DAMASCUS
E mail from…….DAMASCUS “On Friday mornings when the souks of Damascus are closed and unusually quiet, I cycle around with a notepad, noting the names and features of the city’s labyrinthine markets. I’m putting together a souk map – to be called “Souk and ye shall fi nd” – which was inspired by a series [...]
E mail from…….DAMASCUS
“On Friday mornings when the souks of Damascus are closed and unusually quiet, I cycle around with a notepad, noting the
names and features of the city’s labyrinthine markets. I’m putting together a souk map – to be called “Souk and ye shall fi nd” – which was inspired by a series of challenges I was given by friends (both Syrian and expats) to whom I had boasted that there was simply nothing that
you couldn’t fi nd in the Souk Hamidiyeh, Damascus’ main bazaar. They set me a series of challenges, and I was required to fi nd: a bath mat, a feather boa, a tea “egg” (for putting tea leaves into and dropping into a mug), fresh cream and a boiler suit. Naturally, I found all of them.
The souk guide that I plan will have fold-out maps of the souks themselves plus an index of all the wonderful things to be found there. Already the list reads like poetry: Bedouin violins, bee pollen, blankets (synthetic), shark steaks, tulle, camoufl age “Tea for Hairy Women”, calf skins,
camel meat, Palestinian embroidery, ice cream scoops, barber shop accessories, swimwear (modest), underwear (sensible), sheep’s cheese, nylon turbans, feather boas, felt fezzes, hammocks, gold and hand-blown glass. What more could you want?
As I write, there are two local campaigns focusing on Damascus’ ancient Old City. The fi rst is to save the Malek Faisal Street which hugs the north wall of the Old City and which contains ancient souks, workshops over two centuries old and houses 5,000 families. The plan is to replace the neighbourhood with a two-lane highway and improve the traffi c inside the Old City. Activists have succeeded in delaying the destruction of the area and in June 2007, World Monuments Fund declared the Old City of Damascus a “World Monument in Danger”. But it remains to be seen what will happen. In the meantime, large chunks of the Old City’s main (Roman) artery, Straight Street, are being
cobbled in anticipation of January 2008, when Damascus will assume the mantle of Capital of Arabic Culture. Perhaps the two campaigns can cooperate and save the world’s oldest inhabited city for another 3,000 years.
Having lived in Syria for two years, I can safely speculate on the exotic mix that a typical fl ight to Damascus brings. One may be surrounded by a British nun fl ying home from her summer holidays, a nostalgic neurosurgeon from the huge Syrian diaspora in California, a cabinet maker from the Old City who has been fl own over to Europe to panel the library of a rich client, a young British Army cadet being fl own out to Damascus to play the bagpipes for the British Embassy’s annual Queen’s Birthday Party reception, or weather-beaten archaeologists whose speciality is a historical period no one has ever heard of.
You’ll always know exactly which season it is in Syria hanks to the fruit and vegetables for sale. In late August, an un-briefed tourist might be alarmed to see men in rubber gloves with large knives at each street corner. These are the prickly pear brigade, who peel the cactus fruit and drop it into large ice-fi lled vats ready for customers who traditionally drop by late at night, when the weather is cool, to sit at tables around the highly decorated stall.
In September come grapes, and fresh pistachios, sold in mounds in their soft, rubbery skins of the most delicate pink. November brings beetroot which is sold hot in large tubs by men pushing carts around the Old City. The autumn and winter are dominated by a symphony of citrus fruits including bitter oranges and lemons that smell of pepper (and which are sweet enough to eat without sugar), which ends with a triumphal fl ourish of blood oranges in January.
Not long after come fresh almonds, sold green and eaten with salt, and then it’s the fabled orange blossom season, when the Old City is heady with the scent of the short-lived white fl owers. Before you know it, you are back to summer when buckets of extraordinary apricots, cherries and peaches from the Ghouta, the oasis that still – just about – surrounds Damascus, crowd the roadsides and Damascene tables.”
Malika Browne has lived in Damascus for two years
