Picture of the day

I had to LOL when I saw my neighbour's shoes!

PMS!!! Thought I'm sure it probably stands for something else here!

Jabal Qasiyoon

 

One of the 'must do' tourist things according to all the guidebooks is a trip to Jabal Qasiyoon. We'd aim to get there just a little before sunset, so we could see the amazing views of the city from the mountain.

There are tonnes of cafes and restaurants at the top of the mountain, most of them totally overpriced according to local standerds. We'd usually plan a trip to the mountain to coincide with friends/relatives visiting!La fontane became our favourite:

We only tried the crepes. I'm sure the tiramyssu was delicious, despite the dodgy spelling!

Special offer? Perhaps not!

I bought this fabric softner while in Syria, thinking I was getting a good deal. I misread it for '+10%'

Only the day before leaving, I actually looked closely :-(

We do fun stuff at Hawza too!

There's an office in our Hawza (religious school) dedicated to culture! Their job is to organise non-academic stuff (e.g. we're doing a module on basic first aid/nursing skills this term) as well as competitions. Most of the competitions are hard! They involve reading a book and doing an exam... but since it takes me an average of 5 hours a night just to decipher my course books (learning the stuff takes another 5 hours!), the last thing I want to do is take on extra work!

So I was over the moon when they decided to hold a cooking competition- finally something I could take part in! I made a fake oreo cheesecake, but couldn't find the right kind of cheese, so it wasn't my best effort. On the day of the competition, they laid out all the food on tables and everyone helped themselves... it was a mad rush (so sadly no pics!).Results came out 3 weeks later at the mother's day celebrations! All the teachers who took part got a prize, as well as 6 students (all of them were Syrian!). There was some consolation in that I had helped one of the winners assemble her dessert!

There was also an arts and crafts competition. I managed to get some pics:

Things that make me chuckle

Someone once told me that if you live in a humid climate, its a good idea to put a few grains of rice in the salt shaker to stop the salt clumping together.

This restaurant was taking things a bit far LOL
(The cafe inside Grandmart Supermarket, Cham City Centre, Damascus)

Meet Irtibaat ba Khuda!

Each culture has a 'must have' prayer book. For us khojas, its the famous Tohfatus Saeemeen. Even though it's riddled with grammatical mistakes in the Arabic, no khoja household is without it.

For the Iranians, this book is 'Irtibaat ba Khuda' or connection with God.




I found a page stuck inside the front cover of this copy. It translates: "Don't backbite, Don't speak lies, Don't eat haram, and then your duas will be answered"

New blog category!

There are a lot of things in Syria that make me chuckle. Like the man that stands on the street corner with a ram, waiting for farmers to bring his ewes... and well you can guess what happens next! Sometimes they even have a lamb on display to show what the ram is capable of!

I read this on the back on a spring roll box and it made me laugh too (albeit a frustrated laugh):



"Please recycle"

Dude, please tell me where! I'd love to recycle bottles and cardboard and cans but the closest I've seen to recycling is the people searching through the garbage looking for things to sell and the cats eating the scraps of food! A little bit of me dies everytime I throw out plastics and paper and magazines with religious stuff? I take them back to London every summer!

Azem Palace

One of the other 'must see' touristy things in Damascus is Azem Palace. It was built in 1750 for the Ottoman ruler of Damascus called Asad Pasha al Azem.

The house now houses a small museum of art and traditional crafts. Out of all the museums we've seen in Damascus, it's probably the best in terms of cost and things to see.



Here's what Wikipedia says about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azem_palace

The architecture is an excellent example of Damascene traditional houses. The structure itself consists of several buildings and two wings: the harem and the salamlik. The harem is the family wing, which was a private space for the residents (originally, the Azm family). This wing includes the kitchen, servant quarters, and the baths, which are a replica of the public baths in the city but on a smaller scale. The salamlik is the guest wing, and it comprises the formal halls, reception areas and large courtyards with traditional cascading fountains.

Used in the building of this palace were several types of stones including limestone, sandstone, basalt, and marble, chosen to provide a natural decoration for the structure. The ceilings have painted wooden panels that display natural scenes. In fact, Dr.Andrew Petersen, Director of Research in Islamic Archaeology at the University of Wales Lampeter states that the use of Ablaq (alternating courses of white limestone and black basalt) in this building is “A characteristic of the monumental masonry of Damascus.”^[1]

In 1925, the Azm palace was heavily damaged by French artillery during the Syrian revolution. It has since been restored and became a museum of arts and folk traditions. It received the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 1983.

One thing to watch out for is the dodgy guards... They will often keep the inner doors closed and then open them up 'especially' for you in return for a tip. Very annoying!

The best room is the one with the religious items and the 'going for pilgrimage' display. There's an egg with a whole chapter of the Quran written on it! On my last visit, my friend managed to keep a look out while I snapped a quick pic on my phone!

Surah Waqia written on an egg!

Pic from school...

The weather is still freezing here! It's so cold that even the marble floors that they love using in their houses are like ice! So much so that when we remove our shoes to enter the prayer room at school, it's very tempting to take off our shoes at the door, so our poor socked feet don't have to touch the ground, rather than put them on the shoe rack and having to walk across the frozen corridor.

That was until this pic went up at the end of the week...




And here's a close up of the sign they wrote up....



It translates:

"Dear Sister,

From the will of Imam Ali ibn Abi Talib (a.s) to his son Hassan:
Allah, Allah, organisation in your affairs

Dear sister, do you love order and organisation??? How are you in your houses? Perhaps this is how you put your shoes?

Which picture surprises you? We want your comments."

Okay so the whole sign and picture thing was totally OTT. Although the message still stands... we are sooooo okay with throwing litter in public places, putting our shoed feet up on the seats in public transport and leaving the toilet messy and unflushed after using it. But we wouldn't dream of doing these things at home!

Back in London at our local Islamic centre, it was so common to see people going home without cleaning up after themselves and their children. Truly, it doesn't take more than 2 mins to leave your spot clean (i.e how you found it!) and save a poor volunteer having to stay back and clean up afterwards!

Message of the day - the world would be a much nicer place if we all pitched in a little!

Botanical Gardens

I know, I know it's been ages since I last blogged. After a last-min unexpected trip to London, I came back to Syria and had a month of back-to-back family and friends come to stay. It was great fun, but that, along with the 6 hour daily power cuts are not helping the blogging cause!

Anyway.... here are some pics of one of my fav spots in the Old City of Damascus. It's the Botanical Gardens. Yes, you read that correctly - Syria does actually have a botanical garden! Not much of a site in the winter.... but spring/summer this place is an explosion of colours and fragrances!










There's also a little cafe that probably has the best desserts I've had in Syria so far! Crepes with fruit and even Nutella shawermas!

The new shia mosq in Sayyidda Zaynab!

I'm back to Syria and back to blogging! Yes, thank you all for reminding me that I haven't blogged for a while!

Here's a new pic from Sayyidda Zaynab - its of the shia mosque that's being built on 'the other side of the roundabout'! It's not quite finished yet, but already open for business!

It's called 'Imam Khumayni Mosque'. No prizes for guessing where its funding is coming from. LOL

School Books

School is in full swing... I have classes from 8am to 1pm 5 days a week, with Thursdays and Fridays off.

My school bag is heavy! These are my books:


From Top left:
The brown book is 'Duroos fi Uloomul Qur'an' or Lessons in Quranic Sciences. 355 pages. We've been told that memorising the summaries at the end of each chapter is enough to pass the exam.

The blue book next to it is Jafer Subhani's 'Seeratul Muhamadiya' or the Life story of the Holy Prophet. 287 pages, but written really easily in story format

The blue and white book is 'Aadaabal Islam vol 1' or Islamic Manners/behaviour. 325 pages. The teacher summarises the chapters into bullet points which she makes us number in the book. She also expects us to regurgitate the lesson on the spot! scary stuff. Especially when you are one of the few non-Arabs in the class!

The little book on the bottom left is the last chapter of the Holy Quran (Juz Amma). It contains the last 37 chapters of the Holy Quran and we are expected to memorise it by the end of the term.

The light blue book next to it is 'Aqeedatul Islamiya' or Islamic Principles of Faith. 458 pages, badly photocopied and bound together. Actually its not the whole book, its just the half we are studying this term!

The green book with the pic of Imam Khumayni is our Tajweed book - or how to recite the Quran with the correct pronunciation. We haven't started this class yet as the teacher hasn't returned back from the summer holiday (she's not the only one - 6 members of the class are still in their home countries!)

The blue and brown book is our Sarf book or morphology. Its the Arabic grammar book we're studying this year. Our teacher is Egyptian, but you would never guess from the way she speaks Arabic. She's convinced I don't know grammar very well, so she's always asking me questions.

The books arrived late - we were well into our first week before the deliveries starting trickling in. The theory is that the books are printed in Iran and then shipped over.

We're still waiting for our Fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) and Hifdhul Mawdhooi (Memorisation of the Quran by subject) books, but nevertheless, the teachers are ploughing on with the lessons.

The books have cost a grand total of 260 liras, which is just under 4 pounds - a hell of a lot cheaper than university textbooks back home!

With so much studying this term, I guess I can kiss my social life goodbye!

Musalla of Sayyida Zainab

There's one thing that REALLY annoys me when I got to the Musalla of Sayyida Zainab (The bit where they have the congregational prayers).

It's not the fact that you have to go early to get a spot near the fan in the summer, nor the fact that you have to hang around at the end to avoid the rush. Nor, as the guidebook says, is it the overpowering stench of feet (I guess 2 years in Iran made me immune to that!). And I can even deal with people not praying in sync - not everyone is lucky enough to have areligious education.

The thing that really annoys me is this... there is a certain group of people (whom I won't name, otherwise I'll get tonnes of hate mail) who think its ok to come into the prayer room lastminute.com and assume that a spot will mgically open up for them. Just so you know woman - the space doesn't open up, but rather you squash the rest of us who actually turned up on time. And, to make matters worse, they often bring in these huge shopping bags with them. It's kinda ironic that in the shrines in their own country, they are not even allowed to take food and water bottles, let alone shopping, but in Syria they think nothing of huge 'take up a whole person's space' shopping bags.

A friend of mine last summer used to refuse to let them squeeze in at the last minute and actualy lecture them about turning up on time, rather than taking the scenic route via the souk. I tried it once, but turns out the woman had just arrived to Syria and she'd literally freshened up and ran out the door in order to get to the prayer room on time. She did promise me, however, she wasn't going to do any shoppping :-)

Pic taken last night of a lastminute.com lady who squeezed in next to us and her shopping bags

This is what I was busy doing today...

When we moved into our apartment in Syria, it was dirty! The previous tenants were related to the landlord, so they didn't bother cleaning the place properly.

Unlike when we moved to Qum, I didn't make myself ill scrubbing the place. I took things slowly - doing a bit every week.

The kitchen walls were caked in grease - all the way to the ceiling (no idea how the grease got up there!) and one day before classes started, I got on a chair and scrubbed the walls with steel wool. Problem was, being a bit vertically challenged, I couldn't reach all the way to the top. So for the past 8 months, my kitchen walls have looked like this:

BEFORE
(The top 2 rows of tiles are still caked with grease)

That was until I spotted a ladder last week, borrowed it and spent the next 2 days scrubbing the walls. Now it looks like this:

AFTER (all sparkly and clean)

I even managed to study in between all the scrubbing. A day well spent :-)

My latest Addiction...

... is polo juice! It's a mix of mint, lemon and ice and is soooo refreshing! I just can't get enough of it!

So far, I've tried the one at the Safir Hotel's Fresh Delight's cafe and Anas Restaurant in Babila. But by far the best so far is the one at the Ecological Cafe in the Old City of Damascus.

Long Johns

Syrians have an obsession with them... they even sell them in the summer!

Just a word of warning - to the visitors who come here and get excited when they see them - the elastic on them is rubbish! It is only stretchy on the first wear, after that, the long johns fall down. So it means one has to rush to the nearest rest room and pull them up every 10 mins.

Make Mine a 'Cheer-Up'

Here's a picture of the local version of 7-Up!

And here it is in Arabic:

My washing machine

My washing machine is ghetto. There is no other word to describe it! I was explaining the concept to a British lady who was visiting here last week and she said that it was exactly how she used to do her laundry in 1960s England!

There are 2 tubs.




The clothes go into the left tub.

I fill it up with water from the tap, via a hose. Throw in some detergent and turn the dial. Once the cycle is done, I have to drain out the water and refil it again with tap water. On the second cycle, I add fabric softner too. One cycle runs for 15 mins, but I usually do 2 cycles with detergent and one with fabric softner.

After draining out the water, the clothes go into the right tub to be wrung out.


It takes about an hour to do one load of laundry and I have to constantly babysit the washing machine! If I'm doing whites, I have to remember to turn the water heater on, as I tend to 'boil' the white clothes. The clothes come out reasonably clean, although all the dirt tends to magnetise itself to one piece of clothing (usually my black dress trousers!)

It's all part of the 'living in the third world' experience ;-)

Iceland

We have one of these too! Albeit, selling different things from the UK chain.

One of the things that irritates me about Dubai and increasingly in Syria too is how they transliterate English words into Arabic. There is a perfectly good phrase for 'Ice Land' in Arabic, but yet they don't use it!