a few months on...

It has been a while…

For those in any doubt about the cyclical nature of things, I am writing this entry from Damascus’ Old City, the place I vowed never to return to three months ago. I had spent two months with a Syrian family in the Old City, an initially charming but eventually exasperating experience. Damn novelty - it always gets in the way of actually seeing what’s what. Two months of sleeping with my head by one of Damascus’ busiest streets, being woken every morning by screaming kids/adults and constantly feeling like I was in the way culminated in an intense distaste for the Old City and its horrendously tourist-congested streets. Away!

So for the past three months I had been living in a part of Damascus called ‘Mezze Jebel’ (Mezze mountain) in a nice apartment (with a balcony). Mezze Jebel was very much another side of Damascus. Whereas the Old City was all winding paths, old Arabic houses and the occasional epic Roman arch, Mezze Jebel is a sprawling neighbourhood on a mountain populated by ugly, not-quite-finished-looking apartment blocks. If it appears haphazard, that’s because most of the buildings were built without planning permission and, as such, were built bloody quickly. My neighbour, a divorced man who woke up 11 every day and seemed to be in pyjamas most of the day, was fond of pointing out how his wonderful view was spoilt by the hulk of an apartment block that had been hastily erected in front of our building.

I liked Mezze Jebel. There was absolutely nothing going on - brilliant. Primarily a residential area for lower middle-class Damascenes, it was fantastically unexceptional and, more to the point perhaps, I felt as anonymous as a paving stone. Also I was a short stroll away from ‘Falafel Ala Kaifek’, arguably Damascus’ most famous falafel shop (it’s been around for 40 years according to informed falafel-eaters), where a sandwich that could feed a small family is yours for the equivalent of roughly 50p. Many of my phone conversations with Syrian friends would end with “….do you think you could pick up a sandwich from Falafel Ala Kaifek on the way? Ok…[discussion in background]… actually can you get five?”.

So now I’ve moved back to the Old City; I had to move at short notice after my capricious landlord decided that the sinful arrangement of a man and woman who aren’t married living together was outside his comfort zone. It’s quite a familiar story - in the conservative parts of Damascus (i.e. most of it), neighbours and, more pertinently, landlords assume that their values, which appear incomprehensible to the majority of Westerners, are universal, in casually expecting them to be adhered to end up imposing them on their tenants. It’s strange to come face-to-face with that genre of wilfully idiotic ideas that springs from conservative social values and find yourself unable to laugh them off. Because you’re homeless.

Anyhooo, I am, as I say, back in the Old City and actually I’m rather loving it. I live in a very nice, clean house which manages, I’m not quite sure how, to be smack bang in the middle of the Old City and yet be wonderfully quiet. For example, I left the World Cup final halfway through because, well, I was tired (this was the highly unimpressive culmination of my attempt to generate enthusiasm/interest for the World Cup which, by the way, Syrians were CRAZY about) but, even though I fell asleep outside, I didn’t even know that the game had ended because I didn’t hear a peep - the horn-honking, screaming and general commotion couldn’t scale whatever it was that stood between my lovely new house and the masses. I’m very excited about all this because I am an extremely light sleeper and Syrians are, in general, pretty noisy. Actually I don’t know if I can even justify that national classification - I may just be talking about human beings (who I generally tend to find noisy).

I live with all Arabic speakers which is wondrous, perfect for my Arabic. There are lots of plants everywhere. Overall, it’s great. I feel like I am experiencing the Old City in the manner that I would have expected myself to be experiencing it first time round but for some reason I never seemed to get round to. This means going for pleasant aimless wanders through the web of tiny paths that offer the only way around the majority of the Old City, discovering what lies behind big, wooden doors that reveal nothing from the outside and focusing my mind on my continuing research into Damascene snacks. I seem to have, one way or another, replicated that delicate mix of anonymity and sociableness that I find so irresistible and feel both engaged in an exciting little adventure and able to socialise with interesting people when I fancy it.

As may be evident from the above, life in Damascus is (mercifully) approaching something of an equilibrium after a six month period where it was difficult to pick out a coherent theme or even an idea of what was being aimed for. I’ve embarked on an internship with the UN office here and am writing for a newspaper on the side, which, together with my Arabic lessons, is keeping me nicely busy. My Arabic improved like crazy for about two months but, perhaps because of the excessive ego-stroking that ensued, the pace of development seems to have slackened somewhat. Maybe I have reached the ‘intermediate plateau’ (I think that’s a proper name) but I have certainly noticed that improving has suddenly become harder work - the learning curve has flattened out and I have found myself able to construct sentences but with a vocabulary gap the size of the Pacific Ocean separating me from native speakers. The search is on for some kind of a solution. I suspect that patience may have something to do with it.

In any case, I now live in Damascus. In many ways, I feel like my time here has only just started.