Syria - 24 hours in

Today has been a full Damascene day in Syrian. It is our first. I have just sat with an old man, who was calling for his son repeatedly from the courtyard. His calls had become increasingly incessant and twice Yvette and I had witnessed the hotel staff try to quiet him – once harshly – as his voice escalated in stridency. I came downstairs and sat with him and eventually went over to hold his hand and murmur to him in English interspersed with a few Arabic words. He seemed calmer, but when one of the hotel guys came back over he whacked his cane at him. He was working to get out of his chair and motioned for me to help, so I walked with him across the courtyard to the office where he proceeded to whack his cane down on the desk… Fortunately he sat down and I took his cane away and he touched his nose to my nose – a familiar, intimate greeting that I witnessed a number of times between men - first in the Doha airport. He began to weep and held my hand over his heart, and we gave him a tissue and I then discovered he could speak some English. His son came shortly afterward and the three of us sat for another 5 minutes until I took my leave. He reminded me so of my grandmother who would become easily emotional without all her mental facilities or reasoning abilities to be able to have rational conversations with – that one needed to work to connect on an emotional plane. At 10 years old, emotional planes weren’t (and still aren’t) my strong point, but this evening was poignant for the experience and the memories it conjured.

The evening sky has come now and I have returned to the courtyard to type. Four men – including the old man’s two sons sit conversing over tea and a water pipe – occasionally bringing in a 5th person to their circle with a cell phone conversation. Several foreign guests are also having conversations in French and perhaps English – muted to me by the babbling of the fountain courtyard.

Syrian hospitality has been constant and frequent and deep. People have offered their language skills, their homes, their shops, their food, and their hand in friendship to us. We have met people from Iran, Iraq, UK, France, Lebanon and people from across Syrian towns – Damascus, Palmyra, Bosra, Allepo, and Hama. We have been invited to tea and coffee. We have been urged to visit, to stay longer, and to study the language. We have been warmly welcomed in the mosques and told the stories of Hussein and Hassan – grandsons of the prophet. We visited one of the most sacred sites of Islam today – the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus. It is a place with a very long history – this site was once a temple to Zeus, it was used by the Romans, converted to a church by early Christians, became a shared space with Islam and Christianity later in history, and now is a mosque. It contains the tomb of Salhadin – the famous adversary of the crusaders – who is remembered for the mercy he showed people after his victory. The mosque is particularly dear to Shiite Muslims from Iran as Hussein’s tomb is here and we witnessed much weeping and singing and rhythmic chest thumping and kissing of the stones and the pillars at the site of his tomb. One of the Cantors/tour guides/Imam had a beautiful voice and sang the stories for at least 30 minutes to a group before they entered the tomb area. All of the women in this group were shrouded in black but with expressive faces that have seen much history – often the short stick of it has been theirs I fear.

We have enjoyed seeing the street hawkers – especially the country-fair like showman: The Turkish tea-seller, with his ornate metal backpack contraption, pouring out water into his cup from 2’ up and then tossing the water into the air like a water fountain, tossing and spinning the glass before catching it and setting it back down; The Spiro-graph man with his paper filled with arrays of tri-color 2” circles whipping out more as we watch; The vegetable super-slicer hawkers creating art from cucumbers, carrots, and potatoes; The whistling-balloon helicopters being shot up into the atrium before drifting back down to the pedestrian zone once the air is exhausted; The dancing dolls spinning in the lane; The ladies lining the cobbles by the mosque with piles of shelled walnuts. My eyes are full from the feast.

We spent most of our day in the Old City and Souk of Damascus. We have decided on Allepo (known as Haleb in Syria) as a base for our next two months. Yvette is amazing me with her Arabic linguistic skills. She is navigating beautifully the language and making friends left and right. I feel blessed to have some greetings and niceties at my disposal from marrying into Yvette’s family and the lingua franca they use. Merhaba, Enshallah, Hum-del-Allah, Salaam Aleukum, Mas Salaam, Shukarin, Kefiya – they are my starting point for interactions while Yvette chats up the locals I say “Hello. My name is Neil. What is your name? I am American. Nice to meet you. Goodbye. ” Pretty heady stuff I know, but it is a start, and today I tackled the number system and a few more phrases. I can add the Arabic Rosetta Stone (100 Syrian Pounds) to my computer… I wonder if that is a legal copy at the price of $2.20? Anyways we are committing to tackling this language more diligently than we did Lao, so hopefully the brain synapses will resonate well and be faithful to remember more than they forget.

Blessings all. From the Land of Paul, from the land of Hussein, from the “Axis of Evil”, from the ancient mud-wattled homes – we bid you the local goodbye: “Mas Salaam” (Much Peace).