Day 43 Goodbye Syria!

SYNOPSIS:The last day in Damascus was spent doing errands, mailing excess luggage, and getting a flight to Teheran.  I also checked off two more sights at the Christian quarter and went to the famous view point at night with Mohammed.  Also, a few words about body language, idle time, and cultural values.FINAL REFELCTIONS ON A WONDERFUL COUNTRY AND ITS WONDERFUL PEOPLEShipping a package home from abroad has always given me strange feelings, almost like standing atop of the cliff and looking down to the Euphrates.  There is a turn in my stomach and I am sure that something will go wrong.  It usually doesn’t, but rational thinking is not going to help.  Some of my clothes went back home, travel brochures, receipts, camera chips, a voice recorder.  Five kilograms in all.  I finally can lift my suitcase again.  But what if my pictures get lost?  But what if I take them to Iran and they get lost there?  And my favorite coat – shouldn’t I just have carried it all along?  And worst of all – that voice recorder!  It was full of old stuff which I was going to erase.  But nothing could be erased from it.  You would think I am just an idiot not to be able to erase some old recordings, but I finally put this challenge to Hassan, the engineer – he also could not erase anything.  So it was a useless devise.  It would not record.  But it would turn on out of the blue and play!  Just imagine a voice coming out of my package somewhere in a postal carrier somewhere in the air, or at the airport, or in a postal truck.  A package going to America with a voice in it – surely it would be mistaken for a bomb and then my whole luggage would be confiscated or destroyed!  I was plagued all morning by second thoughts and awful visions, but it’s done.What an ordeal at the post office.  There was a postal worker who just had to pack my stuff for me.  He was well meaning and started to construct an extra good lining of styrofoam.  I could see that what he was doing would not work by a couple of centimeters, for the box he had.  But I could not express myself strong enough verbally and he kept gesturing that I should be patient, step aside, and all would be fine.  Nothing was fine and when he finally could not squeeze his make-shift, taped up styrofoam contraption into the box provided and suggested a box twice the size of what was needed, I asked him to just give me the box and let me pack my own stuff.   He finally gave in.  All but one item did fit into the small box without his extra stuffing.  But now I was racing against the clock – 5 minutes before closing time.  And you can be sure that postal workers anywhere in the world drop their pen when it’s closing time.    This is the worst package I have ever sent.  Prayers to Ganesh that that all will arrive in one piece and more prayers that the recorder will shut up until it gets there!By the way, that gesture for ‘patience’ has puzzled me for a while.  Put all of your fingers together into one tip, then turn your hand with your fingers pointing up and shake your hand up and down a couple of inches for a few times.  First I thought it had something to do with food.  Then, someone suggested that it means ‘good’ – but the context in which I saw it was not right for ‘good’.  Now I know:  It means patience.  Wait a minute.  Hold it.Another puzzling gesture is the head movement for yes and no.  I have not gotten a straight answer from anyone – I forgot to ask Hassan!   But I noticed that whatever the head movement is, I never know what it is supposed to mean.  In Europe or America, we do a nod or a shake.  Not here.  Here is the best of what I can come up with:  If you say ‘no’ – you tilt your head towards the right and move it up.  If you say ‘yes’, you do pretty much the same but to your left.   This to me looks the same and so I have been utterly confused, even after 30 days of trying to figure this out.   One clue for a ‘no’ answer is a clicking sound you make with your tongue accompanying the head movement.  But that confused the heck out of me, too.  In Germany, we would do this when we want to say “Na so was!” In America, I am not sure we do that sound at all.After I got my package taken care of, I headed out in search for an airline office to book a flight to Teheran.  I found a very nice small office with a friendly English-speaking staff.  I am booked now for Teheran.  Now I only have to get my visa…  I am supposed to pick it up in Dubai – In Shahallah.At the office I observed something I have been watching for a while now:  Prayer beads.   Just like Catholics, Muslims have a sting of prayer beads which they infallibly carry with them.  Whenever there is down time, you see them praying.  Waiting, for example, at the airline office.  Riding the microbus.  Standing in line somewhere.  Sitting and waiting for customers in the souq.  People just get out these beads and you see their lips moving as they pray.  Actually, I think the prayers are more of a list of venerations of Allah.  Something like ‘to Allah, the Merciful’, to’ Allah the Allmighty’, etc.  But I have to confirm that to be sure.Once you pay attention to this, the prayer beads are everywhere.  Even at the line dance at the wedding I crashed in Raqqa.  The first person in line, who only needs one hand to connect with the next dancer, will whirl around the prayer beads thereby dedicating the entire dance to Allah.  I have only once observed such cultural unity in behavior when people are idle, and that was in China.  There, we noticed that everyone who had nothing else to do had a book and read.  From the smallest child able to read, to the oldest man, books were everywhere.  In Syria I only observed one single man reading.  I think it was the Koran which he had in his shop at the souq.  I saw a few students with books under their arms.  And I saw one apartment with books:  Hassan’s.I had neglected the Christian quarter during my first stay in Damascus and so I went there this afternoon.  In a compact area there are more than 5 churches of different denominations.  I listened to beautiful hymns in the Greek Orthodox Church, bemoaned the closed Armenian Church, and visited the Catholic chapel dedicated to St. Paul as well as the underground Franciscan church of the first bishop of Damascus.  Corey – there is a sculpture of Saul’s conversion from 1999 which was put in the gardens of the St. Paul chapel.  Not quite a Caravaggio, but something after all!  The memory of St. Paul  and his Damascus connections is kept alive here at various places.  I saw the gate and the opening through which he supposedly was lowered down in a basket to escape from his enemies– cool!I stopped by the Umayyad mosque one more time.  Just to sit in its court yard and to take it all in.  I sat next to two black-clad young women, Kawther and Hanan.   We had no other way to communicate but our smiles and our hands, but I could sense how much they would have loved to talk had they spoken English or had I spoken Arabic.  Of course we went to the standard conversation which I described a few days ago.At night, Mohammed was going to meet me to pay a final good-bye visit to his aunt with me.  But I also had one more open item – the viewing point.  It has a name, but my guide book is gone… so I will leave it at that.  Every tourist is trying to make a trip up there as the mountain top provides for unprecedented views of Damascus from above.  Best time is sun-set, which allows for views of Damascus during daylight hours and at night.  After that robbery Steve from Australia had faced when hiring a taxi to the viewing point, I was not about to go by myself.  Mohammed negotiated a good price for the taxi and the view was spectacular.  Damascus is much brighter than Aleppo.  Landmarks such as the Umayyad mosque or the Four Season Hotel are clearly visible.  The city stretches as far as the horizon.  We had a full moon, too.  What was sad to see is that the mountain top used to be lined with restaurants and cafés.  Mohammed’s aunt said that they were all closed and destroyed because of drug problems.  Who would have thought?  That made for a lot of ugly concrete, abandoned terraces, and trash…  But the view remained.I said good-bye to Mohammed.  He said that I should look for a wife for him in America.  Corey, what do you think?  He is 33 and a really sweet guy…I said good-bye to Syria.  It was a wonderful experience here.  Nothing went wrong.  From the weather to health, all preliminary factors important for a successful trip were in order.  Seeing something like Damascus, Aleppo, or the Euphrates are dreams that have come through now.  But most importantly, the experience with people here has been overwhelmingly wonderful.  One small episode sums it up for me:  In the microbus a few days ago, an old woman sat in front of me.  She turned around and did that checking me out top to bottom thing.  From there our standard smile and hand gesture conversation began.  A young woman next to me chimed in.  And just before I had to get off, she took a necklace out of her purse with a golden heart and put it around my neck.  The old woman heavily supported the move and the two were beaming at my embarrassment.  I was so ashamed that I had nothing to give back.  It is just a cheap necklace.  But the gesture was priceless.  It sums up my stay here!  I will miss these people and their kindness and their deeply rooted humanity.Thanks, Scheherezade, for getting me this far.Good night.