Liquid Refreshment

To paraphrase Tom Waits: I like to consider myself a pioneer of the palate, a restauranteur, if you will; I've wined, dined, sipped and supped in some of the very most sublime and ridiculous spots this sweet sphere has to offer.

In particular, I have an abiding interest in the boozy concoctions that various places have concocted, and it was thus that I approached Syria with a certain amount of trepidation; in a majority-Muslim country, what would be available?

In truth, I needn't have feared. Syria has a significant Christian population (about 10% of the country's inhabitants, as opposed to other Arab nations like Morocco which are virtually 100% Muslim), and liquor stores aren't the sordid, maudlin affairs that they seem to be in North Africa; they stay open during Ramadan, their windows aren't blacked-out like the storefront of an adult bookstore in Times Square, and they have a thoroughly decent selection of the sort of internationally-known liquors that you'd find in a duty-free store.

Not that this does me any favors. I can't afford duty-free liquor; I'm living on $550 a month, and I need to know what the proletariat are drinking. It is thus that I offer up a brief summary of my explorations into the world of cheap, locally-available tipples.

Category 1: Beer

It isn't hard to find the usual brands of light lager here; Heineken, Corona, Amstel Light and the like are readily available; there's even a store that has the Czech Budweiser (which bears gratifyingly little resemblance to its American counterpart). As to what the locals are actually drinking in Damascus, it seems to boil down to three choices; the Turkish-brewed Efes, the Lebanese Al-Maza and the locally produced Al-Barada.

There isn't much to say about Efes, really, except that it comes in rather large cans and that they also brew an "Extra" version that tops out at 9% alcohol, for when there is serious work to be done. In terms of flavor, it is thoroughly innocuous, and not particularly worth describing. Al-Maza is equally retiring, and both work well to cool the brain on a hot day.

Then there is Barada.


With Barada, like Forrest Gump's box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get. Bottles come in three different colors of glass (clear, green and brown), and the labels all seem to be of different vintages. Some of the labels list it as 3% alcohol, other's 4%--and others, with admirable honesty, claim that it is between 3-5% alcohol.

In terms of gustatory experience...

There are few times in my life that I have attempted to consume a foodstuff or beverage that was so laughably atrocious that I laughed out loud. One of those times involved my first sip of Barada. Its head resembled soap bubbles, and the flavor closely resembled that of used dishwater. I wish this were an exaggeration. Strangely enough, my second experience a month later was considerably tastier. Perhaps they tweaked their machinery, perhaps the boss came in early or late, perhaps all the good stuff had settled to the bottom of the brewing vat? I'll never know, but whenever I have the daredevil urge, I know I can get a thrill by ordering up a bottle of this stuff.

Category 2: Wine

The wine scene in the Middle East has an admirable pedigree, as anyone who's read the Old Testament knows. "Old," however, does not necessarily translate to "good." Syria itself doesn't seem to have much wine production going on, and though I've seen a few bottles for sale, I've been warned off them by well-meaning friends. Jordanian wine doesn't seem worth the trouble, though their marketing squads do make much of its Holy Land status. The clear winner seems to be Lebanon; the reds are cheap and usually tasty, , though til now, I've yet to encounter anything worth taking home.

Category 3: Liquor

Sometime in the middle of the summer, I wound up wandering into one of the government run commissaries that provide various foodstuffs and kitchen supplies for astonishingly low (and clearly subsidized) prices. To my surprise, one couldn't even enter the main rooms without walking by the liquor counter, which carried a hair-raising assortment of locally-produced selections. Intrigued, I decided to purchase a bottle of the local gin, which cost me approximately $1.65 for a 750ml bottle.

It is... an acquired taste, and in that respect I suppose it's just like more expensive, ostensibly better gin. It has a faint industrial aftertaste, as though the distillers forgot to clean off some sort of industrial lubricant before running a batch through. As is usual in these cases, the more one consumes the more charm it has, and when heavily adulterated with tonic and lime--in season, alhamdulillah--the experience need not be overly unpleasant.

Lest one think that I take a universally dim view to the state of Syrian liquor production, there is one drink that has yet to disappoint. That drink, ladies and gentlemen, is the noble Arak.

Arak is an anise-flavored liquor produced throughout the Levant, and is very similar to Greek Ouzo or Turkish Raki (although as is usual in these cases, it is wise to praise the relative superiority of the local product should you find yourself in any of these countries.) Highly alcoholic, it's usually diluted heavily with water before consumption. The addition of water renders the clear liquor a cloudy, milky white, a transformation I always find exciting. (I've tried and failed to understand the precise chemical reasons for this phenomenon; something to do with insoluble oils, as I recall.)

Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan all produce a few brands; price points range from gratifyingly cheap (about $3.50 a bottle) to $30 and up, but so far as I've been able to tell, quality is consistent no matter the thickness of one's wallet. If you don't like anise, I suppose you're out of luck; if you do, it's worth seeking this stuff out (or hitting up any friends you know who might be making a trip back from Syria sometime soon).

Teetotalers are in luck, as well; almost anywhere in the city you're not far from a glass of the freshest, most delicious juice the planet has to offer. When I arrived in June, mulberries were in season, and my tongue was purple for days. Now the mulberries have gone, but we're in the middle of pomegranate season, which means that you can have the supremely decadent experience of fresh pomegranate juice, squeezed before your eyes, for about a buck. Fancier places will also offer milkshakey concoctions of bananas, chocolate, milk and other fun things, but I haven't felt the need to try, honestly. I can make a smoothie at home, but I can't walk outside and buy pomegranates.

Hope you're all well--

John

Hammam Nuruddin

On my second day in Damascus, I went with a classmate to the Hammam Nuruddin. On my first weekend in town after my return in September, we returned, having been there several times this summer.

A hammam is a steam bath, what Max Bialystock or Laurel and Hardy might refer to as a "Turkish bath." At its simplest, patrons go sit in a very hot, steamy room and sweat and scrub for a while. Nuruddin takes it several steps further, with a sauna, massages, and a crew of professional hammam attendants who will scrub you down. The building itself is also rather incredible--first built 850 years ago, it had fallen into ruin, and was restored sometime in the middle of the last century. It now has marble floors, ceilings painted with elaborate geometric patterns, and relatively modern plumbing.

After our first experience there, we realized that we could easily do without everything but the steam bath; the scrubbing, in particular, was a harrowing experience. One may purchase a coarse exfoliating mitten in the market immediately outside the bath, but if you rely on the gentlemen inside, they have at you with what appears to be a mitt made from a few layers of burlap. Though I didn't ask, it was clear that the same burlap had been used for all the other customers that day; I'm fairly sure that the mitt was an heirloom, and had been handed down over the ages since the time of Nuruddin.

When you're done steaming, the Kurdish attendants wrap you in towels, then a separate set of towels. The whole process feels faintly ridiculous and more than a little touristy, but I have yet to meet someone there who wasn't from the Middle East--it seems that most of the conversations we have are with Gulf Arabs on vacation in Damascus, along with a few Turks and Jordanians. And though I could just take a shower, the process does seem to have a revivifying effect that a simple bath wouldn't.

What You May Have Missed

Hey there, everybody—

If you’re reading this, it’s likely that I haven’t been as devoted to corresponding with you as I wish I were. In case I’ve been really, shamefully out of touch, here’s a brief description of the last year of my life:

I returned to the US in the summer of 2008, having worked in Morocco for about a year. I got a job as a carpenter, which lasted one month. On my last day on the job, I broke my finger with a nail gun. Oops.

I decided to relocate to Portland, Maine, with my darling girlfriend Nicole, who had been working there at Baxter State Park. While working at a few jobs that are best left unmentioned, I had plenty of time to ruminate on the fact that I had found my Arabic studies in Morocco to be exciting, and that there were potentially interesting jobs available to people who could speak Arabic well (jobs that didn’t include such duties as folding t-shirts at the mall). During the long winter of 2008, I applied to and was accepted at several schools, including UT-Austin, which was my first choice and also had the madness to offer me a TA position. Nicole and I relocated to Austin in August of 2009.

I studied. I liked Austin—it’s a hip town. In the winter of 2009, I was encouraged by my professors to apply for a fellowship called CASA—the Center for Arabic Study Abroad. take (Why they couldn’t pick an acronym that means something in Arabic is a matter of endless puzzlement.) CASA is funded by the US Department of Education, and its ostensible goal is to take American “advanced” speakers of Arabic and transmute them into “near-native” speakers of Arabic over the course of a year of intensive study overseas in an Arab nation. The application process involved the usual paperwork and recommendations, plus sitting for a really long hard test in February of 2010.

In mid-March, I was offered a year-long fellowship in Damascus, Syria. After having a slight nervous breakdown, I accepted and shipped out in early June. I just returned from a month-long break in the US, where I visited Nicole in Austin, and my parents in Rochester, New York, and am writing this expository journal entry in an attempt to put off reading about one-third of a novel in Arabic.

If you’ve made it this far, I’d love to hear from you, and I promise that future entries will be of a more gripping nature—such as the story of the womanizing Kurdish-Australian photo-video artist named Fassih, whose narrative also involves my involuntarily sleeping on the roof all summer, which is related slightly to the tale of the amorous cats and the call to prayer, which is in turn tenuously linked to the story of how I accidentally sort of converted to Islam, as well as my friendship with the septugenarian Syrian slam-poet and local celebrity called Abou Mansour. Stay tuned.

National firewall, schmational firewall!

Hello beloved readers--

That probably means about two people, but I thought I would let you know that I have recently found a way to circumvent the firewall that prevents me from blogging! Hopefully this will translate into additional adventure tales from the Middle East.

In other news, I just got back from visiting the lovely Nicole in Austin, as well as my dear parents in Rochester. "Jet lag" is an innocuous-seeming phrase for something so powerful. I'm going to eat and then sleep, in sha Allah!

Time to revive.

Seeing as how I'll be visiting foreign climes again, and seeing as how certain people might be interested, perhaps I'll start posting on this moribund blog once more.

Further proof that Abdou is one of the coolest cats in the Maghreb--he heard Tom Waits and requested CDs.

In re presidential elections, and the potential question of McCain/Obama: demanding moral fiber from a politician seems to me to be like requiring that all policemen be excellent boxers, or only hiring lawyers who write good poetry. I could further develop this pithy if meandering statement, but instead I will mix myself another gin and tonic.

كيفاش كنقل "Runyonesque"?

In the past week, through no particular fault of my own, I have met a hustler called Muhammad Couscous, been asked if I wouldn't mind buying some hashish to help pay for a leg operation, and encountered a former marriage-license salesman named Steve who advised me to go to Moscow for the babes. This last delivered an astonishing ten-minute monologue which may have been about medieval Russian art, his work in the pornography industry, or UFOs—I remain uncertain, despite having given it much thought.

I guess I have no excuse not to write a book.