Written: [Courtyard of Al-Rabie Hotel, Damascus] 7.45pm 17th May

The courtyard is truly a blessing as it gives character to a hotel that would otherwise be fairly unremarkable. The marble tiles, fountain, chirping birds, old furniture and hanging vines all contribute to the generally relaxed, old and musty atmosphere of the hotel. The young guys that run it haev evidently run out of people to be interested in or foreigners to be surprised by as they approach their work in a relaxed but business-like manner. Although, maybe it's just me that they don't like given their general bruskness and constant rebuffs of my attempts to communicate in Arabic with their more than adequate English.

This place must certainly be over 100 years old yet everything in it seems normal, utilitarian and serves a purpose. The tourists recline on the more comfortable of the older chairs as if they were musty old armchairs in their livingrooms, as they read books. The older tourists huddle around small tables reading guidebooks, talking in hushed tones and reacting with muted wonder at the loud call to prayer that emanates from the large mosque.

The Chinese girl wearing a beautiful silk robe (knee-length, black) that contrasts perfectly with her alabaster skin thinks nothing of traipsing along the marble tiles, probably laid over 100 years ago, on her way to the ancient stairwell leading to the room in which she sleeps, that has probably never seen the modern wonders of TV and Air Conditioning, born of an older, more practical form of climate control and entertainment, before the advent of such luxuries. As she trails the sickly synthetic yet strangely emasculating (for me, not for her) scent of designer skincare product, it seems to stand at odds with the shisha pipes and decaying wooden furniture around it.
































This is the beauty of Damascus, as LP says, the locals shop in the ancient souqs, live in the Old City, pray in the Ummayad Mosque, bathe in the Ottoman-ear hammmams and fill the streets with a lifestyle that has changed so much yet so litle in Syria's long and turbulent history. The two old men playing backgammon outside a butcher's shop in the shade of the stone buildings of the old city. The men sharing a shisha and a conversation in the qahwa opposite the Ummayad Mosque. The women bargaining for spices and textiles in Hammidya Souq, 100+ years old. The kids bouncing a football against the eroding stone walls, a grey that is not so much unforgiving as seemingly eternal.

How many empires have these people seen come and go? Romans, Persians, Abbasids, Ummayads, Greeks, Ottomans, French, Ba'athists, and now, slowly encroaching, the empire of the tourist. The clothes may now be made of cheap manufactured Chinese textile and there may be satellite dishes above the slums, but some things in Damashq, as-Sham, will never change. And all those things can be found in the smile of the tea-maker as he serves the young German girl tea, directs his older son on where to place more stools, grips the shoulder, reassuringly, of his younger son who's playing on his electronic keyboard, and takes a relaxed, pensive drag on his cigarette as Damashq moves before his eyes.