Hello everyone,

I've heard there have been some problems finding the photos I posted yesterday to my blog. If any of you have been successful in finding them, please forward your methodology to the rest of the email list. As I have mentioned before, blogspot is blocked in Syria. You might question the soundness of my logic in using this host site then, but as I have also mentioned, I still have to take "Introduction to Logic" this summer at Towson and furthermore, I think it adds a dimension of excitement otherwise absent in travel blogging to have only intermittent access to my blog. If this seems very silly and rather stupid to you, my sympathies. It is quite silly and even quite stupid in my opinion as well. But nothing of the sort has ever stopped me from doing something.

Take for example, my shopping expedition yesterday, during which I purchased a $12.50 digital radio, manufactured in China for a cost of $3.00 at the most. But it was marked with a price and I did not consider trying to bargain with the shopkeeper, especially when he popped in a battery and began to dance to the music station he had tuned it too. How could I? It was a worthy purchase, though, I think, because now I can further improve my Arabic listening skills by tuning in to the vitriolic sermons that abound on Damascus radio for the benefit of taxi and bus drivers the city over. I also bought a promising book, "The Art of Damascene Cooking" and a chess board, so my tutor and I can play chess at a reduced price, which, he tells me, we may attempt tonight! He needs to beat me, he says.

In other matters, I am about to acquire a cell phone. I literally swore to my tutor that I would do so today. And so I will try. I also have chosen a spot close to the office for Turkish Airlines, so that I may make it there before they close today to discuss a much desired alteration to my itinerary. In sha' Allah, as they say here, "If God wills". We shall see.

I hope you are doing well, and I'm sorry that there is nothing I can do at this point to look for my pictures on the blog, but regardless, I am posting new pictures to it. I hope they will reveal themselves in due course. I have a suggestion in this regard: my profile picture is a photo of part of the Golan Heights which also appears in the "album" I have been posting the new pictures too. So if clicking on this picture, which should be readily visible to all visitors, yields a photo album, you have indeed uncovered these heretofore mislaid pictures. Good luck.

I'll try to find them this afternoon though, accessing the blog from a computer better endowed than my own. Sorry about the confusion.

Talk to you all later on. To those of you I got to talk to at the Browns' Easter gathering, it was wonderful to see and talk with you all. I really hope I'll be doing that in person on May 15th.

Alphabet soup,

David

A Happy Chance

In Arabic, it's custom to say "Forsa Saeeda" when you meet someone instead of "Nice to meet you". This expressions translates literally to "A Happy Opportunity". I ran into some Georgetown students from Amman, that's all. It was bound to happen sometime, being that foreigners, students especially, spend most of their time in the same 5% of Damascus. But it has been a night of happy chances. I was walking through the Old City in search of a chess board (I was several hours too late for that, I'm afraid) and I saw someone I had sat next to in the placement exam at the university. Then I saw someone I had sat next to in a microbus nearly an hour earlier. Then I saw someone I stood next to at Bayt ul-Qaseedeh, who's actually a friend of Ayad's (my tutor) as well. Maybe it's a good omen. Perhaps it means I will meet great success the next time I attempt to make an omellette. Or to write a tome. Or when I enlist in the Navy to join the yeomen. Or the next time I eat a pomelo. Who can say?

I will see you from Latakia.

Damascus the Solemn

I make introdoction: Tis is blog. I rite. Sank you.

I went to Bayt ul-Qaseedeh again tonight and I heard translations of two American poets - Langostun Hugges and Ahlahn Gisnburg.

* * *

Tonight, I am back to cookings. I've been eating for a long time now a combination of things: eggs with cheese cooked in olive oil, served on pita bread (which I am told by my tutor has no other name than "khubz aadi" here - "regular bread") and sometimes with sesame seeds; and then a second, less easily summarized dish of questionable construction - a soup of sorts (though I have to add water to it every time I heat it back up, because it all disappears in the refrigerator) comprised of chicken wings, chicken wing stock, onions and peppers and cabbage, a copious seasoning of cumin and salt, and.. let me look.. noodles and white beans. Tonight, I wanted something I could finally call reasonably edible. I had managed to secure a recipe for chickpeas and chorizo. We do not have chorizo here, but there are some little sausages that every butcher shop has, so they can claim a more diverse offering than just butt beef. I think sausage-making is heavily censored by the government in Syria. This is not because I happened to see a black mercedes with smoked windows and h black-suited men in it pull up to my local butcher shop and confiscate a string of weisswurst the butcher had been toiling over with a German sausage-making manual, but simply because I have only happened to see one type of sausage. Ever. Since my arrival. I attempted this recipe. But did I follow it? I am not a follower (I do follow a couple of podcasts, actually). Did it mention the inherent difficulties in sautéing cooked chickpeas? Did it give me reason for caution? Alas, if it had, I would not be eating warm Hommos (which is actually just the name for chickpeas here, but I'll let it slide) with sausage and onions and leftover cabbage mixed in. Shallow-fry your chickpeas with care.

But this is not a cooking blog. If it were, I know you would have the good sense never to read it. It is a Syria blog. I am in Syria. And what's more Syria is about to enter Summer Time! Summertime could not be further from the present moment. But Summer Time is just a day away! And isn't that just almost as exciting? Thus the natural balance will be restored. No one on the internet, by the way, has accurate info on Summer Time.

This weekend is Easter - Eid ul-FiSH. The capitalization means you don't say "fish". Fasaha, (composed of the same three consonants as FiSH - intro Arabic lesson!!) is a lovely and most convenient verb that most logically means "to celebrate Easter". Your first Arabic sentence - "NufSuHu eid al-FiSH" - "We celebrate Easter on Easterday". This is a perfectly nonsensical Arabic sentence that no Arab will understand if you say it to him/her. How am I celebrating Easter? "Sawfa nufSuHu fee il-Ladheekia" - "I will celebrate Easter in Latakia". By eating fish (not FiSH!) and hopefully some calamari as well. Latakia is a port city on the northern Mediterranean coast of Syria and a very old city which in fact has one of the few fully intact Roman arches in Syria (Damascus has a broken one). I will take a picture for you. It also apparently has a beach or two. We shall see about that. I will not forget my bathing suit, however. I will make my journey by bus and I will know not how long it is for that I stay. One of the most remarkable sights to see in Latakia is the ancient Phoenician city of Ugarit, where the alphabet was invented. If you remember from elementary school, it was the Phoenicians who invented an alphabet - not just for their own personal use - but for you and me too! (This was at about the same time that the Egyptians got around to coming up with hieroglyphics - something the Syrians had had in similar form for millennia, they are quick to boast). This was in the 1000s B.C., I think.. roughly. So hopefully I will see these things, and so will you. Latakia's about the size of Baltimore, for reference..

So I will go do work, I will go to work, and then I will set the wheels a-turning like those ancient Phoenician mariners before me, if the oceans were asphalt and their ships coach buses.

Live on in America!

David

Oh, also, I think I did some injustice to my pomelo experience in my last email. Let me try again: Imagine that you have a large yellow squishy ball, like the ones used in gym class dodge ball. Now imagine that there's a smallish grapefruit inside of it and that you want to get to it and eat it. Get to it. Rip off the layers of white fleshy void. Eat it. Now you have conquered a pomelo.

***You can read more about the Phoenicians at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenicians!!!***