Travels in the Levant

Here are some pictures from Syria and Lebanon. This is the first place we stayed at.

Here are our beds on the roof the first night. Notice the tears in the matresses. I don’t have a picture of our room the second night, but it was awsome.

This is the Leila (night) Restaurant and Terrace where we ate at our first night in Damascus. From left to right: me, Brian, Steven, Tyler, and Juan (the Argentinian guy.)

This is a picture of me in the courtyard of the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus. This is typical of what unveiled women put on to enter mosques (those that they are allowed to enter, that is.)

Windows in Damascus.

Cool watermellon on a hot summer day.

Here’s a picture of Tyler sipping Syrian brew at the Bab Sharki cafe in Damascus.

Here’s our Cancun-esque party outside of Beruit.

This is Place de l’Etoile in Beruit, a swanky area that was completely destroyed in the Lebanese civil war but has been rebuilt to look old.

The highlight of today and our trip so far was seeing the gigantic Umayyad Mosque in the Old City of Damascus. Brian, Steven, Tyler, Juan and I left the hotel after a restless night and walked about 5 blocks to the old city. The Mosque, built in 706CE, covers around an entire block of the cobbled streets. We entered from the side where I donned a full length robe and hood and entered the mosque. Saladin’s tomb lay to my immediate left and as we continued we came to a place where everyone removed there shoes and entered the enormous open courtyard of the Mosque. Here’s a picture I found on the web

The Shia martyr Hussein’s tomb lies on the far side of the courtyard; this makes the mosque a huge pilgrimage site for Iranian shia muslims, who we saw in droves, with the women in billowing black chadors. I met two girls who spoke very little English and so I tried to communicate with them in Arabic, only to discover they were Iranian. I also met a couple from Aleppo who spoke to me about the beauty of their town. They wanted to know how we, Americans, had managed to get into Syria; I told them “God knows.” It is encounters like these that really have made my trip in the Middle East. Everyone, even in Syria, has been incredidbly friendly to me, which is a shock considering what our government says about Syria. Something to ponder.

Off of the courtyard there is an enormous room where the Shrine of John the Baptist lays, who apperently Muslims regard as a prophet. We saw a number of Islamic prayer leaders (possibly Imams) giving sermons to different groups, a number of them speaking Farsi. Here’s a shot of the shrine i found on the web.

We drank fresh blackberry juice on the street and found a restaurant called the Umayyad cave where they were out of almost everything and served the guys’ cheeseburgers without buns. Later, we wandered by shops filled with glittering gold and silver until we found Straight Street, which is actually quite kinked. I bought a bottle of water in one store and the man gave me a whole plate of hamoudeh for free, which is some kind of sweet paste made out of sesame seeds, which i am not particularly fond of. We found a tiny factory which made kufiyyas and i managed to give away most of it to the workers, who in turn shared their olives with me.

The roof of our hotel is beautiful but sleeping at night is rough. By around 2am it was so cold that I was covered in goosbumps and had only my towel and a sheet I had begged of the manager to cover up with. I eventually went back to sleep, but was awakened at 3:45 by the call to prayer, from the mosque less than 100 meters from our beds. I woke up again at around 7am because the heat was unbearable and I was sweating all over. I drifted in and out of sleep for a while longer and final gave up and took a shower in what is basically a closet with a drain. We have been told that, God willing, rooms may be available tonight and so I’m keeping my hopes up.

Tomorrow we go to Beruit, but I will be sad to leave Syria. Perhaps, a study abroad is called for in the future.

We got a late start this morning because the guys had been out late (sigh) and hadn't packed but finally left the hotel around 11am. The manager let us leave our suitcases there so we each brought only a small ... [Continue reading this entry]