DAMASCUS JOURNAL
A Link Straight to Syria’s Ancient Past Endures as War Creeps Closer
By ANNE BARNARD
Published: July 28, 2013
DAMASCUS, Syria — The Street Called Straight, long bereft of its bustle, was finally crowded again. Wall to wall, people shuffled forward in a slow procession. Shopkeepers had closed their wooden shutters, packing away the inlaid furniture and brocade shawls that no one had been buying anyway, to clear the sidewalks for a funeral parade.
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Trumpets and drums beat out the soaring refrain of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. The white coffin, heaped with daisies, spun like a helicopter rotor above the crowd as the pallbearers danced past a mosque to a neighboring church, both centuries-old structures striped with light and dark stone.
Women ululated and threw rice. The dead man, a Christian, was to have been married, but he and his Muslim driver were kidnapped and killed south of Damascus, two more victims of Syria’s civil war, and the funeral was the closest thing he would have to a wedding.
“Syria! Syria!” the crowd called, hailing the young man, Fadi Francis, as “a martyr of the neighborhood.”
Straight Street, the most storied thoroughfare in Syria, huddles these days in a wary calm, marred now and then by mortar attacks, and every day by anxiety.
The street has been known since at least the early years of Christianity for its ramrod course through the twisting alleys of the old city of Damascus. It contains along its cobblestoned stretch much of what many citizens see as the best of their country: ancient history, diversity, entrepreneurial spirit. But now, residents fear its very existence is in danger — though they disagree on who presents the greatest threat — the rebels, the government, or, as many see it, both.
“I’m tired of watching people wearing black,” Leena Siriani said, looking down at Straight Street from her balcony. “Deep down, there is no longer anything that makes us feel happy.”
Many shops close early nowadays, and the foreign tourists are long gone. Shelling can be heard in the distance, and new militiamen guard the street. No more does President Bashar al-Assad stroll past on his way to dine with Damascus power brokers by the marble fountain at therestaurant Naranj.
The Bible says that after the apostle Paul was struck blind on the road to Damascus, God directed him to “the Street Called Straight” to find a man who would baptize him, on a spot now marked by the nearby Hanania church.
Along the street, remnants of a Roman colonnade, plastered in places with worn posters of Mr. Assad, testify to millenniums of habitation. Geometric stonework dates to the medieval Ummayad era, when Damascus was the seat of the caliphate ruling the Muslim world. For centuries, people of many faiths and ethnicities have rubbed shoulders daily here, if not always in complete harmony, then in common worship of urban life and commerce.
Today, high-end antique shops alternate with cubbyhole workshops where carpenters and metalworkers make and sell their wares, much as they did centuries ago. Ottoman mansions and tiny swaybacked dwellings still shelter, respectively, the wealthy and the poor.
Scarves and carpets spill onto the street, from the third-century arched gateway at Bab Sharqi to the Medhat Pasha Souq, where market stalls under an arched tin roof display spices, lingerie and toys. At night, from the window of Abu George’s tiny and venerable bar, dim light still glows through colored liquor bottles, a kind of stained-glass beacon of religious diversity and neighborhood fellowship.
“If Muslims didn’t drink,” Abu George, a Christian, likes to say, “alcohol would be a lot cheaper.”
Abu Tony sat on the curb one recent morning in front of his antique shop, drinking coffee. There were no customers, but he and his merchant neighbors had opened up anyway, to pass the time. He surveyed the row of shops, which to him symbolized the spirit of the street. “I’m Christian,” he said. “Next door, he is Sunni; the next one is a Shiite” — who, he said, rents his store from the Jewish owner, who left for America but stays in touch.
To Abu Tony, the rebels were extremists, alien to Syria.
“It’s the land of civilization,” he said. “Christianity went out to the world from this street.”
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