I’ve been sitting in front of the PC, for days, hours at a time, trying to come up with something to write about my visit to Syria. I think I have pretty much exhausted what there is to say, given that any one week trip in Syria warrants a systematic way of approaching each day. I haven’t had a proper holiday since the college days. If you’ve been following my blog you’d know that my longest holiday in the past three years was two weeks. When I used to spend 2 or more months in Syria I barely had time to do everything lol! pool with a view, what’s not to...

Damascus measures time not by days and months and years, but by the empires she has seen rise and prosper and crumble to ruin. She is a type of immortality. She saw the foundation of Baalbeck, and Thebes and Ephesus laid: she saw these villages grow into mighty cities, and amaze the world with their grandeur - and she has lived to see them desolate, deserted , and given over to the owls and the bats. She saw the Israelitish empire exalted, and she saw it annihilated. She saw Greece rise, and flourish two thousand years, and die. In her old age she saw Rome built; she...

عصر غريب وجيل اغرب في برهة من الأزل. كنت أعبر في دهاليز الزمان وسمعت خبرا “ما كان يوما” في الحسبان أنا… انا فخر الأمم، أنا مجد الحضارات، أنا عز الانسان أنا التاريخ.. صرت طي النسيان وممن؟ من أحفادي من جيل هذا العصر وهذا الأوان لا عجب أني ارى في عيونكم الحسرة والهوان… فكيف تهوي امة كان لها كل هذا المجد وهذا الشان الا اذا...

Spring is when cotton clouds hug the sky, when the birds sing hailing the arrival of life, when the warmer winds tug at the unfolding leaves on the trees, when the light drops of dew make fragrance of the jasmines that give Damascus its fame. Spring is the only season I have not seen Damascus in. At the age of 24 I have finally seen what the season Spring is, and in Damascus. Spring is when I stepped out of the airport in the early morning and breathed in a fresh wisp of cool fresh air. Though dry, it never became fractionally as arid as the dampest of Dubai’s air. I...

I want to dedicate this post to Noura. At first I did not want to write “yet another Eid post”, but we all love and support Noura and let’s face it, long distance sucks! So below is a long and detailed account of everything I ate during my stay in Damascus.   I went to Damascus with really one thing in mind: to eat. I missed food. I didn’t care wether or not the food was healthy. It is home made food, with love from my grandma and mom. Except for shawerma of course, but it’s shawermaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! My grandma 7ayati spends most of the...