The Pillars of Hercules

I have to call my informant Aziz, which was not his name, or else he will be persecuted and thrown into prison—the Syrian cure for dissenters—when the Commander of the Nation reads what I have written. “Aziz” was defiant. He said Assad’s vanity was ridiculous. “He was saluted at school each morning,” he said, when the kiddies entered the classroom. They chanted, “Hafez Assad, our leader forever!” and another one that started, “With blood, with soul, we sacrifice ourselves to you!” And it was he who told me that his palace in Damascus, built at a cost of $120 million—and of course no one but the Commander was allowed to enter it—was called Kasr el Sharb, The People’s Palace.

This glass and steel monstrosity, like a massive airline terminal, on a high bluff overlooking Damascus was almost the first thing I saw the next day when I reached the city. It can be seen from every part of the city; that is obviously one of its important features. The structure was as truculent and unreadable and unsmiling, as forbidding, as remote as the man himself. Vast and featureless, it could be a prison or a fortress, and in a sense it is. Assad has almost no contact with the people, and is seldom seen in public. He is all secrets, a solitary king-emperor. There are rumors that he is sick, that his son’s death was a shock, that he is in seclusion. Some days he is shown on the front page of the Syria Times sitting rather uncomfortably in a large chair, apparently nodding at a visiting dignitary.

Beneath Assad’s palace, Damascus lay, biscuit-colored, the chill of morning still upon it, the new suburbs, the ancient city, the souk, the mosques and churches, the snarled traffic, the perambulating Damascenes. For reasons of religion and commerce—its shrines, its mosques, its churches—Damascus is heavily visited. It is an ancient city, so old it is mentioned in the Book of Genesis (14:15–16)—Jerusalem is not mentioned until the Book of Joshua (10:1–2). Unlike Jerusalem, which as an old walled city and bazaar it somewhat resembles, Damascus is the destination of few Western tourists; but it is dense with its neighbors from the desert and the shore. It is the souk and the shrine for the entire region. “Damascus is our souk,” a man in distant Latakia told me. It is everyone’s souk. And the great Omayyad Mosque, built thirteen hundred years ago to a grandiose design, is the destination of many pilgrims. Beirut is only a short drive—two hours at most—and so there were Lebanese here too; and Iraqis, stifled by sanctions, shopping their hearts out; Nawar people, Gypsies from the desert, and the distinctly visible women with tattooed chins and velveteen gowns from the Jordanian border; gnomes in shawls, scowling Bedouins, and students, and mullahs with long beards, and young girls in blue jeans and hectoring touts in baseball hats.

In one corner of the walled city was the house of Ananias, who in Acts 9: 1–20 had a vision which commanded him to go to the house of Judas to receive Paul.

“Original house,” said a caretaker.

Perhaps it was. Perhaps this was Straight Street. But I was dubious. It was true that this was the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world, but it had also been besieged and wrecked and pillaged and burned at various times. The shops in the souk, which was larger than Aleppo’s, and better lighted and airier, sold brassware and tiles, inlaid boxes and furniture, rugs, beads, huge swords, bad carvings, knickknacks, and Roman glassware.

“Original glass,” the hawkers said.

They were small mud-encrusted perfume bottles which had recently—so these stories went—been excavated. There were small terra-cotta figures, too, and pint-sized amphorae. For just a few dollars I could be the owner of a priceless collection of Roman artifacts.

The head of John the Baptist is said to have been interred at the Omayyad Mosque. Anyway, there is a shrine to it in the interior of the mosque, which lies at one end of the covered bazaar. I walked there and saw a group of Iranian pilgrims squatting on the carpeted floor, all of them sobbing, as they were harangued by a blubbing mullah doing a good imitation of an American TV evangelist in a mea culpa mode, yelling, preaching, weeping, blowing his nose, wiping his eyes, while his flock honked like geese in their grief.

Looking on were incredulous Syrians, secretly mocking, smiling at the exhibitionism and looking generally unsympathetic.

“Are you religious?” I asked an Arab in the mosque.

“Not at all,” he said. He had come to look at the renovation of the mosaics and pillars in the courtyard of the mosque. It was a horrible job the workmen were doing, he said—an act of vandalism, they were defacing it.

“What is that man saying?” I asked, indicating the howling sobbing mullah. He was standing, stuttering and speechifying, and at his feet, the sixty or more people sat with tearstained faces, their shoulders shaking.

“He is telling the story of Hussein.”