Over this weekend, I was able to accomplish much, elhamdulillah.
On Friday, I dressed up nicely in order to be respectful and went in search of the Sayyida Ruqayya mosque. It’s a relatively big place which seems really small from the outside when you first approach it. There are two doors through which to enter, one is for men and the other for women. Once I entered through the door for women, on the left there was a bin where they had bags for shoes. On the right there was a stand with abayas (black) on it, although the abaya didn’t come into play until I was pretty much into the mosque and about to go into the place where Sayyida Ruqayya herself is buried. Right when I was about to enter, the guy at the door stopped me and told me to go back and get an abaya, which I did. Afterwards, I walked in. I visited Sayyida Ruqayya elhamdulillah, and couldn’t help but cry when I got really close to her resting place. There were many Iranians around, and I could also see inside the tomb itself that there was a lot of Iranian money placed into the shrine, as blessings or luck. You could see some Syrian pounds as well, but mostly it was Iranian money. I apologize; I don’t know the unit of money for Iran so I’m not going to say anything but Iranian money.
A side note here about Sayyida Ruqayya herself—if I read the sign correctly in the mosque, she is the daughter of Hz. Husayn, who was martyred in Karbala. Mostly this is a Shi’a place if I understood correctly, and as I was walking towards the shrine I could see a lot of them had stones. I also prayed, and while I was praying someone placed a stone on top of my bag. It’s usual that a Shi’a have a stone from the earth of Karbala while praying, but I don’t know if this stone was actually from there since there’s a box of stones that is at the entrance to the shrine proper. Either way, I was quite happy to have been there. I couldn’t leave there for a while though, so I sat for some time in the courtyard and just prayed. It was wonderful and peaceful. When I had first walked into the mosque there was a group of Iranians reciting an ode or a prayer, I’m not exactly sure what they were reading, meaning obviously I have to get started on Persian soon. When I walked out and sat in the courtyard there wasn’t anyone doing anything in a group setting, it was just a couple of people spread out through the courtyard sitting together and talking and such, so I was able to just sit there for a while. It was quite a hot day but the courtyard itself was really nice and cool and windy.
After visiting the Sayyida Ruqayya mosque, I then went to the Umayyad Mosque. The Sayyida Ruqayya mosque is quite close to the Umayyad Mosque actually, it’s not even five minutes away by walking. Anyways, I got to the Umayyad Mosque, but they told me that I couldn’t get in without an abaya, so I went to the “Putting on Special Clothing Room” (no joke, that’s the real name of the room) and got an abaya for five Syrian pounds (which is also lira. Have I talked about the money unit here before? If I haven’t, a quick overview now: foreigners usually refer to the Syrian money as Syrian pounds, and Syrians refer to it as lira, and I’ve heard my grandmother refer to it as Suri, to distinguish it from the Turkish lira. So there we are :) ) because I’m Turkish. The guy asked me where I was from because the price changes according to where you’re from. Turks get a lower price apparently.
Having borrowed the abaya from here, which happened to be an interesting gray-brown color, I walked in and just did a walk around the mosque first. Afterwards I started to take pictures, and I will hopefully be able to upload them on a Picasa web album or something and link it to here so that people will be able to see. Words are nice of course but since one picture’s worth a thousand words, one needs to put pictures up as well, and hopefully I will be able to do this.
If you all remember, all of this is happening on Friday, so I happened to be at the Umayyad Mosque right around the Friday prayer time, so I stuck around and listened to the hutba and prayed the Friday prayer. Only after the Friday prayer had been finished do they let women visit the actual prayer site within the Umayyad Mosque, and within this prayer hall is the shrine of Hz. Yahya, or Zacharias as I believe he is called in English. I visited him, elhamdulillah, and then towards the back of the complex you can find one of the shrines for Hz. Husayn, and in the same place they also have a small shrine for Zeynel Abidin. I visited both of these places, and then being really hungry, went home to prepare lunch. When I got home, I found that one of my house mates’ friend was here and she knew the way both to Sayyida Zainab and also to Mohi al-din Ibn Arabi. Originally I had planned on going to Sayyida Zainab after finishing with lunch and whatnot, but I ended up going to Mohi al-din Ibn Arabi’s tomb and mosque with the friend. She is truly a wonderful person.
After visiting and paying respects to Mohi al-din Ibn Arabi, we stuck around for a while because the men were actually doing a zikr. They were in a small room though off to the side, and the people working at the mosque wouldn’t allow us women to sit downstairs close to the room so we had to go upstairs, but once we sort of pasted our faces and ears to the window, we were able to hear much of the zikr elhamdulillah.
After the zikr, we decided on meeting at 6:30 am on Saturday morning to go to Sayyida Zainab.
The morning of Saturday, I woke up, got ready, but I was running sort of late so I didn’t have time to eat breakfast (bad idea not eating breakfast. Always eat breakfast). Anyways, I booked it to the bridge where we were going to meet, and we met up and then went to the top of the bridge to catch a microbus to go to a certain point on the way to Sayyida Zainab. From that certain point, we caught another microbus to go to Sayyida Zainab. It took quite some time to get there, but elhamdulillah, we were able to reach Sayyida Zainab and visit her. They gave me an abaya there as well. By the way, I say “they gave me an abaya” but what I really mean is I borrowed the abaya, I didn’t actually get to keep it. Having taken the abaya, we entered the complex, which is absolutely amazing. The outside is full of blue and green and yellow tiles that are arranged in the most beautiful and intricate flower designs courtesy of Iranians who really know what they’re doing when it comes to pretty designs.
The inside was actually much like the Sayyida Ruqayya mosque, just Sayyida Zainab was much larger and honestly I felt like although the inside was quite well taken care of, the outside areas could definitely use more looking after. And I don’t fully know why, maybe it was because I was with someone but I didn’t have the same feeling in Sayyida Zainab as I did in Sayyida Ruqayya. I will have to go to visit her again insha’allah, and we’ll see how things are when I go back. Maybe it’ll be different being alone. We’ll see.
After visiting Sayyida Zainab, we walked around the area a little bit more and visited other important sites. We walked into a cemetery and I found the tomb of Ali Sheriati, which I was completely surprised to come across, it was a pretty small affair and not well taken care of but it was there. I finally bought an abaya—Moroccon style abaya, in Syria, yes, thank you very much. The social unacceptability continues full-blast. I also got my first taste of true hospitality when we were doing the walking around. My friend wanted to find the mosque for one of the first martyrs from the Sahaba, which happened to be in the Palestinian refugee neighborhood of the city, so while we found the mosque we also found that it was locked, and a nice Palestinian man helped us get in touch with the imam so we were able to go inside and see the maqam of the martyr and also walk through the mosque. Side note again—the mosques here are amazing and they sort of disguise themselves. You think they’re going to be pretty small due to their door size, but then you walk inside and it’s an amazing, light-filled place, quite large, too. This was exactly the case with this mosque we visited.
We went back home for lunch, and I decided on eating pizza this time, so I went and got pizza. The guy is amazing but the pizza crust is interesting, the dough isn’t like the dough in America. Then again, not even the ketchup is similar so can’t exactly expect the pizza dough and whatnot to be similar. Still delicious, but the pizza dough is more like pastry dough. Anyways.
I ate lunch, and then afterwards I walked up to Mohi al-Din Ibn Arabi for asr prayer. We had asked yesterday and the people at the mosque said that they held zikr sessions after asr prayer, and we both wanted to go see how that would be. My friend couldn’t come because she had things to do but either way, I walked up there and prayed asr and then sat and listened to the zikr. It was quite wonderful to hear; I’d listened to other zikrs before so I had an idea of what it would be like but that had always been in a pretty private setting with a set number of people. This time was different though because it was just a community full of people I’d never seen before and whom I also assumed didn’t see each other on a regular basis. They were all quite comfortable with simply sitting next to each other and praying and doing zikr. I admire their ability to be Muslim and be completely okay with it, no problems, and no assumptions attached.
All in all, quite the productive weekend. I was quite happy with what I was able to accomplish, elhamdulillah. School starts again on Sunday, so we’ll see how this week goes. See you all at the next post! :D
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
School Starts!! First week of classes!
Indeed. You are once again not reading the title of this blog post wrong. I’m once again in school, during the summer. It seems I just cannot do without school, and I’ve even managed to find a school in the oldest city of the world, Damascus. :) Just kidding. The point of my coming here was to speak Arabic and take classes, so elhamdulillah, the point is being accomplished insha’allah.
I walked to school this morning and arrived in about 35-40 minutes. After looking on the board for my name (Fatima Zulfikar—have I mentioned already that my name has become Fatima here? People have a hard time saying my name here as well, so I just went with Fatima. In Arabic: فاطمة ذوالفقار) and finding that I will be in room B-10, I walked over to my classroom. Classes here start at 9 and end at 1, meaning I have four hours of Arabic class through the day, with 10 minute breaks in between each hour. Quite fun. I calculated with my dad later in the week (I’m writing this post over the weekend of my second week here)that due to the 4 hours a day, 5 days a week, I’m actually doing the same amount of Arabic that I’ve done over the past three years at UNC, in one month. For a lot cheaper, by the way.
There are now 14 people in my class, 3 boys and 11 girls, plus the teacher, whose name is Ahmad Muhammad Muhammad, or, as he said, “in English, Ahmad Muhammad Double.” You have to hear him say the word “double” though, it’s not the same as it is in America. Or if anything you just have to wait until you see me or talk to me again to hear me saying it. :)
On the first day of class we did some really basic grammar, sort of like a re-cap of the basics of Arabic grammar where we went over the concepts of noun, verb, and what can be termed prepositions (خروف جر). Actually before that we introduced ourselves and things like that, and then we did the introduction to grammar.
Throughout the two weeks of school up to now, we went over numbers (عدادmore complicated than you would think actually—there are different rules for different numbers, as in the thing that is being counted changes according to the number, and the gender of the number also changes depending on the gender of the noun. It’s quite wonderful.) and repetition for emphasis (توكيد) and then also the part of a sentence that answers the questions of “how?” (الحال) and, most awesomely, we also went over the meanings of verb forms in Arabic. You see, in Arabic, you have this system where out of three letters, or the root, you can make a million different kinds of words depending on what form you put it in—this goes for verbs, which have 10 forms, called وزن plural اوزان, as well as nouns and adjectives and adverbs. The connections within the language are amazing, and you can pretty much make out the meaning of any word if you can find the three-letter root of that word.
So school is from Sunday to Thursday, and the weekend hits you kind of unexpectedly, especially since I’m still getting used to the fact that the week is indeed from Sunday to Thursday, and the weekend is Friday and Saturday. The feeling of happiness that washes over a person when they realize that the next day, Friday, is the start of the weekend, is exactly the same.
My weekend was pretty awesome so that deserves a post of its own, so the adventures of my second weekend here coming up!
I walked to school this morning and arrived in about 35-40 minutes. After looking on the board for my name (Fatima Zulfikar—have I mentioned already that my name has become Fatima here? People have a hard time saying my name here as well, so I just went with Fatima. In Arabic: فاطمة ذوالفقار) and finding that I will be in room B-10, I walked over to my classroom. Classes here start at 9 and end at 1, meaning I have four hours of Arabic class through the day, with 10 minute breaks in between each hour. Quite fun. I calculated with my dad later in the week (I’m writing this post over the weekend of my second week here)that due to the 4 hours a day, 5 days a week, I’m actually doing the same amount of Arabic that I’ve done over the past three years at UNC, in one month. For a lot cheaper, by the way.
There are now 14 people in my class, 3 boys and 11 girls, plus the teacher, whose name is Ahmad Muhammad Muhammad, or, as he said, “in English, Ahmad Muhammad Double.” You have to hear him say the word “double” though, it’s not the same as it is in America. Or if anything you just have to wait until you see me or talk to me again to hear me saying it. :)
On the first day of class we did some really basic grammar, sort of like a re-cap of the basics of Arabic grammar where we went over the concepts of noun, verb, and what can be termed prepositions (خروف جر). Actually before that we introduced ourselves and things like that, and then we did the introduction to grammar.
Throughout the two weeks of school up to now, we went over numbers (عدادmore complicated than you would think actually—there are different rules for different numbers, as in the thing that is being counted changes according to the number, and the gender of the number also changes depending on the gender of the noun. It’s quite wonderful.) and repetition for emphasis (توكيد) and then also the part of a sentence that answers the questions of “how?” (الحال) and, most awesomely, we also went over the meanings of verb forms in Arabic. You see, in Arabic, you have this system where out of three letters, or the root, you can make a million different kinds of words depending on what form you put it in—this goes for verbs, which have 10 forms, called وزن plural اوزان, as well as nouns and adjectives and adverbs. The connections within the language are amazing, and you can pretty much make out the meaning of any word if you can find the three-letter root of that word.
So school is from Sunday to Thursday, and the weekend hits you kind of unexpectedly, especially since I’m still getting used to the fact that the week is indeed from Sunday to Thursday, and the weekend is Friday and Saturday. The feeling of happiness that washes over a person when they realize that the next day, Friday, is the start of the weekend, is exactly the same.
My weekend was pretty awesome so that deserves a post of its own, so the adventures of my second weekend here coming up!
The weekend: Friday and Saturday
So you think I’ve written the days of the weekend wrong, do you? Nope. Not at all. The weekend here consists of Friday and Saturday instead of Saturday and Sunday, which I think is quite wonderful, and yet I’ve no idea why. Either way, I’ve had two extremely relaxed days where I really haven’t done much other than sitting and reading and eating and drinking liters and liters of water. I literally cannot stop drinking water. Anyways, as I haven’t done much of value for these two days, I’ve decided to dedicate this post to a description of Damascus and my house and things like that.
Thus, first of all, the house: it’s a classic house that consists of a courtyard with rooms all around, and it has two floors. The first floor consists of the courtyard, three rooms, the kitchen, and the bathroom. The second floor has two rooms (I’m on the second floor in one of these rooms) and there are also five little steps up to the roof of the house. You come in from the front door and walk through a small corridor that opens to the courtyard of the house. The courtyard is half covered by a grapevine and the other half is by some kind of cement covering but I don’t really know what it is made up of. Anyways, the first floor of the house is arranged around the courtyard. Immediately once you come out of the corridor, the first door to your right is a room. Right next to this room is the kitchen. There’s a bit of emptiness where there a bunch of plants and whatnot, and you can see the stairs going up to the second floor. On the left wall of the first floor, there’s space for the TV (which one of my housemates just recently bought because the old one didn’t work and had obviously not been used for quite some time. It’s actually sort of hard to tell for how long the old TV hadn’t been used since there’s a lot of dust and sand floating around here, but either way, it just hadn’t been used.) So after the TV, you just keep going and you have these random cement blocks that are covered by a rug and I haven’t yet become curious enough to lift up the rug to check and see if there’s anything substantial underneath the rug, so I’ll update you guys about that once I do check.
So, once you pass the cement blocks, there’s another room right in front of you, and then right next to this room is the bathroom. The bathroom has a toilet that you sit on, it’s not squatty. There’s a bathtub in there as well, and it’s quite clean except because we go in there with our shoes it gets muddy after a while since there’s just so much dust on our shoes and the bathroom floor tends to be wet. Either way though, it’s quite nice. Turn your back to the bathroom, and right in front of you are the stairs to the second floor, and to the left there are actually two other rooms-—one is a classroom that the landlady’s son uses to teach Arabic when he’s around, and there are some stairs going up which lead to another room.
Now, once you go up the stairs (the ones in front of you, not the ones leading to the room), the only things you’re going to find are the two rooms and there’s also a laundry line which I’m pretty sure I’ll be using that one because it puts the clothes right out in the sun so they’ll dry quicker. The two rooms are right next to each other, and the room in front of you when you get up the stairs is that of a housemate, and the room right next to it is mine! It’s quite nice, large, and has high ceilings so I feel like I have a lot of space. In my room there’s a bed, a closet, a desk with a mirror on it which I don’t use except to put my water and cell phone on when I go to bed, and then another table which I use more often. I also have a window that I tend to keep open while I’m in the house so that the room gets air. Despite being on the second floor the room doesn’t get very hot, especially when I keep the window open, but I do have an air conditioner. I used it the first night I spent in the house, but after that I just didn’t need to use it because the weather’s been so nice and cool and windy. The wind is a wee bit dangerous for the clothes, but hey, you win some, you lose some.
The way the room is arranged is as such: you come in through the door, and the window is to your left, and the little desk is right in front of the window. There’s a small sofa right after the table, and then there’s the bed. To your right is the closet, and after the closet you have the other desk thing, which, like I said, I just don’t feel the need to use. It’s a really nice room, but most of my time I spend downstairs in the courtyard area.
The house is nice in general, it’s not hugely taken care of or maintained, but there’s a person who comes in every week to do the cleaning and stuff so that’s nice. And they’re really helpful when it comes to installing and moving things about so it’s okay.
That's it in general for the house. As for Damascus, let me just get straight to the point and state it very succinctly: it is exactly like Istanbul, maybe less well-arranged, and Arabic instead of Turkish is heard on the streets. Otherwise, I swear I'm simply walking around a big city in Turkey unable to understand all of the conversations going on around me since my colloquial Arabic is pretty much next to non-existent. Damascus is also obviously older than any other city on earth so you kind of have to multiply the Istanbul effect of walking on history by 10 I think which should get you to the correct ratio of the history level of the city.
Anyways, Damascus a little bit more in general. Its actually quite small. I don't know why but it seemed absolutely huge when I was looking at the map and then I realized I could walk most places in less than half an hour, 45 minutes if I was being slow.
I can't help but be comparative right now though, so some comparisons and similarities between here and Turkey. Traffic: completely the same. Horns honk the entire time, cars/buses/minibuses/microbuses/taxis don't care about pedestrians, or bugs, as I've decided to refer to us humans who walk. Its really interesting as well but taxis and microbuses honk at whatever they see moving essentially. Whether they're empty or not, they see someone walking, they honk. Its amazing. People: friendly and helpful, elhamdulillah. The men are also the same as in Turkey where they pretty much stare at you for being a woman. White people might blend in a little bit more in Turkey so I get more attention here for the white color of my skin, but its not that bad. Nobody acts on the looks they give so really, everything is good. Damascus is quite the safe place elhamdulillah.
That's all the similarities I can come up with right now, but I'll be sure to update the similarities soon as I remember them. For now, look out for the next post about the start of school! :) Indeed. Even in Damascus, I have managed a summer school. And, for all intents and purposes, its been good. :)
Thus, first of all, the house: it’s a classic house that consists of a courtyard with rooms all around, and it has two floors. The first floor consists of the courtyard, three rooms, the kitchen, and the bathroom. The second floor has two rooms (I’m on the second floor in one of these rooms) and there are also five little steps up to the roof of the house. You come in from the front door and walk through a small corridor that opens to the courtyard of the house. The courtyard is half covered by a grapevine and the other half is by some kind of cement covering but I don’t really know what it is made up of. Anyways, the first floor of the house is arranged around the courtyard. Immediately once you come out of the corridor, the first door to your right is a room. Right next to this room is the kitchen. There’s a bit of emptiness where there a bunch of plants and whatnot, and you can see the stairs going up to the second floor. On the left wall of the first floor, there’s space for the TV (which one of my housemates just recently bought because the old one didn’t work and had obviously not been used for quite some time. It’s actually sort of hard to tell for how long the old TV hadn’t been used since there’s a lot of dust and sand floating around here, but either way, it just hadn’t been used.) So after the TV, you just keep going and you have these random cement blocks that are covered by a rug and I haven’t yet become curious enough to lift up the rug to check and see if there’s anything substantial underneath the rug, so I’ll update you guys about that once I do check.
So, once you pass the cement blocks, there’s another room right in front of you, and then right next to this room is the bathroom. The bathroom has a toilet that you sit on, it’s not squatty. There’s a bathtub in there as well, and it’s quite clean except because we go in there with our shoes it gets muddy after a while since there’s just so much dust on our shoes and the bathroom floor tends to be wet. Either way though, it’s quite nice. Turn your back to the bathroom, and right in front of you are the stairs to the second floor, and to the left there are actually two other rooms-—one is a classroom that the landlady’s son uses to teach Arabic when he’s around, and there are some stairs going up which lead to another room.
Now, once you go up the stairs (the ones in front of you, not the ones leading to the room), the only things you’re going to find are the two rooms and there’s also a laundry line which I’m pretty sure I’ll be using that one because it puts the clothes right out in the sun so they’ll dry quicker. The two rooms are right next to each other, and the room in front of you when you get up the stairs is that of a housemate, and the room right next to it is mine! It’s quite nice, large, and has high ceilings so I feel like I have a lot of space. In my room there’s a bed, a closet, a desk with a mirror on it which I don’t use except to put my water and cell phone on when I go to bed, and then another table which I use more often. I also have a window that I tend to keep open while I’m in the house so that the room gets air. Despite being on the second floor the room doesn’t get very hot, especially when I keep the window open, but I do have an air conditioner. I used it the first night I spent in the house, but after that I just didn’t need to use it because the weather’s been so nice and cool and windy. The wind is a wee bit dangerous for the clothes, but hey, you win some, you lose some.
The way the room is arranged is as such: you come in through the door, and the window is to your left, and the little desk is right in front of the window. There’s a small sofa right after the table, and then there’s the bed. To your right is the closet, and after the closet you have the other desk thing, which, like I said, I just don’t feel the need to use. It’s a really nice room, but most of my time I spend downstairs in the courtyard area.
The house is nice in general, it’s not hugely taken care of or maintained, but there’s a person who comes in every week to do the cleaning and stuff so that’s nice. And they’re really helpful when it comes to installing and moving things about so it’s okay.
That's it in general for the house. As for Damascus, let me just get straight to the point and state it very succinctly: it is exactly like Istanbul, maybe less well-arranged, and Arabic instead of Turkish is heard on the streets. Otherwise, I swear I'm simply walking around a big city in Turkey unable to understand all of the conversations going on around me since my colloquial Arabic is pretty much next to non-existent. Damascus is also obviously older than any other city on earth so you kind of have to multiply the Istanbul effect of walking on history by 10 I think which should get you to the correct ratio of the history level of the city.
Anyways, Damascus a little bit more in general. Its actually quite small. I don't know why but it seemed absolutely huge when I was looking at the map and then I realized I could walk most places in less than half an hour, 45 minutes if I was being slow.
I can't help but be comparative right now though, so some comparisons and similarities between here and Turkey. Traffic: completely the same. Horns honk the entire time, cars/buses/minibuses/microbuses/taxis don't care about pedestrians, or bugs, as I've decided to refer to us humans who walk. Its really interesting as well but taxis and microbuses honk at whatever they see moving essentially. Whether they're empty or not, they see someone walking, they honk. Its amazing. People: friendly and helpful, elhamdulillah. The men are also the same as in Turkey where they pretty much stare at you for being a woman. White people might blend in a little bit more in Turkey so I get more attention here for the white color of my skin, but its not that bad. Nobody acts on the looks they give so really, everything is good. Damascus is quite the safe place elhamdulillah.
That's all the similarities I can come up with right now, but I'll be sure to update the similarities soon as I remember them. For now, look out for the next post about the start of school! :) Indeed. Even in Damascus, I have managed a summer school. And, for all intents and purposes, its been good. :)
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Negative; Best Smoothie/Juice Stand in Damascus
Today I woke up later than usual and walked to the University of Damascus to visit with friends at the CASA office. I met with them, but they had to meet with their professor for about an hour so I decided to go and get my AIDS test result. So I took a taxi to the clinic. See, to get the test done you go through the main door and they have this little box where you have three options: Syrian, Syrian student, and Non-Syrian student. You hit the appropriate button (non-Syrian student for me obviously) and you get a number and just wait until you’re called. They want a copy of your passport, two photos, and the fee waiver if you’re from the university, and then you get a little slip of paper that has your name on it and a number of some sort and then you present that little piece of paper when you want to get your results.
To get your results, however, you go to the side of the building where they have this large window which they open only after 12 I think so I was lucky when I got there otherwise I’d have had to wait for an hour. But anyways, they open that window, there’s a huge rush to get your little piece of paper to them, and then you just wait for a while. The guy behind the window comes out with a load of papers, and then starts calling out names, and you go get your results when you hear your name. My name here has suddenly become Fatima Zulfikar, because people have trouble pronouncing Yekta here too. Anyways, so I went up and got my results when I heard my name be called—first half of the title of this post explained thus. :) To put it more clearly, the result was negative. I do not have AIDS. Elhamdulillah. Couldn't have been any other way, but I guess it's always good to know.
After getting the results, I walked around Zablatani for a little bit and found a shop that sold water and junk food type stuff and bought some of that so I could get, once again, change, to pay for the trip pay to the university with the taxi. The guy at the shop was really funny, and the taxi driver I had this time was also really nice, I paid him a little bit over the meter but I couldn’t give him as much as he would’ve liked, so I apologized for that and he was nice.
I went to the office for my program (Standard Arabic Regular Courses—SARC) and turned in the AIDS test result. The lady there smiled at me for the first time, which made me happy too. So after turning in the results, I went upstairs to the CASA office and sat waiting for the friends to get done with their business. They’d been here for a year and were planning their trips home so it was hard for them to say goodbye to their teacher and friends, so it took a while but it was also nice to see that goodbyes are really similar no matter where you go in the world.
Once we had left the university, they took me to a juice stand called Abu Shakir (ابو شاكر) which they said made the best smoothies ever, and boy, were they right. The drinks were absolutely amazing, I got a strawberry-banana mix thing and it was soooooo delicious and great and refreshing too, because it was cold. So we just hung out there for a while, drinking our smoothies and then we went our separate ways, them to pack and me to the house to eat some food because I was getting hungry.
I got back home, dropped off stuff, made a sandwich, ate, hung out for a while with my housemates, and then went to the internet café. After the internet café I just walked around for a while and then came back home, sat with the roomies again, and then went to bed.
I feel like I haven’t actually talked about Damascus itself or even my house, so I’ll do that in the next post! Signing off today, Thursday, May 20, 2010.
To get your results, however, you go to the side of the building where they have this large window which they open only after 12 I think so I was lucky when I got there otherwise I’d have had to wait for an hour. But anyways, they open that window, there’s a huge rush to get your little piece of paper to them, and then you just wait for a while. The guy behind the window comes out with a load of papers, and then starts calling out names, and you go get your results when you hear your name. My name here has suddenly become Fatima Zulfikar, because people have trouble pronouncing Yekta here too. Anyways, so I went up and got my results when I heard my name be called—first half of the title of this post explained thus. :) To put it more clearly, the result was negative. I do not have AIDS. Elhamdulillah. Couldn't have been any other way, but I guess it's always good to know.
After getting the results, I walked around Zablatani for a little bit and found a shop that sold water and junk food type stuff and bought some of that so I could get, once again, change, to pay for the trip pay to the university with the taxi. The guy at the shop was really funny, and the taxi driver I had this time was also really nice, I paid him a little bit over the meter but I couldn’t give him as much as he would’ve liked, so I apologized for that and he was nice.
I went to the office for my program (Standard Arabic Regular Courses—SARC) and turned in the AIDS test result. The lady there smiled at me for the first time, which made me happy too. So after turning in the results, I went upstairs to the CASA office and sat waiting for the friends to get done with their business. They’d been here for a year and were planning their trips home so it was hard for them to say goodbye to their teacher and friends, so it took a while but it was also nice to see that goodbyes are really similar no matter where you go in the world.
Once we had left the university, they took me to a juice stand called Abu Shakir (ابو شاكر) which they said made the best smoothies ever, and boy, were they right. The drinks were absolutely amazing, I got a strawberry-banana mix thing and it was soooooo delicious and great and refreshing too, because it was cold. So we just hung out there for a while, drinking our smoothies and then we went our separate ways, them to pack and me to the house to eat some food because I was getting hungry.
I got back home, dropped off stuff, made a sandwich, ate, hung out for a while with my housemates, and then went to the internet café. After the internet café I just walked around for a while and then came back home, sat with the roomies again, and then went to bed.
I feel like I haven’t actually talked about Damascus itself or even my house, so I’ll do that in the next post! Signing off today, Thursday, May 20, 2010.
Things pretty much on a roll now
So I had my placement test today! It went pretty well, I’d been scared of the exam because my roommates had all taken it and said that it was really hard, but none of them had the same classes I’d had and they’d also been away from Arabic for a while whereas I had the advantage of only having been away from Arabic for about two to three weeks, so the exam wasn’t completely horrible. There were five parts to the exam—listening first, then writing, then reading, then grammar, and then a speaking part. By the time of the grammar part of the exam, I was getting a little loopy and so I just started guessing on some of the questions, and really, there’s only so much Arabic grammar that I can remember in the half hour they allowed us to have to answer all the questions. I was able to answer all of the questions in the time given though so I think that’s good.
After the placement test, I went to Souq Sarouja, to the bank, to get money to pay for the classes so I could register for class. Having gotten the money, I went back to the university to pay the money, and learned then that I’d got into Level 6 of the program! Which made me really happy, because level 6 happens to be the highest level in the cheaper set of classes, so, yay. So I paid the money, gave the application and the letter that I’d gotten from the embassy, and thus only had the AIDS test left, which technically I was supposed to get today but the lady said I could just turn it in tomorrow so I’m going to do that insha’allah.
Having turned in almost everything, I ran back to the house because I was going to meet with the landlady for my house at 2 pm. She didn’t come, so I just took nap for a while and then went shopping again for some necessities and also for fruit and vegetables. I also figured out where to get bread, and the old man who works there and I have hit it off so it’s good.
I walked back to the house afterwards, dropped off the stuff, and then went to the internet café to talk to my parents and also to check email. I’m meeting with some friends from the past tomorrow insha’allah, so more adventures to come tomorrow!
I had to take taxis today, again, and that just annoyed me, as per usual. The first taxi I took didn’t even turn on its meter, but I knew how much it would be so I just gave the guy 50 lira, and what does he do? Turns around and asks for more, at which point I just said “Look, I’m sorry, I don’t have any more money, I’m going to the bank right now to get money” and then he had to say okay fine. After getting money from the bank, I walked to the hotel because I didn’t have any change, and that is just annoying when banks don’t give you anything smaller than 500 lira and taxi drivers don’t give you your change either so it doesn’t make sense to hand them a 500 lira. So I complained about this to the lady at the reception, and she agreed sort of but she’s Syrian so she doesn’t exactly suffer from the same constraints placed on foreigners. However, the second taxi driver I had was an absolutely wonderfully pleasant surprise. I was taking this taxi from Souq Sarouja to the university again, and when we got to the university, the meter read 23 lira, so I just gave the guy 50 lira because that’s what you do. What happened next made my jaw drop. He told me to wait, put his hand in the money box, and GAVE ME CHANGE. I was bowled over. Completely surprised. And absolutely happy to have been proven wrong with regards to Syrian taxi drivers.
Hokay. A little bit of an unorganized post, but that’s it for today, May 19, 2010. See you all soon!
After the placement test, I went to Souq Sarouja, to the bank, to get money to pay for the classes so I could register for class. Having gotten the money, I went back to the university to pay the money, and learned then that I’d got into Level 6 of the program! Which made me really happy, because level 6 happens to be the highest level in the cheaper set of classes, so, yay. So I paid the money, gave the application and the letter that I’d gotten from the embassy, and thus only had the AIDS test left, which technically I was supposed to get today but the lady said I could just turn it in tomorrow so I’m going to do that insha’allah.
Having turned in almost everything, I ran back to the house because I was going to meet with the landlady for my house at 2 pm. She didn’t come, so I just took nap for a while and then went shopping again for some necessities and also for fruit and vegetables. I also figured out where to get bread, and the old man who works there and I have hit it off so it’s good.
I walked back to the house afterwards, dropped off the stuff, and then went to the internet café to talk to my parents and also to check email. I’m meeting with some friends from the past tomorrow insha’allah, so more adventures to come tomorrow!
I had to take taxis today, again, and that just annoyed me, as per usual. The first taxi I took didn’t even turn on its meter, but I knew how much it would be so I just gave the guy 50 lira, and what does he do? Turns around and asks for more, at which point I just said “Look, I’m sorry, I don’t have any more money, I’m going to the bank right now to get money” and then he had to say okay fine. After getting money from the bank, I walked to the hotel because I didn’t have any change, and that is just annoying when banks don’t give you anything smaller than 500 lira and taxi drivers don’t give you your change either so it doesn’t make sense to hand them a 500 lira. So I complained about this to the lady at the reception, and she agreed sort of but she’s Syrian so she doesn’t exactly suffer from the same constraints placed on foreigners. However, the second taxi driver I had was an absolutely wonderfully pleasant surprise. I was taking this taxi from Souq Sarouja to the university again, and when we got to the university, the meter read 23 lira, so I just gave the guy 50 lira because that’s what you do. What happened next made my jaw drop. He told me to wait, put his hand in the money box, and GAVE ME CHANGE. I was bowled over. Completely surprised. And absolutely happy to have been proven wrong with regards to Syrian taxi drivers.
Hokay. A little bit of an unorganized post, but that’s it for today, May 19, 2010. See you all soon!
Getting things accomplished
So today has gone much better with respect to getting things done. I had originally planned on going to the Turkish Embassy first, then the university, then the AIDS clinic, but I decided to switch up the order, and went to the University first, where I got my AIDS test fee waiver (oh, about the AIDS test—its required of everyone, but especially of foreigners, and usually it costs money but since I have to do it for the university they give a little document thing that allows me to get the test without having to pay) and the application for the program. As a part of my “be nice to your nose” program, I’d taken a taxi to the university, which got me to the gate of the university that I needed to go to, which was good. There’s a large road between the university and where the taxi dropped me off, but there’s an underground tunnel where they sell stationery and books and notebooks and whatnot, so you just walk through that and you get to the main gate of the university. Piece of cake, when you have a better idea of where you need to go. I also scheduled to take the placement exam the next day at 10 am, which you have to pay 500 lira for.
After getting the application and the fee waiver and scheduling the placement test, I went to the AIDS clinic, and they took some blood and then told me to come back the next day for the results. After that being done, I went to the Turkish Embassy, again with a taxi, and gave them my passport and told them I needed this letter for the university. They told me to come back at 3 pm to pick up the letter and my passport, so I decided that instead of going back to where I live, I would just hang out in the area. So I was just walking around, and I ran across a mall, so I just went in and walked around and found a café and sat down and hung out there for about an hour where I ate and drank coffee. It was fun. I left there and walked around some more and saw a park, so I just sat there until it was time to go to the embassy to pick up the letter and the passport and read my book (which is again, Elif Shafak’s Forty Rules of Love—definitely recommend it). I picked up the letter and whatnot, and then I walked back to my place and dropped off my stuff and went shopping.
I came back and put away the stuff I’d bought in the fridge, and then went to the internet café where I talked with my mom and dad over Skype.
My phone came back, by the way, so that’s been solved as well. The reason for it not working hasn’t been solved still but at least its back, elhamdulillah.
So I used a total of three taxis today, which began to piss me off somewhat because they just ask you for so much money. The first two taxis I used were really nice, to their credit, and they used the meter so I just paid them a little bit over the amount in the meter as that’s what you’re expected to do, and I’m pretty sure due to inflation and whatnot it works out fine since they don’t adjust the meter to fit, so I’m okay with that. But the third taxi driver? We went quite a way from Zablatani (زبلطاني) to where the Turkish embassy is located, and the meter said 72.50 lira, so I gave the guy 75 lira, and he got pissed off at me and said that in Syria they always give 100 lira when it’s at that amount, which isn’t actually true. So I just said okay fine and gave him the money, but it was just really annoying for him to get mad at me. Taught me my lesson though, I’ll obviously always be overpaying no matter what. And I'm going to try and use the taxis as little as is possible, insha'allah. Everybody has to make a living, which I get, but I have a budget too yo.
That was it pretty much for this day, May 18, 2010. Tomorrow it’s my placement exam, so we’ll see how that goes. Insha’allah kheir!
After getting the application and the fee waiver and scheduling the placement test, I went to the AIDS clinic, and they took some blood and then told me to come back the next day for the results. After that being done, I went to the Turkish Embassy, again with a taxi, and gave them my passport and told them I needed this letter for the university. They told me to come back at 3 pm to pick up the letter and my passport, so I decided that instead of going back to where I live, I would just hang out in the area. So I was just walking around, and I ran across a mall, so I just went in and walked around and found a café and sat down and hung out there for about an hour where I ate and drank coffee. It was fun. I left there and walked around some more and saw a park, so I just sat there until it was time to go to the embassy to pick up the letter and the passport and read my book (which is again, Elif Shafak’s Forty Rules of Love—definitely recommend it). I picked up the letter and whatnot, and then I walked back to my place and dropped off my stuff and went shopping.
I came back and put away the stuff I’d bought in the fridge, and then went to the internet café where I talked with my mom and dad over Skype.
My phone came back, by the way, so that’s been solved as well. The reason for it not working hasn’t been solved still but at least its back, elhamdulillah.
So I used a total of three taxis today, which began to piss me off somewhat because they just ask you for so much money. The first two taxis I used were really nice, to their credit, and they used the meter so I just paid them a little bit over the amount in the meter as that’s what you’re expected to do, and I’m pretty sure due to inflation and whatnot it works out fine since they don’t adjust the meter to fit, so I’m okay with that. But the third taxi driver? We went quite a way from Zablatani (زبلطاني) to where the Turkish embassy is located, and the meter said 72.50 lira, so I gave the guy 75 lira, and he got pissed off at me and said that in Syria they always give 100 lira when it’s at that amount, which isn’t actually true. So I just said okay fine and gave him the money, but it was just really annoying for him to get mad at me. Taught me my lesson though, I’ll obviously always be overpaying no matter what. And I'm going to try and use the taxis as little as is possible, insha'allah. Everybody has to make a living, which I get, but I have a budget too yo.
That was it pretty much for this day, May 18, 2010. Tomorrow it’s my placement exam, so we’ll see how that goes. Insha’allah kheir!
Monday, May 17, 2010
First day and a half in Damascus
It was pretty amazing, but I actually managed to get more done during the half day then I did during the full day, but hey, things just happen that way sometimes.
So I got into Damascus at around 16:30 (yay for 24-hour systems, they make so much more sense), and went to my hotel, Al-Haramain. I’d actually had my first experience with Arabic in the airport when I called them to ask to reserve a room, which turned out to be a really good idea because they only had one room left, which I took. Immediately when I walked into the hotel the guy at the reception asked me if I would like to see a room and I said “sure!” so once I put my stuff down in my room, the guy and his friend took me to the house with the room and I just looked around. It’s pretty close to the university in an area called Souq Sarouja, and is pretty quiet except for when there’s construction. They’re putting in actual roads (insha’allah) so they have construction going on Sunday-Thursday (note on the weekend here: its Friday and Saturday, not Saturday and Sunday. This also makes more sense to me but I haven’t yet figured out why I like it), but only from sometime in the morning until about 2 or 3 pm, which isn’t that bad since during most of that time I won’t even be in the house due to classes.
Anyways, so I saw the room, went back to the hotel, and asked if I could be shown the way to a bank. Turned out the woman at the reception desk also needed to go, and the guy that had helped me out in the beginning with the room also came so that I wouldn’t get lost and could make it back to the hotel safe. So we set off together. I got money from the bank, then went with the guy to a shop dealing with SIM cards and phone issues in general and bought a SIM card, so I now have a phone that works here. There was some trouble with it at the end of the full day, but elhamdulillah that got fixed so now it’s back in operation. After the phone business was taken care of, I went to an internet café, which I’m pretty sure is going to become my permanent internet café, although it may be too early to decide, where I spoke with my mom and dad through Skype. What a wonderful invention that Skype.
After that I went back to the hotel, put down some of the stuff I’d been carrying and just decided to walk around, and was going towards some random destination through a small park with what I’m still assuming is the ruins of a hammam in the middle of it (yes, I still haven’t been able to figure it out, mostly because it just seems really awkward to walk around the place half a dozen times with all the people in the park looking at you. And I already have this big sign on my forehead that just blares “FOREIGNER” so I’m trying to keep on the down-low; why the blaze you might ask well its due to my white skin that you don't see too often down here unless it is a tourist. or foreign student) when I once again came across the guy who had helped me out in the afternoon. We walked towards the Souq al-Hamidiyya, which I was really pleasantly surprised to find that it was close as my grandmother, who visited Damascus and other important places in Syria like Palmyra and Homs and Hama, had said that I should definitely go walk through it. Amazingly enough, it was exactly like walking through the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul, except this one was actually wider and I didn’t get hassled as much by the sellers; they weren’t yelling out in twenty different languages trying to catch my attention.
We walked through the Souq al-Hamidiyya, and when we walked out of the end of the souq, I saw the Umayyad Mosque, which I didn’t go into, but I walked by it. I’m really excited about going to visit the Mosque, not only because it’s just such a beautiful place, but also because Salah ad-Din’s tomb is in a corner of the mosque. A random sidenote: for those of you who haven’t watched Kingdom of Heaven, I highly recommend it. If you don’t like war movies don’t watch it, but I really liked it, especially the last scene where it shows Salah ad-Din picking up a fallen cross and placing it on a table. Respect.
So we just walked through the old part of the city, and it was really nice. Peaceful, almost, despite the noise of the cars once we got out of the old city and towards the road and despite all the people, but it was nice. Essentially it was just like walking around in Turkey, with the only difference being that people around me were speaking Arabic and I couldn’t always understand what they were saying.
After walking around, we went back to the hotel, and I fell in bed but couldn’t go to sleep because it was so hot despite the fan whirling about. So I decided to sit up and read a book, and this is where one exciting thing happened—there hadn’t been any problems with the bed when I lay down on it, but when I sat up and reached over to my bag to take out my book (Elif Shafak’s Forty Rules of Love by the way, definitely read it if you have time), the bed sort of just went “graaccckkkk” and went down, but at an angle, so it was slanted. I was a little weirded out, and I just kept on cracking up and laughing because the bed had been completely fine when I lay down, but then I sat and it broke. Too funny. Well, after that exciting little adventure with the bed, I sat (again, but this time nothing happened) and read for a while, and when I couldn’t keep my eyes open anymore I lay down (slanted, but it worked out better for some reason) and slept.
When I woke up, I went downstairs to have breakfast (egg, bread, jam, butter, olives, plums, and tea) and then asked for directions to the University of Damascus. It took me about forty-five minutes to walk there mostly because I wasn’t entirely sure I knew where I was going, and I asked for directions a couple of times, but eventually I made it to the university (and yes, I asked for directions in Arabic. Fusha, but they answered in aamiyah, but I was still able to understand. I think I might come back to America extremely adept at Charades). Little did I know that the real adventure was starting now.
I went in through the gate and into the building that had “كلية الادآب”written on it, thinking that was where I needed to go. After walking around much and asking where I could register and where the building and people of the program were and not getting an answer that matched from any two people, I gave up and decided to go check out the Turkish embassy to see if I could get the letter I needed to register for the class. So I walked over to the assumed location of the Turkish embassy, and to my horror, the building was completely closed and looked as if it hadn’t been taken care of in ages, which was just really weird because Turkey and Syria have pretty good relations now—for example, they’ve lifted the visa on travel between the two countries. Pretty depressed by this time, I went back to the hotel and moved out to the room that I’d seen during the half day, and it was then that a truly funny coincidence occurred and was pretty much the highlight of my day. I walked into the house, put my stuff down, paid the guy the rent for the month (10,000 Syrian pounds, or lira, as the money is known here, which is around $200-$300, I think), and then went downstairs to meet the roommates that were there, and it turned out that the girl who’s staying in the house is actually a friend that had been mentioned by another friend of mine. Such a small world.
After dealing with the stuff in the house, I went out to the bank again because I needed money, and after getting money I went to the hotel to meet with a friend from UNC who’s also here to do Arabic language study at the University of Damascus, who had much better success with the registration process than I did, so it was great to listen to him and his advice as I got the information I needed—the right information this time. The guy who’d shown me the house had also mentioned that there was a Turkish guy who was here and they’d mentioned that I was here and a Turk and could help this guy out, so I met with him as well in the hotel, and from him I learned the place of the Turkish embassy. Apparently they’d moved and the guy that had given me directions only knew the old place.
So after this pretty unsuccessful day in getting things done, I went back to my room and started to put things in their places. And that was when the defining moment of the day happened—as I had been expecting for a while, my nose started to bleed. Non-stop. I don’t mind nosebleeds, I’m used to them since I tend to get them especially when it’s hot, and this was just obviously going to happen because I’d been walking around all day, it had been hot, etc. so I was like yeah, this was meant to happen. After a while, once it seemed like it was sort of stopping, I went downstairs and took a shower (heaven. There’s really nothing like feeling clean) and then made a huge mistake—I blew my nose. That just got the bleeding started again. Copious amounts of blood, might I add, and it just wouldn’t stop. So I freaked out, which didn’t help with stopping the bleeding at all. Some advice: do not freak out when you have a nosebleed that just won’t stop. Then it really won’t stop. Stay calm, stay cool, and just keep that nose stuffed with Kleenex or cotton balls if you have them since they actually work better to stop the bleeding.
Having freaked out, however, I called my mom, who told me to calm down and call the friend from UNC who’s also here, which I did, and he was really nice and came over with the guy from the hotel who had been really helpful up till now, who asked me if I would like to see a doctor, and I just said sure so he went back out and brought the hotel doctor with him in like five-ten minutes. The doctor did some general check stuff and told me to press on the root of my nose to stop the bleeding, and also told me to get a lot of vitamin C, so the guy from the hotel ran out and bought oranges. The doctor, whose name I didn’t get unfortunately, watched me eat two of the oranges, and then said that I should be okay and that it was most likely because of the heat and all the walking I’d done. I paid him 1,000 Syrian pounds, and then he left.
In my defense, this is the first time I’m by myself in a country that I’ve never been to before, and I can sort of speak the language, but not as well as I would like to be able to speak it of course, and I speak fusha, not the colloquial, which I only understand half of, or less than half of, when I hear it spoken. That will insha’allah improve as time goes on, but at this point of time, I still don’t understand it very well. So yeah, I freaked out. After calling my mom though I managed to calm down, and by the time the doctor had come and gone I was fine. My nose stopped bleeding while the doctor was here, but he still gave me some of the cotton balls he had which I stuffed up my nose. This helped me a lot with avoiding the gazes of all the guys that were out in the streets at this time, because I needed to go to the hotel as it turned out that my phone wasn’t working properly.
The phone came back to the real world the next day, and I slept okay during the night, and now I’m simply paranoid about my nose so I’ve been taking better care of it than I’ve ever done before, but it should be getting better by now since I’ve been getting more used to the heat. And just my luck, it hasn’t actually been all that hot when I’ve been out walking about so that’s been good. I’ve actually needed the light jacket I brought with me some of the time.
That’s it for the one and a half day I’ve been here—May 16 and 17, 2010! More to come tomorrow insha’allah!
So I got into Damascus at around 16:30 (yay for 24-hour systems, they make so much more sense), and went to my hotel, Al-Haramain. I’d actually had my first experience with Arabic in the airport when I called them to ask to reserve a room, which turned out to be a really good idea because they only had one room left, which I took. Immediately when I walked into the hotel the guy at the reception asked me if I would like to see a room and I said “sure!” so once I put my stuff down in my room, the guy and his friend took me to the house with the room and I just looked around. It’s pretty close to the university in an area called Souq Sarouja, and is pretty quiet except for when there’s construction. They’re putting in actual roads (insha’allah) so they have construction going on Sunday-Thursday (note on the weekend here: its Friday and Saturday, not Saturday and Sunday. This also makes more sense to me but I haven’t yet figured out why I like it), but only from sometime in the morning until about 2 or 3 pm, which isn’t that bad since during most of that time I won’t even be in the house due to classes.
Anyways, so I saw the room, went back to the hotel, and asked if I could be shown the way to a bank. Turned out the woman at the reception desk also needed to go, and the guy that had helped me out in the beginning with the room also came so that I wouldn’t get lost and could make it back to the hotel safe. So we set off together. I got money from the bank, then went with the guy to a shop dealing with SIM cards and phone issues in general and bought a SIM card, so I now have a phone that works here. There was some trouble with it at the end of the full day, but elhamdulillah that got fixed so now it’s back in operation. After the phone business was taken care of, I went to an internet café, which I’m pretty sure is going to become my permanent internet café, although it may be too early to decide, where I spoke with my mom and dad through Skype. What a wonderful invention that Skype.
After that I went back to the hotel, put down some of the stuff I’d been carrying and just decided to walk around, and was going towards some random destination through a small park with what I’m still assuming is the ruins of a hammam in the middle of it (yes, I still haven’t been able to figure it out, mostly because it just seems really awkward to walk around the place half a dozen times with all the people in the park looking at you. And I already have this big sign on my forehead that just blares “FOREIGNER” so I’m trying to keep on the down-low; why the blaze you might ask well its due to my white skin that you don't see too often down here unless it is a tourist. or foreign student) when I once again came across the guy who had helped me out in the afternoon. We walked towards the Souq al-Hamidiyya, which I was really pleasantly surprised to find that it was close as my grandmother, who visited Damascus and other important places in Syria like Palmyra and Homs and Hama, had said that I should definitely go walk through it. Amazingly enough, it was exactly like walking through the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul, except this one was actually wider and I didn’t get hassled as much by the sellers; they weren’t yelling out in twenty different languages trying to catch my attention.
We walked through the Souq al-Hamidiyya, and when we walked out of the end of the souq, I saw the Umayyad Mosque, which I didn’t go into, but I walked by it. I’m really excited about going to visit the Mosque, not only because it’s just such a beautiful place, but also because Salah ad-Din’s tomb is in a corner of the mosque. A random sidenote: for those of you who haven’t watched Kingdom of Heaven, I highly recommend it. If you don’t like war movies don’t watch it, but I really liked it, especially the last scene where it shows Salah ad-Din picking up a fallen cross and placing it on a table. Respect.
So we just walked through the old part of the city, and it was really nice. Peaceful, almost, despite the noise of the cars once we got out of the old city and towards the road and despite all the people, but it was nice. Essentially it was just like walking around in Turkey, with the only difference being that people around me were speaking Arabic and I couldn’t always understand what they were saying.
After walking around, we went back to the hotel, and I fell in bed but couldn’t go to sleep because it was so hot despite the fan whirling about. So I decided to sit up and read a book, and this is where one exciting thing happened—there hadn’t been any problems with the bed when I lay down on it, but when I sat up and reached over to my bag to take out my book (Elif Shafak’s Forty Rules of Love by the way, definitely read it if you have time), the bed sort of just went “graaccckkkk” and went down, but at an angle, so it was slanted. I was a little weirded out, and I just kept on cracking up and laughing because the bed had been completely fine when I lay down, but then I sat and it broke. Too funny. Well, after that exciting little adventure with the bed, I sat (again, but this time nothing happened) and read for a while, and when I couldn’t keep my eyes open anymore I lay down (slanted, but it worked out better for some reason) and slept.
When I woke up, I went downstairs to have breakfast (egg, bread, jam, butter, olives, plums, and tea) and then asked for directions to the University of Damascus. It took me about forty-five minutes to walk there mostly because I wasn’t entirely sure I knew where I was going, and I asked for directions a couple of times, but eventually I made it to the university (and yes, I asked for directions in Arabic. Fusha, but they answered in aamiyah, but I was still able to understand. I think I might come back to America extremely adept at Charades). Little did I know that the real adventure was starting now.
I went in through the gate and into the building that had “كلية الادآب”written on it, thinking that was where I needed to go. After walking around much and asking where I could register and where the building and people of the program were and not getting an answer that matched from any two people, I gave up and decided to go check out the Turkish embassy to see if I could get the letter I needed to register for the class. So I walked over to the assumed location of the Turkish embassy, and to my horror, the building was completely closed and looked as if it hadn’t been taken care of in ages, which was just really weird because Turkey and Syria have pretty good relations now—for example, they’ve lifted the visa on travel between the two countries. Pretty depressed by this time, I went back to the hotel and moved out to the room that I’d seen during the half day, and it was then that a truly funny coincidence occurred and was pretty much the highlight of my day. I walked into the house, put my stuff down, paid the guy the rent for the month (10,000 Syrian pounds, or lira, as the money is known here, which is around $200-$300, I think), and then went downstairs to meet the roommates that were there, and it turned out that the girl who’s staying in the house is actually a friend that had been mentioned by another friend of mine. Such a small world.
After dealing with the stuff in the house, I went out to the bank again because I needed money, and after getting money I went to the hotel to meet with a friend from UNC who’s also here to do Arabic language study at the University of Damascus, who had much better success with the registration process than I did, so it was great to listen to him and his advice as I got the information I needed—the right information this time. The guy who’d shown me the house had also mentioned that there was a Turkish guy who was here and they’d mentioned that I was here and a Turk and could help this guy out, so I met with him as well in the hotel, and from him I learned the place of the Turkish embassy. Apparently they’d moved and the guy that had given me directions only knew the old place.
So after this pretty unsuccessful day in getting things done, I went back to my room and started to put things in their places. And that was when the defining moment of the day happened—as I had been expecting for a while, my nose started to bleed. Non-stop. I don’t mind nosebleeds, I’m used to them since I tend to get them especially when it’s hot, and this was just obviously going to happen because I’d been walking around all day, it had been hot, etc. so I was like yeah, this was meant to happen. After a while, once it seemed like it was sort of stopping, I went downstairs and took a shower (heaven. There’s really nothing like feeling clean) and then made a huge mistake—I blew my nose. That just got the bleeding started again. Copious amounts of blood, might I add, and it just wouldn’t stop. So I freaked out, which didn’t help with stopping the bleeding at all. Some advice: do not freak out when you have a nosebleed that just won’t stop. Then it really won’t stop. Stay calm, stay cool, and just keep that nose stuffed with Kleenex or cotton balls if you have them since they actually work better to stop the bleeding.
Having freaked out, however, I called my mom, who told me to calm down and call the friend from UNC who’s also here, which I did, and he was really nice and came over with the guy from the hotel who had been really helpful up till now, who asked me if I would like to see a doctor, and I just said sure so he went back out and brought the hotel doctor with him in like five-ten minutes. The doctor did some general check stuff and told me to press on the root of my nose to stop the bleeding, and also told me to get a lot of vitamin C, so the guy from the hotel ran out and bought oranges. The doctor, whose name I didn’t get unfortunately, watched me eat two of the oranges, and then said that I should be okay and that it was most likely because of the heat and all the walking I’d done. I paid him 1,000 Syrian pounds, and then he left.
In my defense, this is the first time I’m by myself in a country that I’ve never been to before, and I can sort of speak the language, but not as well as I would like to be able to speak it of course, and I speak fusha, not the colloquial, which I only understand half of, or less than half of, when I hear it spoken. That will insha’allah improve as time goes on, but at this point of time, I still don’t understand it very well. So yeah, I freaked out. After calling my mom though I managed to calm down, and by the time the doctor had come and gone I was fine. My nose stopped bleeding while the doctor was here, but he still gave me some of the cotton balls he had which I stuffed up my nose. This helped me a lot with avoiding the gazes of all the guys that were out in the streets at this time, because I needed to go to the hotel as it turned out that my phone wasn’t working properly.
The phone came back to the real world the next day, and I slept okay during the night, and now I’m simply paranoid about my nose so I’ve been taking better care of it than I’ve ever done before, but it should be getting better by now since I’ve been getting more used to the heat. And just my luck, it hasn’t actually been all that hot when I’ve been out walking about so that’s been good. I’ve actually needed the light jacket I brought with me some of the time.
That’s it for the one and a half day I’ve been here—May 16 and 17, 2010! More to come tomorrow insha’allah!
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