Part Three: Syria with the Parents: Damascus

Thursday morning we went to the train station to take the train back to Damascus. The train system is fairly new and the country is clearly very proud of it because the whole time that we were sitting and waiting for our train there were floor sweepers and trash collectors walking in circles around the station, keeping it meticulous. On the train itself there were the same service men, handing out earphones and candies and coming around to collect trash. Our first class tickets were only 80 cents more expensive than second class and a total of $5 each.

The train ride was again through the agricultural landscape and was worth the ticket fare, just for the views. Moving south past Hama and Homs the environment turned more to desert, with scattered irrigated blocks of green land, but mostly just shepherds and their flocks and kids in villages running after the train. We arrived in Damascus in the mid-afternoon and made it to my house just as my host-mom was leaving. We promised to meet up later in the evening so I showed my mom around the house, she unloaded some of her bags and we walked so I could show her around my neighborhood on the way to the old city. We hadn’t eaten lunch that day so we were both starving and unfortunately we got lost in the souqs walking in circles trying to find a particular restaurant. Having traveled all day and running low on blood sugar, I was not in the mood to be overwhelmed by the sounds, people, lights and narrow alleys of the old markets and it seemed to me that in the week and a half that I was gone, tourist season had come into full swing as we saw tourist groups around every corner (now I am definitely grateful that I don’t live in the old city). Finally we found a restaurant to sit and eat and luckily it happened to serve my mom the best arugula (rocca) salad she’d had yet, so all was not lost and after doing more shopping-without-buying, investigating the quality and choices of gold-embroidered tablecloths, we walked back to the house for some mom-bonding time over tea and falafel ordered from a nearby restaurant.

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Friday we had a full day waiting for my dad to arrive. We had slept at my house, with my mom in my bed and me on the floor (breaking in my new GoLite sleeping bag, indoor camping!), and the next morning we set our priorities: laundry, a hair appointment for my mom and more laundry in the morning (slightly complicated by the morning rain, makes it difficult to use a clothesline). After we had a goal of checking out Damascus’s contemporary art galleries, though I forgot it was Friday aka prayer day and after finding the first one (eventually) in a distant part of the city in a swanky hotel, we realized that all the others would be closed. This pretty much killed the rest of our day, so we went back to the old city to eat lunch and walk in the markets, snacking on street sweets as we walked (one particularly memorable street had us walking almost in the pathway of a worker shoveling human waste into the back of a pickup truck from a manhole in the ground before we realized what he was doing). Buying sweets to taste is not as easy at it may seem.

Earlier in the day my mom had invited Leila, my host mom, out to dinner with us as a thankyou for taking good care of me (and my stomach); it also conveniently happened to be the Middle East’s Mother’s day on Saturday. We returned to the house to co-ordinate plans with her for the night and finish the laundry and while we waited for her to come home I fell asleep and took a much-needed nap.

After eating meal after meal in the restored 400 year old houses-turned-restaurants of Aleppo and the old city in Damascus, we opted for a more ‘contemporary’ restaurant, where they featured sushi on the menu (though considering how far we are from the sea and any Japanese chef we passed on the opportunity) as well as Western dishes. The food wasn’t particularly exciting and by far the most expensive we’ve paid yet (around $50 for the three of us) but it was nice that we could take her out for a meal since I don’t think my host-family ever goes out to restaurants.

We walked back to the house from there, passing by my host-family’s church, where Farah was hanging out with some friends (he opted out of joining us for dinner). Once we got back to the house, my mom and I repacked for the next few days and took a cab to our hotel, conveniently located between the center of the city and the old city. At the reception desk, however, we were turned away because I had left my passport in my room and there was no other option but to return back to the house. 2 cab rides, $2 and 30 minutes later, we were in our room, lying on our beds, exhausted, waiting for my dad to get in from his midnight flight.