Damascus was hot, dry, dusty and smoggy. Whenever I get back from Damascus, I've got a headache. Beirut and Damascus are worlds apart. Beirut is colorful, fresh, modern. Damascus is old, and grayish, poor. But some people love it there; oldest continuously inhabited city in the world. One of these people is Josh Landis. I had an interview with him about the future of Basjaar el-Assad ( http://faculty-staff.ou.edu/L/Joshua.M.Landis-1/syriablog/). Josh predicts Basjaar is going to ride the storm, and will make it at least until 2007. A friend of his, a Syrian poet and a very vocal critic of Basjaar, predicts that this guy is going down, and going down hard. He can't say why, not before June, when this much-discussed Baath Party Congress is taking place. He's got a very critical blog http://amarji.blogspot.com/), but it seems that since the Hariri murder in February, and the US condemnation, the government in Damascus has been very lenient towards opposing voices in the country. A really funny one, although you'd have to be very much aware of the local situation otherwise you don't understand half of what he is saying, is a blog by a guy named Karfan. He is absolutely brutal when it comes to the Assad clan, and leaders in Syria. He does not publish under his own name, and I wouldn't either if I were him. ( http://syriaexposed.blogspot.com/).Ammar doesn't worry about this, even though the Mougabarat (secret police) has pulled him in for interrogation. He said that he noticed that they only knew about the stuff that has been published in Arabic, and since his blog(s) are in English, he doesn't think anything will happen. I'll write the story today, it should be published in Trouw sometime this week.
Anyway, the work in Damascus was good. Syrians do not like chaos. That's why Landis thinks Basjaar is going to stay. Syrians are mortified that the same thing as in Iraq might happen to them. They could not stand that mess! If you want to cross busy streets, you can only do this at certain points, such as the corners. And in order to make sure you do not break that rule, they've placed chest high fences in those areas where they think people might cross anyways even though it's not at the corner of the street. So you have to walk all the way to the end of the street, cross, and walk back on the other side if you want to visit a shop you see on the other side. That?s Syria for you.
The place is also incredibly cheap. A ride through town in a cab will cost you $2 at the most (but you have to take the continuously begging cab driver for granted). If you take a mini-van, it?ll cost only 25 Syrian liras, which is like 50 cents or even less. Sandwiches go for 50 cents, clothes cost (If you do not mind wearing fashion from the 80?s) next to nothing. $2 a T-shirt and such.
The ride from Beirut to Damascus is a mere $10 with the shared cab system. Not bad, although you usually get to share your cab with five chain smokers (+ driver. Yes, 6 people do fit in a family car for a 3 hour drive). On the way back I got stuck with a fervent Hezbollah fan. After half an hour I couldn't stand his fucked-up peasant rhetoric anymore, and we insulted each other politely the rest of the way. As a real Hezbollah, you are not allowed to listen to singing, be it male or female voices. The only things allowed are speeches, Koran prayers, or the Hezbollah repertoire, which is some sort of men's choir that belch out marching type of war songs about how they will squash the Jews, march to Jerusalem and how god is with them. Walid said that "that's what you get if you want to be cheap and not rent a whole cab for yourself." A whole cab is $50, but then you get the whole vehicle for yourself, and you don't have to spend your time with assholes like these. But more often than not, these cab rides are great fun, because usually the people you share the cab with have all these funny life stories. I?ve got a few cab experiences in story form, maybe I'll publish them here one day.
