Back to Damascus

October 23-24, 2009: It had taken so long to clear the border into Lebanon

Damscus' souk on a non-Friday

traveling by bus that I decided to take a shared (aka service) taxi back to Damascus. Think of it as a very small bus that leaves when full. It cost me only 10,000 Lebanese pounds (about $6.60) more than the bus and I figured the time saved would be more than worth it. Then we wound up stopping for ages for one of the other passengers to buy some elaborate sweets (which you would think he could have bought in Beirut) and to exchange money (ditto). Still faster over all, though.

Remember it had cost 150 SP for a taxi from the City Hotel to the bus station? Now I needed to go in the other direction, and the taxi driver at the bus station quoted 400 SP and claimed the trip was 20km! He found my refusal to go along with this scam quite amusing, and eventually agreed to take me for 200 SP. I maybe arrived too early at the hotel, as my room wasn’t as nice as the first, even after I had them move me to one with a street view. Still clean and comfortable, though. Turned out I was also a little early for lunch, as most everything was shut down for Friday prayers. The ATM machines seemed to be shut down too – it took three tries to locate one that would give me money.

Surprised to see these Crusader-looking guys near the Citadel

I got rather lost wandering around the not very prepossessing section of town north of the Old City, before eventually returning to the souk and visiting Damascus’ version of Azem Palace. Like the souq, it was larger and more elaborate than the one in Aleppo, and rather full of visitors – not all of them tourists. In contrast, the National Museum, which I visited the next morning, was packed with foreign tour groups. The museum occupied me for most of the morning – I was especially taken by the Mari statues (3rd century B.C.E.),with their black-rimmed eyes and feathery robes (tinyurl.com/yjbqf8m). Another surprise was a completely reassembled 2nd century C.E. synagogue, the oldest ever discovered, with walls completely covered with paintings.

Turkish madrassa, now a handicrafts market, near the National Museum

While the sights in Damascus impressed me, I hadn’t been doing as well with food. I had gone back to Al Kamal, but now that I wasn’t pandering to a weak stomach, I found the food not very good and the service poor. Lunch at Abu El Aziz, with a view of the dome at the Umayyad Mosque tasted better, but I was getting rather tired of kebabs.Then I stopped at Beit Jabri, overfull of both people and clouds of nargileh smoke. While the courtyard of the old building was indeed beautiful, and my pomegranate juice tasted good, the service was dreadful, and, given my dislike of being photographed, I could have done without the busy TV crew that showed up after I had been served.

So, for my second night, I took a taxi to Al Khawali, deep in the souk – it was fun to be driven through the market, not completely shut down even on a Saturday night. But again, the food disappointed, with indifferent vegetable soup, canned rather than fresh mushrooms and so-so green beans. Even worse, I found that I wasn’t very hungry – because for the second time in Syria, I got sick! I’m inclined to blame the pomegranate juice rather than lunch, but either way it seems Syria didn’t agree with me.