The Imperfect Traveler Part 5:

On The Road To The Ruins

Once settled into my apartment in the Al-Malky section of Damascus, I had one week before school began to learn as much as I could about the country I was to call home. 

Syria is a gorgeous country, full of history and beautiful landscapes, which I explored with the other new staff at Damascus Community School.  

A few things of note:

When I moved there in 1995, Damascus was a little larger than Philadelphia. 

Both have over 1.5 million people, a Center City (Old City in Damascus), and lots of history.

Each city used to have height limits on its buildings. Philadelphia used to impose a height restriction on them to keep the skyline below William Penn’s hat atop City Hall.

But in 1987 Liberty One was built, and today the city’s skyline looks similar to other American cities. 

• Damascus on the other hand has a limit to its skyline as well – resources. There simply aren’t enough metal resources to create steel in the country, and it’s too expensive to import. Therefore, most buildings are constructed of stone/cinder blocks, and only a few extend beyond five stories high.

In 1682, Thomas Holme surveyed what would become Philadelphia and created a square grid (16 city blocks) which would become Center City. 

Damascus might be the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world, with evidence of settlement dating back at least five thousand years. 

There is NOTHING planned about the city; and the addition of motorized transportation created chaos throughout the city. 

This caused some issues for American drivers in Syria.

The school provided rental cars for its faculty; three teachers per car. I shared a blue Mazda 121 with a couple of physical education teachers.

The car was amazing. 

It wasn’t sold in the United States, probably because it wasn’t legal.

The tires were incredibly small, the steering wheel not four inches from the windshield, but the car could RUN. I took it on excursions into the desert, across rough terrain, and treated it horribly, yet it kept going and going…like the Energizer bunny.

In one of our first meetings with an embassy official, we were warned about driving in Syria.  

• Syrian police officers earned about a thousand dollars a year, and would “supplement” their income with random stops. Syrians often paid bakshesh (bribe money) to avoid a costly ticket, but if we were stopped, we were instructed to NOT speak Arabic, as the police were instructed to leave foreigners alone.  Tourists brought hard cash into the country, something the government was desperate for.

• One local friend of mine described an encounter with the police when he was stopped.  He was asked for his papers, which he showed them.  They then reported his car didn’t have something; he showed them it did. They then reported it was missing a fire extinguisher – funny enough, he had one in the car! The policeman walked to the front of the car, and used his baton to smash out a headlight. “Headlight is broken, that’s a fine.” Next time, he just asked how much the officer wanted.

• A teacher I worked with was a HORRIBLE driver. On one trip, she drove down a street bouncing off parked cars on either side, and never stopped.  I’m not sure what car insurance looks like in Damascus, but I can assure you rates went up that year.

• There were MASSIVE traffic circles, (roundabouts) in Damascus, usually connecting the main city with its outlying neighborhoods. I lived closest to Umayyin Square, a circle with SIX roads pouring into it…and optional traffic lights.  On more than one occasion I played bumper cars attempting to jostle my way onto Fayez Mansour on the way to Mazzeh in southwest Damascus.

• If we got into an accident outside the city and hit a child, we were told to wait for the police, and ask them to call the embassy.  In most circumstances, the family would be offered money for the child’s injuries.

But if we hit a cow, we were to flee the area and get to the nearest police station to ask for protection. 

In many circumstances, that animal represented a family’s life savings. Poor Syrians could always have more children, but they couldn’t afford another cow.

But my first week in Damascus I didn’t need to worry about driving. 

Each morning, the new faculty met at the gate to the school, where we were picked up by a charter bus and given a tour of some Syrian landmarks, the most significant of which was Apamea.  

Apamea was a city established by the Greeks following Alexander the Great’s conquest of the Middle East, and for a while was one of the largest cities in the Roman Empire. 

Constant wars and conquests led to the city’s decline, which ended following an earthquake in 1152.  

But it is AWESOME.   

When I’ve gone to see historical sites in other places, they’re usually roped off, and we’re forced onto guided tours.

But in Syria, there is history EVERYWHERE, and what shocked me was how nonchalant the locals were with it. 

On our tour of Apamea, we were allowed to explore everything on our own: climb, dig, whatever we wanted, all while the guide explained the layout of the city. The main street of Apamea is lined with a colonnade – the tour guide bragged that it was the “longest standing ancient colonnade in the world.

But upon further inquiry I learned much of it had been restored by archaeologists. Its amphitheater used to seat twenty thousand people; its ruins are well-outlined, though they hadn’t been repaired. Houses, stores, bakeries all lined the streets, and we were allowed to wander on our own amongst the ruins. 

It was one of the coolest things I’ve ever done…

But something I did was extremely stupid.  

I didn’t get in trouble, but I certainly could have.

When I was younger, I rarely considered death – it was something that happened to old people, and therefore not worthy of a thought. 

Today when I look at this particular photo, I think about how fragile these ruins were – sure, they’d survived earthquakes, wars, and time, but one wrong move and they could’ve come down in the blink of an eye.

Twenty-six year old me only thought of how cool it was to be climbing ancient Roman ruins.  

I made some other stupid choices while living in Damascus.

But I made some great ones as well…

… Including purchasing Monuments of Syria, which guided me through most of my explorations of that great country. I’ll share a few of those stories next time.

…to be continued…

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