NEST arranged for a Lebanese taxi driver from Hamra to take us up over the Mount Lebanon range through Lebanese and Syrian border crossings into Syria. The drive up over Mt. Lebanon early on a Saturday morning through the fog and mist gave us our first view of the beautiful breadbasket of Lebanon, the Bekah Valley.
When we crossed the border into Syria, Karen & Gary immediately were struck with how much Syria looks like Colorado: tall, steep mountains against a dry wilderness. Our Lebanese driver turned us over to a Syrian taxi driver who took us into the ancient / modern city of Damascus.
The Greek Orthodox monastery where we stayed in Damasucs, St. Elias, was located in the former Christian & Jewish districts of the old city that was surrounded by walls and gates (called 'bab/s'). It is next door to the R. Catholic church that claims to be built on the site where Saul was unhorsed by the risen Jesus. There is a beautiful modernist chapel on the grounds of the church built in the 1950s that houses the traditional site that looks like a stone road over a very small grotto for prayer.
On Saturday p.m., after lunch in a restaurant near our monastery with no tourists at all, we took a cab to the old souk (marketplace) to see the Umayyad mosque, one of the largest and most beautiful from the centuries of early Islam.
The souk of Damascus is enormous! Imagine on a Saturday p.m., more people than the Mall of America in Minneapolis with more than a thousand tiny shops that sell everything from ornate Qur'ans to exotic lingerie. It was absolutely packed with people doing weekend shopping. We found the Umayyad mosque and slipped inside and first saw Saladin's tomb (he was the Kurdish Muslim commander who defeated the Crusaders and re-established Muslim control over Jerusalem).
The interior of the mosque was a huge courtyard surrounded by ornate walls with stonework, gold leaf, and several minarets. There were side door openings into halls for prayer. In the courtyard everyone had their shoes off, but families and groups came there to eat bag lunches, fly kites, take pictures, etc. It was a great civic space inside of a mosque and open to the sky.
Milling around in the souk was tiring after our long cab drive early in the day, so we returned to the monastery before catching a cab to Bab Sharki, the city gate closest to our quarter. There we found by accident the R. Catholic church built over the traditional site of the home of Ananias, the Christian in Damascus who baptized Saul / Paul. We happened to arrive when Saturday evening mass was being celebrated in Arabic with both women and male priests leading the liturgy in a packed basement church that looked like it was cut out of the stone.
Afterwards we had dinner at the 'St. Paul Cafe' that is beside Ananias' home. There we sampled a very tasty Syrian beer, a surprise for us in the Muslim-majority nation of Syria. (As someone in Beirut said to me: ‘Allah has many commandments, but we don’t follow them all;’ a wise saying for understanding daily life in Beirut, Damascus, & Jerusalem.)
On Saturday p.m., my friends discovered that their Anglican friend's congregation we were planning to attend on Sunday a.m. only has worship on Fridays and Saturdays. Sunday is a regular business day in Damascus. So on Sunday a.m. we took a cab to the Syrian National Museum which has room after room of archaeological objects from multiple civilizations. There I saw the original objects of many ancient civilizations that are displayed in introductions to the Hebrew Bible / Old Testament. We had lunch in the garden of the museum, then returned to the souk to try to find some gifts.
The citadel of Damascus was closed for renovations but we had dinner in a cafe overlooking the citadel and the old souk.
On Saturday and Sunday evening we checked out Syrian TV. Lots of soap operas in Arabic (produced in Egypt?) and a number of stations devoted to music videos produced in the Middle East by various musicians mixed with N. American music videos. The FMTV channel seemed quite daring in what they were broadcasting in conservative Syria. The formula for doing music videos seems to have transplanted itself easily in the Middle East and N. Africa. I wonder if Iran allows people to watch this Middle Eastern channel!
On Sunday we learned about the invasion of a Greek Catholic church in Baghdad. Two priests and lay members inside the church were killed by Iraqi insurgents that were protesting an incident of conflict in Egypt between Muslims and Coptic Christians. Christians in the Middle East follow these stories very closely & are deeply moved because there is a very long history of sudden uprisings, massacres, and violent incidents against Christians in multiple nations in this region. (One student at NEST knew both of the priests who were murdered.)
The ride back on Monday through the mountains of Syria and Lebanon was spectacular, but we felt we had barely scratched the surface of old & modern Damascus. The border crossings from Syria to Lebanon involved our Lebanese driver giving various tips and gratuities to government employees to get us through all the checkpoints. Syria has a hidden exit fee they charge even to persons with all the right visas, so we paid that and moved on.
When we returned to Beirut things were warm, sunny, and much more humid than dry, cool Damascus. I look forward to visiting Aleppo soon, Syria's most populous city that has its largest Christian community.
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