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Published: November 25th 2008
Be careful of the soma...
Whatever they say about Syria and its government, don’t be fooled. The Syrian people are some of the most generous and lively people you will meet anywhere, and the food, history, and landscapes are unparalleled. The country is one of the safest I have ever been to, in great part due to the police that roam every corner, and it was a joy to be there. The Syrian people are good people that share our hopes, dreams, and desires for a better future while paying special attention to enjoy the pleasures of life. After my trip last week to southern Syria and Damascus, you better believe that I will be heading back for at least one more round of travel in a land that has been part of multiple empires including: Egyptians, Hittites, Nabatean, Persians, Romans, Umayyads, Ottomans, French, and British. And as you hear endless times from people on the street, “Welcome to Syria!”
Off to Damascus!
The trip started on what could have been a risky note. Instead of heading to the border during daylight, I decided that I would work all day and then Diana and I would catch a long distance
taxi, “servicee,” to the border at night. Since the border is only about 1 hour from Amman, I figured that leaving at 7ish would get us to the border at around 8PM, and depending on the time spent at the border, we would arrive to Damascus around 10:30ish. As I suspected, there was literally only a handful of people at the crossing and the stamps, exit and entrance fees, and other bureaucratic tasks only took about 45 minutes. For a border that can take up to 5 hours to cross, this is good time. The servicee driver knew exactly what he was doing and did a fine job of leading us to all the right windows to get the stamps in the correct order. After a surprise stop in the middle of a dark highway somewhere in southern Syrian to change drivers with another man who was supposedly the brother of the original driver, we arrived in the south of Damascus without any problems.
The minute we jumped out of the servicee, however we were surrounded by pushy Syrian taxi drivers offering us a ride to our hotel. If there is one problem with Syria, it is the taxi
drivers who lie and cheat there way to an extra buck or two. It’s not the money that is at issue, it’s the lack of scruples. Having spoken with a friend who lived in Damascus all last year, I had a fairly good idea of the local taxi rates, so when I was told that it would cost me 500 Lira (10 USD) to take me to my hotel near the center of the city, I knew I was in for a long argument. The real price was most likely somewhere around 75 Lira ($1.50) and although the driver was nice enough during the ride, when it came time to pay he turned into a mean SOB. Not to mention the fact that he dropped us off about 1 kilometer from our hotel. Lucky for us, we found another taxi driver who was honest and knew just where the hotel was located.
After ditching our bags in the room, we decided that we would head out for a glimpse of the famous Damascan Souq. Having been thoroughly disappointed with the level of Arabian culture in Dubai earlier this summer, I remember having asked someone there where the biggest souq
in the world was. They answered with a smile, “Damascus.” So, as I walked past the illuminated statue of Saladin, the feared yet just Muslim commander from the crusades, and the Citadel, which marks the entrance of the Western most end of the souq, you can image that my heart was racing to see what was inside. What I found not only didn’t disappoint me, but was more than I could have ever imagined.
A Night in the Old City
Remember all those empires that I mentioned a few paragraphs ago, well imagine walking into a place where around almost every corner you can see some remnant from one of them, if not remnants from 3 or 4 of them at a time. Just take the site of the Umayyad Mosque, which is the centerpiece of the entire Old City, some 1.5 square km. The mosque was the first great mosque ever built, from around 700AD, and is the third holiest mosque in Islam, behind the mosques in Medina and Mecca. It was constructed on a worship site that dates back to 3000BC and which still has ruins from the Roman temple to the God Jupiter and the Basilica
to John the Baptist that replaced the Roman temple. Even today you can find a huge shrine in the center of the mosque’s prayer floor that is said to contain the head of John the Baptist, and I forgot to mention that it is also the location of the Shrine of Hussein, the grandson of Muhammad and the founder of Shi’a Islam. Can Shi’a and Sunni Islam co-exist side-by-side? Well, they do in Damascus all in the same holy site. And the mosque is only the most obvious example of what can be seen throughout the souq, Damascus, and Syria.
In fact, after thinking back to my experience in Damascus I am reminded of a song by Jarabe de Palo which says,”…la pureza esta en la mescla, en la mezcla de lo puro que antes que puro fue mescla.” If there ever was a place that exemplifies how purity is only a result of mixing cultures, religions, histories, and ethnicities, it is Damascus. No matter how much we believe in the purity of our (fill in the blank), at the end of the day we should be proud to recognize that almost nothing is “pure” but instead a synthesis
that created what we hold in such high esteem today.
The souq is an example of this synthesis. It is full of ruins that jump out at you from around every corner and when you decide to take a stroll around it at 11PM, you get to enjoy the scenery with almost no one around to block your view. After about an hour of meandering around the small corridors and darting down shadow-filled alleys, we found our way into a café for few cups of tea and I filled my stomach with some fatoush and hummus. To Diana’s surprise, it was the first time that she entered a café and was the only women in the entire establishment, but the men welcomed her with indifference and the waiters served us with a smile that lacked any sign of hesitation.
Day 1: The Old City
On our first day in Damascus, we decided that we would walk in the western most entrance to the souq and then find our way around the entire walled city in more or less a clockwise fashion. This meant walking down the most well known area of the old city souqs, Souq al-Hamidiyya. Al-Hamidiyya
is approximately 250 meter long wide corridor permanently covered with an arched metal roof that was installed in the early 1900’s. On either side there are vendors selling every thing from traditional clothing and sports jerseys to board games and Kor’ans. While people had no problem gawking at a guy with blondish hair, they were never pushy or rude in trying to lure us into their stores. I believe this is in large part due to the fact that the old city in Damascus is not just a tourist village, but is actually a bustling part of the city where you can find all types of people.
At the end of this souq, there stood the Umayyad Mosque. Aside from the history of the mosque that I already described, the mosque itself is massive structure with a beautiful granite courtyard the size of a soccer field that cools your feet as you walk along it in your socks. (As a sign of respect, you are asked to leave your shoes at the entrance.) The courtyard is surrounded by a huge wall that is covered in beautiful mosques dating back to the time of the Roman temple. From the center
of the courtyard where the ablution fountain is located and men continuously wash before prayer, you can see the covered prayer area of the mosque and the three strikingly different style minarets, one on each of the mosque’s three corners. The fourth corner remains minaretless. Inside the prayer area, the ceiling is arched with support beams reaching from one side to the other giving you the feeling of being under the haul of a boat. And literally everywhere you walk inside the prayer area there are people praying or walking towards one of the many Shrines to cling to the gold colored bars, which surround them. In fact, I was struck during my tour by the number of Muslims that I saw paying, crying, and clinging to shrines, tombs, and other sacred representations throughout Damascus. For a religion concerned with minimizing the potential distractions to man’s worship of God, including pictorial representations of the Muhammad and his close family, I was surprised to see Muslims, just as the followers of almost any religion, longing for a physical representation of and connection to their beliefs.
Walking out of the Umayyad Mosque, I thought that there was little more that would
impress me, but it didn’t take long until we stumbled onto the Shi’a Sayyida Ruqayya Mosque. This mosque built in the 1980’s and constructed around the mausoleum of the daughter of the Martyr Hussein of Kerbala, a Shi’a saint, is rather modest in the exterior, but filled with colored glass mosaics that blind you with delight in the interior. Although probably a 30th the size of the Umayyad mosque, the beautiful Iranian influenced glass mosaics dominated by the color blue are a striking and impressive departure from the shades of white, brown, green, and gold that dominate the Umayyad Mosque. While gazing at the mosaics, you must watch your step not to stumble upon people prostrating in prayer. While in the courtyard outside, chanters retell the story of Hussein’s tragic and their Islamic denomination’s struggle for survival to the wails and cries of the mourning pilgrims.
Video of the pilgrims mourning inside the Sayyida Ruqayya Mosque courtyard: From the Sayyida Mosque we walked along the exterior of the old city in order to get a glimpse at the exterior wall that has stood for centuries and then re-entered the old city to pass through the Christian
and Jewish quarters. Perhaps the most amazing of all, aside from the history that greets you at every corner, is the old city’s vibrancy. Everywhere you look there are people of all ages and all classes. Unlike of old cities and souqs I am accustomed to with lower class people and tourists, this old city was as much alive with cafes, saloons, stores, and religious centers as if has probably even been and there is no sign of it slowing down. Having said this, there is no denying that there is an enormous amount of maintenance that could be done to the endless number of buildings that lean over the street as if begging to find a century’s overdue rest on the ground below.
To be continued…
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Erika D.
non-member comment
The best writing
...I've read all day: "buildings that lean over the street as if begging to find a century’s overdue rest on the ground below." What a great image. Thank you for having the guts to be poetic. As for your ruminations on the worshipers at the shrines, I am so glad that you have the discernment to see the beauty and commonality of all human beings in their yearning to connect with God. This is something I have pondered on a lot. We are so often put off or estranged by how other people worship or express their faith, but if we can get past the initial foreignness of it, we will surely recognize in those "others" some of the deepest feelings of our own souls. As always, thank you for your thoughtful posts.