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.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
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.
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.
Saturday, September 11, 2010
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!
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!
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