A New Year in an Old City.

Damascus hasn't changed particularly in the three weeks that I was away over Christmas and New Year. A housemove and a new resolve to change a rather boring timetable into an opportunity for adventure was spark enough to reignite an interest in being back here though.
Christmas in Dubai was alwasy going to an undefying experience and in the gentle balm of a Gulf Christmas it was easy to see that the UAE could have conducted this rather cynical marketing excercise for its stock of Western businessmen and tourists at any time it liked. The unconvincing fairy lights hung from the sides of queue filled motorway tunnels and the 'traditional' roast turkey on offer in all restaurants regardless of their extraction was a rather crushing experience to a grown child weened on mince pies, brusk walks and big, homely Christmas lunches spent avoiding the circling brussel sprouts and waiting for the BBC to declare it a white one by a whisker. Nonetheless the hefty spiritual price of an Emarati Christmas was well compensated for by being with family and moving on to Tash's for New Year.
On my last morning in Dubai, the eve of New Year's Eve, the Iraqi Government announced that it had executed Saddam Hussein in the middle of the night. Though the story of the taunting and the camera phone footage of his hanging was yet to break, I felt nothing but sadness at the manner of his passing. It is not a comfortable argument that reads that the manner of his death was far more just and righteous than those of his victims. No doubt it was. But if we are to judge our actions relatively against those that have offended against us then we have already lowered our moral status beyond reprehension. The footage tarred the 'legal enaction of justice' with the air of a lynching and certainly this kind of 'justice' does not equate to a safe night's sleep on the road map to peace in the Middle East. An opportunity to make an example of the archetypal dictator through the due processes of the freshest democracy was fumbled badly by all concerned, and as a result his death appears to have martyred Saddam in some people's eyes and endorsed the violent principles of vengeance that are such an obstacle to democratic progress in the region for others. I would not say that I felt much for Saddam, a torturer and a murderer, as he faced his fate at the gallows, but I did for the families of his 'victims'. For those whose cases will never be heard, family members not recovered and lives left changed it must have been very difficult to watch their hopes for justice die at the hands of, what now looks to have been, something of a mob. Ruth Kelly announced rather grandly the next day that Saddam had "been called to account." Unfortunately the courts had yet to finish doing the sums, and now, it seems, they will not have the chance. Perhaps if we had been so keen for him to be "called to account" it would have been less messy to finish him off as the tanks rolled into Baghdad or when he was discovered in his priest-hole in Tikrit rather than hoisting him up on a political gallows at three in the morning in a kangaroo-esque, and ritualistic execution. Perhaps also the hangmen should not have worn black balaclavas, now an international symbol of the terrorist. Perhaps in Baghdad there are already too many uncertainties.
A week or so of gentle consideration has led me to realise what I was already aware of. The key to understanding the Middle East is not the newspapers and it is not textbooks or literature, although all these contribute to an overall picture. The main aim of a year abroad is not just immersion in language, but culture. A short while ago Manal asked us (when we complained that we wanted to travel at weekends) whether we were in Syria for study, or tourism. At the time I wasn't sure. My answer now is that I am here to learn things and understand them in a way that I could not from a book in England. Study is a huge part of it, but so is travel and interaction. So Damascus is unlikely to see too much of me at the weekends of the next few months.
Already Guy, Clem, Ed and I have made it to Faraya for a three day skiing 'fact finding' mission. (Start with an easy one..) The snow was crisp and deep enough, the weather (at least on Friday) stunning as we looked over our shoulders on the chair lift back down the mountains to Beirut and its bay below us and the apres-ski, if not bounteous, inviting and cheap. The journey from Damascus was easy enough, with an overnight stop in Beirut for a square meal and a few beers, followed by a quick hop up the hill in a service taxi to the mountains. Finding somewhere to stay at 8:30 in the morning caused a few initial problems - the chef that we woke up in the first hotel decided that he was not willing to make life easy, speaking tongue twistingly fast in a strong colloquial, quoting massively overinflated prices and demanding money that we didn't have upfront to avoid a hike in prices the following day. Nonetheless we struck a rich vein of luck in flagging down an empty minibus that passed us on the road, whose driver Ragib became our personal guide and chauffeur for the next three days for minimal fees, and we were suited, booted and on the slopes by eleven in the morning. Sadly on Saturday the weather didn't quite hold out and a large front of low pressure that descended on the entire region resulted in horizontal snow showers driving, stingingly into our faces and closing all the lifts on the mountain by lunchtime. At that point the army closed the road a bit further down and Ragib was unable to make it up to collect us, so we had to find a lift with a chap working in the last open cafe in the resort. His price was high, and his manner unappealing but since his was amongst the last three cars in the car park, our choices were equally unattractive. He had the air of someone selling a vital organ on your behalf so as to be able to consider you in his debt for the rest of eternity. As a result he was little impressed by Clem's retort of "nothing?" to his question, "how much would you like to pay me?"
By the time we left we had amassed three taxi drivers, three chalet owners vying for our custom and an invitation to some illicit hunting in the hills around Ba'albek, as well as some cracking goggle marks and some nearly spectacular footage of Ed skiing off a large precipice-like 'jump' (it would have been perfect if Guy had not been looking the wrong way when it happened).
All in all an extremely succesful weekend and one to be repeated. Plans are already afoot for Palmyra or possibly Aleppo this weekend. No rest for the wicked, and hopefully no work either.