Old Damacus

The open market in central Damascus showing the ruins of a previous civilization. Is it all gone now?

In 2006, while I was teaching in Tarsus, Turkey, I took a weekend bus trip to Damascus. George W. Bush was president and saber-rattling--there was talk of making the country off-limits for Americans--so I ran down and bought a ticket.

The bus ride was an eye opener. From the eastern Turkish city of Antioch, we drove southeast into Syria along a desert road bordered by a row of trees and not another scintilla of vegetation on the landscape. The wind was blowing so hard a bus full of people bucked around like an empty box. The trees planted in a single row along the highway were bent over from the relentless wind.

The Courtyard of a Damascus Mosque

When we arrived in Damascus the Tour took us to too many mosques, though they are lovely. What I found more interesting was a museum across the street from one of them with a huge banner out front saying: Oldest Alphabet of Human History.
I told the tour guide I was going over there, and he about had a stroke on the sidewalk. Fortunately(or un-), the museum didn't open till the afternoon, so I saw another mosque, admittedly lovely, but I'd rather evidence of human intellect, rather than religion which often seems the source of wars.

 

The next place we went was a Roman bath.

I guess the country was called Arabia then, but count on this, Paris, Germany, Israel or Turkey, anyplace else you go around the Mediterranean, you will find Roman baths, aquaducts, and temples. Busy beavers--they didn't just conquer, they built. We have done as much conquering, I wonder if we are doing as much building.
I once heard and interviewer ask an archeologist during the 1st Gulf War, where would be a good place to have  war so as to avoid destroying antiquities.  He said he couldn't think of one, the place was such an overlay of civilizations.

What I despised about Turkey was photos of Bashar el Assad and his father everywhere. Dictators are nasty and seriously lacking in any sense of shame. They think the people they are willing to barrel bomb should adore them. Makes me sad to wonder what has happened to some of the people in this picture--Are they refugees in Turkey or Germany? Has the soldier in the foreground facilitated the bombing? How many are dead? Maimed? Is the statute of Saladin still proudly riding or in a million pieces on the ground?

Sad to look at these old pix.