Day 20: Lattakia/Damascus - $120 to $0 in 60 seconds

I don't know what was worse when I woke up, the headache or the smell.  I was sprawled on one of the beds in the salubrious Safwan Hotel.  I had a vague memory of getting back to the hotel.  Then I realised that Sami had arranged to take us to his farm today for an all-day picnic.  Sami is a warm, hospitable guy, but he doesn't half turn the screws when he wants company.

Staggering down to the reception, I bumped into Grace.  Sam was still in bed, moaning off the scotch little by little.  They were not going to Sami's farm.  I also had an excuse - today was the day I was going to Damascus, the jewel in the crown of my trip.  I had to get there and unless Sami could get me back to the hotel or bus station by 17:00, no sale.

13:00 rolls around and as arranged, Sami pulls up, honks, gets out, comes in and sits down.
"Let's go," he said.
"Yeah," I replied.  "About that..."
Grace begged off because Sam was still in bed, performing a full Camille.  I explained that unless he promised to have me back by 17:00, I'd turn into a pumpkin.  Sami cajoled, requested, demanded, insisted, suggested and generally pulled as many strings as he could but in the end he told me that if we went to his farm I wouldn't be back until at least 22:00.  Ergo, no farm for me.  Sami and I exchanged numbers and he fish-eyed me and Grace closely before leaving without us.  I got the impression that he was disappointed.

Grace and I went to arouse Sam from his stupour only to find him in fine fettle, ready to take on the world as long as the world did not include Sami's farm.  The three of us slunk into the centre of Lattakia, studiously avoiding Sami's haunts, and surreptitiously enjoyed a wholesome Syrian breakfast of shwarma and garlic sauce.  As we ate, who should arrive out of nowhere but Captain Libya, fresh off the bus from Lebanon!  He and his new companion, a Syrian student named Lauron, ate and then we all repaired to a Corniche tea house to play some crackgammon and drink chai khameer, the same as normal tea but served with way more sugar and without the tea bag.

I again lost track of time while playing and realised that I would be hard pressed to catch the 17:00 bus to Damascus, which takes four hours.  I hurried back to the Safwan, paid Mohammed, said goodbye to the crazy uncle and the degenerate dwarf pervert and was kindly escorted by CL and Lauron to the bus station, where I got my ticket and was firmly ensconced on the 18:00 bus.  CL assured me that when I got to Damascus, all I had to do was go to the Methat Pasha main drag and stumble into one of the numerous budget hotels he said awaited me there.

The bus ride to Damascus passed without incident, apart from the presence of the first and only Arab body-builders I have ever seen, two of them, necks like engine blocks, wider than their seats, smoking cigarettes that looked like matchsticks in their sausage-fingered hands.  Ridiculous.

I arrived at the Damascus bus station and, luckily forewarned by my trusty Lonely Planet, managed to get a taxi to the Old City for the correct price (50-ish Syrian) as opposed to the taxi scumbag price (200 Syrian).  All it took was one honest cabbie who happily put on the meter without me having to ask and even insisted that I drink his cup of tea that jiggled tantalisingly in the cup holder.  As we approached the Old City, the streets became more and more narrow, the buildings more and more decrepit, until eventually we were stuck in a traffic jam caused by a road built for horses that had been double- and triple-parked upon until only single file traffic was possible and even then exceedingly difficult.  I paid my cabbie, strapped on my gear and headed for Methat Pasha, the main street of the Old City, by day crowded with hawkers and shopkeepers, by night deserted and unlit, eerie in the absence of all noise.  I asked a guy wearing a death's head t-shirt for directions.  He walked me there.  After a few paces, I noticed that he was staring at my hair and beard.  He caught my eye.
"Metal?" he asked.
I was momentarily baffled.  By way of explanation, he threw up the horns.  Awesome.  He told me there was metal to be found in Damascus.  I looked but never found.  His name was, of course, Mohammed.  He gave me his number and left me at the start of Pasha street.  It was enormous, a huge vaulted ceiling covering what by day is one of the oldest and busiest bazaars in the world.  I walked along, seeing no lights and, more importantly, no budget hotels.  I came to the end of the street, which degenerated from stately shops and covered roof to piles of rubble in the middle of the road and old houses leaning against each other and groaning like drunks.  I asked a group of three guys if they knew where I could find a cheap hotel.  In true Syrian style, they insisted on accompanying me for the next forty minutes, tramping around the Old City, looking for a place to stay.  One of them was tall, thin and quiet.  The talkative one was a sound recordist for Syrian television.  The third was dressed all in denim with a centre parting to his hair and a dangerously rakish moustache.  He looked like an Arabic Douglas Fairbanks.

They walked with me for ages until we found the ominously named Shahbandar Palace Hotel.  I seriously doubted if a hotel with the word "palace" in the name would be in my price range.  We rang the buzzer.  A slim, nattily dressed guy of about my age answered the door.  He spoke excellent English.  This place was going to be expensive.  I asked how much for the cheapest room.
"120 dollars," he answered.
Shit.
"Is there anywhere cheaper?"
He held up a finger, took out his mobile, made a call, chatted in Arabic for a few moments and then hung up.
"Is 30 dollars alright?"
"That's still way too much," I said apologetically, feeling like an abject hobo surrounded by all these helpful guys.
The guy, whose name was Ammar (his nickname was Mac), made another phone call.  He talked, listened, talked again and hung up.
"Okay," he said.  "You can stay with me."
"What?"
He spoke to the three guys accompanying me in Arabic.  Then he turned back to me.
"They will take you to the internet cafe where my roommate is.  He will let you in.  I'm sorry but he doesn't speak English.  Is that okay?"
I was dumbfounded.  I knew the Syrians were nice but this was the absolute limit.
"Are you sure?" I asked, still expecting some sort of joke.
"I'll see you at midnight," Ammar said.  "Now go take a shower and relax."

The three guys walked me to the internet cafe to meet Syaman, Ammar's roommate, a Syrian Kurd.  As they walked, the Arabic Douglas Fairbanks turned to me and said something that, in the moody lighting from the sparse streetlamps, with the sounds of the Old City murmuring around us, the smells of the warm, humid Middle Eastern night, really caught me off guard and seemed to be more meaningful than I'm sure it was intended to be.  He looked me square in the eyes.
"Your mother really loves you," he said.
I froze for a moment and then kept moving.  I'm sure it's just a phrase he translated in his head from the Arabic, something they say whenever someone has a stroke of luck, but in context it felt like much more than that.  I smiled at him and nodded.
"I'm sure she does," I answered.

We met Syaman at the internet cafe, my three friends said goodbye and Syaman and I walked the five minutes or so to their apartment.  Ammar's apartment was one room rented in a shared house.  The family that owns the house lives on the ground floor.  On the second floor are four bedrooms all rented to expatriates, apart from Ammar.  Ammar's room was about eight feet by twelve feet and in it were two single beds.  His regular flatmate, a German archaeologist, was away on a dig.  Syaman was crashing there for the fifteen or so weeks that the German was away.  Syaman was a dark, broad guy with a ready, easy smile and the snazzy dress sense I had come to expect from the Syrians.  They are a people that are always dressed formally.  Even if they live in a dirt-floored shack, they have at least two sets of formal clothes that they wear out of doors.  Syaman taught me to count from 1 to 6 in Kurdish and also taught me the word for "good", which is bash.  Zar bash means very good.  We communicated in a haphazard manner for about half an hour and then I took a shower.  The facilities are shared between the rooms - a common kitchen and a shower room with a Western toilet.  The roof of the house is an open terrace with the rooms built in a bungalow style around the square rooftop.

After my shower, I returned to the room to find Ammar back from work.  He asked how I was settling in.  I thanked him profusely and he interrupted me.
"It makes me angry when you say thank you," he said.  "Stop it."
I told him I just didn't know how else to express gratitude.  Ammar shrugged.
"This is how we do things here.  Maybe one day if I am in London I can stay with you in your home."
I told him it would be my pleasure.  He grinned and asked if I was hungry.  Before I could protest, Syaman ran off and returned ten minutes later with a pizza, three shwarmas and a bag of soft drinks.  They asked if I wanted a beer.  I declined.  We ate our shwarma and shared the pizza.  Ammar asked me about London and what I thought about Syria.  He told me about his job and his life.  He was from Qamishli, the border town with Turkey.  He worked as the night receptionist at the Shahbandar and he had just earlier that day secured himself a two year contract in Dubai at the Palms resort as the reservations manager.  At the Shahbandar, a hotel that charges $120 a night for a single room, Ammar made $400 a month.  This was very good for Syria, he told me.  At the Palms, he would make $1500 a month with accommodation included as a perk of the job.  He was very excited about the trip.  With his half of the rent being $100 a month, he was currently living on $300 a month, a princely sum for the average Syrian.  While I stayed with him, he refused to allow me to pay for anything, even if I tried to sneak.  When we went to the internet cafe, he paid.  Both Syaman and Ammar, like all Syrians, were smokers, but when they found out I didn't smoke they both smoked outside without a word.  I told Ammar that he could smoke inside - after all, it was his place.  He told me that if I didn't smoke it would be rude to smoke around me indoors.  Syaman agreed and they both took turns smoking on the terrace for the whole time I stayed there.  They didn't even smoke in the room when I was out, just so that the room wouldn't smell.  When I told Ammar that I have very good friends in London who smoke around me even though they know that I don't and that it aggravates my asthma, he was shocked.
"Why would they do that?" he asked, seriously at a loss.  "That's a horrible thing to do to a friend!"
The level of hospitality I enjoyed with Ammar and Syaman was overwhelming.

I got a text from CL asking me where I was staying so he could meet me there the next day.  Ammar asked about the text, I explained and Ammar insisted that CL come stay with us at his place.  I started setting up my sleeping bag and he asked me what I was doing.  I told him I had an air mattress and would be fine on the floor.  He asked why I wanted to sleep on the floor.  I pointed out that there were two beds and three of us.  He told me he and Syaman would share one bed and I would have the other one.  I said that that was ridiculous - I couldn't take a bed to myself if my hosts were sharing.  He told me that I could sleep on the floor if I wanted but the bed would remain empty on principle even if I didn't take it.

We chatted about life and travel for another hour or so and then I started to doze off.  I apologised but Ammar told me to go to sleep and he and Syaman would go to the internet cafe so as not to keep me awake with their talking.  My protests were weakened by the fact that I was already basically asleep.  After much moral debate, I slept in the bed.  And I slept very well.