers, table-cloths, doilies, etc), and women's wear (including every variety of hijab veil you can imagine-- in some stores there are rows and rows of the disembodied heads of female mannequins, circa 1940s, displaying these.)

I was in Cairo's Khan al-Khalili souq with Leila and Tahani Rached just a week or less ago.  They are both vast, historic, major-city souqs, but they are each very different.  Perhaps because the souqs in Damascus are nearly all covered, and much better paved.  Perhaps because the Damascus souqs are all squeezed into a still-functioning walled Islamic "Old City", whereas the Cairo ones sprawl with much less form through much of the downtown area.

Anyway, both souqs are also laced through with intriguing little sub-alleyways, and studded with amazing, and very ancient larger khans, wikalas (caravanserais), and above all mosques-- from the monumental to the tiny little jewel of a mosque that you can glimpse by surprise as you turn another confusing corner.  When I was in the Souq al-Hamidiyeh yesterday evening there was a call to prayer, and it seemed to blare out of every coner of the souq, very loud indeed.  (An interesting reminder of the abiding power of the Sunni traders who dominate most areas of commercial life here.)

So I had a rough idea of the portion of the souq where I might hope to find knitting supplies, and turned off the main drag into a side-street in roughly an appropriate direction.  I found a place selling all kinds of cords and ribbons, and thought that was good place to start.  Since I also needed to buy some yarn and vageuly knew how to say that, I asked for a yarn store first.  The cord guy was extremely helpful.  Did I mention that practically everyone who works in the souq is male-- even the men standing dwarfed behind mounds of extremely large and gaudy bras, or reaching up to bring down one of the really tackiest little "boudoir" outfits a person could possibly imagine...

So this guy took me out into the street and very patiently told me, "You go in that direction and take not the first street on the left, nor the second, but the third.  And you go down to the end and on the right you'll find the souq al-tansim...  And of course, there it was, exactly where he had told me.  The selection of yarns there was adequate.  Just.  And then I pulled out my sample needle and said, "Please could you tell me where I can find a set of these?"  (The set of five needles is for knitting socks.)  This guy, too, gave me very precise instructions, to the shop of Mr. Abdel-Karim al-Salati, where he assured me I would find the needles I sought.  As it happened, I walked right past the Salati shop, and a few shops further along-- deep into cheap-knitted-hat-land-- I stopped to ask again where I might find a set of sananir.  This guy, too, was precise.  "Walk back the way you came; count eight shops along, and you'll be there," he saidf.  And indeed I was.  Mr. Salati immediately pulled from a box behind him exactly the set of five needles that I needed.

How kind everyone was to this fairly crazy-looking foreign woman with her mixed-up Arabic and her  fairly weird request!

I was feeling really good about having bought the needles, but my outing was further topped off when I discovered, just near the big entrance to the Omayad Mosque, a couple of busy guys with a handcart piled high with pomegranates and oranges, and a juice press.  One of them was slicing off the tops of the pomegranates and the other was getting some excellent upper-body exercise on the juice press with them.  "How much for a glass?" I asked.  When the cutting guy said "35 pounds" (about 70 US cents), I couldn't resist.  Soon the foaming glass was in my hand and the sweet-tart red juice was slipping down my throat. Glug, glug, and it was gone! I hadn't realized how thirsty I was.

Walking back to the hotel through the gathering dark of the evening was fun, too. The authorities here have put plenty of pedestrian overpasses over the downtown streets and made some other good accommodations for pedesterians, too.  (Like widening the sidewalk along the street that skirts the front of the Hamidiyeh, so walking along it-- and past the place where all the awning-canvas sellers have their shops-- is nowadays even quite a pleasant experience.)  There are still some monstrosities of modern development around the city center, in particular one vast square-box office block that's been standing empty there for a number of years now.  But in general the scale of the whole downtown area is still human, and the streets very lively-- particularly in the early evening.  Even the nearly brand-new Four Seasons Hotel, whose brutal and dominating structure looks in daytime like a cross between a ziggurat and one of Moscow's old Stalinist edifices (the Hotel Moskva?) looks a lot nicer-- even fairly pretty-- when lit up at night.

Anyway, enough architectural criticism from me.  I have met some fairly interesting people here, too.  I shall tell you some about them, later.