Evil-doers.

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We’re bolting through traffic on our way into Damascus, the driver fidgeting with his radio and his cigarettes and occasionally looking up to dodge the minibuses that come shooting across four lanes in one quick jerk of the wheel. My eyes are still smarting from the infection that left them bloodshot in Baalbek, and the flat sunlight sifting through the haze has me squinting toward the valley when Damascus comes into view. From a distance the ancient city looks like any other modern Arab metropolis: a low gray sprawl of concrete houses, broken by the thin columns of hundreds of minarets. We drive past rows of apartment blocks with their flapping laundry, the satellite dishes clustered on the roofs like wild mushrooms. This isn’t exactly what I had in mind. In fact, barreling through the modern sprawl, passing leafy parks and a few swank sidewalk cafés with late-model luxury sedans idling by the curb, I’m wondering whether this 8,000-year-old city doesn’t have a few tricks up her chador.

My hotel is down a quiet side-street shaded by grape leaves that rustle when the wind stirs. There are a few tailors cutting and sewing away in their narrow storefronts, an old, toothless barber who gives me an enthusiastic greeting every time I pass. Around the corner I find a sidewalk restaurant dishing out heaping bowls of foul - the beans smothered in hummus and oil and served up by a grave, precocious 10-year-old with neatly parted hair. Across from me a soldier in pressed khakis is sipping cups of teas, sitting with the sort of insouciance that suggests he could close this place down if as much as a single chickpea burned the roof of his mouth.

It’s late in the day and I lose myself for a few hours in the Old City, wandering past the sacks of nuts and spices, the orange carts and barrels of olives, the old men squatting on the sidewalk and looking up at the sun like it’s been saying things behind their backs. There are hard-luck guys selling lottery tickets on little TV trays, or packs of Gauloises and Gitanes and Viceroy cigarettes, as if association with such exotic brands could alone bring the promise of better days. I watch old women haggling over bolts of fabric, slapping at the hand of the shopkeeper when he, undoubtedly, offers a dishonest price.

These women move in remarkable, trenchant packs, their lined faces rendering a topography of hardship, their bodies wrapped in so many layers of black it looks like they’ve been dressed for burial. Seeing them rub a chador between their fingertips, or testing the stout heel of a shoe against their palms, you get a sense that these are household matrons of the highest order. They rifle through piles of cheap bras and unflattering undies, clucking their tongues with disapproval, an air about them suggesting a lifetime of domestic tyranny.

In parts of the Old City, you feel the years groaning down on you. Dilapidated buildings lean toward each other until their upper floors practically kiss; old, stooping men shuffle down narrow lanes, twisting and turning and disappearing under low archways with Arabic script chipped into the stone. But then you reach the magnificent Souq al-Hammadiya, the main artery of the Old City, its shops hawking Puma track suits and cell-phone accessories and elegant hijabs that the women are queuing up for. Outside, on the covered street, men are selling knock-off polo shirts with names like Giorgio Emporio and Gavin Kline, or little wind-up ducks that chatter and wobble to the delight of the kids. In the souq’s vaulted roof, tiny bullet holes - relics of the days of Vichy France - spell out constellations of sunlight. Pigeons are whirring and cawing in the rafters, racing out into the open air toward the minarets of the Umayyad Mosque.

Nearby there are souvenir shops selling cheap plastic worry beads, scruffy kids hawking packs of postcards. Outside An-Nafura café - a Damascene institution just steps from the mosque - I meet a plump, middle-aged man with a hawk-like nose and powerful, thick-framed glasses. He introduces himself as Hassin and offers me a seat; there’s a great commotion of shifting chairs and argileh pipes as I make myself at home. We sit with our backs to the wall, watching the traffic on the narrow street. He’s wearing an Aztec-print shirt that looks like it came 2-for-1 at a souvenir shop in Chichen Itza. It’s stretched across his stomach until it practically pops at the seams; when he swivels his head, I can see drops of sweat beading in the folds of his neck.

We talk over our tea about traveling and about life in the Middle East. Hassin has much to say about America, though he admits he’s never been. “Why would I go to America?” he asks, as if it’s a very stupid question indeed. “I have everything I need in Syria.” And admittedly, he’s got a pretty cush life. He’s worked for most of it as an electrical engineer; today, as we sit with our tea at half-past twelve, his work day is already through. Along with his job, he runs a profitable side-racket renting rooms to college students from abroad, and it’s not hard to suspect that Hassin’s mirthful face and easy-going demeanor owe much to the fact that, each night, ten nubile foreign co-eds are rinsing their underthings in his sink and cozying up in his beds.

We finish our tea and he invites me back to his house for coffee, taking me down a few gravelly lanes to a palatial place that’s been in the family for more than 300 years. We sit in the courtyard shaded by two orange trees, with potted plants lining the windowsills and a tangle of grapevines crawling up the walls. There are a dozen rooms clustered around a maze of hallways and narrow stairwells. A few of Hassin’s young nieces and nephews are scampering around, looking for mischief in a pile of freshly swept leaves.

Hassin’s aunt - a compact woman with powerful shoulders beneath her shawl - is sitting on the sofa, cutting the stems from a bag of grape leaves. She chops them three or four at a time, gripping the knife with muscular hands and then daintily stacking the leaves beside her. Her wide, stout nose seems built for a life of suffering. “The air we breathe in this mortal world is the air of misery,” her face suggests. “And with this schnozz, I’ve been sucking it in like a Hoover.”

When the coffee arrives she leans on the table with her arms crossed, like a drunken sailor. She takes a cigarette from her pack of Gauloises and tucks it between fingers, and there it stays while she sips her coffee or scolds the neighbors’ kids for running up and down the stairs.

Hassin shows me around the house, making note of the particulars, as if I might be picking it up for the missus. He points out the fine views, overlooking the Umayyad Mosque and its three minarets, and draws my attention to the handsome woodwork and high ceilings. The rooms are cluttered with all the detritus of college life: overstuffed knapsacks, running shoes, Arabic-English dictionaries. Years ago, before the rest of the family moved out, these rooms were filled with brothers and cousins and their countless, screeching progeny: a massive, atypical house, perhaps, but a typical Syrian home.

Upstairs he shows me an armoire dating back to the 19th century: a remarkable silver-plated piece whose value he estimates in the tens of thousands of dollars. Everything’s been handed down from father to son, father to son, from one generation to the next. Hassin pauses briefly to let the solemn waves of tradition wash over me. On my way out, as he shakes my hand and offers warm tidings for a safe trip, he suggests, “Perhaps if your father is in Damascus some day, he would like something nice for his house…”

That night I meet Sara, a CouchSurfer I first wrote to from Amman two months ago. I’ve managed to catch her just in time: in the morning she leaves for Abu Dhabi, to spend ten days with her family in the Emirates. She’s a stout, boisterous girl whose whole body convulses with laughter when she hears a good joke. She takes me to Beit Jabri, a raucous restaurant in the heart of the Old City, with a wide and airy dining room in the courtyard of an old restored home. There are lanterns dangling from the rafters and a fountain burbling in the middle of the room. The waiters circle in their crisp white shirts and cheerless vests, grimly efficient while a singer wails from the stage and packs of kids go scooting between the tables.

It’s a Thursday night - the start of the Muslim weekend - and the place is packed: suave guys in pin-striped suits and open-collared shirts, women in pencil-thin heels and tight jeans and shirts that practically squeeze their breasts into submission. It’s a far cry from the Damascus I’ve been expecting. In fact, it’s at precisely the moment that a voluptuous bottled blonde sashays toward the ladies’ room - her hips swaying like a sex-charged pendulum - that I realize me and Syria have a lot of catching up to do.

We dig into our mezzes while a pair of mirthless ladies nearby give us a once-over. They’re wearing colorful, bejeweled hijabs and make-up that might’ve been spackled on with a trowel, and there’s an air about them that suggests they’d find “rectal cancer” to be the punchline to a particularly uproarious joke. Still, they have a certain allure, not unlike a Ming vase on display in the echoing halls of the Smithsonian: you can marvel at all the work put into it, you can wonder at the cost, but you sure as hell wouldn’t want it lying around the living room.

Sara suspects they’re put off by the sight of a pious young Muslim girl - her hair primly tucked beneath her hijab - sitting across from a foreigner. I venture that they’re distracted by my extraordinary good looks, and we settle on the vast middle ground between the two. When the bill comes she all but lunges across the table to pry it from my hands, and I’m forced to admit that I’m really getting used to this Arab hospitality. On the way home I return the favor, offering to share the cab back to her place before high-tailing it back downtown. It’s after midnight - the witching hour for some of the sleazy cabbies in town - and she’s uncomfortable taking a taxi on her own. There are some frank, disapproving stares on the street as we climb into the back seat together, and for the 20-minute ride the driver eyes me warily in his rearview mirror, as if I’m the one you need to keep an eye on.

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