Souq Al-Hamidiyya

Yesterday we traversed through Souq Al-Hamidiyya, the main through-fare and shopping district in Damascus, for some cleaning supplies and household items. The souq is a long, covered market that leads into the heart of the old city. The Lonely Planet travel guide says, “A cross between a Parisian passage and a department store, it’s a cobbled street lined with glitzy emporiums. A vault of corrugated-iron roofing blocks all but a few torch-beamlike shafts of sunlight, admitted through bullet holes punctured by the machine-gun fire of French planes during the nationalist rebellion of 1925.” (It’s all true – we saw the holes.)

Shopping in the souq without command of Arabic is a fun challenge. I was looking for a generic cleaning fluid to use on floors and furniture, and was fortunate enough to run across the cleaning district. (Here every shop is highly specialized – I have seen both a button shop and a wrapping paper shop. To make things easier, similar shops are grouped – thus, you have a “cleaning district” within the souq.) I searched the shelves for something which seemed right– without wanting to pay $4 for the American brand-name I recognized. The shopkeeper, slightly amused I think at having a foreigner in his shop buying cleaning supplies, was at my elbow recommending this or that brand. I opened up one of the proposed bottles to smell, and determined that it was a cleaner for enamel surfaces (not what I wanted). My smelling the bottle, however, was interpreted as a desire for a lovely-smelling cleaner. He pulled out a bottle of brilliant yellow fluid called Azmerle, which advertised in English a “Flowers Fragrance Argument.” I’m not sure what it means either, but I decided not to prolong Josh’s agony (he was standing by awkwardly) so I purchased it. I’m happy to announce that it worked fine!

One of the most beautiful things about Syria thus far is the warmth and generosity we’ve encountered in its people. Without exception, at any shop you enter (or person you pass on the street), you will be greeted with the phrase, “Ahlan” or “Ahlan wa sahlan.” This generally translates to “Hello and welcome.” In Arabic a greeting consist of two parts – the greeting and the response. We generally say, “MarHaba” which means hello, and are greeted with “Ahlan wa sahlan.” People ask where we are from, and we tell them we’re American. Being American is slightly more unusual here than being European, and the return greeting is all the warmer. They want to know what state we are from (we say Minnesota) and always tell us about their family and friends who live in the US – or Italy, for that matter!