Haases hali mardaan

Sorry for the delay, once again, but I've been sick. I've had a cold, which, ironically, does not go well with the heat. I'm more fortunate than some of my fellow Americans here, one of whom was hospitalized briefly with dysentary. One must be careful where one eats. Call it ejnabi (foreigner) disease. We also sometimes pay ejnabi rates for things like taxis, though I've encountered this problem less than others. In fact, usually when someone discovers that you are foreign (generally because of your poor arabic pronunciation) they are eager to welcome you to the country, ask you where you are from, and sometimes give you special treatment. Tourism helps drive this city, and people know it. They want people to go home and say they had a great time. I know I will, despite the occasional health issues which have recently clouded my thinking.

I've also had midterms, so I've been trying to study through the brain fog. I finshed those up yesterday, and now its the weekend, so il hamdu lilah. I have been working on a few different posts in the background here, but I have yet to complete them, and now, once again, I'm feeling more in need of some rest than the desire to complete my journals. Below I present some continuation from my last post, which I wrote some days ago and just now finished.

Ok, so the American embassy was not at all a friendly place, at least the part I saw. I think I went to the wrong entrance, I later heard there is a cultural attache center across the street that is more welcoming. But when I tried to go to to the main entrance, I found the gate staffed by locals who gruffly asked me who I was there to see and what I wanted. I tried saying that I was an American student here studying for the summer and that I just wanted to drop by the embassy to see what it was like and maybe meet some people. This got me turned away. I've had easier times getting into hip night clubs with selective doormen, and I'm not really all that hip. But I completely understand why our embassy would have this attitude and I don't blame them for it one bit. For the record, this is not the kind of place you can just drop by unannounced.

So I left there and headed east in search of a coffee house. This time it wasn't just to get my fix. I have contacted Joshua Landis, a professor from the University of Oklahoma who is living here in Damascus on a Fulbright scholarship and author of SyriaComment.com, an excellent collection of essays about Syrian politics and related items. I asked him if he could come speak to the American students from the language institute, which he has agreed to do, but I need to track down a suitable venue. I could possibly try to do this either at the university or at the embassy, but so far these appear to be less than ideal options. He suggested the Rawda coffee house, and after my chilly reception at the embassy, I decided to go have a look at this place to see if it would suffice.

The neighborhood around the embassy is a little more upscale than what I had been used to seeing. Like other areas of Damascus, there is a traffic roundabout with a gradiose fountain in the center. Unlike many other areas of Damascus I have seen, the homes here have real yards, with grass and trees, and the cars are new, clean, and undamaged. It felt like a suburban neighborhood in America. This is in fact not the only part of town I know of like this. The neighborhood north of my usual coffee house is rather nice also, and I hear that there are others. Not to diminish the appeal of living in Bab Touma - indeed there is a mystical charm to living here - but I think if I ever come back for an extended stay, I may look for an apartment in one of these other locations.

After walking down the length of Rawda street, where the Rawda coffee house is not, I stopped to ask a man in front of a store for directions. I had a map with me which I pulled out so he could point the way. Although I understand all of the Arabic for turn left, then right, and go straight two blocks, the roundabouts and streets that can point in any direction call for more details in the instructions than I can sometimes entirely comprehend. I'm told that maps are uncommon in Syria, which may explain why a group of children gathered around me and the man helping me, who was cheerfully describing much more about the neighborhood between there and the Rawda coffee house than was necessary. Or these children may have gathered around because I was ejnabi. The kids I have talked to on the street are proud to show off their English skills, which I have generally found to be superior to their elder compatriots, even in parts of the country that have less than adequate educational facilities.

Anyhow, the directions were true and I found my way to Maqhua Rawda. It was larger than other cafes I had visited and was populated almost entirely by men. Most of them were playing backgammon or chess, the backgammon players loudly slamming their chips on the board as they made their moves, the chess players sitting in quiet contemplation, patiently considering the board while dragging slowly on a nargile pipe. Many were wearing full length robes and traditional headdress, which you will see here and there while traveling around in Damascus, but rarely so many in one place. I had the sense that these men were from all over the Middle East and were here on business.

I stayed there for several hours, reading texts for class, eavesdropping on conversations that I hardly understood, and since it was early afternoon and I had been walking in the sun, drinking lemonade, rather than coffee. Places like this are nice, but I don't think it will be a good spot to have the students meet Dr. Landis. It's too noisy, and a little hard to find.

Honestly, I have more posts in progress. Coming soon.

Keeping my cool

Ahhh the computer lab at school. Air conditioned, free, and I don't have to walk on the life-threatening streets of Damascus to get to it. Well, at least not if I come here right after class, which is only sometimes possible, and even then it closes at 2:30 in the afternoon, so I only get about an hour to use it when I do.

Today I don't feel like creative writing. Let's call it a holiday - this is approximately the midpoint of my stay here in Syria. I know, the story I've written has barely placed me in the town. Worry not, more tales are to come. The sad truth is that the classes are very intense and I often don't have time to do anything worth writing home about, let alone do the writing. On the other hand, I've been holding back a few stories for when I'm feeling nice and prolific. Today is not that day. Today I feel free form, today I liberate the delete key from the keyboard. Its not just me, some of my friends and I have been cracking under the heat en masse, passing through regular phases of irritable, frustrated, elated, content, and around again. Its not that classes are too difficult, or the unbearable heat, the frequent stomach ailments from foreign microcritters, the linguistic frustrations with the locals, or the sense that when you walk down the street you're playing Frogger with your life, but all these things together are sometimes very exhausting. This is balanced out by large amounts of coffee consumed at the one nearby cafe that has an air conditioner. And after a long day, if I'm really beat from it, there's a place down the street where I can have a 500ml beer for about a dollar.

Shouts out to all who have commented from various locales, like Sue from Mom's work, Jamil in France, Paul of the world-famous PK and J Show, 'free to be' up in Akron, Jessica the mailroom veteran, Dana out in CA (or do I sense another move? hmm) and of course my old pal anonymous - man, we go way back. Greets also to all the other family and friends reading out there. Also cheers to everyone back at The Library, you know who you are, and if you've forgotten, its time to go home. See you all in September.

Some people who don't know have asked for a little more explanation of who I am and why I am here, so here goes. I'm a student from The Ohio State University majoring in political science, Middle East studies, and Arabic. I'm here in Damascus for the summer taking intensive Arabic classes in the hope of rocketing my skills toward fluency. That, in fact, is going fairly well. I plan on going to grad school (somewhere) after this to study (something.) Its too hard to tell at this point. Someone asked if I was on any kind of special grant or something, but sadly no. I'm paying for this the same way I pay for all of school; student loans and academic scholarships. However, this summer is not too expensive, despite the costs of travel, because everything is so cheap here. Well, except for the air conditioned cafe, where an iced cappuccino costs 150 lira (about 3 dollars), but for that I get to spend 3 or 4 hours almost every day doing schoolwork while waiting for the temperature outside to drop down to the mid 90s.

Well, I'm off to the American embassy - I've got some elbows to rub.