EVERYONE CAN RELAX, I FOUND A GYM (and a phone, house, tutor)

As-salaamu ‘alaykum!

It has been a few days since my last post and a lot has changed, so forgive me for this lengthy update. Please feel free to skim. Since Saturday morning I have rented a room for the month in my tutor’s house, began Arabic lessons and, most importantly, joined a gym!

The house is the Muslim Quarter of the Old City, which I like because it is just down the block from some of the best markets in town, and still in walking distance from the Christian Quarter, where the “action” is. I have six roommates, not including my tutor, Hanin (ha-neen), who lives downstairs. Hanin was recommended to me by a friend of my uncle’s, and she is a firecracker; in a city where it is a faux pas to wear shorts in public, Hanin walks around in capris and a tank-top, shouting hello to every shopkeeper she passes. Occasionally locals will ask me where I live and as soon as I mention the general area, they will say, “ah, in Hanin’s house? She is crazy, eh?”

The roommates are all ex-pats whose travels make my summer trip look like a weekend in the Pocono’s. Nationalities break down as follows: Two from the US, one from Sweden, one from Denmark, one from Argentina, and one from the UK. In typical Middle Eastern fashion, the house is open in the middle, with rooms branching off from a central courtyard on the first floor. On the roof, where most of us live, bedrooms surround outdoor living space with a table, TV, kitchen, and sink.

The room is nice enough; not particularly clean and a little bit (ok, a lot a bit) on the warm side for me, but it has been ok so far. Haven’t had much time with the roommates yet, but they seem really nice and interesting. My first two lessons were very good and with a few hours of review outside each lesson, I feel like I am learning a lot. I am working hard to expand my vocabulary, reading, and sentence structure. I will write more about the house and studies later, but right now I want to talk about the gym and the traffic.

When I first imagined my trip to the Middle East, I pictured myself running shirtless through the desert, a pack of laughing children sprinting to keep up with me. In my fantasy, I turn off the road, sprint up a pyramid, and then below victoriously from the top, six-pack glistening in the hot Syrian sun. Well, even I know there are no pyramids in Syria, but I thought I could at least go for a run around the city. That lesser fantasy was eroded the moment I saw Damascene traffic. Allow me to explain:

Traffic makes traveling by foot a pain in the ass. As far as I can tell, there are five rules that govern driving in Damascus:

1. Go as fast as the limited space in front of you will allow.

2. Whenever possible, point your car at some obstacle in the street

a. Swerve to avoid said obstacle only at the last possible moment

3. Honk often

4. Travel as near to neighboring cars as possible

5. Disregard crossing pedestrians, especially women and children

6. If you must stop to avoid a collision, begin braking as late as you can and stop as near to this obstacle as possible

7. Never hesitate. Especially not when merging.

Navigating as a pedestrian is made even more difficult by the following factors infrastructural factors:

1. There are no traffic lanes, so it is impossible to know when or where an unexpected line of cars may appear, bearing down on you at an alarming speed. Furthermore, what would be a three-lane road in the U.S. is, at minimum, a five-lane super highway in Damascus, meaning you have many more cars to avoid when crossing.

2. There are extremely few traffic lights, and, though they may exist, I have yet to see one stop or yield sign. Bottom line: There is no guaranteed safe time to cross a street.

3. Traffic police tend to follow the crowd, rather than the other way around. This means that a large group of pedestrians will stand at a crosswalk until someone is brave enough to step out into the stream of traffic, causing cars to slam on the brakes.

4. In many neighborhoods, sidewalks are barely wide enough for a single person, meaning that most foot traffic spills onto the streets. On average, I get hit by about four side view mirrors per day (I blame this mostly on my broad shoulders and large, muscular, arms).

These unfavorable traffic conditions, combined with extremely poor air quality, meant that I would have to find a gym in order to stay in some semblance of physical fitness. So, after my lesson on Monday, I went well outside the normal tourist circle in order to check out a few health clubs that I had heard about from the same woman who recommended Hanin. This lead me to my first experience with Damascus’ microbus system.

How can I describe microbuses? Well, picture a Volkswagen Bus, but made by Isuzu in 1982, and outfitted with seating for 12-14, plus a driver (you can’t make this up). The microbuses run various set routes around the city, and act like local buses, as opposed to the more modern city buses, which run along major avenues. At 10 Syrian pounds (Lyra) per ride (roughly $0.21 American), microbuses are an incredible value. Microbuses often travel with their sliding doors open, and slow only to a roll when new passengers board or exit. If there were a perfect example of ideal Damascene driving, a microbus would be it. When I am lucky to find myself sitting by a window, I sometimes like to hold my arm outside for a breeze, forearm flat against the outside panel. Microbus drivers are such good Damascus drivers that I often find myself scrambling to pull my arm inside the car for fear that our clearance as we pass another car will be less than the width of my elbow.

On Monday, having braved my first microbus trip successfully, I arrived at an area that is home to a few fitness clubs. The first two were very small and dirty, and had very little equipment. The bench and barbell in my room in Brooklyn looks like Equinox by comparison. The third bluc, which I knew had a reputation for being very snobby, was a dream come true: Syria’s answer to Crunch or LA Fitness. In Syria, this meant that it had only what you would expect at a bare-bones health club in NYC, but it was more than I expected. So was the cost; a month-long membership that gives me access whenever the club is not closed to men (women get the weight room to themselves from 11:30 AM to 2 PM), cost almost exactly the same as a New York Sports Club membership in Brooklyn. By Damascus standards, this is outrageous, but with rent so cheap (about $220 per month) I was more than happy to shell out for my biceps’ sake.

Once I had forked over my membership fee, I headed to the locker room, where I put on shorts in public for the first time since arriving in Syria. Lying flat on a bench press, I immediately felt right at home. I was so thrilled to pump iron again that I could not wipe the protein-eating grin from my face, drawing many confused looks from fellow gym rats. I hit my chest and back, noting the strength I had lost during my hiatus from lifting, which began just before finals at CU. It was good to exercise again all the same, and my first workout taught me that Syrian meatheads are exactly like American meatheads. Same appraising looks, same subtle mirror poses.

On my way home, tired from my first workout in over a week, I mistook a different microbus for the one that had dropped me off, and soon found myself near the top of a mountain, about 6 km from my neighborhood. Shit. The next one I found dropped me a few miles outside the city limits, on the highway to the airport. Double shit. After consulting the map in my guidebook and trying in vain to locate a microbus back into the city, I eventually took a cab to within walking distance of the Old City.

Some friends from the hostel were confounded that I had spent at much as I did just to workout, and after I pointed out that the sum was roughly equivalent to their monthly cigarette purchases, they became indignant. Those of you who know me well will understand how much willpower it took not to ask them if they thought my Zeus-like physique was “an accident”.

Later that night I had a beer with my Californian roommate, Charles, and then met up with some friends from the hostel for sheesha and coffee. A good laugh was had by all when I regaled them with my quest to find a suitable workout facility. A Swiss girl named Samira was quick to point out that I investigated the same number of gyms as I did rooms to live in.

...And on that note, I am off to workout

EHB