Day 2

With a good night's sleep, I was up and ready to go well before Dania's Arabic-style inner clock wanted to even think about.....So, I checked out what channels she has on the TV - far more than we have with our basic cable. She says she tends to watch the BBC, CNN International, Aljezeera English, and the Lebanese channel that has lots of close-to-current US stuff dubbed into Arabic. I then wandered into the kitchen and tried my hand at lighting the stove to heat some water for coffee. I scrounged around for breakfast and made do with a grapefruit, and coffee.

Finally, Sheharazad woke up and we decided to continue wandering around Damascus so that I could finally acclimate. We walked in her souq which is just up the hill a few blocks from her house and visited the local bread maker:


Then we wandered around the souq some more just sort of checking out each vendor: one place sold household goods; another detergents/soaps, etc; another sold children clothes; others specialized in specific kinds of vegetables or fruits. My favorite was the olive guy at the bend in the road:We then found the mosque for the neighborhood, entered once we'd covered our heads and taken our shoes off, and wandered around, only to realize we had no idea where to go and what was kosher - so to speak..... I think like Ousama who's always been reticent to enter churches, I've always been uncomfortable entering a mosque simply because I wasn't sure what was proper.

So with that excitement out of the way, we headed toward city, first of all, to have some breakfast at Dania's favorite western style coffee shop, Sale Sucre. Their latte would do Starbucks justice and put me in the right frame of mind to tackle BMI for that return ticket at their office farther into the city. Once accomplished, we went over to the Handicraft Souq close by that has been set up to surround a mosque.


There were some interesting shops that we explored, but I wasn't ready yet to purchase anything to bring home.

Then we headed out to explore the Hejaz Railway Station. It's too bad Ousama didn't have this option when he went to Mecca two years ago. It would have much easier for him to have traveled by rail from Damascus than take all those planes!

After exploring the building, it began to drizzle a bit and our stomachs began to rumble. So, we headed toward the Souq El-Hamidiyeh where we'd been the day before, found a restaurant, had some good lentil soup and something warm to drink, and realized as we left that it was getting late. That's the problem in being a tourist in the winter when the sun sets so early! Fortunately, we had just enough time to explore the Jewish quarter that's totally abandoned now except for a few industrious artists who've decided to make it the SoHo of Damascus.

We still had enough time to explore the Christian quarter and find the Church of St. Ananais, the man whom God called upon to find a man name Saul on the Street called Straight in Damascus. As you may remember, Ananais was successful, found the blind Saul, healed him, and helped him convert to Christianity. Paul then stayed with Ananais for a time until the Romans got wind of his being there. It was once again Ananais who helped Paul leave the city when he lowered Paul in a basket over the city wall so that he could flee. To reach the church we had to descend a flight or two of stairs to what apparently was the cellar of Ananais' house with areas that are claimed to be original Roman bricks! It all looked pretty authentic to me:

As we were walking in the Christian quarter, look what we saw that surprised me so much:


We were not able to enter the other church that led to where Ananias had helped Paul over the wall; however, Zuhair had actually driven us by that part of the exterior wall 10 years ago. So, we called it quits for the evening and headed to the local store to stock up on wine for a dinner party that Julian and his roommates were having that night. Dania had filled me in on the alcohol realities of Damascus: if you want something bottled and drinkable, you head to the Christian quarter. She had bought a bottle of red wine somewhere else, brought it home and sampled it (and had it around when I arrived). Let's just say that the literal translation on the label sums it up: RED WINE SWEET. Apparently, it's made in Syria. So, the key is to find Lebanese wines, which we did.

The dinner party was pretty amazing. Julian has, I think, 3 other roommates: Haidar, an Iraqi who lived in Iran for most of his childhood and fled from Iraq when we invaded; Bridgette who is an American freelance photojournalist who, at 26, has already been to some pretty far-out places; John, a US Iraqi vet who's in Damascus to learn Arabic, and a British guy whose name I forgot! There were so many other people there anyway that it's all a jumble. The wine went down well with the chicken dish that Julian and Haidar had worked on all afternoon. We all ended the evening by walking to the Journalist's Club that's about 2 blocks down the hill from Dania's apartment. I only mention this place now, because it has a key role in a funny future event......