Departing Post

Well, my friends, it has come. It is time for me to leave Damascus and begin my two-week tour of the Middle East. I refuse to make the typical, “it feels like just yesterday” comment, because, honestly, it feels like a lifetime ago that I stepped off Turkish Airlines flight 0952 to Damascus. Naturally, it is odd to think that I have been living here for seven weeks, but that is because there were many times when I thought I would never get used to the Middle Eastern lifestyle, and now it is fun and (mostly) easy, not because it went by in a flash.

As for my coming travels…

From here I will head to Beirut with my roommate Rob. We will spend one night there and then head to the mountains in east Lebanon for four days of proper backpacking and camping. We will start in a town just north and east of Beirut and finish in a town just south and east of Tripoli, sleeping by the trail along the way. We will stay a night in Tripoli and then Rob will head back to Syria and I will spend a few days in Beirut before catching a flight to Jordan. In Jordan, I will meet up with Greg, who has been in Egypt for two weeks, and together we will head into Israel for five days. On the 3^rd of August, Greg will head east for more travel and I will fly to Istanbul, where I will spend two days staring at the Bospherus and maybe get wildly drunk for the first time in two months, before catching my plane to JFK on the 5^th.

I could not ask for more from my experience in Damascus, except in the way that we, as humans, always ask for more. I improved my Arabic, I made good friends, made some bad ones, met interesting people, met boring people, experienced life in a totally new place, and learned a lot about how I live and about how others do. I found the love of a lifetime (see post from June 27^th), and reaffirmed my affinity for popcorn and Diet Coke. I shed more than twenty pounds and more than twice the equivalent in anxieties and unfounded prejudices. I did it and it is done: I jumped in with both feet and I have no regrets.

Well, actually, I have two regrets:

First, I wish I had handled my blog differently. As nice as it was to share my experiences with all of you, I do feel that the blogging was a bit of a waste. The abridged, censored, and watered-down writing style that I had to adopt in order to keep my posts easily readable, to make this page socially and politically acceptable, and to avoid frightening any of my readers at home, definitely detracted from the quality and honesty of the finished product. In my own journal I was able to go into detail about the intensity of my emotions and the enormous effect that this trip has had on me, but on the blog I had to watch what I said.

I would have loved to be able to write with more detail about how excruciatingly lost I felt during my first few weeks, but I could not, because I have anxious parents who love me very much and don’t want me to suffer. I also did not want an inbox flooded with worried e-mails, and did not want to have friends and family thinking that my experience was not a good one just because it wasn't stress-free.

I would have loved to delve into the depth of the mental challenges that I struggled with on a regular basis, but the idea of giving away my deepest limitations and weaknesses on blogspot.com is abhorrent to me. Maybe in a book, but not so long as my feelings would remain one click away from FrEaKySyRiA86; my hubris is simply too large.

I would have loved to sing the praises of the merits of travel, and express my gratitude for all of the growth I have experienced here, but I did not want to seem overly self-satisfied and vain, and, more importantly, I wanted to keep some things for myself. I believe that important thoughts can easily lose some of their impact when they are over-simplified for web publication.

As a result, as some of you may have predicted from the passage above, I have decided to stop posting for the remainder of my trip. I am going to take the next two weeks to write for myself. I am going to read, take pictures, see the sites, socialize, and enjoy the last stretch of this journey without feeling obligated to explain the process to a remote audience. My plan is to post once more, during the few days after I return to the states, so, if you are interested, look for that between the 5^th and the 10^th of August. If you don't see it, well, sorry, I guess I got busy. Andrew: I pass the blog torch back to you. For god’s sake write about something other than bicycles.

My second regret is that, when I leave Damascus behind, I will also be leaving behind the most delicious hummus on the planet. In my will I have added that, in addition to Duck Pond in Cape Cod, the mountains of Colorado, the streets of New York City, and the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, I would like some of my ashes scattered in a bowl of my favorite hummus, for all to eat. In this way, I will return to Syria one day, and a piece of me will live on in yummy goodness forever, or until swallowed.

I hope you all have enjoyed reading, and if anyone besides my mom wants to be updated as to my whereabouts, please email me at eric.harris.bernstein@gmail.com, and I will be happy to keep you updated as I am able, for the remainder of the trip.

Take Care,

Eric

Marmousa

A week ago, I mentioned that Bret and I were heading to a monastery for the weekend; here is the story. The Marmousa monastery is located about an hour north of Damascus, 20 km outside of a small town called Nebek. The monastery beds and feeds visitors free of charge, and only asks that guests pitch in with meal preparation and do some work around the campus. Donations are accepted but not prodded for, and everyone I have met who has gone agrees that it is a very special place. Bret’s rent ended on the day that we left, and since he is not taking classes, he decided that that would be an opportune time to take off for some traveling around the Middle East. His plan was to do a tour of monasteries in the mountains north of Damascus, and leave straight from there to Lebanon. This would be our last hurrah.

In class on Thursday, when I was waiting impatiently for the lesson to end so I could meet Bret and get going, a Danish girl named Mia heard of my plan and asked if she could join. She seemed nice enough, and even though I would have rather just gone with Bret, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to have an extra person to split the cost of the cab with. The three of us met by the gate to the old city where Bret and I had first arrived in Damascus, almost exactly five weeks before. I thought about how scary and hectic the traffic circle had seemed on that hot early June evening, and noted how familiar it now felt. I asked Bret what it felt like to be leaving for good, but he was busy trying to figure out which bus terminal we needed to go to and wasn’t really paying attention to my nostalgic rumination.

Eventually we found the right bus terminal and hopped on a microbus to Nebek. An hour and a half later, we pulled up to a parking lot in the middle of the desert. The parking lot funneled into a quarter-mile-long set of stairs that lead up to what looked like a tiny Medieval village, set into a mountain drainage. Just to the right of the drainage sat one large, castle-like, structure with high walls that rose proudly above the mountain slope. The castle was flanked on the left side of the drainage by a large structure that sat high up on the next hill, and on the right by a series of small- and medium-sized homes.

We reached the top of the stairs, ducked through two three-foot doors, and emerged onto a beautiful open terrace with chairs and tables scattered about. A monastery employee approached the three of us and asked if we had come just to look around, or to sleep. We told him we would like to stay for a few nights and he asked if we had brought sheets. Woops. After we had been scolded by one of the monks, the employee found us sheets to borrow, then led Bret and I to one of the rooms set aside for male visitors. Mia had been nervous-talking since we got in the microbus, so we were both glad to get some time away from her.

We crossed to the part of campus with smaller buildings and arrived at a cave that had been walled off and outfitted with a door. The concrete floor was covered with straw mats and half a dozen bare, clean, and narrow mattresses were neatly arranged throughout the room. It was cool in the cave and, despite the multitude of flies buzzing about, there was a simple charm to it. Bret and I threw our bags down then took a seat on the balcony outside of the cave with our feet dangling over the edge. We sat and watched the expansive, empty, desert landscape in silence.

Bret is a very independent and difficult guy to figure out, but we had become close over the summer. There is an intimacy between us now that had not been there when we sat together at that airport bar in early June. I suspect that it came as a result of undergoing new and uncomfortable experiences together, but maybe we just have good chemistry.

Bret and I are very different in a lot of important ways, but a capacity for endless introspection is a quality that we share, and that common trait led a lot of our talks to very interesting and personal places. The summer has been a challenge at times and a joy at others, and at each of these stages Bret and I talked openly and honestly about how we felt and why we thought we felt those ways.

By the time we sat down together on that balcony, it wasn’t just that each of us knew how the other had felt at various points throughout the summer that made us close, it was that we each had arrived at some deeper understanding of the traits and priorities that drove the other. Bret no long felt the need to distance himself in order to ensure his independence and I no longer worried about invading his private time. We understood each other. We trusted each other. I would be sad when we parted ways, but I no longer feared being alone in the Middle East, and my new craving for alone time is a part of Bret that has rubbed off on me.

A priest passed by and told us that meditation would start at seven-thirty, followed by mass at eight and dinner at nine, so we headed back to the main building, kicked off our shoes and ducked into the church. Two rows of pillars separated the chapel into three rectangular areas. Everyone was seated quietly on pillows situated against the rear wall. Bret and I took seats in the center room. There was a brief prayer, and then thirty minutes of silence. Some people just meditated; others crossed the room and carefully brought candles to their seats from a table by the entrance, and used them for light by which to read and write.

When the mass started, Bret and I observed passively. Father Paulo gave a very interesting sermon in English about interfaith relations, passed around communion accoutrements, and dismissed the worshipers for dinner. Everyone helped in the preparation and clean up of a dinner that consisted of noodle soup and the usual sides of bread, yogurt, apricot jam, and olive oil. When all the work was done, Bret and I headed off to find a good spot to look at the stars.

We laid flat on one of the castle walls, hearing little other than crickets, and enjoying what was one of the most impressive star displays I have ever seen. Bret said that he appreciated the monastery’s beauty and quiet, but admitted that the whole “Christian vibe” was really throwing him: “Sometimes I just can’t turn my brain off, and the fact that there is this belief that all of these people share, that brings them all together, and that I don’t hold, just really fucks with my head. Except for the meditation hour, I’ve been feeling pretty uncomfortable. I don’t think I’m gonna stay as long as I thought.” It was more of the honesty that I truly appreciate. “I know what you’re saying, I guess I just have an easier time putting it out of my head. I wouldn’t want to stay more than two nights either, though.” I replied. Then we talked about boobs. Soon we were resting our heads on t-shirt pillowcases, slapping flies, and trying to ignore the snoring of our three roommates.

Having turned in early with the rest of the monastery, we woke up early and sat out on the porch, enjoying the quickly fading morning coolness, and staring out at the desert valley below the monastery. I spent a really relaxing day studying, reading, and writing. At various points there were odd jobs to help with around the monastery: Bret fed chickens, I helped peel and chop eggplant, but mostly we were free to do as we wished. In the late afternoon a very friendly regular visitor showed Bret and I around some nearby caves, and then we joined a group of other westerners for a walk up the canyon to the goat herders’ house. The goat herders, who, predictably, take care of the monastery’s goats, live in a very simple, but clean and comfy, house about two kilometers west of the monastery. The young Syrian who lead us there explained that the monastery owns all of the land between the entrance and the goat herder’s house, and pointed out a few buildings scattered on the desert hills that serve as various retreats and chapels for special occasions.

The goat herders were in the middle of dinner when we arrived, so they gave us a key to the goat corral, and told us to have a look. We spent about half an hour chasing the goats around, cracking up as we watched them spew scat, and trying to get one by the horns. Eventually Raice, a truly hilarious Dutch man, got one, but quickly realized there was not much to be gained by petting, and much to fear by way of kicking and biting. “I’ve never felt wool before”, I commented in a moment of weakness. “...and you still haven’t”, Bret added. Woops.

When we tired of trying to kill a goat just by staring, alla Clooney in The Men Who Stare At Goats, we found that the herders were done with dinner and wanted us to have tea with them. We watched MTV Arabia, drank boiling hot tea of disposable plastic cups, and then headed back down the canyon for mass and dinner.

After we had eaten and done our part to clean up, Raice commented, “I think they’re about to put on a play and I think it’s going to be in Arabic, so let’s get the shit out of here.” I was pretty beat, and our plan was to leave at five-thirty to hike the fifteen kilometers through the desert back to Nebek, but I felt bad just cutting out, so I stayed to watch. The play was…odd, and afterward I was happy to wash up and go to bed.

Bret and I woke on time and joined with Mia and her new American friend (who happens to live in Boulder) for the hike back to town. We past the goat herders’ house and were joined by two of their dogs. The dogs followed us for at least six clicks as we rolled over large desert hills. We all got increasingly nervous that we would be blamed for losing the dogs, but they left us when we hit a paved road that we had been told would take us into town. Two kilometers later, Mia lost her nerve and was certain we were on the wrong track. “We’re on the only road in sight, in the middle of the desert, Mia, I think we’re looking for the town where the road ends”, I pleaded, but there was no stopping her. After she had flagged down a sixteen wheeler and confirmed the directions (walk until you aren’t in the middle of nowhere), we were on our way. Bret and I fell back and talked about guy stuff, while Mia and Amy sped ahead, eager to see the next sandy hill. One kilometer outside of town, a Syrian man insisted on giving us a ride into the city center, which we graciously accepted.

It was just past eight when he dropped us off near the bus terminal. We had some well-deserved mini pizzas for breakfast, found a pharmacy where I bought nail clippers and itch cream (my arms and feet were pocked with bloody craters from clawed-at mosquito bites), and hopped the micro back to Damascus. I could not wait for my shower and my bed. Damascus was home…-ish.

Bret’s new plan was to stay with me in Damascus for two days and then leave for Lebanon, so I had a house guest, which I was excited about. He got along with my roommates Amanda and Chistopherus very well and they both teased me for my, typically American, lack of hospitality. (As a side note, this is not my fault: There is no telling what Bret ever wants. He has the oddest and most specific cravings, I swear. “I could really go for six fritos, some cheese-whiz, and an O.J.” or, “Man, a cigarette and a guava-flavored soda would hit the spot”, or my favorite, “I would kill for a Tab, some Mentos, and three ecstasy pills.” Ok, I exaggerated a little, but still).

It was boiling that night in Damascus, and Bret and I listened in horror as my trustee fan shrieked, sputtered, and died, just as we laid down to sleep. There were about seven seconds of complete silence, and then we burst out laughing. I think the incident of the dying fan really sums up my experience of life as a westerner in Syria: You figure out how to get by on comparatively very little and you learn to laugh at the minor annoyances. Although, for the first seven seconds, it really felt like the world would stop spinning along with that godforsaken fan.

All my best,

Eric Harris Bernstein

Bathrooms

Can you believe it? Two in one day! It's Friday, so I thought I would catch up on some posting. I love Fridays in Damascus, really LOVE them. They are my favorite part of living in the Middle East so far. Everything is closed so you are really forced to relax. It is truly fantastic. What’s that you say? Talk about the bathrooms? Well, ok.

Bathrooms in Syria are a funny thing. Ignoring the obvious debate between squat or throne toilet, what fascinates me is how space is prioritized in wash facilities. I have yet to see a toilet with more than ten inches of space between the front of the bowl and the nearest wall or door. With so little clearance to work with, I find that I have to flatten myself against the front wall so that my pants don’t get caught on the toilet seat as I drop them. Also, because there is hardly room to stand, let alone lower oneself onto the seat gently, sitting down becomes a leap of faith, whereby one must sort of plop, and trust that the seat is down and that the bowl will not crack. This is to day nothing of the five feet of head space that most bathrooms are allotted. Having said all of this, I must acknowledge that cramped living conditions might necessitate such space-saving efforts. But here is the kicker: The showers are freaking huge.

For whatever reason, Syrians have decided that doing one’s business requires six square feet at most, but showering, well, showering requires at least the area of a small bedroom. The shower room in my house, which, from what I have seen, is about average, is roughly four feet wide and well over ten feet long. The single shower head is located in the middle of one of the longer walls, so a bather has at least four feet of space of latitude in either direction, and enough room to the rear to perform a back flip. The water runs into a drain by the shower’s foyer (the name I have given to the several feet of the shower room nearest the door), but one needs a squeegee to dry the water that escapes gravity and pools by the rear shower wall. I actually find squeegeeing my own dirty water quite fun and satisfying. Regardless, though, I do not understand why some of the space allotted for showering can’t be redistributed to WC facilities. The Syrian government seems to love to redistribute, so I have taken the matter up with them in the form of a letter to the President, Bashar Al-Asad.

As a fun side note, I have just discovered that I share my love of Metallica with the proprietor of the internet cafe where I do my blog posting, and since it is Friday and the place is empty, we are currently rocking out to "The Unforgiven" at full volume.

Rock on,

Eric

World Cup Fun

Hello everybody! How goes it? We just got through a pretty terrible heat wave, so things here are peachy again. Classes end in less than a week and I will be leaving for Lebanon that day, so all of the sudden I am very busy trying to plan my two weeks of travel, buying souvenirs, etc. As a result, I have been spending most of my internet time researching various destinations, and have had little time to blog. Now that the World Cup Finals have ended, though, I thought I would write a little bit about what it has been like to watch in Syria.

When I first arrived in Damascus, I could not wait for the matches to start. I pictured the U.S. making a run into the late rounds, and I was excited to experience football fandom in the Middle East. During my second week here, when the first matches started, I watched excitedly with locals and expats alike, but it was not long before I realized that I was embedded in the lair of a sports fan’s worst nightmare: the bandwagoner.

Syria’s national football team is decent, but they have yet to qualify for a World Cup Final, so, predictably, Syrians opted to support the team with the best chance for victory in each match. I should specify that, when I say “support”, I don’t just mean “cheer for”, we’re talking flag-waving, face-painting, horn-blowing, lunacy. Early in the tournament, I had hoped that once some key teams were eliminated this bandwagoning would dissipate. I assumed that by the third round, I would no longer have to endure thousands of phony Italians and Brazilians packing the streets in celebration after every one-sided victory, but, alas, the further the tournament progressed, the more arbitrary and fanatical the ad-hoc alliances seemed to become. Why would a teenager from Damascus care about Argentina at all, let alone enough to wear its flag like a cape?

Despite the annoyance of obnoxious Damascenes constantly rooting for the clear favorite, my friends and I went all over the city, watching the matches in a variety of venues. We watched at outdoor cafes with young Syrians smoking sheesha, and at big open restaurants with families sitting at large tables covered in Middle Eastern dishes. It was always fun, but when it was not a team that I cared for, I usually just defended the merits of baseball against attacks by my European friends.

When the U.S. played Ghana in the first elimination round, we watched it on an enormous public screen and waved my American flag towel when Landon Donavon scored to tie the game. During the game we were each interviewed by a Syrian news crew who asked us the leading question, “why are all the Syrians rooting for Ghana”? I was tempted to give the news crew what it wanted and say, “it’s probably because the United States supports Israel”, but Charles convinced me that would not be wise. On the way home, we were harassed and followed by a group of adolescents who threw rocks at us until a Syrian man yelled at them and they ran off. He later turned out to be gay and propositioned Rob, who has become accustomed to both positive and negative attention from locals who are fascinated by his blonde hair and blue eyes. After our public shaming, things got personal.

All my western friends were sick of seeing Syrians draped in foreign flags, celebrating victories that they had no stake in. Picking a team to support is one thing, but picking a new team for each game is just wrong. The common wisdom amongst expats became, “root against the crowd: root for the underdog”. Now, I have been a Mets fan since I went to Shea Stadium on my 7th birthday, so I know something about rooting for the underdog. Here is what I know about it: It sucks. The thing about underdogs is that they lose 90% of the time. Thrilling as a shocking victory might be, it is rare. When the championship finally rolled around, though, I thought the universe might be offering me a consolation prize for all of the disappointing outcomes: Spain, the clear favorite and Sport’s Illustrated predicted tournament winner, was slated to face the Netherlands, who had never before reached the finals. Surely, I thought to myself, the Damascene bandwagoners will support Spain and, if the Netherlands manages to edge it out, I will be able to see the look of defeat on the faces of all those soulless Syrian sports fans, and laugh. But what I found when I arrived at a café to watch the big finale was worse than I could have imagined.

As if the government had ordered it, the entire population of Damascus had divided into equal parts Spain and Netherlands supporters. Now, no matter what the outcome, at least half of the city would be celebrating when the final whistle blew. At that point, my interest in the match became purely my interest in seeing the World Cup finally end. When Spain scored in overtime, a number of Syrians, dressed in orange to show their support for Holland, cheered wildly. Rob was staring blankly at the large projection screen with his mouth hanging open. Bret had his head on the table. I quit. Give me some upper deck seats to watch the Mets lose any day of the week.

Peace.

- EHB

Trying To Beat The Heat (Or, Beaten By The Heat)

Hello friends! How is everybody? Good? Good. I am also well. I have just finished my second week of Arabic classes (half-way done!), and have decided to write about the weather. Enjoy!

Afternoon heat in Damascus is by far the hardest part of day-to-day life here. Everyone struggles. Of all the highly motivated, intelligent, and creative people that I have met here, none have devised a suitable strategy to beat the heat. Ideally, I would to spend a few hours at home studying, reading, and writing until things cool down, but my unshaded second floor room is not an ideal hide out. All morning, the sun bakes my room, and the outdoor common spaces offer similarly little refuge from the mid-day heat. Phrasing it more positively, I can say that the sweltering sun allows me to really get the genuine Damascus experience, by encouraging me to complain about the heat constantly (a favorite local pastime), and causing me to sweat through any clothes that I put on (another thing that Damascenes truly relish). The common wisdom amongst locals is that there is simply no way to function during summer afternoons so, between the hours of one and five or six, most Syrians aim to limit movement as much as possible, and find shade wherever it may occur. My desire for constant activity made this difficult at first, but I am learning quickly.

My roommates Christopherus and Amanda have truly mastered the art of doing nothing during the day. They usually wake up in the late morning, and emerge from their room only to get food or water until at least 5 o’clock. When I get back from class around two and see them sitting in the partly shaded living room, my typical greeting is, “good morning!” This description, by the way, should in no way be taken as mocking; I was well on my way to this sort of schedule myself, before classes started and forced me to rise early and face the weather.

My new roommate Rob, who moved in just after Charles moved out on Saturday, seems to be generally productive (or at least more productive than I) during the mid-day heat. Since he is not in school, and therefore wakes up later than I do, it is not so difficult for him to muster the energy to be productive during the afternoon. From what I can tell, he is usually out and about while I am in my room hiding from the sun, but a few times I have seen him lying comatose on his mattress in the middle of the day with a fan pointing directly at him.

My landlady, Hanin, seems to have the best approach of all. Because her room is in the shadiest corner of the ground floor, it is usually quite comfortable during the day, so when it is light out she leaves the house only when errands or mandated court appearances make it absolutely necessary. If I ever live in Damascus long-term, I will buy some exercise equipment, find a room like hers, and get friends to deliver all my essentials. Well, perhaps it’s not that bad, but I certainly do miss being able to duck into some air-conditioning in New York, and Boulder’s pleasant breezes.

Despite my misgivings about the afternoon weather, I find that any time spent outside at night is quite fantastic. Because there is little moisture in the air and very few clouds in the sky (I think), the heat escapes from the city rather quickly once the sun goes down. My house’s outdoor living room is usually very pleasant after 8 PM or so, and almost every restaurant in the Old City is built with a movable fabric shade covering an open roof, so that patrons can enjoy the pleasant evening temperatures as they munch on fatat and tabouleh. The pleasant weather is easily the clearest explanation for why Damascenes stay out so late. Or maybe it’s because their rooms are as hot as mine.

Even though outdoor spaces cool down quickly in the evenings, for whatever reason, my room remains a sauna until at least 3 AM. The walls must be a marvel of insulation engineering, because no matter how long I leave my door and window open, the temperature in my bedroom does not drop. As my parents can attest, I have always loathed sleeping in hot temperatures, so to fall asleep at night I have adopted the old “water and fan” technique.

Every night before bed, I fill a 1.5 liter bottle with tap water and point my floor fan directly at my head and chest. Whenever I start to feel uncomfortable, I grope for the bottle on the floor next to my bed and pour some of its contents onto my head, arms, chest, and lower legs. At first, my technique was timid because I was worried about damp sheets, but in the weeks that have passed I have learned that water evaporates quickly in my room’s hot and dry climate, so now I don’t even bother to open my eyes as I liberally soak my bed and body. The trick is to fall asleep quickly, before the water dries, and before another cabdriver parks his car in the alley adjacent to my house and starts blasting Middle Eastern pop music. I have gotten quite good at this, and I no longer view these rituals as a pain in the ass, as I did when I first moved in.

The only thing that still disturbs my sleep is catfights. No, I don’t mean two Syrian women pulling at each other’s hair through their hijabs, I mean actual fights between stray cats. There is nothing more disconcerting than the high pitched squealing of two kittens fighting over food scraps. It’s like nails being dragged across a chalkboard, but with the added image of Feifel clawing at Garfield’s bloodied neck. Because my Panamanian roommate, Carlos, once tried to feed these cats with a bowl of milk, my house is now a popular hangout for dozens of strays, and battles over territory are a nightly occurrence. Many times I have woken with a start to this dreadful noise and seen a scraggly feline fleeing to a neighboring roof. Up to this point it may seem that I have just spent an entire blog post complaining, but please allow me to elaborate on some benefits that I have received from all this temperature turmoil.

In dealing with the daily challenges of life in Syria, heat being just one of them, I have learned to deal with my physical and mental discomforts without allowing myself to become distraught. For my first two weeks here, I often found myself getting really worked up about the lack of sleep or the difficulty of filling the afternoons. I would start to think about home, and all of the people and activities that made my life great, and I would lament being stuck in the Middle East for over two months. This was neither productive nor pleasant – the good times were still great, but as soon as something started to bug me, I would find myself unable to move on and feel at peace. It was only after much practice and thought that I came to understand temporary moments of discomfort as exactly what they are: temporary. Now, when I feel frustrated or sad, I simply tell myself to wait half an hour and, almost always, I have forgotten my concerns altogether before ten minutes have elapsed.

So what if I don’t sleep well here and there? So what if my afternoons don’t go perfectly? These things are hardly worth getting upset about, and realizing this made a world of difference. Learning to be patient when dealing with challenges is by far the most helpful and enlightening thing I have learned so far this summer.

I hope everyone had a good Fourth of July holiday. I am heading to a monastery in the mountains north of Damascus for the weekend, which is supposed very beautiful and peaceful, and I am really looking forward to some quality journaling time. I am going with Bret, who is leaving directly form the monastery to travel around the Middle East for six weeks, so this will be our last hurrah in Syria and I am looking forward to some raunchy conversation with him, as well.

Ma’sallama

Eric

Struggling With Addiction In The Middle East

Hello readers! Happy Independence Day! I was really stoked this morning to realize that Syria has a fourth of July too. Of course for them it's just "Sunday", but I think I picked up on some extra good will floating around. I hope all of you are enjoying your barbecues and fireworks shows; I will be grilling lamb, eating hummus, and drinking crappy whiskey until I remember all the words to the Star Spangled Banner. On a more serious note, here is a something I jotted recently about a terrible problem I am having.

In my zeal to adapt to life in the Middle East, I am afraid I have picked up a habit that is quite common among the locals, and which could have disastrous effects on my life and health. I hardly think I need to name the habit in question, but I will say that the more I try to resist it, the more I find that I am in the grips of a powerful chemical force.

In the States, this habit would not be economically or socially viable, but it is so affordable and widely practiced in Syria, that it is hard to say no. Everywhere you go here people offer you left and right. There is so much downtime in Damascene culture that people do it just to fill the day. Sometimes in the mornings I buy what should be enough for a week, and find myself back at the store for more in just a few hours. It just feels so good, and it so easily accompanies any activity; here, they even let you do it in restaurants!

The behavior I am referring to is, of course, eating humus.

Back home, I was lucky enough to grow up near Sahadi, an excellent Middle Eastern grocery store, so I had always been a fan of humus, but I relied mostly on my parents to supply it and regulate my consumption. When I went away to college, it was easy to stay away; the quality in Pennsylvania and Colorado did not compare to what I was used to, and it was too expensive to purchase on my student budget. When got here, however, and found a dealer just a few blocks from my house in the Old City, all hell broke lose.

You might think this post is somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but this is no laughing matter. I eat a disgusting amount of humus. I can easily eat half a kilogram in one sitting. I eat it with everything – bread, eggs, meat, a spoon. The other day I seriously considered trying to make it into a tea. What’s worse is, I don’t think I will ever be able to function normally without it. Whenever we run out on Fridays, when the Arab stores close for a day of prayer, I find myself lying in bed motionless, moaning deliriously for hours. One particularly tough Friday, I did manage to get out of bed, but only so that I could stumble to Umayyad Mosque and search for the shop owner and beg him to give me, “just a taste! Two kilos, please!” I was promptly escorted out, and told never to return.

I don’t know what I am going to do now that classes have started, because it is a faux paux to eat in the classroom, and I can’t bare the embarrassment of returning from the “bathroom” with chickpea stains all over my face again. If anyone has a good idea of how I can deal with this dilemma, I want to know, because this is a serious problem. Below is a poem that I recently wrote for a bowl of hummus in my refrigerator:

O Bowl of Hummus
Thy texture is so smooth
Like desert sand
Thy taste incredible
Like water to a parched traveler

I caress thee with bread
Kiss thee with veggies
Hug thee with mine Tupperware
I care for thee like a mother bear for her cub
Until I consume you

If only Romeo had had just a taste of your glory
He would have forgotten Juliet in an instant

I wish to bathe with you, in you
To commune with your blended splendor
Until our souls are one
And I am nothing but chickpea, tahini, and olive oil

Yours forever,

E.H. Bernstein

I hope that this post finds everyone well. I cannot believe I have been in Damascus for over a month and that my trip is half over. I wouldn’t say time has flown by, but as always, in retrospect, it seems like no time at all. I am already having to plan my end-of-summer trip in late July, and I guess it's really not that far off. Anyway, shout out to Max Bosworth who just found a job - Forell, get your s*@% together.

All my best to all of you loyal readers!

- Habeeb Al’Hummus

Eric Visits The Hammam

Hello friends!

I am happy to report that over the last week and a half things in Damascus have really started to roll. After my trip to Lathakia, I quickly began to feel much more at ease with the lifestyle here. Accepting the slower pace was hard for me, but once I did, I've found myself much happier.

One of the best experiences that I had in my last week of freedom, before classes started last Sunday, was a visit to the Turkish bath (or hammam, as the Arabic goes). I had read about Damascus' hammams in my guidebook and was excited to check one out, so off I headed with roommate Charles in tow.

We walked to the Hammam Nur Ad-Din, which is located just down the street from my house, in the Old City’s spice district. The bathhouse was built around the year 400 A.D. and is said to be one of the oldest functioning hammams in the world. Despite its age it has not lost charm.

A misleadingly small doorway led to a cavernous lounge with a domed ceiling that rose at least 40 feet. We traded our valuables for towels, swapped our sneakers for wooden sandals, and headed to the bath facilities. At the rear of the welcoming lounge lay a portal, behind which the humidity increased noticeably and the age of the building was suddenly apparent. Carpets and wood dissolved into bare stone walls and floors are in the classic Damascene black-and-white-striped pattern; the doorways were large and arched. We took a seat on a bench opposite a large wooden door, and awaited further directions.

A bathhouse attendant, disguised in the standard loner towel, handed us each a bar of soap and a scrubbing tool of wound twine, then ushered us into an adjoining room with three doorways. On the sides, two open doorways lead to smaller rooms where attendants soaped and rinsed visitors. In front stood a door of heavy dark wood, reinforced with black steel crossbars for an extra medieval appearance. This was opened to reveal a a white stone steam room about thirty feet wide and fifteen feet long. The air was just clear enough to see through.

The attendant motioned for us to sit on the floor on either side of a stone basin with a double faucet. He used a stainless steel bowl to splash us each with lukewarm water from the sink, and left us to enjoy the steam. Charles shared some tidbits of history about the bath with me - that they were primarily intended to be used to weary travelers recovering from journeys through the desert - and we commented on how good the humidity felt after the persistent dry heat of Damascus.

After a few minutes of enjoying the humidity, the attendant returned and pointed us through an open doorway into a small square-shaped room in the corner of the large steam room. This, I soon realized, housed the steam pipes that controlled the climate of the entire facility. Sitting just a few feet from the jets of scalding steam, Charles and I looked at each other and laughed, like two fraternity brothers who, after throwing back a pair of shots, realize that they have just had one too many. The steam spewing from the open pipes settled like a large cloud at about shoulder level, so everyone seated in the small room would stand up intermittently to breath in the heavy steam and to to suppress a cough. The room was far hotter and more humid than any sauna or steam room back home. When I stood up and breathed in the heavy steam directly it felt like inhaling soup. The sensation in my lungs was incredible.

Just when I was about to throw in the towel, a new attendant came in and lead Charles and I back into one of the washrooms where we were directed to lie, turn over, and sit up, as he scrubbed us each with a steel wool-like exfoliating cloth, then soaped and rinsed us each in turn. When he was done, he instructed us to return to the steam room to use the soap and scrubbers we had been given to wash at our leisure. Sitting by the basin, Charles passed me a pommace stone, which I used to scrub three weeks worth of dead skin and Damascus funk from my feet.

After we were properly clean and had taken a few last breaths of the heavy steam, we headed for the pre-exit cold shower, which felt like nothing short of heaven. A bathhouse employee used a fresh sheet to shield me from view as I shed my now-sopping-and-transparent towel. He wrapped me in the one fresh sheet and covered my shoulders with a second. After he had done the same to Charles, he sent us clomping in our wooden sandals to the main entrance room, where a friendly attendant replaced my covers yet again. He covered me from ankle to shoulders in freshly laundered towels and sheets, wrapped a third towel around my head. He asked where I was from and welcomed me to Damascus.

Charles and I took a seat on the Syrian carpets that cover the waist-high benches surrounding the large front room. In moments, a bathhouse attendant brought us tea and cold water, and we sat there with our feet dangling from the bench, drinking, talking, and observing the late-afternoon crowd that was now trickling in. I felt a profound calm. Around the room, fathers helped their young children undress and replaced their own thobes with hammam-issued towels. Men emerged from the steam rooms, knelt in prayer, then joked with one another. 

Everyone was smiling.

I think this was the moment I began to feel at home in Damascus. The site seeing that I had done previously was fascinating, but always left me feeling like an outside observer. At the bathhouse I felt actively engaged in Middle Eastern life. It was really great to see that the staff treating everyone with the same kindness and hospitality. No one even seemed to notice that the two visitors. 

When Charles and I agreed that it was time to get some food, we headed to the front desk, collected our valuables and paid the grand total for our luxurious visit: 350 sp each – roughly $7.50 – a very reasonable price for such an incredible and relaxing experience.

I hope everyone is well and that I haven’t lost too many readers due to my sporadic posting; with school having started, I find myself with less and less time to write and get to the internet café, but I will do my best to stay keep current.

Cheers,

Eric