from the 902 to the 963.
DAM! I'm in Syria. Here in ash-Sham I'm having little adventures in Arabic several times a day. My total lack of a decent vocabulary continually trips me up, but that also means that every time I get something right it's like a little moral victory. This morning I rehearsed how to say "The Canadian Embassy" in decently colloquial fashion: es-safaara al-kanadiyye. My perfect pronunciation was something of a Pyrrhic victory: the cab driver was so convinced that he instantly unleashed a stream of Arabic none of which I understood. It eventually emerged that he didn't know where the embassy was, and took me on a drive to one of the embassy districts where he asked a Syrian officer for directions. After this side-excursion and eventual arrival which involved a spurious turn around the block, he had the nerve to ask for a tip and the further nerve not to make change; I ended up paying double fare as I wasn't in the mood to argue (in a cash-based culture, which entails a constant quest for small change, I experience a recurring minor guilt when I can't make exact payment). But being jacked for the equivalent of a dollar was nothing compared to being jacked for the equivalent of $50 by my own government for them to generate a letter authorizing me to study at Damascus University. But hey, I'm coming from a school that already acclimated me to paying pointless fees for purely bureaucratic reasons (oh snap!).
Just a brief bit about my visit yesterday to the National Museum; the most sublime object in their collection is a little 3" x 1" clay tablet that bears the Ugaritic alphabet, written left to right. It was for teaching aspiring scribes their letters, in scribe school 3400 years ago. That's right, I'm in the country where they invented the f**king alphabet. I got no comeback for that. In Canada we invented hockey and poutine.
I can't imagine any other place but Syria where I could feel so close to the ancient world. They've had time to figure out a thing or two around here. Except for solid net access.
Just a brief bit about my visit yesterday to the National Museum; the most sublime object in their collection is a little 3" x 1" clay tablet that bears the Ugaritic alphabet, written left to right. It was for teaching aspiring scribes their letters, in scribe school 3400 years ago. That's right, I'm in the country where they invented the f**king alphabet. I got no comeback for that. In Canada we invented hockey and poutine.
I can't imagine any other place but Syria where I could feel so close to the ancient world. They've had time to figure out a thing or two around here. Except for solid net access.
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