Day 5 – Wed 1 Apr 09 - Damascus

Woken late with a text from Matthew, we were clumsy and scratchy getting going but slightly revived by the obligatory olive, cheese, egg and bread breakfast and a brief conversation with Anita, a Norwegian of Arabic extraction reading at the table outside our room. When we got to Matt's Tim was tired and easily irritated but we got out to find a taxi and went to the botanic gardens for an ice cream together.

Tim has been fascinated by the ants there and he wasn't long looking at ants when he relaxed and came back to us with all sorts of tales about things he had observed. Matt left to take a lesson so we had a few hours to spend before meeting together to go to the ‘Cain and Abel’ mosque on te hilltop overlooking Damascus. We decided to pick our way to the Azam palace without using a map. Whilst I love maps the end purpose is always to get a map inside my head so it was a nice feeling to walk around the narrow lanes of the souk following only instinct - informed by sunlight and shadow - and end up at the right place.

Azam palace was an inspiration to me in a modest way. I loved the aesthetics of space, water, geometry and vegetation and I set myself a challenge to make any future home I lived in a place where the integration of beauty and nature was considered to be a worthy investment. I didn't see many of the palace exhibitions, choosing instead to spend a long time simply sitting soaking up the place and watching the people.

We walked up to Matt's in time to meet the students near the Islamic University for the ride up the hill. The minibuses in Damascus are mainly small and thin. There is a reason for this which you soon discover on the ride up through the steep narrow streets of the Kurdish settlements clinging to the sheer limestone slopes of the hillside. This is an area with many illegal houses and refugees with no official status. This might explain in part the higgledy piggledy nature of the housing. After my lesson on earthquake prediction I sincerely hope these people get a decent warning of the next earthquake here. I would not like to be on these slopes when it took place. The drivers took it all in their stride as clutches slipped and brakes squealed. The drivers know their vehicles to the nearest millimetre but it still seemed impossible that no-one collided or got run over.
Finally, we stopped when the road gave way to steps and we climbed a concrete stairway that zig zagged among a few remaining houses then launched several hundred metres across bare yellow limestone to the squat square form of the mosque near the hill top. We removed our shoes, the girls covered their heads and we walked through the sanctuary area to the cave behind. In the cool of the cave the Iman told us the story of Cain, Abel, jealousy and murder. We heard how the mountain itself gasped at the deed, and we saw the tongue and tonsils of the mountain frozen in open mouthed shock. Nearby we saw the hand print of the angel Gabriel on the cave roof, holding the mountain to keep it from crushing Cain and thereby wiping out the forebear of the human race. We were shown the Arabic name of God picked out by the random deposition and erosion of calcium on the cave roof. We heard the tale of the forty refugees who hid in the cave hundreds of years ago and are still (apparently) in there; whenever one dies another replaces them so they continue to live - a shadowy invisible presence - behind the bricked wall and three round window openings to the back of the cave where the faithful throw money and photographs of their loved ones.

All this we heard twice; once in the guttural arabic of the Iman and then a second time in the beautifully accented English of Maha (the "big eyes of the little deer") who translated for us. Many of the students prayed. Fouad explained to us that when you visit a house you give two greetings; one when you arrive and one when you depart. "So it should be when you visit God's house and that is why we pray twice when visiting a mosque". His little brother Osama (10) had joined us for the trip. Osama’s English was excellent and when we asked him how he spoke such good English he casually said ‘I picked it up playing computer games’. He had a wonderful smile which seemed to permanently light his face. That cheerful disposition might come in handy in later life. It could be tricky living in the US with the name Osama and a birthday on September 11th.

We left the mosque just as the evening call to prayer rose across the city. In the gathering gloom of the early evening, constellations of green light could be seen from the mosques across the city. Green is the colour most associated with Islam; not surprising that a culture with its roots in the desert should regard green as the colour of life and holiness. Each light was a focal point of sound as the call to prayer rang out. Up on the hill we heard the rumble of traffic drowned by wave on wave of incantation; sounds reaching back to ancient times before green neon lights or electric amplification. As the wave of prayer faded back to the drone of cars Matthew gathered the students in a story-telling circle and we passed around tea and biscuits in the dark. The stories flowed from Alla'adin to Leprechauns, the hanging gardens of Babylon and Sargon the Great.

Just before the stories began, while the tea was being poured, we had a phone call from Vivienne at the Halifax to say our offer on Mike's house had been accepted. Our own story seemed - at last - to be moving forward. It was an unbelievable thing; a house way beyond our expectation now within our grasp and a place big enough to allow space for new dreams and new adventures for us all. Above all it offered us more than a house. It offers a home big enough that hospitality can be practiced in tangible ways.

Images - The beautifully crafted arches of the Azam Palace (top); climbing up through the shanty town to the 'Cain and Abel' mosque (middle) and the illuminated stairway leading back down the hill towards Damascus (bottom).