Day 9

This day was spent more or less relaxing and finishing up my shopping in the two souqs. One of the most memorable experiences we had the entire time occurred then. Dania had shown me two cigarette lighters that her Tasmanian friend had given her. They look like regular ones; however, they also function as “flashlights,” in that if you turn on the other end and point the lighter toward a flat surface in a darkened room, you see a projected photo, on one, of Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah in Lebanon, and, on the other, a photo of the chinless wonder, Bashar al Assad, fearless leader of Syria! When she showed me these lighters, I died laughing and knew that there were some people at home who would howl too! So, one of our goals in Souq Al Hamidiya was to find those suckers.

We must have gone from stall to stall with Dania using every word she could come up with to explain exactly what we were looking for. I think most of the young guys working at each wondered what the hell two Americans wanted with these “lighters.” Fortunately after about the fifth referral, we found our man and bought enough for all who’d appreciate them at home.

The souqs of Syria are pretty amazing just to wander through. They are organized by types of things sold – more or less; and I cannot for the life of me figure out how anyone would remember how to return to one particular stall, given the fact that the entire area is so cavernous. It runs 500 meters from east to west, starts near the city’s citadel



(a far cry from the really impressive one in Aleppo), and ends at the Roman archway just before the Umayyad mosque. Most of the souq is arched with iron ribs covered with corrugated metal. In places you can actually see the hundreds of bullet holes that were shot there during the turmoil with the French in the 1920s . It was apparently built on the site of an ancient Roman fortress, some of which you can see, during the Ottoman empire in the 18th century.
Dania’s recently met a British woman who claims to be mapping the souq . I like what she has to say about the entire area. It is pretty magical in its variety, sometimes its exoticness and other times its mundaneness – if those last two words are really words!

So, we were pretty much finished with shopping and had enough time to relax a bit before our dinner date with some of Julian’s roommates, Bridgette and Haidar, at the Journalist Club. It was pretty crowded this time when we arrived. But, of course, it was dinner time and not well after hours as before! I happened to notice, as we sat down, a group of four men right next to us; and the only reason I noticed them was that they had a full bottle of Johnny Walker Red and a full bottle of “red wine sweet” at their table. But, we got busy with our dinner and chats. At some point while we were just finishing up eating, one of the men rose from his table and started walking toward our table. All of a sudden, he fell right on top of Dania moaning something that sort of sounded like “Allah, allah.” Well, you can imagine my instinct…..I immediately hopped up, moved toward her to try to pull her (and her purse) out of under the tub-of-lard who was still moaning. My thought at the time was that the guy was having a heart attack! The waiters and bartender ran over and took him away so fast that things were “back to normal” before we really knew what had happened! Within a few more minutes, our waiter came back with profuse apologies and our bill that had been slashed in half! By that point, I had had the time to look over at the men’s table to see that all but about 2 shots of the scotch was gone and all the wine had disappeared. The guy was just drunk as a skunk!
It was funny when we returned the next day, after Dania realized that one of her earrings was missing. The nice men were still so apologetic and embarrassed over what had happened. I found the entire episode VERY funny, because Ousama had quite adamantly claimed that Dania would NEVER run into drinking problems in Syria!!!! I should have taken a photo of the club for posterity. Maybe, Dania, if you ever read this, you will for me!!!??