A Dickson made it to Damascus...and the authorities here have blocked Pop's Weekly Letter. So, our blog has joined the storied list that includes the New York Times, Twitter, and Facebook. Little did we know that we are being watched.
It's a little more than a week into my trip from Beirut to Istanbul by land, most of which will be spent in Syria.
I arrived in Damascus two days ago after a week in Lebanon where I saw a Middle Eastern country unlike anything any of the others I have seen: free press, women in mini-skirts, locals drinking beer, active criticism of the government, posters lauding Ahmadinijad everywhere, and a very cosmopolitan restaurant scene. Our trip took us to the swanky Beirut bars, through the beautiful Lebanese mountains (where they ski in the winter) and impressive Roman ruins, and finally to a museum dedicated to the resistance during the Lebanese Civil War at their former headquarters in the south. That alone was a story into itself. Everyone was wonderful to us, even though they knew I was American.
My travel companions left on Monday to go back to Denmark, and I continued on to Damascus. Without meaning to sound corny, I have wanted to visit this city since I was in high school, and I can't describe my excitement at finally being on a bus going there. When I lived in Amman, I was turned away at the Syrian embassy for a visa, and since then, it's been too expensive to come over here.
It's difficult to capture this city's history, but Mark Twain said when visiting Damascus (I took this from my guide book): "no recorded event has occurred in the world but Damascus was in existence to receive news of it. Go back as far as you will into the vague past, there was always Damascus...She has looked upon the dry bones of a thousand empires and will see the tombs of a thousand more before she dies." Muhammad is said to have looked upon Damascus from the mountains surrounding it and refused to enter, saying that he wanted to enter paradise only once.
Obviously, both are a tad dramatic, but the history is impressive. The main street in Damascus named in the Book of Revelations (the Straight Street), as Paul was converted on the road to Damascus. References to the city are mentioned in the Old Testament numerous times (Isiah is one example). The main mosque, the Umayyad mosque, was originally an ancient pagan temple dating back to 9th century BC, then a pagan Roman temple, turned into a cathedral by the Roman empire sometime in the 4th century, and then a mosque after the Muslim conquest in 636. The walls are covered by beautiful green mosaic depicting either paradise or some ancient city, no one knows for sure. It's the only example of living things being represented inside of a mosque. It also houses a shrine to John the Baptist (revered by Muslims as well as Christians) and Imam Hussein, the son of Ali and the first Shia muslim. I've read about and studied this mosque since college, and being under those mosaics, seeing the shrine to John the Baptist, the under-stated tomb of Saladin (who was based in Damascus), and watching the throngs of Iranian pilgrims to the Hussein mosque was quite the experience.
Everyone seems to have wanted to conquer Damascus. Innumerable ancient civilizations have crossed here, the Crusaders tried no less than four times, always getting to the city walls, but never taking the city. The Mongols raped the city twice, the last time under Tamerlane, who took all of the artisans back with him to Central Asia. As Sean will remember from our many, many times watching Lawrence of Arabia: the Arabs tried to start a united Arab state in Damascus after the first world war, only for internal divisions and colonial machinations to prevent it.
The rest of the city is a magnificent display of an old market town: hundreds and hundreds of stores along the pedestrian streets selling everything from touristy trinkets to vacuum cleaners to lingerie (it's quite funny seeing veiled women shop for lingerie without caring at all about the people around them).
Yesterday, I went to a Turkish bath. To give more another example of the history: it has been in existence since the 13th century. It took two hours, and involved a sauna, followed by a very steamy room where you wash, then a very strong man takes essentially steel wool and rubs off all of the dead skin, then more bathing and a massage. In the end, you are wrapped in towels and sit and drink tea. I've never felt more clean. Too bad, then, that I left to walk through the streets, some of which are covered in blood from the killing of sheep for their Eid celebration. This is the second biggest holiday in Islam, which celebrates the pilgrimage to Mecca.
If anyone wants to visit the Middle East, come here. The people are wonderful, the streets are clean (except during Eid), everything is cheap, the history is unimaginable, and the city is beautiful. And that's just Damascus.
I'm off to the north on Sunday, to stay in a monastery for the night. Then to a city called Hama, which I will use as a base to see a couple of Crusader castles and the mountains of Syria's west. One of the castles was a base for the infamous Hashasheen, from where we get the word "Assassin". These Shia fanatics perfected the suicide-mission in the 12th century and caused fear throughout the Muslim and Crusader middle east. From Hama, I'm heading north to a city called Aleppo, another ancient Middle Eastern city. After a couple of days there, I catch the train to Istanbul, where I'll spend three days before heading back to DC.
Hope to send another note in Aleppo or Istanbul. Pictures to come soon.
Love,
Joe
