gross..

Life may well be a circus* and the world a stage in actuality, but sometimes it seems to me like that circus is a radioactive cesspool and the stage is being put to rather gruesome use by mutant iguanas in a drama of their own creation.. Perhaps I can't claim to have witnessed the strangest occurrence ever to grace the hallowed rubber covered floors of a Damascus microbus (I always trip on those silly floors, as I did on this occasion), and perhaps I can't even really claim that anything outside those buses has particularly cesspool-characteristics (I hope I can't). But I at least witnessed something that inspired in me these rather dismal thoughts. The occurrence was this: I got in to a microbus going toward my neighborhood. There were two young men sitting in the first row, I tripped over the rubber floor pad into the second row. I passed up my money, and we were off. The first time the driver stopped for someone to get in, it sounded like he said "Mu tari'" which seems to mean "I'm not going to the end of the route" but literally translates to "No way", although not in the sense that we use it in English. But it happened that the two people he refused were very young, a little girl and her younger brother. The passenger on the door side took issue with this callous refusal and made it well known. He and the driver started arguing, I really couldn't follow what they were saying, but I think I heard a "The Qur'an tells us…" from the passenger. Soon the driver had pulled over, de-ignited and was at the door arguing face to face with his pious-minded accuser. He gave the passenger his money and told him to get out, leaving two of us with the driver. The other passenger seeming to sense that the right moment had come, got out the open door. On we went, me and this angry man, he not seeming to notice my presence. If the walls of any microbus in Damascus might ever resemble anything other than the complete opposite of a flower, one could rightly have called me a wallflower. But under the circumstances I remained a mere wall-unexplicable-adhesive-remenant. And thus was I camouflaged. For a good 30 seconds. Arriving at a suitable turnaround spot, the driver asked me where I would like to be dropped off, only the Arabic language has a great deal of trouble expressing the conditional mood and I only made out the word "drop off". I dutifully answered, but the response was predictably incomprehensible. So I got out and walked. I know it gets tiring to hear so many microbus stories, but they really are fascinating places, just as you might find a mutant iguana drama troupe a rather remarkable spectacle. Or at least I do. And it's what happens to be most interesting to write about. Not cleaning or purchasing a brain-dead cellphone or trying to unlock my iphone, but the little buses I spend such brief but somehow significant minutes in each day. I've thought since my first ride in one how great it would be if I could just ride around all day interviewing and talking to passengers, conversing with the driver. But finding a driver willing to acquiesce to such a request would defeat the purpose almost. Acquiescence can be so boring. I thought of a good aphorism yesterday that I wanted to hold onto. But as it arrives to most good aphorisms that are actually quite bad or at best mediocre, I've forgotten it, probably forever..

On a more uplifting note, I learned today where Araq, the aniseed flavored brandy that is so popular in Syria, got its name, which means "sweat" in Arabic (you think that's bad, consider the Persian version of Araq, called "Arâgh-e sâgi" - dog's sweat). We owe to the Arabs the invention of the alcohol distillation, which for those of you who are not sure of the chemistry (and I am among you, in all honesty), this involves taking a solution of water and alcohol, like the fermented juice of grapes, and concentrating it by means of burning off the more volatile alcohol and then condensing it at the top of the still, forming little droplets that look like……. sweat.

There's little to report on other matters. My professor is increasingly devout. My lessons are increasingly productive. My new cellphone is increasingly weak-willed. My sleep is increasingly decreased. But today is Thursday, and it's the weekend. So things may change.

I hate to end on a bad note, but I have to mention, in my desperation for some variety in my cheese beyond the highly varied and albeit amusing shapes of its delivery, I bought a brie shaped container that I somehow knew instinctively was cheese, without stopping to question why it was not in a refrigerator, why there was a little boy holding a cracker topped with a disconcertingly triangular piece of creamy substance, or even why it said "processed spreadable cheese" at below the logo of the maniacal boy. By its taste, my guess would be that it was composed of velveeta, cream cheese and american cheese mixed together and reconstituted in pie-piece shaped molds. You may well question my sanity, but I would respond: what desperate traveler in the driest of deserts would not at least begin to run toward the first convincing mirage that met his eyes. You might rightly retort that running for illusory water seeking relief from terminal dehydration is different from accidentally buying a processed cheese pie. Even one composed of eight entirely unnecessary pieces.

On the other hand, I am fairly confident at this point that I will never in my life eat a more perfect orange than I can eat every day here in Damascus. I'm afraid I'm even driven so far beyond my facilities of self-expression as to be forced to invoke the cliché that I had no frickin' clue what oranges really taste like before I ate one here. Seriously. I should mail you some.

Appreciatively, and Perpetually perplexed by the way Syrians always sing "Happy Birthday" in English instead of some Arabic version of the song as they are doing now with great enthusiasm in my neighbor's house,

David

*or was it a circle??