In Damascus, Ancient Appeals

Damascus might not top everyone’s dream vacation wish list, but it had slowly crept to the top of mine. St. Paul was first to give me the itch to come here. Saul of Tarsus, as he was then known, hadn’t even reached the city walls when he was struck blind by a vision of Jesus, a conversion that changed the course of Christianity.

I didn’t count on anything so memorable, but then a Middle East correspondent I know wrote me a drooling letter about the markets of Damascus, and I had my own vision: exotic bazaars with fabulous carpets, Bedouin robes and antique silver, all at bargain basement prices. What pushed me over the edge was my kids’ baby sitter. Her father-in-law in Syria said this was the time to visit--before strongman Hafez Assad dies and, as Syria-watchers predict, the country reverts to tribal warfare. A month later she reported: “My father-in-law says to come soon, before there’s peace with Israel and the tourists start arriving.”

Damascus is not a pretty city. Outside the medieval walls of the Old City it sprawls like a messy modern metropolis, a mix of broad boulevards, desultory parks and scattered new construction. A great slab of mountain tops the north; to the south and east stretches a harsh and daunting desert. It’s only the Barada River, snaking down from the Anti-Lebanon mountain range, that prompted early settlement here.

And early it was: Damascus has been continuously inhabited since 4000 BC, and any conqueror worth his salt made it a target, from Nebuchadnezzar and Alexander the Great to Hadrian and Tamerlane. It was a center of early Christianity (John the Baptist’s head supposedly lies in a tomb here) and then, with the rise of Islam, home to one of the most sacred sites outside Mecca. Mongols, Mamelukes and Ottoman Turks set up camp here. So did the Germans during World War I, then the French. Syria became independent after World War II.

Happily for the visitor, Damascus is a great deal more navigable than its chaotic history suggests. Just about everything that’s interesting is in the Old City, a maze of twisting streets and alleys bound by massive walls from the 13th century. The markets are there. So are the Great Mosque and all the old churches and palaces.

The Old City was the first destination of our five-day visit last November. My wife, Kaarina, and I had been traveling the better part of a day and a half, because getting to Damascus from the U.S. is best done with a European connection.

There’s no better cure for jet lag than plunging into the frenzy of the Hamidiye Souk, the Old City’s main market. A cacophony engulfed us--merchants yelling, mothers herding children, the blare of Arab music. Swept up in the crowd, we brushed off the tenacious money changers and peddlers hawking socks, batteries and stuffed owls, and veered down one of the numerous side streets and then veered again.

Eventually the din receded, and an intoxicating calm descended on the commerce at hand. The heady aromas of the spice market seemed to waft from the Middle Ages. Vendors in stalls sold herbs, potions, sweets. Entire stores devoted to water pipes or decorated boxes.

Surprises popped up every few yards. Small archways opened onto sudden courtyards. Doors led to palaces. Attracted by a small crowd, we ducked into a courtyard where what looked like an Arab sitcom was being filmed. On cue, an old man on a stool repeatedly exploded in a torrent of abuse, to the great merriment of the crowd that had gathered.

We prowled the gold street. We ducked into cool caverns of rug emporiums. We stopped by stores with antiques and looked for the richly woven cloth for which Syria is renowned.

“Please, welcome,” was the universal greeting in English. “Just look. Come in and have tea.”

We put off serious shopping until later. It was difficult enough just sorting out Syrian currency. Faded and worn almost illegible, the bills, denominated in Syrian pounds, looked as if they were printed around the time of Saladin.

Of course nobody in Damascus actually wants Syrian money. The U.S. dollar is the preferred currency, but bring your own supply; there are no ATMs in Syria, traveler’s checks are difficult to cash, and only hotels and upscale restaurants accept credit cards. A sign at our hotel warned, “We only accept foreign currency.” Great, my wife and I thought: What were we going to do with the $300 we’d changed at the airport?

Clearly it wasn’t going for taxi fare. Our metered fare from the Sheraton hotel to the market was 325 pounds, which we estimated to be $4. Only later did we realize we’d missed a decimal point; the fare was 40 cents. No wonder the driver gave us such a big smile.

Or maybe he, like so many Damascenes we encountered, was just being friendly. The U.S. government’s condemnation of Assad as a supporter of terrorism, and U.S. support of Syria’s archenemy Israel, might suggest a cool reception for Americans. But Damascus turned out to be a very agreeable place to visit. It is also, thanks to Assad’s intelligence and police apparatus, exceptionally safe. There apparently are no pickpockets in the markets, where the worst crime would appear to be overcharging tourists. Even at night on lonely streets we felt safe, perhaps due to the omnipresence of Assad. Huge photos of the president-for-life are everywhere--on billboards, on every road in and out of town, in stores, in hotels and the souks, often accompanied by pictures of his two sons. (The elder son, the fast-living, charismatic military leader, died in a car crash in 1994; the second son, the soft-spoken ophthalmologist, is now the regime’s heir apparent.)

We even felt comfortable in a mosque, which is fortunate because Damascus has one of the world’s most treasured. Built in the 8th century, on the site of a Christian shrine and an earlier Roman temple, the Umayyad, or Great, Mosque, is, after Mecca, Medina and the Dome of the Rock, the holiest site in Islam. Non-Muslims, women as well as men, are permitted entry any day but Saturday. The only restriction is that Western women must be fully covered. Robes are rented near the visitors’ gate.

Suitably attired, Kaarina and I stepped into the outer courtyard, which is the size of several football fields. One of the intriguing structures in the vast open space is the mosque’s medieval treasury, a delicate octagonal structure that looks like a jewel box.

We proceeded through giant wood doors into the main prayer hall and immediately were transported into another world. Part library, part shrine, part indoor park, it was an oasis of calm. Men sprawled on rugs, dozing or chatting or reading. Groups of pilgrims gathered around the various shrines, kissing the relics and snapping souvenir photos.

To the southeast of the mosque is the Christian sector of the Old City. You know it’s the Christian sector because there are many more women strolling the streets. The women dress more openly, too, many in modern Western style, while elsewhere in the city they go about shrouded head to toe. That Muslims and Christians live in such proximity with no apparent friction is a striking feature of this city. But tolerance has its limits; almost all the Jews in Damascus have left.

Straight Street, the Roman Via Recta, remains the major thoroughfare through the Old City. We walked a good part of its length, past bustling souks and restored palaces, to the south end and the House of St. Ananias, where Paul’s sight was restored after his encounter with Jesus. Unlike the mosque, which attracts busloads of pilgrims, this ancient Christian site had only two other visitors, a German couple. Throughout our stay, in fact, we encountered almost no Americans.

To complete our tour of Paul’s brief if memorable sojourn, we went on to the Old City’s southern gate, Bab Kaysan, and the 20th century St. Paul’s Chapel. This is where disciples supposedly lowered Paul out a window in a basket to escape the Jews, who were not pleased to have the new religion preached in their synagogues.

The Christian sector also boasts some of the city’s best restaurants, and we returned that evening with the approximate address of one that had been recommended, the Ellisar, a grand old mansion turned into a trendy dining mecca. Finding it became an exercise in frustration followed by despair. Street signs in the Old City are scarce and not always in English.

Just when we had resigned ourselves to dinner at our hotel, we spotted a well-dressed couple ducking through an unmarked doorway down a dark lane. Following, we found ourselves in a spacious courtyard packed with dozens of white-clothed tables ringing a bubbling fountain. The crowd was young, lively and sophisticated, all apparently Syrian. Not a few were chatting on cell phones. Many more were puffing away on extravagantly decorated water pipes filled with scented tobaccos. And everyone was digging into platters of mezze that busy waiters delivered in a nonstop stream.

Mezze--it means “table”--is meant to be shared, a combination of appetizers like hummus, tabbouleh and stuffed grape leaves, various salads, tidbits of meat and sweets. Wary travelers may want to skip the salad offerings, as we did; outside the major hotels, the water in Damascus can be chancy. Mezze can be a course in itself or followed by a platter of broiled chicken or roast lamb served with heaps of French fries. Beer is the favored beverage. If you’re adventurous, you’ll wash down your dinner with arak, a sweet anise liqueur.

In our five days in Damascus we had several excellent meals, a few at budget cafes around Martyrs’ Square, a downtown commercial hub that caters to tourists. We ate our last Damascus dinner at Luigi’s, the pricey Italian dining room in our hotel. It turned out to be a strategic place to observe the more cosmopolitan echelons of Damascus society, an endless parade of women in clinging glittery dresses and men looking as if they’d stepped off yachts.

For all its ancient allure, Damascus can be sophisticated. There were glitzy shopping arcades (though a fashion-conscious teenager confided to us she much preferred a day trip to shop in Beirut) and the sense of a busy modern metropolis. The week we visited, in November, a film festival had drawn well-dressed crowds to the showings in the Cham Palace Hotel, one of a well-regarded Syrian chain that puts a premium on architecture and decoration. Except for the films--almost all in Arabic--it could have been an evening at any glamorous U.S. festival.

Our own hotel, the Sheraton, boasted a large swimming pool, which is why we picked it. Unfortunately we’d failed to consult the monthly temperatures; November in Damascus gets frigid at night, and the pool was unheated.

At the time of our stay the Sheraton was hosting a regional retreat for fieldworkers from the United Nations High Committee on Refugees. We were invited to their cocktail party one night. All around us luxury-deprived men and women wolfed down hors d’oeuvres and swapped grim tales of backwater postings.

Guiltily we slunk back to our amenity-crammed room and turned on CNN. That’s where we heard the first murmurings of American-brokered peace talks between Israel and Syria. In a land-for-peace swap, Syria hoped to regain the strategic Golan Heights, which Israel took in the 1967 war; for its part, Israel would be gaining security, particularly from Syrian-backed guerrillas who operate out of Lebanon.

On the last day of our visit, it was time for serious shopping. By then we had seen enough to know what we wanted, and we started at Dabdoub’s store outside the Azem Palace, an Old City landmark.

Dabdoub’s had been recommended by a friend in Chicago, and it was filled with enticing, and what turned out to be very expensive, antiques. A fabulous miniature triptych of Russian icons could have bankrolled one of our twins’ preschool; a silver-filigreed Syrian water pipe could have subsidized the other.

We chose three items--an old Arab painting, a silver plate with a fish design and an old pencil box. It took the better part of an hour and several feints of walking out before we reached a price that was less than half the original.

The bargaining continued at a large rug emporium, Bazar Nazir on Straight Street. We pleaded poverty. The proprietor smiled indulgently. Then, to prove the durability of vegetable dyes, he threw boiling tea water on an 80-year-old Caucasian rug whose lush autumn colors had caught our eye. We pretended to be unimpressed. We consulted our watches. We started for the street. The owner hauled us back, and we settled on two very nice rugs for a modest price. Like every other shopkeeper, he congratulated us on our bargain.

For variety, we interspersed our stay in Damascus with several day trips. Our most ambitious trek was to the fabulous city of Palmyra, about three hours’ drive into the desert. We’d checked the price of a car and driver at our hotel, then opted for one arranged by our baby sitter’s father-in-law.

Rising at dawn, we were soon speeding along an arrow of road that traversed a numbingly bleak landscape of sand and low hills broken only by the occasional black Bedouin tent or corral of camels. Occasionally a truck passed; more often we were the only car. Though we’d read our guidebooks, nothing prepared us for the astonishing ruins. Spread over an oasis of palms, its columns and temples looked like nothing from a distance. Up close they were the imposing evidence of the flourishing city lost to the Romans by the fabled queen Zenobia, reputed to have outshone Cleopatra in wile and beauty.

There is a Cham Palace hotel on the outskirts for visitors who want to stay over, but for us, four hours in Palmyra was sufficient.

Whatever time you spend, it’s impossible not to be overwhelmed by the place. The sheer magnitude of the more than 300 columns was awesome. The ruins include an immense temple, a marvelously preserved theater, baths, recently discovered tombs, even a fortified castle whose ramparts afford a stunning view of the entire oasis.

Closer to Damascus were other fascinating sights. One afternoon the father-in-law himself drove us south into a moonscape of volcanic black stone. Our destination was Bosra, home of the best-preserved Roman amphitheater in the Middle East. Most amazing, it is entirely encased in a Crusaders’ castle. Two ruins in one, and both in pristine condition.

The father-in-law, a courtly man who’d been a well-paid civil servant, was very knowledgeable about the ongoing excavations. Not surprisingly, he clammed up when we tried to talk about Assad, as did everyone when we dared broach the question of politics. But he grew animated when pointing out, not a dozen miles away, the blunt rise of the Golan Heights. They belong to Syria, he declaimed; anyone could see why Syria needed them back. Why, from there the Israelis could practically lob shells into Damascus!

We left it at that, and went back to talking about the volcanic rock.

On another afternoon we took an hour’s drive north to the strange village of Malula, virtually hidden in the stark foothills of the Anti-Lebanon range. A cluster of pastel houses clung precariously to the cliffs, and there was a spectacular walk through a cleft of rock. Most noteworthy, this is the last place where people speak Aramaic, the language of Jesus.

On our last night in Damascus we tuned in to CNN again and heard more encouraging news about the peace talks (though they since have stopped, with no date set to resume). As we drove to the airport under the watchful eye of Syria’s formidable ruler, we congratulated ourselves at having been ahead of the tourist curve.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

GUIDEBOOK

Doing Damascus

Getting there: From Los Angeles, Lufthansa and KLM offer connecting service--one change of planes--to Damascus. Round-trip fares start at $1,666 until March 26, rising to $1,872 in summer.

Americans must have a visa, which is easy to obtain through a visa service or the Syrian embassy (see below). One caveat: Syria will not admit anyone whose passport indicates a visit to Israel.

Where to stay: The Sheraton is one of Damascus’ few Western hotels; double rooms $205 to $275. Tel. 011-963-11- 222-9300, fax 011-963-11-224- 3607, Internet https://www.sheraton.com.

The Cham Palace close to the Old City is a high-end property in a Syrian chain; double rooms $220 to $280. Tel. 011-963-11-223-2300, fax 011-963-11-221-2398.

Where to eat: Our favorite Old City restaurant was Elissar, near Bab Touma (ask your hotel concierge to mark it on a map); dinner for two with appetizers, about $30. Less expensive but good: Sahoul, off Martyrs’ Square.

Shopping stops: For antiques, Dabdoub’s on Azem Palace Museum Square. For carpets, Bazar Nazir on Straight Street, just west of Bab Sharqi. For jewelry and brass, Tony Stephan at No. 156 in Hamidiye Souk.

For more information: Syrian Embassy, 2215 Wyoming Ave. N.W., Washington, DC 20008; telephone (202) 232-6313, fax (202) 265-4585. The government also maintains a useful Internet site: https://www.syriatourism.org.