Syria, the Land of Lebanon/Chapter 8
CHAPTER VIII
THE PORT OF THE WILDERNESS
ALTHOUGH it is ninety miles by railway from navigable water, Damascus partakes of the characteristics of a seaport. It is, in fact, the port of the wilderness. Just to the east of its fertile "garden" is the Syrian desert, across which slow caravans have always been coming and going—traveling from the rich river-bottoms of Mesopotamia, from Persia and India, and even from far distant China, to bring the riches of Asia to the overflowing warehouses of Damascus. The lands from which the city derives its prosperity cannot compete with European industries, and so only a small proportion of their products is now sent westward across the Mediterranean. Yet Damascus remains still the metropolis of the desert peoples. From the viewpoint of the peasant or Bedouin Arab, it is a very modern place; and to the stranger who can see beneath the alluring glamour of its Orientalism, its chief characteristics are abounding prosperity and noisy activity. This oldest of cities is no mere interesting ruin or historical pageant. Even in the fast-month of Ramadan, its streets are as crowded as the most congested shopping district of London or New York or Paris.[1]
The most characteristic feature of the bazaar is its smell—that peculiar, inescapable blending of licorice and annis and pungent spices and heavy perfumes, combined with a vague odor of age and staleness which pervades the dust-laden air, and sometimes with an odor not at all vague which arises from the filth of unswept streets. It is not when I "hear the East a-callin'" but when I smell the East that the waves of homesickness sweep deepest over me. I love the scent of the bazaar. Sometimes I catch a whiff of it through the open door of a little basement store in the Syrian Quarter of New York; and in a moment my thoughts are five thousand miles away among the old familiar scenes.
The next most vivid impression of the bazaar is its weird combination of bright coloring and gloom. The narrow, winding street is guarded from the glaring sun by striped awnings and old carpets which reach across from house to house. Some few of the chief thoroughfares, like the "Street called Straight," are enclosed by great cylindrical roofs of corrugated iron. You are indoors and yet out-of-doors. The light is dim; but it is daylight, and you feel that all the while the sun is shining very brightly overhead. Along the fronts of the shops and hanging on ropes which stretch across the street, are shining brasses and pieces of inlaid wood-work and cloths of the most gorgeous orient hues; but the rear of these same shops is usually wrapped in impenetrable gloom. Sometimes there is visible only a square black hole surrounded by a frame of gaudy silks. When you pass a blacksmith's forge, with shadowy figures moving among the sparks at the back of the inky darkness, it seems like a glimpse into inferno.
Most of the shops are tiny affairs only six or eight feet square, which open on the street for their entire width and have the floor raised to about the height of the customer's waist. The resemblance of a bazaar to a long double row of pigeon-holes is increased by the manner in which the box-like recesses follow continuously one after the other, with no doorways between, as the entrance to their upper stories is by ladders in the rear.
In the middle of his diminutive emporium, the typical Damascus merchant sits all day cross-legged, smoking his water-pipe, reading from a Koran placed before him on a little wooden book-rest, and eternally fondling his beard. Frequently he says his prayers. Sometimes he varies the monotony of a dull day by chatting with a fellow-merchant in a neighboring shop fully ten feet away. The Jews and Christians of the city may be annoyingly importunate; but the Moslems, who form the large majority, seem insolently careless as to whether the passing stranger pauses to examine their goods or not. Over their places of business they hang gilded invocations to "the One who giveth sustenance," and then leave matters entirely in His hands. If nothing is sold all day, it is the will of Allah: if a customer does come, it is the will of Allah—that he shall be overcharged as much as possible.
Shopping in Damascus is not an operation to be hurried through with careless levity. If you appear a promising customer, the merchant will set coffee before you and, while you and he are drinking together, will talk about anything under the sun except business. When you ask him the price of an article, he may tell you to keep it for nothing, just as did Ephron the Hittite when Abraham was bargaining for the Cave of Machpelah.[2]
If, however, you offer a fair amount for that same "gift," he will protest that to accept such a paltry sum would necessitate his children's going hungry and naked. So he names a price about double what he expects to get, and you suggest a sum equal to half what you are willing to pay. Then follow vociferous exclamations, indignant gesticulations, and sacred oaths, while his price slowly comes down and yours slowly goes up, until at last they almost, though not quite, meet. Neither will change his "last word " by a single piaster. Negotiations are at an end. You turn scornfully to leave the shop of the extortioner, while the merchant commends his business to God and resignedly begins to wrap up the goods and return them to their shelves. He does this very deliberately, however, and just then—because you two are such good friends, whose appreciation of noble character finds its ideal each in the other's life—you decide to split the difference, the purchase is completed, and you part with mutual protestations that only a deep, fraternal regard forces you—and him—to conclude the bargain at such a ruinous figure.
"It is bad, it is bad, saith the buyer;
But when he is gone his way, then he boasteth."[3]
Perhaps the shop-keeper will still, however, detain you for a glass of sherbet. If he does, then you have probably paid too much, after all.
A friend of mine was obliged to spend no less than two weeks in purchasing a single Persian rug; but during those two weeks the price went down ninety dollars. One winter I had occasion to buy, at different times, several small picture frames. They were all exactly the same size, shape and material, were obtained from the same salesman at the same shop, and in the end I paid for them the same price to a piaster. Yet the purchase of each one necessitated a half-hour of excited bargaining.
It should be understood, however, that there is really nothing dishonest about such a procedure as that described above; for neither party is misled in the least by the other's protestations, and neither believes that he is deceiving the other. It is just the leisurely, intensely personal Oriental way of doing business. After you once become used to it, bargaining in the bazaars is far more full of excitement and human interest than buying something in the West, where fixed prices are distinctly marked. If you are so crude as to ask a Moslem merchant to tell under oath what he paid for an article, he will often speak the exact truth. But be sure to swear him by a formula which he considers binding. Every detail of a Syrian business transaction is embellished by one or more of the fervent oaths of the East. The traveler from the Occident, however, needs only one: the "word of an Englishman"[4] is still accepted at face value. Indeed, a generation ago, Moslems who would unblushingly call upon almighty God to witness to the most patent falsehoods, could be trusted to speak the exact truth when they 
One of the more modern avenues of Damascus
A typical Syrian Café
swore by the beard of a certain upright English merchant of Beirut.
No picture can ever adequately represent the bazaar, not even a moving picture; for besides the unending kaleidoscopic changes of coloring, as brightly dressed peddlers and purchasers move hither and thither, there is a ceaseless, deafening, indescribable and untranslatable tumult of sound. Yet to one who understands Arabic, this is more than noise: it is music, poetry and romance. The hawker of each commodity uses a peculiarly worded appeal which, in eloquent circumlocution, extols the virtues of his wares. These calls are usually rhyming; often they include one of the ninety-nine sacred titles of Allah, and frequently they are sung to a set tune. Back and forth through the perilously crowded streets they go—boys with great trays of sweetmeats on their heads, men with tubs of pickled vegetables, peasants bearing heavy loads of fresh figs, water-carriers stooping low under their goatskin bottles, peddlers of cakes and nuts and sherbets and the nosegay's which the Syrian gentleman loves to hold—literally under his nose—as he strolls through the city. All are shouting their wares. "Oh, thirsty one!" "Oh, father of a family!" "Oh, Thou who givest food!" "Allay the heat!" "Rest for the throat!" When Abraham passed through Damascus he doubtless heard these same cries.
If we are driving, as is possible in the wider bazaars, our gallant coachman adds to the din as he proudly snaps his long whip, toots the strident automobile horn which is now affixed to all Damascus carriages and, in courteous gentleness or bawling rage or sighing relief, keeps up an unintermitting flow of Arabic adjuration to the passers-by whom he almost, but never quite, runs down. "Look out for your back! Hurry up, uncle! Your back, your back!—may your house be destroyed! Your right, lady! Your left, sir! Slowly, oh, inmates of the harem! Oh, pilgrim, your back! Child, beware! Your back, my friend! Your back! Your back! E-e-eh! A-a-ah!"
High above the other calls rises now and then the shrill, nasal song of the vender of sweetened bread, Allah er-Razeek!—"God is the Nourisher!" A half-naked beggar changes his pathetic whine to a lusty curse as he slinks out of the way of a galloping, shouting horseman. Any one who feels in the mood kneels down anywhere he happens to be and prays aloud. As a kind of accompaniment to the vociferous chorus there sounds the continuous tinkling of the brass bowls which are rattled against each other by the lemonade-sellers. And—very frequently in Damascus—there pierces through the deafening tumult the thin, penetrating chant of the muezzin who, from his lofty minaret or from the mosque door in the crowded, narrow street, calls to the greedy bazaar to think on the things that are unseen and eternal.
The great conflagration of 1911 destroyed the heart of the business district by the Omayyade Mosque, and those who knew the city of a few years ago find it sadly strange to climb over the heaps of dusty rubbish which cover once familiar streets. But during the rebuilding, which is progressing rapidly, there is no appreciable diminution of business, and the intricate maze of the bazaars still presents scenes of marvelous variety and endless fascination. There is the Water-pipe Bazaar, where narghileh bowls are made out of cocoanuts ornamented with gold and silver, the Draper's Bazaar filled with shoddy European stuffs, the Saddle Bazaar with its brightly covered Arabic saddles and gorgeous accouterments, the almost forsaken Bazaar of the Booksellers, where now hardly a half-dozen poorly stocked booths hint at the intellectual conquests of the Damascus of centuries gone by, and the Spice Market, whose long rows of bottles scent the air with their essences and attars. The Silk Bazaar is the most brilliant, and its gaudiest patterns are hung out for the inspection of admiring Bedouin visitors. The Second-hand Bazaar of the auctioneers is commonly known as the Louse Market, not because of the uncomplimentary suspicion which first suggests itself, but from a very small and agile coin known by that name, which is frequently used in increasing the bids.
As we pass along one street after another, we see open-front bakers' shops where paper-like loaves are sold, still hot from the oven, and confectioners' booths filled with all manner of sherbets and jellies and delicious preserved fruits and the infinite variety of sweet, indigestible pastry in which the Syrians delight. In one little square there are great piles of thin apricot paste which look exactly like bundles of brown paper. The merchant offers us a sample to taste, but we are not quite sure as to the quality of the dust that has been settling upon it all the morning. A long towel hung over yonder doorway indicates that it is the entrance to a hammâm or public bath, within whose steaming court we can see brown, half-naked forms reclining on dingy divans. The intricate lattice-work of overhanging balconies guards the harems of the merchants from the vulgar gaze of the crowds below. This little gate, curtained by a hanging rug and edged with a line of slippers, leads from the deafening tumult of the bazaar to the solemn quiet of a cool, spacious mosque.
From time immemorial the merchant-artisans of Damascus have been united in powerful associations. There is even a guild of beggars, though, to do them justice, these are neither so numerous nor so importunate as in most Syrian cities. On the other hand, the curs which infest the busiest streets are innumerable and are disgusting in appearance beyond any other dogs I have ever seen. Yet these sore, starved racks of bones, with hardly the energy to get out of the way of a passing carriage, have organizations of their own. At any rate, they recognize definite boundaries; and a dog who ventures outside the territory occupied by his own clan does so at peril of his life. One evening a friend of mine, who is a good mimic, was so unwise as to bark lustily just as he entered our hotel. In a moment every cur in the district was giving voice; and far into the night, as unhappily was all too strongly impressed upon us, they kept up their vociferous search for the unknown intruder.
But it is never quiet in Damascus. Most Orientals go to bed very early Jerusalem is like a city of the dead by half-past eight in the evening. The Damascenes, however, seem to need no sleep, and the noises of the streets never cease. The only noticeable change in their volume is that, when the shops close, just before sunset, the tumult suddenly increases. Then, hour after hour, you can hear the heavy murmur of the multitude, broken occasionally by the voice of someone singing, or by a chorus of loud cheers. An interminable succession of songs and marches, all of them fortissimo and in a strident minor key, shatter what ought to be the midnight stillness as they rattle from phonographs whose Arabic records are prepared by the German subsidiary of an American talking-machine company. Very far off, a dog lifts up his voice in a faint howl which starts a pandemonium of barks and growls and yelps all over the neighborhood. The freshening breeze rustles among the orchards; then it slams a window shut. The bell of a tram-car rings sharply; carriage horns give loud double toots which just fail of forming any known musical interval, and always there is the sound of water—rushing, purling, rippling, splashing—the eternal anthem of Damascus' greatness.
So when his second day in this noisy city draws to a close, the wise traveler decides that, as there is no use trying to get to sleep early, he will go out and himself share in the midnight enjoyments. I do not know how many cafés there are in Damascus: I should be quite ready to believe anyone who told me that there were ten thousand. They are said to be the finest in Syria. Indeed, the Damascenes boast that the first of all coffee-shops was established in their city, and also that sherbet was invented here.
The best cafés are situated beside the main branch of the Barada. Those near St. Thomas' Gate have very attractive shaded gardens, where the tables are set out under spreading trees and are surrounded by tiny streams of running water. An evening visit to one of these riverside resorts is a memorable experience, and it is quite safe; for, unless corrupted by European influence, no Moslem ever touches alcoholic beverages, and one need therefore fear none of the drunken roughness which is associated with the "cafés"—which of course are not cafés at all—of Christian America. The Damascene seeks his recreation amid an atmosphere of ease and leisure and refined enjoyment. If a patron wishes to dream away the whole evening over one cup of coffee or a five-cent narghileh, there is no one to object. Itinerant musicians beguile the hours of darkness with plaintive minor ditties sung to the accompaniment of the guitar or zither; story-tellers spin endless fairy tales to circles of breathless listeners, and—alas!—the tireless phonograph roars its brassy songs. Many of the regular habitués of the place are absorbed in interminable games of backgammon. Coffee, fruit syrups, pastry, candy, nuts, cool water-pipes and mild cigarettes—such are the favorite refreshments of the fierce, fanatical Moslem!
As the cups in which the coffee is served are tiny handleless things, hardly larger than a walnut, they are usually set in holders of filigree work. These are, as a rule, made of brass, but in homes of wealth they may be silver or even gold. The liquor is often flavored with rose-water and is very thick and sweet, though it will be prepared murr if anyone has such an outlandish taste as to prefer it "bitter." The unpalatable sediment which fills a good third of the cup must on no account be stirred up. Many a stranger has found to his cost that the coffee is served exceedingly hot; and it is a necessity as well as a sign of good breeding to keep the lips from quite touching the surface and to suck up the drink with a loud hissing noise. In a private house, this formality should by no means be neglected, even if the coffee has become cooled, as the omission would be equivalent to a criticism of the host.
Around the coffee-pot centers the social life of the Moslem world. It has an important place in every kind of ceremonial and festive occasion, from the circumcision of the child to the funeral of the old man. The merchant offers it to his prospective customer. The desert sheikh starts his women grinding the beans in a large wooden mortar as soon as a stranger enters his tent. Not to give coffee to a guest would signify that he was unwelcome.[5] It is invariably served at the beginning of a call. Later on, sherbet is brought in, and then the visitor knows that it is time for him to leave.
Coffee sometimes plays a more serious part in Eastern affairs. Its heavy sweetness disguises varied and deadly poisons. The bacilli of typhoid fever are said, in this scientific generation, to be drunk unsuspectingly by many a venturesome meddler in affairs of state. The death penalty is seldom inflicted in the Turkish Empire. Deposed ministers and irrepressible busybodies and troublesome reformers are merely imprisoned or exiled. Often they are sent to Damascus. Then, shortly, they die of indigestion or heart failure.
- ↑ Estimates of the population of the city vary from 150,000 to a more probable 300,000. Of this number, some 10,000 are Jews, 30,000 are "Greek" and "Latin" Christians, and a few score are Protestants. At least four-fifths of the population is Mohammedan, and Islam is dominant and uncompromising in Damascus, as it is not in cities like Constantinople and Cairo, where Moslem fanaticism is to a greater or less degree held in check by the constant menace of interference by Christian powers.
- ↑ Genesis 23:11.
- ↑ Proverbs 20:14.
- ↑ This includes the American, for all who speak the English language are ordinarily classed as Ingleezy.
- ↑ Some years ago, our minister to Turkey, who had been promised an audience with Abdul Hamid, was made to wait half a day in an anteroom of the palace without being offered coffee. So far as I know, that fact was never published; for the American newspapers seem to have quite missed the significance of the omission, and our representative himself apparently did not realize that he had been publicly insulted. But the experienced diplomat who was then in charge of our Department of State cabled the minister, in case of further affront, to leave Constantinople immediately.