The Road to Damascus

So yet again, I’ve fallen behind with this thing - it’s so hard to motivate yourself when you have no Internet in your house! I haven’t done a great deal since I last posted really, except for a birthday trip with Amy to Istanbul, which was awesome.

Being the cheapskate I am, I decided not to fly direct from Damascus to Istanbul at a cost of 250 pounds, but instead to take a bus from Damascus across the Turkish border to Antakya for a fiver, and fly from there for about 40 quid return. So far, so simple but of course, being the Middle East, it wasn’t to be. First of all my bus was the slowest bus of all time, so we arrived at the Bab al-Hawaa border point a good hour after we should have done; then as we crossed no man’s land between the Syrian exit point and the Turkish entry point, I noticed that the men on my bus were hiding contraband cigarettes and alcohol on the bus. Turns out Turkish customs are incredibly strict - they had us all get off the bus and stand in the cold at 3am while they searched our bags, and then got really rather cross with a man for having too many teabags. I wish this were a joke, but it wasn’t; they drove our bus away and gutted it, while we waited in the cold for an hour. They found everything the men had hidden and confiscated it, but didn’t take it any further, so we were free to go.

About 5 minutes after we’d got through the border point, we stopped at the roadside to pick up a man with loads of cases. I thought this was a bit weird, but we’d stopped twice on the journey to pick people up, so I assumed he was a friend of the driver’s. I watched as we hauled his cases on board and then he began to walk up and down the aisle, handing out the same contraband we’d just had confiscated - I realised he was the same border guard who’d just busted us, and we’d obviously paid him off. We dropped him off at the next town.

By the time I got to Hatay Airport in Antakya, it was 5am, freezing and foggy. I had reserved a flight but not paid for it, as they told me I could do that once I reached the airport. I realised in the taxi that I hadn’t printed the confirmation emails, but I figured that airport staff at a border town would at least speak Arabic, if not English. What a foolish mistake - turns out not a single member of staff at Hatay Airport speaks English, French or Arabic, and had it not been for a Syrian who took pity on me and translated my Arabic into Turkish, I’d probably still be at Hatay now. Turns out they had no record of my reservation at all, and all direct Hatay-Istanbul flights were cancelled because of the fog, so I had to pay the best part of 100 quid for a single flight via Ankara. I eventually made it into Turkey a mere 13 hours after I’d left Syria, which I thought was pretty good going.

The return journey was actually equally as exciting - my flight from Istanbul to Hatay (a bargain at a mere 30 pounds) was delayed two hours, meaning that by the time I got into Antakya the direct bus to Damascus had stopped running for the night. In a panic as to how on earth I’d get home, I opted for a taxi to Aleppo, in Northern Syria, from where I could catch a bus to Damascus. The taxi driver told me it would cost a tenner, which seemed extortionate, but I was more concerned with getting home than with haggling, so I handed it over. There were two Syrians and a young Iraqi guy sharing the car with me, and the Iraqi made polite but insistent conversation the whole way to Aleppo, in Arabic and broken English, and it turned out he was headed to Damscus as well.

When we got to Aleppo he booked us onto a bus and then started to ask more personal questions - are you married? Engaged? Where’s your fiance? I made it fairly clear that I was engaged, not interested, didn’t have any unmarried friends, etc, and when we boarded the bus I told him clearly that I wanted to sit alone because I was tired. Even after that he wouldn’t take the hint, and kept talking to me - was I Christian? Do I drink? Smoke? In the end I put my headphones on and closed my eyes, but not before sending my flatmates a text saying “I get into Harasta at 3am. Please come and meet me, I’ve picked up a crazy Iraqi and I can’t shake him!”.

I woke up about half an hour outside Damascus, and started getting my stuff ready. The Iraqi asks where I live and I give him the vaguest possible answer, and then he suggests I share his taxi. I said no, my friends are meeting me and they have a car waiting (bullshit, but I’m a convincing liar when needs be) and he says ok, well let me take you for dinner next week. I said no, my fiance wouldn’t like that. In the end, he gave me his number and email address, “in case you ever need any help in Damascus”, and I got off the bus to find my flatmates waiting with a line of taxi drivers who had heard the story of the crazy Iraqi and were ready to beat the shit out of him. One of them even took us home for free.

The thing is, he wasn’t actually threatening - that’s just how men think flirting works here. It never crosses their mind that a woman might not be interested, whether she’s single, engaged or married with five children. It’s just reassuring to know that, regardless of how weirdly a guy acts, there’s generally another five waiting to defend your honour.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/41775699@N05/

Today I’m having an unmotivated day; I’m meant to be writing a ten-minute presentation on gender equality, but I’m finding it very difficult to make myself sit down and write anything. I woke up early this morning and had a shower, thinking that getting up straight away would give me an incentive to get my work done quickly and enjoy mu day. However, after three solid hours of faffing, I decided to get out of the house and buy some shoes – only as an incentive to study harder, obviously.

I walked from my house towards Sayyida Ruqaiyya, known to almost everyone as ‘the Iranian mosque’ for reasons that still remain obscure to me. There’s a little market that runs from there to Bab Faradis (Paradise Gate) that has a few clothes stalls, but sadly none of them had shoes (or at least none that I’d actually want to wear). Still not feeling like going back home to study, I walked from there to the Umayyad Mosque and the beginning of Souq Hamidiyeh, the main market in Damascus. I knew I’d seen a stall near there with fake Converse-type shoes, which I wanted because mine are slowly falling apart and definitely aren’t going to last until I get back to the UK at Christmas.

I reached the stall at the same time as a massive group of tourists, which meant I was free to browse without pressure from the stallholder, who was busy trying to sell flipflops to Italians. Unfortunately my longed-for fake Converse turned out to have D&G written on them in massive diamante, so I left them and headed for what I thought was the inside of the stall. At the back of the stall I discovered that it opened onto an entirely new part of the souq, which seemed to specialise in wedding dresses, makeup and jewellery. I’m really disappointed that I forgot my camera, because this part of the souq was like falling into Barbie-land – enormous meringue-dresses, tiaras and necklaces dripping with fake jewels, bridesmaids head dresses with lace and fake flowers.

I spent a good twenty minutes just wandering around in awe, marvelling at the combination of tastelessness and extravagance, before I emerged blinking into Souq Bzouriyeh – the spice market. This is hands down my favourite part of the market, where everything from saffron to rosebuds and frankincense to fresh pistachios is piled high in front of stalls, while the smell of freshly ground coffee wafts from shop windows. Every time I visit I’m like a child in a sweet shop, and thankfully the stallholders are more than happy to conduct impromptu vocabulary lessons while letting me try things that catch my eye. I have a feeling that on the way home my suitcase will be full of spices, scarves and very little else.

From Souq Bzouriyeh I strolled aimlessly until I stumbled upon Azem Palace – a beautiful 19th century traditional Arabic house, which they’ve just renovated and set up as a sort of museum. Because it’s Saturday it was fairly packed, both with tourists and with Damascene families out for the day, but I just couldn’t resist the student entry price of 10 lira (13p) so I headed in. Inside they’ve set up rooms off the haramlik (family courtyard) and salamlik (the courtyard for receiving male guests) to demonstrate traditional upper-class Arab life in the 19th century. Each room had a different theme, including costume, marriage, musical instruments and traditional crafts, and often a little tableau with mannequins demonstrating the point in question. Apart from the fact that all the mannequins were evidently male (the bride preparing for her wedding night had some definite five o’clock shadow) it was very interesting, and the bilingual displays gave me ample opportunity to practice my Arabic with the option of falling back to English if needs be.

Leaving Azem Palace and its tour-bus hoards behind, I walked along Straight Street in entirely the wrong direction (the souq is very disorienting, in my defence), cutting through Hariqeh once I’d realised my mistake, and walked back along Souq Hamidiyeh to the Umayyad, where I’d started out. A man in the square in front of the mosque handed me a flyer for a street art performance happening this afternoon, sponsored by the French Cultural Centre – juggling and clowning, with performances at 3 and at 5. But sadly, although my walk didn’t inspire any great wish to study, it did waste a lot of my day, which meant that while the clowns were busy throwing things at each other, I was busy trying to find the Arabic for ‘maternity leave’. Ho hum.

Yet again I’ve been horribly lazy about keeping you all up to date, but I just overcame a bit of my tech-stupidity and found out that I can rack up posts and have them posted automatically at a later date. So I’ll try and write a few posts once a week, and then even if I don’t make it to the internet cafe, you’ll have something interesting to read.

In other news, I’ve done about a million things since I posted last so it’ll have to be bullet points again, I’m afraid.

• Three weeks ago I went to Deir Mar Musa, a Syrian Catholic monastery in the desert a couple of hours outside Damascus. It dates from the 10th century but it was derelict for several hundred years until it was renovated by an Italian priest. Now it’s home to about 10 monks and nuns, and you can go and stay there for nothing, as long as you help out with cooking, cleaning and farming. We spent a Friday night and it was fascinating - a total mix of people, including a British archaeology professor who’d converted to Syrian Catholicism and a man who was walking from Syria to Jordan, as well as your standard students and backpackers. I went to the evening mass which was in Arabic and very different from churches at home, and I also joined in an hour’s silent meditation with the monks and nuns.
• Two weeks ago I went to Amman, Jordan. For a day. To cut a long story short, a friend’s American boyfriend had to send his passport to the British Embassy in Jordan to get a student visa, but they hadn’t processed it fast enough and his passport wasn’t going to make it back to Damascus before Eid (when the country closed for a week) and more importantly his flight. So he paid for a private car to take me and a friend to Amman to pick it up for him. Amman seems nice, but I’d like to see more of it than the British Embassy and its branch of HSBC.
• Eid was awesome - everyone gets a week’s holiday, so we had no classes, and the whole city was really happy because Ramadan was over. We made pancakes, went to cafes, ate delicious ice cream from Bakdash, and hired a villa with a pool for a day, where we had a party with two of Um Samir’s sisters and three of their kids. Swimming was a weird experience, because you have to wear a minimum of a tshirt and shorts; Um Samir’s sisters swam in their clothes and the under-veils of their hijabs. They also tried to teach me dabkeh (traditional Syrian dancing) and that ululating thing they do at weddings, and laughed at my attempts.
• Earlier this week we finally went to immigration to extend our visas. For some reason the 6-month multi-entry visa is in fact only valid for a 15 day stay here - if you want to stay longer you have to apply for an extension. By the time I went to Jordan I’d already been here 28 days, and the border guard told me off for not having been, although thank God he didn’t take it any further. Thankfully the fact I’d left and re-entered the country gave me another 15 days to sort it out, so on Tuesday Samir took us to the immigration office. It was without a doubt the weirdest and most stressful experience of my life - it seemed to me to be just an endless series of windows, stamps, forms, more windows, a small bribe and eventually, an extension. It took an hour and a half thanks to Samir’s rashweh, or financial incentive - I know people who had to wait more than 6 hours. Now I’m no longer an illegal immigrant!
• My cashcard still doesn’t work in this country. I have had to send it to Lebanon with a friend in order to withdraw money. Natwest have been less than helpful, and I think over Christmas I may be switching bank.
• Last night I had my first Syrian clubbing experience, which was actually pretty good. It cost 500 lira which is about £7, but included two free drinks. The music was pretty average, the crowd was mostly foreigners, but it was nice for a minute to imagine I was in a country with a slightly more lax moral code than here. The night was only slightly marred by the fact that a Russian prostitute tried to pick me up while I was at the bar - I think she was confused by the short hair.

OK, I think that pretty much covers the main exciting things I’ve done since I last updated. I solemnly promise I’m about to write some other interesting stuff and set up some automatic posts over the next few days, so keep your eyes peeled.

… which is why I haven’t updated this in about two weeks. Oops. Sorry people. I haven’t died after my poison peach episode - I felt pretty foul for a couple of days, and I lost about half a stone, but I’m fine now. And have probably regained the weight as well, but hey.

Truth be told, we haven’t really been doing much the last week or so. It’s Ramadan which means that a) people tend to be in bad moods because they can’t eat, drink or smoke for 15 hours a day, b) a lot of things are closed until after iftaar (the evening meal) and c) it’s frowned on even to drink water in public, which makes walking anywhere pretty horrible. On the upside, Um Saamir feeds us every night because one of the big things in Ramadan is generosity and making sure no one goes without. After about 4 days of seriously good Syrian food, I started to worry that maybe I was taking advantage so I decided to hide upstairs while she cooked and cook my own dinner instead. After I finished, I heard a knock on my bedroom door and, lo and behold,  there was Um Saamir with a massive plate of the dinner she’d cooked. I’m starting to worry I’m going to come back from here seriously fat, because she’s an amazing cook and loves to feed us.

A few days ago the rest of the people from SOAS started to arrive, so we have four more SOAS students in the house now. There’s Jane, a mature student in her 60s, who’s a little bit anal about cleaning but on the upside is spurring us on to be tidy; Jessica, a Finnish girl with a Syrian boyfriend who is teaching me how to cook Syrian food; Niamh, a British expat who grew up in Egypt and is struggling with how funny Syrians find her accent; and Lydia, a Spanish girl I didn’t really know before she arrived but who’s really lovely. Unfortunately there’s been some slight double-booking, so space is at a bit of a premium. Currently, Jane has nabbed herself a bedroom, Lydia is sleeping in the spare room in the boys’ house next door where Wais and Saamir live, Jessica is on Soraya’s floor and Niamh is on a sofa in the outdoor living room. Sunniva is leaving on September 15th though, so hopefully everyone should have a bedroom after that.

I’ve started trying to enrol at the university which, like everything here, seems to involve a lot of bureaucracy. I have to get a letter from the British Embassy here (for which I’m charged £38!) and an AIDS test, plus fill in a million pages of paperwork and give them 4 passport photos and a photocopy of my passport and my visa. I’ve already got my AIDS test done, and while the Arabic on my results form was a little bit complex, I’m fairly sure it said I didn’t have AIDS. I’ve also had passport photos taken - there are no photo booths here, you just walk into a little shop and a man takes them with a digicam. What I didn’t know is that he then photoshops your face to a state of ridiculousness (seriously, I look like I’ve had bad plastic surgery) and then, in my case, gives you a bonus free photo where he’s photoshopped your face into a background of rolling hills and fields. Seriously.

Tomorrow I have my placement test at the university, which I’m not unduly worried about - apparently absolutely everyone finds it impossible, and if you’re not happy with the class they set you in, you can ask to be moved up or down. I’m just excited to actually get studying, because I was starting to get a bit bored.

I’ve also become obsessed with a TV programme here called Bab al-Harra (The Gate of the Quarter) which is the most popular programme here by far. It’s set in Syria before the end of the French Mandate, and it’s about resistance fighters fighting the French. It’s very exciting, and if you’re in a restaurant or a cafe at 10pm when it starts, they turn the music off and everyone’s craning their neck to see the screen. I have little to no idea what’s going on in it, but it’s a nice way to practice my Arabic.

In other exciting news:

• I’ve learned to do crosswords in Arabic, and I even got a clue that Abu Saamir couldn’t get.
• I discovered that you can legally drink here, and we went to a pub in the Christian Quarter where I had two entire bottles of Heineken. I hope you’re jealous of my rock’n'roll lifestyle. Also, coming home at 2 in the morning and brushing our teeth to get rid of the smell felt a lot like being 16 again.
• We went to the poshest restaurant in the Old City, where the president and his wife eat, and ate a blow-out meal for the grand sum of £6.50 each, including tip. When we got home, Um Saamir asked what we ate and the next day, cooked the same thing to demonstrate the superiority of her cooking. She won.
• I’ve found an excellent fruit and veg stall which has never given me food poisoning, and is run by an old man who teaches me all the fruit and veg in Arabic and gives me massive discounts.
• All Syrian children find the fact that I speak Arabic hilarious, and keep striking up conversation with me in shops or on the street. It’s pretty awesome.

Some photos for your enjoyment, finally.

This is a bit late - I’ve not even been busy, just had a really uneventful few days.

Saturday was the first day of Ramadan, so we had a quiet day. Soraya made the mistake of telling the family that she was Muslim, so she got woken up at 4 to eat breakfast, and then had to fast all day. She found it pretty hard, because she hasn’t fasted since she was young, and it was the hottest day of our trip so far, so she slept for a lot of it. I went with Sunniva to buy groceries, and blew 240 lira (about three pounds - a lot of money here!) on a crate of about 15 peaches, which were delicious.

In the afternoon Saamir, the eldest son, visited and taught me a card trick and the names of all the cards and suits in Arabic. I feel quite clever now, even though I know it’s totally useless knowledge. He also took us on a walk around a different part of town to buy yoghurt for the iftaar (the evening meal that breaks the fast).

Sadly when I ate my delicious and extortionate peach, I forgot to wash or peel it. I must have been told a hundred times that you have to wash or peel any raw fruit or vegetables before you eat them, but it was about 38 degrees and I was so eager for a fridge-cold peach that I forgot. Needless to say, it made me really ill for the rest of the day and most of yesterday as well, so yesterday was a write-off. I came to the Internet cafe to try and update, but I felt too ill so I headed home, drank a litre of water and slept for two hours. The rest of yesterday was spent feeling sorry for myself, shopping for something easy to cook for dinner, and sleeping some more.

Today we headed to the bank to change some money, but every bank we went to seemed to have some reason or other that it couldn’t change our money. One actually told us it didn’t change dollar notes less than $20. In the end Soraya managed to get her dollars changed in a corner shop, but I’m left with traveller’s cheques which I can’t seem to cash anywhere. I’ve just been on the American Express website and apparently they don’t recommend you use them in Syria. I specifically told the woman in the post office that I was going to Syria, and she told me my best option was to bring traveller’s cheques in dollars. So now I’m panicked that I won’t find anywhere I can cash them.

Also, I’m not convinced that anyone actually reads this, because no one has ever commented. If no one does then I might as well do this by email. Opinions please?

I landed here yesterday; I would have updated sooner, but I was so sleep-deprived that it wouldn’t have been a coherent or interesting read.

We landed at 9.30, cleared passport control (where I was berated for not knowing my Syrian address by heart, before he warmed to me when he found out I was studying Arabic) , collecting our baggage (my zip had split, the customs official thought my box of knickknacks was full of drugs, and someone almost ran over my laptop with his trolley) and changing some currency (with the nicest man in the world!) we caught a taxi. We had the address of the family, but the cab driver didn’t recognise it, and we’d lost the phone number we’d been given, so in the end we had the taxi driver drop us right next to Bab Touma. Bab Touma is one of the old gates from when Damascus was a walled city - there are 8 in all, with the remains of the wall spread between them.

We were hoping to find an internet cafe, check our emails and find Wais’s number so he could come and pick us up. In the end, Soraya found the number hidden in her case, and a friendly man lent us his mobile. We waited in a cafe for Wais to come and meet us, and then he led us down what felt like a million narrow, winding streets to his family’s house. On the way, I managed to snap the handle off my suitcase - turns out 30kg of clothes, cobbled street and the oldest suitcase in the world aren’t actually a good combination.

The house itself is beautiful. It’s in Qaymaria, the heart of the Old City, and it’s a traditional Arab house built round a courtyard. Unfortunately their had been some crossed wires and the family weren’t actually expecting us until today, but they were really accommodating and Soraya and I ended up sharing a room for the night. The family are lovely. There are three children: Saamir, the eldest son, who I haven’t yet met; Wais, the second son, who’s 23; and Shahed, the daughter, who turned 17 yesterday. Um Saamir, the mother (Um Saamir literally means “mother of Saamir”; it’s a mark of respect in Syria) is an architect, and Abu Saamir, the father, is an electrical engineer and part-time carpenter. He makes beautiful wooden sculptures which he sells in his own shop.

Yesterday we spent mostly exploring the area. I didn’t manage to sleep at all at Dubai Airport or on the flight to Damascus, so I didn’t have much energy for anything else. The main street nearest ours is quite touristy and studenty, but with beautiful shops and stalls. We checked emails, met the family, and eventually managed to have an hour’s nap at about 4pm.

In the evening Um Saamir asked if wanted to come with her to pick up a cake for Shahed’s birthday, so we went on a long walk all around the Old City. Mostly for our benefit really, because the bakery was quite nearby! It was good to see another side to the Old City from the touristy side we’d seen that day, even if I did stick out a bit as the white girl following Um Saamir through the market. She works as a building inspector for the Syrian government, so at a few points on the walk we stopped to visit shops that were in trouble for building violations; but mostly she just showed us a lot of beautiful Old City architecture, including the office where she works, which might just be the most beautiful building I’ve ever seen.

When we got home we had a little party for Shahed, with snacks and cake, where we got to know the other students who are staying in the house. There are two German women who are total beginners; a Spanish woman in her 40s who is married to a Moroccan, and refuses to talk to us except in perfectly pronounced ‘posh’ Arabic; and Sunniva, who used to be in my class at SOAS before I got held back. The German girls, Melanie and Maria, are leaving tonight, and some other people from our class at SOAS are arriving.

Today we’re just having a lazy day. Friday is the first day of the weekend here, but it’s more like Sunday because it’s the day that everyone goes to mosque. Um Saamir made a massive Friday morning breakfast, which she does every week. We ate:  cheese, sausage, lubneh, houmous (which doesn’t mean the dip - that has an Arabic name I can’t remember - it means chickpeas, yoghurt, tahini and garlic, with tomatoes chopped over the top; actually incredible), Arabic pickles, olives (both colours), what we call  houmous (the dip), vegetable stew, flat bread, oil and za’atar for dipping, and jam and halwiah for desert. Yummy yummy! And this evening we’re heading to a cafe with Sunniva and Shahed for dinner and maybe shisha.

Laptop is now charged and I’m exhausted enough that sitting down with my laptop is a welcome break, so here’s a more detailed update.

We’ve been in Dubai for about 6 hours now, so only another 5 until our flight to Damascus leaves. After clearing passport control and customs, we were really confused to find that the airport was totally dead, with 2 shops and barely any passengers. I couldn’t work out why everyone was raving about Dubai airport being so exciting, and I was kind of dreading spending 11 hours here when there seemed to be nothing going on.  After half an hour sitting in Costa, we found somewhere to charge our laptops and sat on the floor (much to the amusement/bafflement of passing tourists) contacting home etc.

We quickly discovered that there’s only so much conversation you can sustain when you’re in what appears to be the world’s most boring airport, so we decided to try and find the other terminals, thinking that maybe those were the exciting, glitzy ones. We managed to spend all of about 3 minutes outside before being beaten by the heat and heading back indoors - even though it was midnight, it was still about 34 degrees and really humid. In desperation, we resorted to heading to departures to find out what time we would be allowed to check in; thankfully, even though we had 7 hours before the next leg of our journey, we were waved right through, without even needing to check in again.

Once we got airside, we found out what all the fuss is about. Dubai Terminal 3 has three hundred and sixty gates. We’ve now walked the length of the airport, and it is seriously massive. I’m pretty sure you could fit the whole of Gatwick in the terminal building. So we’ve spent the last few hours wandering aimlessly, window shopping, people watching and searching for some dinner, and I’ve now officially eaten my first meal in the Middle East. You’re probably jealous. Did I have homous? Falafel? Fattoush?

No. I had Burger King. In this entire terminal the size of a small city, there is nowhere that sells proper Middle Eastern food. Not one restaurant. There’s 2 Costas, 3 Starbucks, a McDonalds and even a Haagen Dazs counter, but no falafels. I’ve never been so disappointed. I’m also confused that, when I ordered a veggie royale, the lady behind the counter offered me free chicken. Seriously. I’m thinking that being vegetarian here might be a bit harder than I initially anticipated. I’ll keep you posted.