A visa for Syria does not need to be obtained in advance – it can be placed in your passport at the border or at the airport for a small fee ($20), taking relatively little time. Single Russian women skillfully exploit this loophole in the law, flooding Damascus airport with their bodies in search of rich Arab husbands. It's simply amazing how many of them we have – single, yearning, aged 17 to 30, dyed blonde and greedy for foreign affection. They are not let into Europe, they are refused Schengen visas, even in Egyptian airports they are looked at with suspicion, and into Syria and Lebanon they may simply not be allowed at all. Single young women from the former Soviet Union are not favored here. However, seeing the threatening glint of my glasses behind my wife's back, the Syrian border guards, who had been interested in my spouse, decided not to argue too much.
It was three in the morning local time, after forty minutes spent in line at the currency exchange office. The money changer inquired into each visitor's personal life details, which gave him great pleasure. So my advice to you – upon arrival, don't rush to passport control as all Russian-speaking tourists do; instead, get in line for currency exchange, because the visa fee is only accepted in Syrian pounds.
In Damascus, we stayed at the "cult" hotel "Sultan", which, despite its cult status, turned out to be of fairly good quality (for its $27). Here we first got acquainted with the national Syrian breakfast: pita bread, jam, butter, kefir, tea, coffee. This breakfast is served without the slightest change in every single hotel we encountered in Syria and later in Lebanon, as if they had been forced to memorize the recipe. It's amusing that the waiter will definitely ask you: "Tea or Nescafe?" – thereby providing free promotion for the Nestlé company.
Damascus is the oldest city on Earth. Actually, every city in this region considers itself the oldest. Over the week of our stay, we were modestly reminded of this in Damascus, Aleppo, Byblos, and Baalbek. We didn't argue – after all, it's very difficult to determine which of them is older. That was a long time ago.
What is captivating, however, is not so much antiquity as the fact that layers of civilizations and cultures have created a completely unique flavor of these places. In Damascus, as everywhere in Syria, many of the largest mosques were, in their time, after the Arab conquest, rebuilt from Christian churches, which in turn were founded on the foundations of ancient Roman temples (often continuing the traditions of ancient Near Eastern pagan sanctuaries). That is, on the site of, say, the Great Mosque of Damascus once stood the temple of the Aramean god Bel. The Romans came and rebuilt it as a temple to Jupiter, surrounding it with columns out of habit. Byzantine Christians kept the columns but added a few new trends of the era and began to worship Jesus here – right up until the Muslims arrived. All they had to do was add minarets; everything else remained standing.
Even today, the mosque looks in many ways like a Byzantine basilica: on the outer walls, paintings of grasses, trees, and palaces have been preserved. Islam forbids depicting the creations of human hands, but in Damascus few care about that, because what matters here is the continuity of eras, and people are accustomed to going to the same place for millennia to pray to God – and to which one is not so important.
Thus, the temples of Syria have preserved all the charm of the centuries. In the Great Mosque, the head of John the Baptist is buried (it cannot be visually identified), and both Christians and Muslims come here to pray – the latter call him the Prophet Yahya. Next to the mosque is buried the famous Saladin, who greatly vexed the Crusaders, and a little further away, in the Zahiriyya Madrasa, is his worthy successor Baybars, who finally expelled the Christians from the Holy Land. Both are highly revered in Syria.
And a few kilometers from the city center stands the giant, gold-domed Sayyida Zaynab Mosque, one of the shrines for Shiites worldwide. Local Shiites arrive here in dozens of minibuses, but there are even more Iranians here – in black turbans, with women wrapped in black cloaks. The appearance of the mosque itself also has many Iranian traditional elements – blue and green paintings and long, thin minarets, very reminiscent of Samarkand. By the way, in Shiite mosques, men and women enter through different doors.
Apart from religious monuments, there are not very many attractions in Damascus. The city has grown too much since the times when Saladin and Baybars rampaged here. The only curious sight is perhaps the Christian quarter at the eastern gate of the Old City – here, on a small patch, all the confessions of the Christian world have gathered. Maronites, Armenians, Greek Orthodox and Greek Catholics, Syrian Catholics and Protestants – they all managed to build their churches here and coexist peacefully, united by a common desire to survive in a Muslim environment. Unfortunately, most churches open only for services and are closed the rest of the day.
Overall, many Christians live in Syria. Northwest of Damascus, the towns of Saidnaya and Maaloula are entirely populated by Maronites who have remained there since pre-Muslim times, and are dotted with highly picturesque churches and monasteries. In Saidnaya, an icon is kept that, according to tradition, was painted by Saint Luke himself: Muslims revere it no less than Christians, and both denominations must take off their shoes upon entering, although the Gospel, unlike the Quran, does not prescribe this. Byzantine frescoes and much else have also been preserved there, but the most interesting thing is the appearance of Syrian Christians, their behavior, and the prayers written in Arabic on the old frescoes. In Maaloula, however, the ancient Aramaic language has also been preserved to this day, of which the town's residents are very proud, because Christ himself spoke Aramaic, for whom Hebrew was something like Church Slavonic is for us.
To be continued.