Syrian Welcome
There was a small TV in the corner of the room. It was switched to a news channel but was being completely ignored by the family. It was showing the news, with footage of fatigue-clad American soldiers holding high-powered rifles as they kicked in doors and searched houses. Scared women, children and old men cowered in corners.
We had only been in Syria a few days, in Damascus, one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. It looked it. Strolling around the worn-down streets, we were astonished at the everyday richness and depth of the culture. It really was hard to absorb — a bread stall literally nailed to the side of a Roman or Grecian arch; the food, drink, noise of people enjoying life; the rush and seethe of the markets and eating houses and silversmiths and shoeshines and tailors and donkey-leaders in all directions. We felt like we had walked into a scene from the bible.
Impeccably dressed gentlemen with neat moustaches sipped dark coffees outside serving hatches in centuries-old walls as they exchanged greetings with other passers-by. Handsome young boys surrounded us as we walked, keen to use their school-learned English phrases. Little girls with dark eyes sucked on traditional sweets as they clung to their mothers’ hands. Groups of people, including us, wandered in and out of the Great Mosque, magnificent, utterly gorgeous and around a mere 16 centuries old.
Nearby was the Tomb of the Sultan Saladin, who we were informed successfully kicked the arses of the Crusaders back in 1187, and liberated Jerusalem for Islam. Everything we passed by or looked at had a history measured in centuries, not years, ground deep into the stones of the buildings — and reflected in the wide-open yet arresting gaze of the city’s inhabitants. But despite the overpowering antiquity, the noise, the press, the seething masses of (to us) foreign-looking people everywhere, we felt comfortable. Not just comfortable, but pleased to be there. Damascus was an amazing place, and we already loved it.
On the third evening, having realised it was as safe as Singapore to wander around at any time of day, we found ourselves in backstreets of old Damascus city near the Souq al-Hamidiyyeh, peeping into carpet shops, saying hello to cigarette sellers, trying on scarves and jackets and just gawking wide-eyed at everything.
When I say backstreets, that’s pretty far back in time as well as location. Just about wide enough for a donkey (cars? — no chance) they snaked this way and that without a thought for planning or organisation, massive walls overhanging them, turning many into almost-tunnels.
Mouldering balconies jutted over our heads, laden with ancient spiderwebs. Tiny half underground doors opened off either side of us, giving hints of mysterious cellars and caverns at our elbows. We were utterly absorbed, but forgot that in Damascus, night comes quickly.
Within half an hour, the light was gone, and the street lights in that part of the city — most looking like they were originally installed by the Romans — were as useful as a chocolate wristwatch. Relying on my well-honed sense of direction, we walked west, back towards the hotel. Dead end. OK, south then: small square full of squealing children fascinated by our navigational dilemma. We walked back the way we had come, or at least I thought we did; nothing looked familiar apart from the cobwebs. We were completely lost, in a maze of dim and ancient alleyways, in a city without signs, with no idea of the language and nobody to help guide us. We also stuck out like sore thumbs as complete strangers, and in those backstreets, nobody spoke English — absolutely nobody.
Then a door opened in one of those ancient walls, and a hijab-clad woman called to us in Arabic. We hadn’t a clue what she was saying, and when she repeated it we were equally in the dark. She motioned us to come in to her house. We looked at each other, at her, then took the only option. We stepped into a complete stranger’s house in the shady back alleys of what we had been advised was a potentially risky city in a country run by a cruel dictator, at a time when western media was warning that president Bashar al-Assad was due to implement yet another a crackdown on civil freedom.
Then we sank deep into the reality of a Damascus welcome. The woman and her husband told us, mainly though sign language and my fractured French, that it was the end of Ramadan, Eid Mubarak, and it was the custom to share their first food with everybody, even two lost tourists.
They invited complete strangers into their parlour, gave us sweet tea, honey cakes, and intimated that they liked football — Man United in particular. We laughed, took photos and thanked them with much bowing and smiling and left happily equipped with directions back to the hotel.
But Mallika had left her scarf behind.
We had only walked a short way up the street when the woman — we never learned her name — came running up with the scarf. She also managed to explain that she and her husband were about to go to her father-in-law’s place for more Eid Mubarak snacking and socialising, and would we like to come too?
We couldn’t say no, and after a short walk we arrived at yet another anonymous door in a blank stone wall. A knock opened it, and we walked with our new friends into a time capsule out of Lawrence of Arabia. Behind the door was a sizeable courtyard complete with sparkling fountain, lemon trees, lines of wooden-shuttered bedrooms on each wall of the upper story, and a set of lounges and a kitchen on the ground floor. All the rooms were full of extended family celebrating the end of the Ramadan fast. Small kids jumped and rolled balls, women carrying trays of fruit, pastries and tea walked between groups of lounging conversationalists on low divans while men sat on cushions, slapped each other on the back and laughed out loud as they shouted incomprehensible congratulations across the room. All the time, everybody accepted us as part of the party, not the blow-in foreign gatecrashers that we so obviously were.
They pressed us with welcome after welcome, more hot sweet tea and dates, nuts, oranges, cooked sugary delights and delicious raisins all heaped up on silver plates. Virtually nobody there spoke English but they all motioned again and again that we should eat, should enjoy the hospitality of the house and together with the family, help celebrate Eid Mubarak.
We were introduced to the heads of the family: a dignified ex-cavalry officer from the time of the French occupation, and his wife. The father showed me old photos of him as a dashing horseman complete with kepi and sabre, shemagh mhadab or chequered headscarf wrapped roguishly round his neck. I signalled how cool I thought it looked, and he looked at his wife, exchanged a couple of words with her then wrapped his scarf round my head, motioning it was a gift for me, for Eid, for a stranger in his ancient city. I was astonished, grateful, almost uncomfortable with his unexpected generosity, but he insisted.
I turned to signal my thanks to his wife, and caught sight of the TV, with its equally unasked-for and unexpected message to the Syrian people from my, western, society. I blinked with shame, but the family just ignored the brutality waged supposedly in the name of freedom, of democracy. It’s one of those moments in time we will never forget.
We have never been back to Damascus, but a part of our life is still there, surrounded by raisins, hot sweet tea and the untainted generosity and goodwill of that family. I hope they are still there; and that life has been kind to them.
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