Damascus, Syria - Holiday in the Axis of Evil

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“Hello,” said the twelve-year-old girl sporting a brace. “Please may I sit down?” I was sitting in the departure lounge of Damascus International Airport while Angela was off looking around some shops. We’d just spent a couple of days in Damascus where we had come across some of the friendliest people in all of our travels. I nodded and regarded the girl now sitting beside me despite it being a most unusual request. This sort of thing would never happen in the UK, I thought: a young girl approaching a strange man and asking if she could sit down next to him - never in a million years. “I want to be a dentist when I grow up,” she informed me. “But I am worried that I will make a mistake in someone’s mouth and go to jail.”

Our arrival into the ever-expanding Axis of Evil had coincided with some mad American pastor threatening to burn copies of the Koran to mark the anniversary of September 11th. With the world’s press wondering whether the idiot would carry out his threat, Angela and I arrived in Damascus on a warm and sunny September evening.

The airport bus dropped us off in the centre of town, a place that had become an outdoor market of sorts. Pots and pans as well as fruit and vegetables were all on sale with men sat about playing backgammon waiting for passersby to stop and look. As we got off the bus, the heat hit us and the taxi drivers moved into position.

“Where you go?” asked the man who was leading us to his decrepit yellow taxi. “Afamia Hotel? Okay, no problem, two hundred pounds.” Whether this was a fair price or not, we nodded and climbed into the back, my legs pressed up against the seat in front. The dashboard had a layer of carpet along its length and also a dangling mirror with a pair of eyes staring out. As we rushed through downtown Damascus, we couldn’t help but be disappointed; the buildings looked in bad shape and the whole place seemed not in the slightest picturesque. Five minutes later we were dropped off outside our hotel, wondering where the Hell we were.

Wasting no time in hitting the streets, Angela and I headed towards the Old Town, the home of souqs, mosques and abundant ancient sites. Along the way we passed the magnificent train station, complete with old stream train outside, and suddenly things began to look much better in Damascus. The smell of cooking filled the air as people, breaking the fast of Ramadan, sat down to eat. Kebab stalls were doing a roaring trade as were the men selling bread from carts, of which there were many. We soon reached the edge of the Old Town, marked by the high walls of the Citadel, an imposing medieval fortress, and entered through one of the old city gates.

The Souqs of Evilness

More or less as soon as we stepped through the gate we found ourselves inside the bustling Al-Hamidiyah Souq. It was packed with people all pushing their way to make any headway through the wide bazaar. The place was awash with noise - yapping toy dogs, peddlers shouting for custom, pomegranate juice sellers clinking glasses, and people shouting to be heard above the din. “Look at those,” said Angela pointing at a stall selling stuffed birds of prey. Falcons, buzzards and eagles were all for sale, some with snakes clasped in their beaks. A couple of abaya-wearing women were looking at them while the owner of the stall hovered nearby. “I think this is the best souq I’ve been in,” she said after buying some fragrant oils in a tiny stall just off the main drag. “It seems so real and authentic.”

The next morning, as soon as we’d finished breakfast, we were back at the Old Town. Being a Friday meant a lot of things were closed, so we decided to venture forth to the Christian Quarter, where according to the guidebook, things should be normal. It had surprised us to discover that Damascus even had a Christian population, living in harmony with their Muslim neighbours. The separation between the Old Town’s Christian and Muslim sections was a blurred one and it brought home to us how insane it was that Syria (along with Libya and Cuba) was part of the so called Beyond the Axis of Evil list, an expanded list from the original three: Iran, Iraq and North Korea. To gain entry into this second tier of evil rogue states, a country had to be ‘state sponsors of terrorism with the potential to pursue weapons of mass destruction.’ As we wandered though beautiful old buildings dating from medieval times, we were witness to not one single piece of evil, and certainly saw no sign of fanaticism anywhere. It was laughable really, the whole notion of an evil country, and the Syria we saw deserved, if anything, to be called the Axis of Friendliness. Mind you, we did notice that Facebook and Youtube were banned in Syria, suggesting that perhaps things weren’t all as they seemed.

Boys with Guns

“Hello! How are you?” beamed the young boy who’d rushed up to us. He was with three friends, all dressed in their brand new Eid clothes. Each of them also sported a gun which they were waving about freely. But these weren’t real guns, of course, but toy ones that could shoot tiny little plastic pellets. Seemingly every small boy in Damascus had been given one for Eid because they were everywhere. After we’d replied that we were okay, he smiled and ran off, chasing after his friends.

“This is how kids should play in England,” remarked Angela. “Like they used to when we were kids and not sat in front of a computer.” I smiled remembering how I used to love firing my toy pistol at my friends in a time when it was okay to do so. Japs and Commandos we used to call our mini warfare games and it had all been innocent fun. Nowadays, if a ten-year old was spotted with a toy gun in the UK, he’d be facing an armed response unit within seconds, possibly with rubber bullets headed his way.

But it wasn’t all fun and games. Further on we saw a group of young boys, all arguing, which resulted in one of the boys running away crying. I noticed he didn’t have a plastic gun and I could only surmise that his pals had pelted him knowing he had no means of returning fire. As he ran towards us his sobbing ceased and I turned to watch where he was going. After charging across the road towards another group of boys, he procured the use of a toy machine gun, the sort that could fire off many plastics pellets per second, and his dour face turned into a smile. After grabbing some spare ammunition, he was off, back in the direction of the original group.

They sell Alcohol Here!

The Christian Quarter of the Old Town looked no different from the Muslim section, except that more things were open and alcohol was for sale. I wasted no time in sampling the local brew, Barada, savouring the refreshing flavour that reminded me of certain white beers available in the UK. While I drank my beer, we consulted the guide book to find out where to go next, soon deciding to see the home where St Paul was supposedly cured of the blindness.

In the Bible a bad man called Saul had been sent to Damascus to cause some trouble for the Christians living there. Along the way God had blinded him leaving Saul defenceless. Luckily for him though, another chap called Ananias soon came along and seeing that Saul couldn’t see a thing, led him along the road to Damascus to his home. Once there, Ananias cured the persecutor of his blindness and in doing so, made Saul see the errors of his ways. From then on, Saul became Paul and turned over a new leaf, soon becoming a disciple of God.

Ananias’ home had been turned into a Chapel and for a small fee it was possible to visit the place where some of these miraculous events had supposedly taken place. Angela and I wandered down some stone steps into a small cavern filled with icons and an altar. Oddly enough, without all the religious paraphernalia present, the stone room would have looked genuinely Biblical.

The Old Town was a labyrinth of alleyways and side streets, many without signs or any way of navigation. Getting lost became a common occurrence, but these detours meant we could see many of the fine buildings, dating from almost a thousand years ago. I wondered how much of the Old Town had been rebuilt or renovated, but according to the guidebook, not much it seemed. Certain sections of it reminded me of York, and other Roman towns in England, especially with the wooden struts and cross timbers on the exteriors. In fact, it looked so good and so authentic that I couldn’t believe Damascus wasn’t further up the tourist trail than it already was.

We eventually reached the massive Umayyad Mosque, the third most important in the Islamic world. It was one of the oldest mosques in the world and also contained, almost unbelievably, the head of John the Baptist, a prophet in both Islam and Christianity. As well as this, it also housed the Tomb of Saladin, one of the great early Muslim leaders of the twelfth century. Saladin had fought off the marauding Crusaders, even earning the respect of Richard the Lionheart. As well having the tomb containing his body, Saladin had a great big statue outside the walls of the Old Town, where crowds gathered, pouring over the items for sale on the ground beside it.

It actually surprised me to find that Damascus was a hotbed of pirate DVDs. Shops and stalls selling them were all over the Old Town, where the latest Hollywood film could be bought for as little as fifty Syrian pounds (75p). We wandered past them towards Azem Palace, built in 1750 as the official residence of the local Ottoman ruler. It looked good from the outside, with its colourful brickwork and fancy arches, and after admiring the view for a few minutes we went inside some of the buildings, now a museum. In an effort to replicate what it had looked like in its prime, mannequins had been placed in strategic poses, but unfortunately they looked a bit ridiculous. Nevertheless, we walked through the old bath house and servant’s quarters, enjoying what was on offer. A group of young girls were also in attendance and one of them rushed up to Angela, asking where she was from. “I’m from England,” she replied, much to the delight of the girl in question, who ran back to her friends, giggling.

We caught a taxi up to a lookout point known as Jebel Qassioun. Once there we joined all the other people who were also enjoying the fine view of the city below. The Old Town could just about be made out among the sprawl of Damascus, all under the gaze of some impressive mountains in the distance. “Apparently Prophet Muhammad was once on this hill,” I told Angela. “He said that he didn’t want to enter Damascus because he wanted to enter Paradise once.”

That evening we had another wander through the souqs, packed to the extreme with people. The shop selling ice creams sprinkled with nuts was doing a roaring trade, as were the juice sellers who seemed to be permanently squeezing fruit to the waiting customers.

People were crowding in a square near the Umayyad Mosque, some feeding the pigeons, others simply milling about. Further along, cars gridlocked the narrow streets of the Old Town, in turn causing crowds to back up as they tried to squeeze past. “Cars should be banned in here.” I said, side stepping one vehicle whose driver was beeping in frustration. “Look at them. It’s madness.” When we reached a junction of sorts, we saw what was causing the jam: cars coming from both directions and meeting headlong with nowhere to go. We soon headed back to the hotel.

The next day was September the 11th and the mad Florida pastor had decided not to burn any Korans, but even so, there was a noticeable presence near the US embassy which we happened to be walking past. We were in search of a cafe recommended by the guide book and as we passed the Turkish embassy, a man with an assault rifle approached us. He and a second man were guarding the road that led to the US embassy, just up the road from us, and told us that we should not take any photos and must head away from the road. We complied and wandered away, even though the whole area looked largely peaceful. After failing to locate the cafe, we went back to the hotel to check out. It was time to leave Damascus.

Strengths:
-The Old Town
-The Souqs
-Delicious food
-Friendly people
-Safe
-The view from Jebel Qassioun
-Relatively cheap
-Alcohol freely available in the Christian Quarter

Weaknesses:
-Cars causing jams in the narrow lanes of the Old Town
-Outside of the Old Town, there is not much to see
-A bit of a hassle getting a visa before travel

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