Damascus and Maaloula – 6th and 7th January, 2006

We write this from the salubrious surrounds of the Cham Palace hotel in Damascus, where a cup of coffee costs more than the meals we have been eating recently. We are sitting in their very comfortable lounge, enjoying some respite from the croweded Damascus streets. It is the Haj holiday tomorrow, so every man and his dog is out buying presents. The shops are open til midnight and the whole atmosphere is very similar to a shopping centre on Christmas eve.

Yesterday morning we left Palmyra for Damascus very early. The bus we caught is usually empty, according to Bashar (our tour leader), but was jammed full. This situation was further complicated about 30 minutes out of Palmyra, when the coolant and oil overheated and the bus pulled off the road, filling with smoke. Everybody is saying we are cursed – this is the second bus in a week to break down while we’re on it.

So, we passed the next hour or so sitting on the side of the road in the middle of the desert. Due to the holiday, buses are as rare as hens teeth, so we had to wait a long time for a replacement. The situation became somewhat complicated as the morning wore on and the girls needed to use a bathroom – there is not a lot of privacy in the desert!

We arrived in Damascus early in the afternoon and were pleasantly surprised to find the temperature several degrees warmer. Now we can wear only three layers of clothes, not five! We didn’t stay in Damascus long, however, as we wanted to visit the town of Maaloula, where Aramaic is still spoken. In fact, 80 000 people, predominantly Christian, speak Aramaic in this area.

Maaloula is carved into the hillside and many houses are actually built in caves. We visited the Convent of Sts. Serge and Bacchus, where we saw the most beautiful church. They have had the wooden support beams dated by radiocarbon and found that they are over 2000 years old. Of course, that long ago the church was not Christian, but was pagan. It was adapted to a Catholic church before 325. The altar in the church can determine this date, as it is in a style that was abandoned by the Church in 325. It is filled with beautiful icons, mainly of the two patron saints of the church, but also of Mary and Jesus. One of the nuns from the convent said the ‘Lord’s Prayer’ in Aramaic – it was very atmospheric.

After visiting this convent, we went to the shrine of St. Takla. To get there, we walked down from Sts Serge and Bacchus via a chasm in the mountain. According to the legend of St. Takla, this chasm was created by Our Lady as Takla fled from soldiers (they were chasing her because she had converted to Christianity). Her shrine is beside a spring that is believed to be filled with holy water and people come from all over to get some to cure their ills. There is also a church near the shrine, but it wasn’t as nice as the one at Sts Serge & Bacchus.

The sun was setting as we left Maaloula, which gave us a great ‘Japanese stop’. The drive back to Damascus seemed to take a long time in the dark, but it was only about an hour. When we arrived back, we went to fight with the ATM again, still with no luck. The machines here do not recognise our credit card, so we’re running out of cash. Hopefully we’ll find a solution when we get to Jordan.

Today is a completely free day for us – Bashar is not accompanying us anywhere. It is a nice feeling, actually, to be a bit independent. We spent the morning in the Damascus museum. It is not the greatest museum I’ve been in and I’m surprised by how little it actually seems to have. There were two rooms, replicas of the Throne Room in Aleppo and of the Underground Tomb in Palmyra, that were very interesting. Also, I found the glass and ceramics to be very beautiful and Fletch really enjoyed the book section. However, after about two hours we had seen all we could.

And so we wandered the streets of Damascus until we ended up here. The city seems to be laid out in sections – we walked through the pen and stationary street, the calculator street, the electrical equipment street, the paper street and so on. The people are very happy and there seems to be good cheer in the air – just like Christmas, really. We have really enjoyed doing some window shopping – the clothes here (both men and women’s) are very beautiful. We’ve been writing this as we eat lunch and from here we are going to visit the Omayad mosque and the Damascus souq. We’ll write about them soon…

Well, soon came sooner than I expected! We walked over to the Omayad mosque from Cham Palace, which took about an hour. We had to walk through the souq to get there, which was like trying to push your way through jelly. We’ve come to realise that bazaars aren’t great places to be if you have no intention of buying anything . Also, if you do look at anything here, you almost have to buy it – you certainly can’t get out of the shop without something!

Once we made it through the mass of people, we came to the entrance to the mosque. We took off our shoes and started to climb through the gate. However, a guard came up and said we had to go to the ‘special clothes place’, which meant I had to put a tent over my clothes as my jacket wasn’t considered long enough. Fletch told me that I looked like an ewok in my tent, I refused all offers of photographs so you’ll not get to see what he meant :)

What can we say about the mosque… It was built around AD 705 and has been rebuilt and renovated several times. There are mosaics all over the external doors and the internal ceiling is intricately decorated. We were there in time for the 5pm prayer, so we saw the people coming in and being led in prayer. This was interesting to watch, not least because there didn’t seem to be an imam present – instead, it sounded like they were following a tape recording. We spent a little while there, just observing and looking around.

After leaving the mosque we got lost coming back to the section of Damascus where our hotel is. Finally we recognised that we were in the camera section (see my comment above about Damascus being laid out in sections), which allowed us to orient ourselves. We were very hungry, so we enjoyed a lovely meal before coming to the internet café. And that’s really the extent of our day. We have a 5.30am start to Amman tomorrow, so its off to bed now.

Fletch’s tips for new travellers

When a Syrian finds out that you are married they ask not whether you have children, but where you have left them. To deal with this, see previous tip for new travellers concerning tripods…