We had a morning to kill so we wandered around into the old city of Damascus. It is such a terribly poor city with lots of small kids who should be either playing or in school, working the streets trying to make a meager living. It was a bit sad to see. I used to get angry at people always hassling me for stuff but someone had said a few days earlier, “They are only trying to make a living because they are desperate for a living.” I am used to people only doing that at home because they are just annoying so from then on I tried to be nice and polite.
“I don’t, no thank you, understand why, no thank you, they don’t, no thank you, realize, no thank you, that we are, no thank you, just, no thank you, poor students, no thank you.”
Maybe it could be my camera dangling from my neck or Hannah’s SLR camera, or my iPod, or Hannah’s iPod, or maybe the Sony Digital Video Recorder. Either way they didn’t believe that we had no money for some reason.
After walking some very interesting back streets we found Saladin’s temple so sat down patiently for 45 minutes taking snaps of them. Being the only Western Person meant that all our subtly was fraught because everyone no matter how far away would look and smile or wave for all our pictures. Some kids playing kept, none to subtly, watching where we pointed our cameras and would run into the frame. They soon got more and more brave until I had about 3 schools worth of kids all around me asking a million questions and asking me to take 126 pictures of them. Soon the crowd grew till the teenagers and young adults joined in all wanting to talk to me. Hannah was laughing at my posse because they all ignored her because she was just a female.
“Today is Monday” I didn’t have the heart to tell them that it was actually Sunday.
“Takeit (take my picture), takeit”, “English”, “takeit”, “USA”, “Takeit”. I would get kids from the crowd who were particularly geeky or looking like they had no friends and taking their pictures because after I did they would become super stars. More and more kids kept trying to get my attention from then on. Police cam over at one stage thinking there might have been a riot. One boy had an English book which he was obviously struggling with for me to read. I quickly read the first sentence and he started cursing and threw the book on the ground because I found it too easy.
They were all pretty funny though, for the next few hours walking all over the city I couldn’t go anywhere without being recognized, “Takeit, takeit”, “Hello Australia”, “hello”, ‘takeit”. I felt like a super star.
“Mika, stop strutting around like you own the place.” Thank god for Hannah to keep me from getting too cocky…. My cries of, “They love me, they really love me. You know Hannah these are my people now.” Got ignored, well not ignored the slap on the back of my head didn’t feel much like being ignored.
In the mosque I saw the Holy Grail. A total midget. Seriously, was as high as my knee. People came to see Mohammad’s Uncles grave and were going crazy with riots trying to break the locks to touch his resting place. I think they thought my shouts of joy and tears of gratefulness were because I was in such a holy place.
“Do you think I could ask her to be my butler Hannah?”
“Takeit, takeit”, “Today is Wednesday”, “Takeit, takeit”
I got into trouble with lots of angry glares as 30 kids all lined up to get their picture taken, right in the middle of the tomb. I should have realized it was such Holy Ground; the midget of midgets had graced me with her Holy presence there.
“Mika I don’t think it is holy because of the midget of midgets.” Hannah pointed out. I was a bit disappointed but had to see her point.
Later we had to get to the Bus station so I went up to a taxi and politely had to tell each of them they were dreaming. I even smiled when I said it to keep Hannah happy. Some man took pity and got us on a local bus. The Syrian people were some of the nicest people I had met, excluding Taxi driver thieves.
At the bus station, “Takeit, takeit”, “Australia”, there was one boy desperately trying to sell us chewing gum, so I gave him all our change, about $5 worth, and he tried to give me the whole box. I didn’t take it though. His smile was so huge when he realized it was a gift. Seeing as most meals, after the blue eye tax, came to about 40c for us it should have kept him going a few weeks.
On the bus to Jordan I cried, “Darth is following us! Wait I think he is smaller, don’t worry Hannah it is only 2 of his monkey butlers, so we should be alright” I could tell because they were smaller.
I have become quite the packing expert so in my bag everything has a place and it usually takes about an hour just to make sure everything is in its right place and everything is nice and orderly. Hannah on the other hand gets out her bag and stuffs everything in one at a time, sometimes using her fist, or foot to get some added leverage for pushing stuff down. It sends me into fits of fury just watching her ensemble of chaos. Heavy things on top, plastic bags sticking out half full, stuff hanging out of pockets, zips half zipped up, the lid half closed. So when the customs were checking over everyone’s stuff, quite thoroughly, they came up to our bags, shuddered, shook their heads, looked at their watches and decided to bypass Hannah’s for mine. After the attempt to get a pinky in my bag failed horribly they gave up on mine and proceeded to the normal people with big suitcases, easy to open and inspect.
Back on the bus Hannah dared me to lick my lips suggestively at some Darth Monkey butlers but I refused. She then started on, a bit too loudly; about how the I quote ‘Towel Heads’ kept staring at her. I then decided to take out ‘Towel Head’ from Hannah’s bag of words. Every now and then I have to remove words from Hannah’s vocabulary like ‘Dirty Arab man’, ‘damn nips’, ‘towel heads’, ‘gooks’ etc. She tends to say them rather loudly and inappropriately, like when Hannah dared Ariane to stand up on the Ferry from Cyprus and yell, “Stop staring at us you Dirty Arabs!” The thing was Ariane didn’t even need to because she had said it quite loudly enough as it was and everyone had already heard her.
We stayed the night in Amman, Jordan.