October 6th

The Syrian attitude toward work and human companionship is the largest single difference between American culture and theirs.  We moved into an apartment in the old city about a week ago, and found that one of the doors and its lock was broken.  Yesterday, the locksmith came over and sort of fixed the lock to the point where it would probably work for the next few months.  He then recommended a door fixer who could finish the job. 

The doorman / door repairman came over this afternoon at two, on his bike.  He's about 70 years old, and speaks Arabic drunkenly through his toothless gums.  I could barely understand him, but it took about an hour for him to figure out that I was American (not because my Arabic is that good, but because I didn't talk very much).  He spent about 20 minutes in total fixing the door with a plane and a few nails, and about two hours on our balcony, drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, and shooting the shit with us.  I asked my roommate if that was normal and his response was, "of course -- should we have invited him for food as well?" 

T-shirts in Damascus

Recently seen t-shirts around town:

"Comma Sutra," with illustrations of copulating punctuation.

"Sweat is so glam," (sweatshirt) worn by university professor.

"I'd bang that" with illustration of drums.

Deir Mar Musa: September 19-21, 2009

To escape the 'Eid (end of Ramadan) crowds in Damascus, I traveled a
few hours outside the city to the Deir Mar Musa monastery. It's
remote enough that you can see the ground through the piles of trash
on the side of the highway as you approach, meaning that it gets less
traffic than the towns outside Damascus. That, and you have to climb
halfway up a mountain to get there.

The monastery itself dates back to the 6th Century, but the current
proprietor, Abu Paulo, restored it and built it up a lot in the '90s.
The monks aren't particularly fat or tonsured and don't spend there
days drinking beer, but apart from that they fit the image: they pray
a lot, sleep in stone-walled cells, and wear tunics around. The
services including Sunday Mass were in Arabic (In nomine Rubb wa Ibn
wa Ruh al-Qudis).

The hills around the monastery are craggy and very dry, and I think I
found a fossil on top of one of them (see photo, above).

Sept. 17: Where I live

If you were curious about my exotic neighborhood, prepare to be impressed:

September 15th. Found a teacher. Still don't speak Arabic.

Word had it that there was a tailor in the Old City of Damascus who played the 'oud and occasionally gave lessons, so I followed the lead and found him yesterday.  A bartender (Abu George) knew him and gave me directions.  The tailor/'oud teacher gave me the first lesson today.  He doesn't speak English, but he taught me how to play a scale effectively by slapping my hand when I played the wrong note.  I won't be giving up my day job to become a professional musician, but at least I'll know the names of the fingers in Arabic. 

Link to a picture of an 'oud that looks something like mine:
http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/oud13.jpg

September 10th

-I've been in class a week.  Not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but the air conditioner in the classroom emits humid, cold air that smells like swamp-cheese.

-The ice cream here is great, but best enjoyed at night to avoid getting an ice cream headache from trying to eat it before it all melts in your hands/on your shirt.

-The best way of getting around Damascus is on public taxi minivans, called the 'services' or 'microbuses.'  These vary in quality from rustbucket Chinese taxi rejects from the 70's (if you know anything about the Chinese car industry, you understand why the "Chang-he Express" is anything but express) to brand new Korean minivans, glammed up with religios icons (swords of Zulfiqar, a suura or two, or more rarely a Virgin Mary), rugs and neon lights.  Variance aside, these minivans have several features in common:  Bare flourescent bulbs, one sliding door on the side, one to many benches, including one that faces backwards, and the Shotgun Pew.  Foreigners and women should not sit in the Shotgun Pew.  I took the service in the wrong direction on Tuesday and wound up alone with the driver five miles across town in bad traffic, roasting in the heat.  It is good form to sit in the frontseat (the pew) if it's just you and the driver, so I hopped up front.  He drove all the way back to my neighborhood at an average of about 7 miles an hour, stopping every few blocks to pick up new passengers until the van was overloaded.  By the time we were halfway there, I was in good company with two other passengers in the front-bench, along with the driver.  I learned some Arabic on the way, and showered with extra soap when I got back.  Lesson learned.

-There are five different types of backgammon played in Damascus.  The most popular one is called "al-maghrebiye," which women don't play.  They have a different kind of backgammon just for women, which for a man to play would be tantamount to crossdressing. 

September 2, 2009.

You never really get used to the heat, but you stop noticing how much you've sweat during the day until you peel off your drenched undershirt at the end of the day. 

I've moved into a new apartment with a couple of Syrian guys, on the edge of town.  One of them speaks English pretty well, and every time I say something in Arabic, he translates the sentence into English to make sure I know what I've just said. 

The placement test at the University was so hard that one girl left crying.

There's a beautiful logic to the traffic here, but people still get hit.  Often.  Saw one notable collision between a watermelon vendor on a bike and a motorcycle policeman.  All survived, save one watermelon. 

Overheard:  "I'm fasting for Ramadan and you aren't; two more people and we'd have a game of poker."  Sometimes understanding the words isn't enough.