Day3 – Monday 30 Mar 09 - Damascus

Matt joined us for breakfast then we walked up to his house, stopping at the juice shop en-route and drinking delicious freshly made smoothies in the park. Matt's roof garden has great potential and we are looking at getting a load of plants from the nursery to green it up. We got a taxi back to the Old City to visit the museum of Arabic Science and Medicine. Matthew went back to teach while Tim, Terry and I visited the botanic garden for lunch. The cheese and mint wrap was delicious and Tim got a giant ice cream but unfortunately I had to leave before I could offer to help him eat it.

I walked up to Matt's house to give the students a lesson on earthquake prediction. It was great teaching natural hazards again and there was quite a buzz as we got the students debating the ethics of predicting earthquakes and who you should tell! Matt and I then walked back to the hotel to pick up Tim and Terry for the final trip of the day - a pancake evening at Richard's house, half way up the steep northern rim of the city. The views from his balcony were breath taking but the conversation with Hannan and Madeline were tinged with poignancy as they recalled stories from their fathers childhoods when the city had green orchards and fields around it and a wide lush river flowing through the middle. Now the city is a huge, noisy and polluted sprawl; all the Islamic architecture and aesthetic swallowed in an ugly cancer of unplanned concrete.

I also enjoyed some fine conversation with Kate - the latter ranging from koranic literature and culture through to her exile from Khabul and her final return. I returned to our hotel feeling a glow of pride, that our son had surrounded himself with such a great group of people whose hearts and souls matched their intellects. Meanwhile, our youngest son (who had made us equally proud at the way he handled all the expectations) stayed over with his big brother, giving Terry and I the luxury of a little time together.

Images - view from Matt's roof terrace (top) and minarets at night (bottom).

Day 4 – Tue 31 Mar 09 - Damascus

We rose, breakfasted and walked up to join Matt & Tim. It was already very warm but the windless morning air was thick with pollution and we could scarcely see the hill beyond. I found it a labour to breathe; every breath constricted and tainted, like a homeopathic suffocation! After some time at Matt's we went to an Internet cafe and thence to Gabe and Teresas for a student's tea party in honour of Sally, a volunteer returning to England.

We saw Gabe, Theresa and Matthew in their element with the students. Matthew had set them the task of writing poems about food memories. His own was a memory of eating scones with Great Granny and Uncle David at Sidmouth. The poetry was funny, poignant and moving; several recalling rainy childhood days in Baghdad (memorable for their rarity) with faces pressed against the window as the smell of cooking and the chatter of family life mingled in the background. I spoke for a long time with Gabe. They are a rare couple. At a stage of life when most are drawing pensions and joining golf clubs they are learning Arabic, running the Iraqi Student Project and actively joining their convictions to their actions.

After the tea party we went shopping for a spare pair of trousers for me (having forgotten to pack any!), had a juice in the park then walked up to the Friday Market with Gabe, Theresa and the newly arrived Monica. The Friday Market is the market where Syrians go rather than tourists so it was full of useful everyday things rather than carpets, hangings and trinkets. Tim stayed with Matt and the students but we met together for a pizza before Terry and I returned to our hotel.

As we waited outside the pizza shop I played around with long exposures of night time street scenes. A group of young men were standing nearby watching. One came up to me offering me a share of his crisps and asking if I would like him to take the photo of me. His English was good and he explained he was a scout so England was important to him as the birth place of Baden Powell. I wonder how many English people could say Syria was important to them as the birth place of medicine, dentistry, literacy and mathematics?

Terry and I walked back a different way down narrow streets awash with cars and pavements used as parking lots. Drivers and pedestrians had a mutual disrespect with jaywalking as abundant as pavement parking. The bit neither of us enjoyed was crossing the main road, a kind ofdeath street consisting of three lines of traffic chaos where the accepted crossing technique is a suicidal saunter into the traffic streams. The slower you cross the safer it is said to be since they see you with enough time to take evasive action. It takes courage to put yourself entirely at the mercy of the vested self interests that would avoid a dented bonnet and thereby aim to miss. It took less courage, however, than the cyclist we saw riding in the dark with no lights the wrong way down a three lane one-way street packed full of evening traffic.

Terry and I were fairly tired when we got back so quickly fell asleep. I tossed and turned and dreamed of being stopped by the police for riding without lights. Waking, the room was airless and my lungs still felt violated. Breathing was a conscious act you had to be careful not to forget. I lay writing until the 4.30 am call for prayer rose and fell like a tide in the darkness and consciousness drifted at last on the outgoing ebb.

Images - Tim in his element at the tea party (top); long exposure image of traffic on 'death street' - hence the ghostly figure (bottom).

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).

Day 6 - Thursday 2nd April 09 - Damascus

This was the day we left the hotel. We made the most of the final shower, ate the last of the olive, yoghurt and bread breakfasts then arranged to store the luggage while we went to meet Matt and Tim at the handcraft market. We bought a couple of presents including a clock with Arabic numerals. There was a music shop selling Ouds, drums, whistles etc. The whistles were the cheapest and had a wonderful bagpipe drone so I bought a double set for 500sp. Terry and Tim were mortified and persuaded me to take them back and swap them for a drum. Secretly I would have preferred the drum but didn’t think I could justify the expense so their prejudices against my piping played to my benefit...

After a tasty restaurant lunch we collected the bags from the hotel. On the way we passed a bike converted for cooking crepes. Matthew told us he used to hear the vendor pedalling round advertising his wares in English by shouting loudly "Crap on a biiiike!”. I had forgotten how much I miss Matthew’s anecdotes and sparkly eyed humour.

We went by taxi to Matthew's where we met Laurence and Nour who accompanied us to the garden centre with the grand plan of greening Matthew's balcony. It was wonderful to walk round somewhere brimming with greenery. There were also a range of birds for sale including some big chickens cramped into tiny cages where they could scarcely turn around, far less stretch their wings. One cage had a dying bird lying on its side in the heat and flies. Tim and I took the cage to an assistant but we could not understand their reply so really didn't feel we had helped either the bird or our own conscience. Tim and I discussed whether we should secretly set the birds free or at least help their chance of escape by removing the stone from the top of the cage. But in true English fashion we ended up not making a fuss or causing embarrassment to us or anyone else.

We got a lift back with Laurence, Nour and Omar (who joined us at the garden centre). Carrying the plants up to the fourth floor was hard work but not as hard as carrying the soil - thankfully we didn't need to do that particular job as the friendly delivery man who does the roof garden for Laurence and Omar seemed quite willing to lug the bags up the stairs! We had tea with Laurence's family and I found out what a skilled and knowledgeable photographer Omar is. He is doing an MA in Vienna on a part time basis. I envied Nour who is growing up with his Dad speaking Arabic, his Mum speaking French and English liberally sprinkled as their social language with friends. He will end up knowing three languages without studying any. However, it seemed strange that a couple so cultured and well educated had decided to settle in a noisy polluted city and bring up a child there. The extent of my surprise suprised even me. It reflected deep seated prejudices; not against amascus, just about cities in general - I still find it inconceivable to choose to live in one. I know many people have few choices but I would sacrifice a lot for the joys of clean air and the song of birds.

I was very tired after tea and just wanted to sit down but Terry had realised she still had the key for the hotel room and I knew it was better to take it back sooner than later so I forced myself to walk back to the hotel to deliver it. As an incentive I took my camera with my new lens attached and gave myself the luxury of abundant time. Damascus seems busier in the evening than it is in the day and I walked slowly, choosing unfamiliar routes to broaden my knowledge of the city. On the way back I picked my way through the dark and narrow streets of souk Sarouja using the moon for navigation. It was a much longer route but being more interesting was less tiring. It also felt remarkably safe and it was with some confidence I explored the maze of little streets. I knew if I got lost I’d be unable to ask for directions but I didn’t expect to get lost. It wasn’t that I knew where I was, just that I was fairly sure I could end up in the right general area provided I walked far enough and could see the moon now and again. I spent a long time photographing a stray cat in a derelict building and an equally long time composing the moon behind the crescent on top of a mosque.

Walking through the city at night, with its bustle of activity I felt an invisible spectator, almost a ghost from another time or place, unable to communicate. I looked in on restaurants, recognising few of the foods and overhearing wholly incomprehensible conversations. There was an ambiguity in my invisibility. Part of it was appealing but part of it was alienating. I felt like a beggar must feel as people walk past avoiding eye contact; but then I realised that this was nothing to do with language barriers - I feel equally distant when walking through any English towns; if truth were known I feel an outsider in every group, sometimes even among my closest friends and family. It's something to do with not being a nuisance, not imposing on people but insecurity is only part of it. It’s also about the joy of solitude (mixed, no doubt, with a bit of pride and aloofness). The origins are dim and distant and the motivation mixed but I’ve learned to live with it happily enough … though it sometimes frustrates Terry.

When I got back to Matthew’s I was ready for bed and we were greatly blessed to find his flatmate, Kate, had tidied her room and changed her bedding so that we could sleep in her bed until she got back from Beirut.