DAMASCUS
More cafés than carpets
Mirroring changes across the region, the old quarters of the Syrian capital are undergoing a facelift – and it’s not necessarily a bad thing
OLIVER AUGUST
Journalist, author and former Beijing bureau chief for the Times of London, Oliver now lives in old Damascus
If there is one person in the Old City of Damascus who knows what’s going on, it’s my friend Samir. He sells carpets. That’s his job. But most of his days he spends away from his shop adjoining the Omayyad Mosque. Samir is something of a bee, buzzing around the winding ancient lanes, chatting here and exchanging gossip there, pollinating the city’s conversations.
If there is an old Ottoman house for rent somewhere, Samir will know. Equally, if an international celebrity has come to town, like Angelina Jolie did last year, ask Samir where she is eating dinner. And many do ask. Reporters for international news agencies call, and if they have been good customers at his carpet shop, they are richly rewarded.
Samir has spent his life in the narrow lanes of the Old City. At age seven he started repairing carpets in the family shop. When his eyesight was no longer sharp enough for the fine needlework he switched to sales. Wearing glasses and the proud moustache of an elder now, he idles at the Nofra café, where a storyteller in a fez reads every afternoon at five, and muses on recent changes. “There used to be only Nofra,” Samir says. “Now there are more cafés than carpet shops.”
Although he follows life in the Old City day by day, Samir is still amazed by what has happened in the past few years. Since the government relaxed restrictions on private enterprise, the lanes around the Omayyad Mosque have bloomed with restaurants, internet cafes, fashion boutiques and bars with live music. Residents and visitors who are not fortunate enough to have their own Arab-style house with a tiled and shaded courtyard, may now go to Naranj or Opaline or one of the growing number of splendid courtyard restaurants.
Change in the Old City has been good to Samir. He no longer just exchanges gossip during his daily rounds but also money-making tips on real estate. Anyone seeking to let or rent a little part of Syria’s main UNESCO World Heritage Site will come to him. That’s how we met. He found me my small five-room manor off a dead-end alley. Once I moved in, I realised there was an entire community around me made up of clients of Samir. Many are foreigners – diplomats, aid workers, language students.
“Damascus feels like the centre of the world again,” Samir says, “like it was in ancient history.” He worries sometimes that commercial development will destroy the city’s charm. A planned highway may eat up rows of ancient dwellings. But Damascus has survived three millennia so far and the current popular onslaught is nothing compared with, say, the arrival of the Crusaders. |
