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!