How We Went to Town

My uncle has gone to the office, so I have a li'l bit o' time to type some more. I did not say anything about our yesterday's visit to the Old Damascus. Yep, Good Ole Damascus, uh-huh...

We went there by car, because it's a day's hike to get there by foot. Damascus is big! On the way, lo and behold! Real-to-Goddess mud houses, in various states of disrepair. We saw one with a wall washed cleanly off, its undergirders shamefully exposed and bare to the world.

We parked the car in Al-Kassaa, a Christian district where most shops still worked (remember the Friday?). Immediately before the Bab-touma city gates there was a big busy intersection and a bridge over the world-famous Barada river (at least, if you've read your Bible), an impressive rushing deluge of watery power, almost two meters wide! Okay, sarcasm off, the "river" fills not even a foot of the almost-two-man-high channel, but I gather that while it is arid here most of the time, floods are not unheard of, either.

Behind the city gates there lies a maze. There is no other word to describe it, excepting possibly warren. Or tangle. The main street is just a tad over a car wide, the side streets can be barely be squeezed through without scratches, and some streets are probably unpassable to any but the local miniature vans. The local miniature vans, having no better way to call them, are just like the normal vans, only a third smaller, and a third more dangerous. The best stunts (or the worst ones, depending on your perspective) are performed by local miniature vans. They're ubiquitous and deadly, just like the african red ant colonies, and if you see one coming, don't be near.

Just after the Bab-touma there are churches. A lot of them. Anglican, Greek Orthodox, Franciscan, half a dozen of them, all different, in one city block. And a little bit further, a gem: a quaint little store, with traditional goods: inlaid wooden boxes, old curved knives, tiny glass vials, beautiful woolen scarves... We were drooling at the window, when we turned around and spotted another one, just opposite. More woodwork, little boxes, carved frames... Then, look — the first one's neighbour is another shop just like that. Two doors down, one more. It does not take much imagination to guess what we found ten meters away down the street, does it? Suffice to say, novelty wore off as we were shown a chess set after an inlaid chess set, and a knife after a silver-plated knife. Some traders were friendly, some standoffish, while some somewhat bitter over our see-all-buy-naught policy. Our feet swollen by the procession of identical little quaint Damascene shops, we decided to return home.

On our way we almost bought a balloon for 25 pounds. Now if you're picturing the standard foot-size balloons we all know and ignore, these were not like those. The guy carried just one that was inflated, but it was not from laziness: the thing was bigger than him. he looked like a four-meter mushroom, with a brownish stalk and a bright red bulbous cap. Two soldiers seized him just as we were about to agree on a transaction, and we backed off, not knowing the nature of their dispute.

Okay, off to Bosra now (no, nothing rubbed off, it wasn't supposed to be an N). I'll post this later, no time to flirt with the 'Net now.