Damascus, fair Damascus

Made it to Syria at 2am, after a crazy taxi ride from Amman to Damascus under insane rain. I was freaking out, but we somehow made it in one piece.

Here is the thing: in Damascus, everyone tries to take advantage of you. I felt it was kinda appalling. I mean, I’m not a 50 years old white man riding a taxi to the Hilton (not that this guy deserves to be taken advantage of by the cabbie, but he is more likely to, no?). Same will the guy at the hostel. Same will the shopkeepers. Everyone. Wasn’t like that in Jordan. And in Egypt, we do it sometimes but at least we’ve got humour doing it ;)

Anyways. Damascus is beautiful! The old city is gorgeous. The alleys, the houses... it’s like a 200 years jump back in time. And the market is quite an experience! Souk-Al-Hamedeya is this huge covered market with almost everything you can imagine.

The food in Damascus is also quite fabulous. Besides Bekdash’s ice-cream, the pastries are great. The cooking, the meat, the skewers, the kebab, hmmmm!!

I prayed in the Omayyad Mosque. It’s very, very beautiful! And there is an interesting fact about it: there is no high barrier between men and women, just a rather porous line. I think that’s cool..

And, the highlight of the trip, was to go to a Hammam! Wow, that was... painful!

(that's me after all the scrubbing and the steam... too tired to smile... :)

And I also got to experience some sort of Shiite festival at the shrine of Roq(aya, the daughter of Ali and Fatima (the Prophet’s granddaughter). Interesting experience... I’ve been thinking, and discussing, lately about the whole Sunni/Shiite thing. I guess there is something quite appealing about have a ‘holy family’ like the Shiites do; and you care about them know their stories, etc... It kinda makes for a number of sacred people to adore, to care for. But here is the thing: it’s wrong. Not one of them is perfect. Even the Prophet was very keen on underlining that he is a man, not a half-god of some sort...

Oh well.

Anyways, I got tired of Damascus a little quickly, and I left after a day and a half.

On the way back to Beirut, well, visa issues on the border. One hour of waiting on the Syrian side of the border - they didn’t want to let me out! - then 4 hours on the Lebanese side - they didn’t want to let me in!! Then I eventually got issued some sort of weird and exceptional 5 days visa! It took having a US visa on my passport to convince them to let me in... Insanity. It’s almost a shame to be an Arab, around here... Just like in Jordan: we had an Aussie and two Israelis in the car, but the driver said that it could be a problem for me to get through the government checkpoints to the Dead Sea... What the fuck?? It’s irritating! I mean, if they want to create some sort of Arab Unity they might want to start by making people feel at home in whatever the ‘Arab Homeland’ should be... When should we start expecting an Arab Schengen agreement?