Now we are three!

The next morning after a hotel breakfast of breads, cheeses, jams, labneh and zaatar, we walked out of the hotel and headed for the National Museum, just a few blocks away. On the way we found a row of artisan shops called Handicrafts Lane that ended in a khan housing more merchants and workshops. We wandered in and out of shops, looking in at painters, weavers and metalworkers, and spent about 20 minutes looking at the gold embroidered tablecloths.

Eventually we made it to the museum and my mom managed to get us in for the local price (15 lira vs. 150) though the second guard who checked our tickets did a doubletake when he saw me and my dad. We decided to hire a guide to take us through the museum on a brief tour, though once we walked with him through a few rooms and realized the depth and breadth of his knowledge, we ended up staying for the full hour and a half. The museum is supposed to offer good background to the historical sites that one might visit while in the country (particularly Palmyra) so our guide, Bachar, tailored his information to some of the specific sites on our itinerary. By the end of the tour our heads were swirling with the overlapping dynasties, religions, cultures, histories and languages of which Syria is bursting at the seams. Each question we had was answered by “Well, you know, there is a story about that…” and so he added legends and jokes into the mix.

From the museum we walked to the old city, stopping to taste some sweets on the way (important side note: my dad did in fact indulge in dessert before lunch). In general, sweets (variations on filo dough, nuts, cream, cheese and syrup) are sold by the kilo/half-kilo, so to buy just one baklava is completely unnecessary and most will not accept money for it anyway. Still, it is difficult not to feel guilty for tasting with no intention of buying a large quantity, so we picked out two huge pieces of kenafeh for less than a dollar, each cut into eight bites, and quickly devoured the plate amongst the three of us.

We proceeded to walk it off for the next few hours, wandering in the markets from one shop to the next (you would think we would run out of shops to look at, but it hasn’t happened yet) until we took a break for lunch in one of the old Damascene houses. The menu was written in terrible English with unappealing Westernized dishes but we asked the waiter for Arabic foods instead and so they appeared and were surprisingly delicious.

After lunch we found the Azem Palace, supposedly the best existing example of Damascene architecture, but it had just closed for the day so we continued on to the Ummayyad Mosque. Again in the mosque it was necessary that my mom and I wear gray-hooded cloaks and we walked around, carrying our shoes in our hands. The mosque is the second largest mosque in the world and a site of religious pilgrimage for Muslims from all over the world so it is always filled with tourists: Arabs, Iranians and Westerners in funny cloaks, and of course there are the genuine locals praying. For Friday noon-prayer, when the mosque’s imam gives the Muslim equivalent of a sermon, the mosque’s prayer room can hold up to 10,000 Muslims, men in the front and women separated in the back. The room also hosts a huge shrine to St John the Baptist and it is supposedly the resting place of his remains.

The interior courtyard of the mosque is lined around the upper walls with golden mosaics depicting Damascus as the city of Paradise, situated along the Barada river surrounded by leafy trees and flying birds. The mosque was first a Roman temple to the god Jupiter, and later a church; elements of the previous two structures are still evident in the mosque and its foundations. There are three minarets in the mosque, one of which is called the White Minaret and is thought to be the same white minaret that Mohammed prophesied Jesus would return to.

The courtyard was surprisingly alive with families: children playing, sliding in their socks on the white marble floor, eating date breads, taking pictures and videos of their visit. Inside the prayer room, similar to the Great Mosque, there were people relaxing. studying together and praying. We had a friendly tour guide take us around and when he was finished he took us to see the ‘best view of the moque,’ conveniently located in the stairway of his friend’s giftshop.

Leaving the mosque, I realized that I really had no idea how many people in Damascus were tourists. Before I was only focusing on the obvious Western tourists, but after seeing the draw of the mosque it was clear that people came from all over the Muslim world to see the holy city of Damascus and how was I to tell one veiled woman from the next? Once I started paying attention though, I could at least tell the difference with the large Iranian tour groups who come to the city, because for one, they aren’t Arab so they look a little different, secondly they are more conservative Shi’ia Muslims and veil themselves differently, and third they don’t speak Arabic so I can at least hear the difference in the language.

From there, we continued in the markets, this time in the spice souq, until our legs and eyes could take no more and headed north to leave the old city and return to my house. Only Farah was home, studying, as his parents had gone to Leila’s village to celebrate Mother’s Day with her mother.

For dinner, we decided to go off a friend’s recommendation and visit the restaurant on the top of the mountain (that’s literally all that we knew about it) for dinner with a spectacular view of the city by night. In order to do this, we had to hire a taxi for the evening, but the view was worth it. We could pick out landmarks from all over the city but most of all you could see the minarets lit up in green for peace.