The long walk home

In the afternoons after class I’ve been getting to know the city a little better. On Monday, one of the students I had met the day before, told me about a film festival that was showing at the French Cultural Center. I had seen posters for it around the city but didn’t know anything else about it, and I still hadn’t been to visit the center, which hosts a variety of concerts, film screenings, lectures and other events. We agreed to meet at 3 and I decided to walk there by way of a few other sites that I wanted to visit. I walked from the university to Ummayyad Square, hoping to get another chance to enter the National Library. Again I was stopped at the gate, but this time the guard explained to me (in Arabic! aka I understood!) that you needed a membership card and visitors could only enter from 9-1 and that it was closed on the weekends. That is, it is impossible for me, or any other foreign students who can’t obtain membership cards, to enter.

So I continued to the National Museum, though I decided against going in because I wanted to save it for another day when I had more than 30 minutes to explore. Also I had to leave a little time to actually find the center and maybe grab a sandwich on the way. I made it to the city center, where I had been on Saturday, and of course I got lost within just a few blocks of the cultural center. I found myself on a backroad, with narrow streets and sidewalk cafés, and a little hole-in-the-wall (literally) bakery with men lining up for their freshly baked bread.

It reminded me of what one of the students that I met in Beirut told me about Damascus- overall its not a very attractive city, but once in a while you get lost and find yourself on a pretty little quiet street with trees and twinkling lights, maybe some greenery and a fountain, and men drinking coffee and smoking while chatting away (I noticed that I didn’t see any women) that seems miles away from the busy city streets. I looked into the windows of the small restaurants, my stomach begging me to stop for a meal, especially since I still had an hour before the film. One of the men who worked at a sidewalk café smiled and gestured for me to sit. There was a little fountain/well bubbling, wicker chairs, small tables carved out of logs, and small rooms lined with benches and red striped fabric built into the wall, equipped with nargileh (hookah/hashish) and shash bash boards. So I sat and asked what kind of food they had and ended up with a bowl of hummus, another of fool, a plate of pickled vegetables, a packet of flatbread and a cup of tea. Altogether my meal, with portions large enough for 2-3 people, cost about $5.

I made it to the cultural center just before 3. From the outside, the building is not impressive and is surrounded by DVD and computer software shops, but the inside is much more attractive than the American center. It is about 5 stories high, the first floor hosts an art gallery with a local artist, the second floor with the cinema, and on the fourth floor there is a small but pleasant library. There was no one else inside the theater but the screening had already started and it was a few minutes into a documentary about the Israel/Palestine conflict. It must have been made before the outbreak of violence in December, which made the timing of the film all the more important. The storyline was difficult to follow but the moments that it captured in interviews with locals about the conditions they live in and the quality of life that they lead, needed little introduction to appreciate. Frank, my German friend from the university, came in a few minutes later with his Algerian housemate, who is, as I learned later, here in Damascus looking for ‘inspiration’ for her work as a playwright. The rest of the films were very much student films, way too long, flashing images and pulsing music, headache-inducing, either a little too abstract or a little too obvious.

One of the ones that I liked, though it went on longer than necessary, was a screen shot of an online war game (I think in real time). It was made by an American student, who logged in under the username “dead-in-iraq” and joined an on-going multiplayer game as an American soldier in Iraq. At the beginning of each round he would drop the weapon he was given and walk around the scenario, looking at dead soldiers on the ground, typing into the computer screen (which the computer would then read aloud for all the other players to hear) the names of dead Iraqi soldiers, their age, and date of death. Every so often he would get killed and the round would restart and he would continue, to the aggravation and continued annoyance of the other players, who harrassed and insulted him in typical gamer-speak in order to make him stop listing names and dates. It became interesting when the other players realized what he was actually doing and the line between virtual/reality became increasingly blurred.

After the showing was over I stayed behind to check out the library, which had computers, tables to work at and shelves of French books and movies. I sat at a computer for over an hour before I learned that you have to be a member to use their library, for about $7 a year. If it was closer to my house it would be very convenient, but as it is, I left only with a program of upcoming events. From there I walked home, completing my first (probably only) cross-town trek from class to home.