summer in the Sham

I grabbed a microbus (minivan kitted out for packing in a max number of passengers) to a town called ad-Dumeir this morning. There's a Roman temple (or something) from the third century CE (probably) that's been substantially excavated and restored.

Finding it was a minor adventure. Yesterday's trip to Maalula was easier at the start because the Maalula minibuses (not to be confused with the microbuses) have their own "garage" (a bus "garage" in Damascus is basically a big confusing parking lot full of buses). This morning at the much, much larger Abbasseen garage I had the challenge of trying to find the proverbial needle. At one point I made the mistake of asking a soldier. They asked to see my passport. I found this level of hassle for a 35-cent bus ride annoying.

Eventually, I found a bus bound for ad-Dumeir and we got rolling. Just to be on the safe side I showed the friendly-but-quiet young man next to me the Arabic text for "ad-Dumeir" in my Lonely Planet; he nodded that this, indeed, was where we were going.

So far so good. But the Lonely Planet steered me wrong, slightly; it refers to the "microbus stop." The young man, whose English was very scant and who seemed too shy to try out Arabic on me, alerted me that we were, indeed, in ad-Dumeir; I couldn't communicate successfully about a "regular stop" or "normal stop". I quickly broke out my Ross Burns guide (glad that I thought to bring it) and realized from its more specific directions that I would need to double back. I got the attention of the driver and hopped off.

Well, what do you expect for 35 cents.

So I had about a 15-minute hike back down the main road, in the sun. Good thing I brought my dorky sunhat.

I found the temple, but there was nobody around to ask about the key to the site. I tried an older man reclining at the back of a produce shop; he was pretty grumpy about being disturbed, and not terribly helpful. It took a little kid to point out to me that the Arabic numerals posted up next to the locked entrance gate were, in fact, a phone number.

"Teeliphoon!"

Duh!

(Quick mention here: you likely realize this already, but the numerals we in the West use and refer to as "Arabic" are not, in fact, the numerals that are used in Arabic. Well, "1" and "9" are pretty similar.)

I had a brief moment of confusion about whether the number would work from my cell-phone-only area code before I realize that the sign's writer had helpfully included the leading zero and area code as well. Good. Now to test my memory of the Arabic numerals.

Got it right on the first guess. With a mix of English and Arabic I managed to indicate that I was at the "temple" and needed the mifteh ("key") for entry; the voice on the other end told me he could come in "five" (khamsa? yes, five) and sure enough, not too many minutes later a motorcycle pulled up and there were a couple more local youths who kept an eye on me while I made my way around the temple remains and shot a bunch of photos.

Regarding the temple itself: the exact origin and original purpose of the building are a bit in doubt. But at one end a Roman arch has been filled up with huge bricks; clearly a later Arab fortification of what was once probably a religious-functional building.

So after a few minutes of poking, prodding, and photographing I walked back to the main road. I tried flagging down a microbus even though it was empty. The driver offered me a direct ride back to town for 300SYP (roughly $6.75 Can); it seemed a bit ridiculous when I could ride the regular run for 15SYP, but the driver was persuasive and I liked the thought of stretching out in the front seat and heading straight back to the city with no stops, so I took him up on it. We were both satisfied with the deal and parted with a warm handshake.

Back here in the city it has cooled off today; down from high to low 30s. That is good because the heat yesterday was making people crazy. Some cases in point:

• When I walked into Bab Touma yesterday, the first thing I saw was a fistfight spilling out into the street, at least 4 men trading blows as a bunch of others tried to restrain them. It was rather awkward. Nobody seemed to be able to land a good punch. So this is the Christian quarter. It made me nostalgic for Spryfield.
• Heading back through the souq, I chose to ignore one of the merchants trying to get my attention, and he ramped up his attempts to get my attention in English the more that I ignored him and concentrated on my pistachio ice cream cone from Bekdach. "Hello... Excuse me!... EXCUSE ME!... IS THAT A NICE ICE CREAM?... IT HAS MOSQUITOES IN IT!"
• Another souq merchant tried to jerk my chain by pretending not to know where Bekdach is (it's on the main strip; at any given time hundreds of people are walking through the souq licking cones from there) and asking me for directions. One of his colleagues came to my rescue and I said "I know, I know he's fooling; it's hot, people get bored." He asked me where I was from, what city, and almost as a gesture of courtesy didn't try to drag me back to his shop. I guess he figured I'd been hassled enough.

People get crazy in traffic, too; I've been asked what that's like here. Basically, there are two rules of traffic here:

1. You watch where the f*!# you are going.
2. There are no other f*!#ing rules.

To put that in a slightly more refined way: any space that you can successfully move into, whether as a pedestrian or as a driver, is yours. Unless you've misjudged the inertia of any other object attempting to claim that space.

I've quickly become accustomed to walking through multiple lanes of moving traffic in order to cross streets. There are some traffic lights here, but there are instances where you have to travel some blocks to find them. So you don't. You cross. And you remember the rules.

The most amusing workaround that I've seen here for traffic jams is the one that the motorcycles use. They use the sidewalks. I'm not even kidding. This gets complicated when one motorcycle wants to pass another one.

Beep! Beep!

Hey buddy! Watch which part of the sidewalk you're driving that thing on!!

That's a rough translation from Arabic, but I think an accurate one.