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Photography_John Wreford The idea is simple. We will cook for each other and then dine together but have each course in a different home. Moving around between courses should be easy. We all live in the Old City, the walled centre of ancient Damascus, occupying courtyard houses along cobblestone streets in an area that’s been inhabited for three millennia. We can walk from one to another, sating not just hunger but curiosity about how other folk live. A date is fixed, a Friday evening. Excitement builds during the week. There are two dozen of us, mostly foreigners, gathered in the central courtyard of the house of an English couple. We stand bunched up and shy. Nobody dares to go much beyond the front gate. We can see a tiled fountain and the closed doors to nine rooms on two floors. In a far corner is a liwan, a covered seating area typical for Damascene houses. The north-facing alcove is usually the coolest spot in the summer heat. But that’s irrelevant now. The sun has faded. It is almost dark. Private quarters beckon.
Around 9pm we walk out, trickling into a dark lane. We pass Bab Sharqi, a city gate built by the Romans that still stands erect. Fourteen centuries ago, Muslim forces from the Arabian peninsula entered Damascus here, unopposed by local Christians. For decades thereafter the two groups of believers lived side by side, even sharing places of worship (massacres and pogroms came later).
I now go ahead of the others, for the next stop is my home. I have a Thai carrot and ginger soup waiting on the stove. The alley leading to my front door starts off about four feet wide and then narrows until I can almost touch both sides with my shoulders. My head too is only inches from stone and wood. My neighbours – or more likely their ancestors – have built additional rooms on top of the alley, creating a tunnel. I unlock the door, light the stove and dot candles around the courtyard. So far, so easy. A few minutes later, the mob arrives. Without much of an invitation, guests wander off to inspect how I live.
Not everyone is thrilled about this. More and more cars are thronging Old City lanes and constant construction work can be a nuisance. Paul, another dinner guest, says he is not able to host one of the courses tonight at his house because “a restaurant is being built to the left of me and a hotel to the right”. The government has repeatedly promised to stop new building work but seems to have made little headway. A car ban for the Old City is also far from being implemented. Still, more foreign residents arrive every year. “It’s a gilded life we are living,” Malika’s husband Andrew says, marvelling that for pennies you can buy bags of ready-peeled garlic here.
We arrive at the home of Tomaso and Valentina, an Italian couple who have a full-scale rock-climbing wall in their courtyard. Below it, they have prepared a spread of tiramisu, creme brulée, chocolate mousse, an apple tart and bottles of bubbly. Within moments, corks are popping, aimed at the sky, sailing in indulgent arcs out of the courtyard and over the roof to who knows where. I can barely keep my eyes open so I bid farewell, but promise that in the morning I’ll be at Petra’s for breakfast. |
Oliver August joins a group of Old City residents for a Damascus dinner party with a difference
Hosts Andrew and Malika are busily serving delicious pomegranate drinks and filo pastry topped with sesame and thyme. Malika says she didn’t have to go far to shop, thankfully. She is seven months pregnant and will have the baby, her second, in the local hospital. She’d have it no other way. Damascus is home. “We have everything on our street,” she says, listing a vegetable seller, a hairdresser, a baker, a tailor, a pharmacist and an internet cafe. “We’re really so lucky.”
From Bab Sharqi, we walk down what is known as Straight Street, a mile-long avenue that bisects the Old City and has done for millennia. St Luke describes it in the Bible. At the time, it was 26m wide and lined by colonnades on both sides. Today, houses have squeezed in and all that’s left of the colonnades is a Roman-style arch excavated in 1936. Still, a sense of age is palpable. Across from the main arch is a smaller one, with a minaret on top. There is no mosque beside it, but instead the sandstone home of the Orthodox Patriarch. This is a familar Damascus scene – a messy but friendly jumble of cultures.
Later, the guests compare other houses in the Old City. Benedicte has the best view from her roof, one says. Jacques did the best job renovating ancient ajami wood panelling. Martin, the Austrian eccentric who likes to kiss the hands of ladies, lives in a palace with amazingly modern underfloor heating. Many of the residents of the better houses are foreigners these days, or overseas Syrians. Wealthy local families have moved out to the suburbs where they can drive their cars up to their front doors, giving an opening to romantics like us, as well as plenty of restaurants, cafés and bars. Every week a new nightspot seems to open. The Damascene speak of the “Beirutisation” of their city. The easy and at times decadent ways of the nearby Lebanese capital are taking hold.
Some time after 10pm, we set off again. The main course is to be served by Justin and Julia, who live near the Omayad mosque, one of the holiest places in Islam, and originally the site of the Roman temple of Jupiter. Part of Justin and Julia’s house may also have been part of the temple. A corridor wall leading to their courtyard is made from large, roughly hewn stones, rarely used in more recent eras. Most guests stomp past them and, without waiting for a drink, fan out to inspect the darker recesses of the house. Doors are opened, nooks probed, staircases and ladders climbed. Soon we emerge on the roof. The vista is as unexpected as it is spectacular. Old Damascus is laid out in front of us on all sides. We see hundreds of roofs enfolding secluded courtyards where women may show themselves unveiled, a honeycomb of private spaces and minarets that seems impossible to chart.
Eventually we return to the courtyard to eat beef stew, before staggering off once more, the lanes darker still. Is it time yet for the early morning call to prayer? Soon we get lost, pleasantly lost. Our numbers are thinning. The atmosphere veers from The Name of the Rose to Animal House.