Since this blog is blocked here I've moved it to:
Helenaanrather.wordpress.com
Please check it out! I've just posted photographs of the city as well as new stories.
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Monday, June 29, 2009
Damascus!
I haven’t had time to process much of this, other than comparing it favorably with Egypt, so instead I offer some glimpses of the first two days here in Damasucs.
Where better to start than the airport? Customs and passport control are in one large, unorganized hall, where many different colored forms are left scattered on crowded tables, the importance of which is left to the traveler to determine. Lots of people seemed stuck there, napping in the middle of everything. An elderly American man in a large Panama hat shouted at a family of ten who had just cut him in line at the passport counter, as I ran into (literally) two students from Oxford here to study Arabic, and who happen to be friends with a good friend of mine from Brown, now at Oxford, who just so happens to be coming for a visit in July. I guess it’s a very small world when you study Arabic.
The road into the city passes Yarmouk, the largest Palestinian refugee camp in Syria. Although you can’t see much because of the walls and chicken wire, the camp is a very sad sight, at least from outside. Cramped and cheap buildings look somewhere between falling apart and in the process of being built, which is fitting since both are the case. The Palestinian identity surrounding refugee camps is a complicated one, since camp inhabitants are generally resistant to letting the camps become home, yet leaving the camps is often perceived as an abandonment of the Palestinian cause, since the persistence of the camps serves as a reminder to the international community that Palestinians are still without a home. The story is more nuanced than this, of course, compounded by the difficulty in obtaining permission to leave and so forth, but since this was my first time seeing a camp I could only think of how sad it would be to have grown up in that limbo.
Especially since Damascus, only ten minutes away, is so beautiful! It’s nicely laid out in the valley against a large mountain, which the city partly climbs. It is a striking landmark every time the city gives you a glimpse of it. The city is clean, calm, and bright, and people obey traffic laws, more or less. People are incredibly friendly, (by which I mean, you ask for directions and someone walks you the twenty minutes to get there), but more discrete than in Egypt. Michaela and I, still a bit shell shocked from all the catcalls and chastisement we came up against in Alexandria, can’t get over the fact that bare arms and skirts don’t even excite a second glance. On the other hand, although it is so much easier being a woman here than in Egypt, it is a lot more intense being an American. I think a lot of this is preconception on my part, along with the many, many pictures of both Assads, Khameini, and Ahmedinejad, so it’ll be interesting to see how I feel about it further down the line. It’s certainly a conversation starter; I’ve had some great ones with stall keepers and taxi drivers about US-Syrian relations, mostly ending in politics-is-up-there-and-we’re-over-here shrugs and everyone looking forward to having an American ambassador.
Our apartment is in a well-off neighborhood at the foot of the mountain, facing a small river. Our place is great, with very large windows that catch the breeze and look out onto our pretty neighborhood mosque. Our refrigerator is in the foyer, our bathroom sink in the hallway, the shower is about the size of Michaela’s room (that is to say, strangely enormous), and larger than our kitchen, and our toilet is kind of in a broom closet, but we love it very much. Our neighbors are three sisters in their forties and fifties, the unmarried siblings of a very large family, and over the course of coffee at their place yesterday I kind of fell in love with them. They helped us translate our Egyptian into Syrian (both Michaela and I are finding that a lot easier than we expected, alhamdulillah), and promised to teach me how to make Syrian rice. As we left, one of them handed us a bowl of candies, from which of course we were obliged to take, and then another thrust a second bowl at us, saying, “here!” She tricked us into putting our hands into a bowl of wet gooey eyeball things—difficult to describe, but it was an hilarious practical joke. I’m looking forward to spending a lot of time with them.
The beauty of the old city is beyond my capacity to describe without weaving some Orientalist fantasy, but suffice it to say that the market stalls are a perfect combination of the humdrum residential necessities and fantastic, gorgeous scarves and trinkets. It’s full of tourists and students of Arabic, though (I ran into another acquaintance I didn’t even know was here), so I’m infinitely glad our friends Emme and Phil found us the apartment in our present location.
Michaela and I spent a lot of time at the Umayyad Mosque, which is one of the most beautiful and peaceful buildings I’ve come across. It’s been a site of worship for the past 9000 years (6000 BC or thereabouts), from deity to deity until it became a temple to Jupiter, then a church, and then a mosque, and now houses Saladin’s remains, which is just so cool. It’s second in religious importance only to Mecca and Medina, and as a piece of Islamic architecture comparable to the Dome of the Rock or the Haghia Sophia. The white marble courtyard gleams like a reflection pool with people walking across it; in our case it was mainly tons of children tearing across it with hoots and shrieks, giving in to what I think everyone felt in the presence of such a large and beautiful expanse. For all its importance, the mosque was just like so many others, filled with people hanging out in quiet corners, families squabbling, and children’s games, very different in tone from the awe-inspiring heights of quiet big cathedrals.
There is, of course, so much more, but to sum it up: two days in, I don’t really see ever wanting to leave (Parents, don’t freak out).
Where better to start than the airport? Customs and passport control are in one large, unorganized hall, where many different colored forms are left scattered on crowded tables, the importance of which is left to the traveler to determine. Lots of people seemed stuck there, napping in the middle of everything. An elderly American man in a large Panama hat shouted at a family of ten who had just cut him in line at the passport counter, as I ran into (literally) two students from Oxford here to study Arabic, and who happen to be friends with a good friend of mine from Brown, now at Oxford, who just so happens to be coming for a visit in July. I guess it’s a very small world when you study Arabic.
The road into the city passes Yarmouk, the largest Palestinian refugee camp in Syria. Although you can’t see much because of the walls and chicken wire, the camp is a very sad sight, at least from outside. Cramped and cheap buildings look somewhere between falling apart and in the process of being built, which is fitting since both are the case. The Palestinian identity surrounding refugee camps is a complicated one, since camp inhabitants are generally resistant to letting the camps become home, yet leaving the camps is often perceived as an abandonment of the Palestinian cause, since the persistence of the camps serves as a reminder to the international community that Palestinians are still without a home. The story is more nuanced than this, of course, compounded by the difficulty in obtaining permission to leave and so forth, but since this was my first time seeing a camp I could only think of how sad it would be to have grown up in that limbo.
Especially since Damascus, only ten minutes away, is so beautiful! It’s nicely laid out in the valley against a large mountain, which the city partly climbs. It is a striking landmark every time the city gives you a glimpse of it. The city is clean, calm, and bright, and people obey traffic laws, more or less. People are incredibly friendly, (by which I mean, you ask for directions and someone walks you the twenty minutes to get there), but more discrete than in Egypt. Michaela and I, still a bit shell shocked from all the catcalls and chastisement we came up against in Alexandria, can’t get over the fact that bare arms and skirts don’t even excite a second glance. On the other hand, although it is so much easier being a woman here than in Egypt, it is a lot more intense being an American. I think a lot of this is preconception on my part, along with the many, many pictures of both Assads, Khameini, and Ahmedinejad, so it’ll be interesting to see how I feel about it further down the line. It’s certainly a conversation starter; I’ve had some great ones with stall keepers and taxi drivers about US-Syrian relations, mostly ending in politics-is-up-there-and-we’re-over-here shrugs and everyone looking forward to having an American ambassador.
Our apartment is in a well-off neighborhood at the foot of the mountain, facing a small river. Our place is great, with very large windows that catch the breeze and look out onto our pretty neighborhood mosque. Our refrigerator is in the foyer, our bathroom sink in the hallway, the shower is about the size of Michaela’s room (that is to say, strangely enormous), and larger than our kitchen, and our toilet is kind of in a broom closet, but we love it very much. Our neighbors are three sisters in their forties and fifties, the unmarried siblings of a very large family, and over the course of coffee at their place yesterday I kind of fell in love with them. They helped us translate our Egyptian into Syrian (both Michaela and I are finding that a lot easier than we expected, alhamdulillah), and promised to teach me how to make Syrian rice. As we left, one of them handed us a bowl of candies, from which of course we were obliged to take, and then another thrust a second bowl at us, saying, “here!” She tricked us into putting our hands into a bowl of wet gooey eyeball things—difficult to describe, but it was an hilarious practical joke. I’m looking forward to spending a lot of time with them.
The beauty of the old city is beyond my capacity to describe without weaving some Orientalist fantasy, but suffice it to say that the market stalls are a perfect combination of the humdrum residential necessities and fantastic, gorgeous scarves and trinkets. It’s full of tourists and students of Arabic, though (I ran into another acquaintance I didn’t even know was here), so I’m infinitely glad our friends Emme and Phil found us the apartment in our present location.
Michaela and I spent a lot of time at the Umayyad Mosque, which is one of the most beautiful and peaceful buildings I’ve come across. It’s been a site of worship for the past 9000 years (6000 BC or thereabouts), from deity to deity until it became a temple to Jupiter, then a church, and then a mosque, and now houses Saladin’s remains, which is just so cool. It’s second in religious importance only to Mecca and Medina, and as a piece of Islamic architecture comparable to the Dome of the Rock or the Haghia Sophia. The white marble courtyard gleams like a reflection pool with people walking across it; in our case it was mainly tons of children tearing across it with hoots and shrieks, giving in to what I think everyone felt in the presence of such a large and beautiful expanse. For all its importance, the mosque was just like so many others, filled with people hanging out in quiet corners, families squabbling, and children’s games, very different in tone from the awe-inspiring heights of quiet big cathedrals.
There is, of course, so much more, but to sum it up: two days in, I don’t really see ever wanting to leave (Parents, don’t freak out).
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