A House in Damascus - Before the Fall Read online

  All over the city, newly baked breads could be seen stacked on racks, laid out on car bonnets and shop steps as well as in display cases and on empty boxes. Every food outlet had packaged breads, clearly not as good as the fresh ones but nonetheless necessary for daily survival. Snack sandwiches were available to ease people through a work day, these sajj options (usually cheese or salami) on offer at the coffee shops and restaurants and made possible only by the bakers. Bread runs the city.

  It has been this way for a very long time, and a simple recipe has taken on cult status. The traditional bread contains only flour, dry yeast, salt, water, milk and olive oil, although some variations may see herbs added in. The human skill in making that simple combination into a product to be preferred over others underlines the importance of the bakers, and it seems their trade began perhaps as early as the eighth millenium BC up near Aleppo. Rudimentary tools evolved over time: newer and better ovens emerged from the simple, earlier use of hot stones (remarkably, the present day "inventions" of oven stones simply return to the ways of those earlier bread makers).

  The rain/grain/bread/social contentment index began very early. Ibn Al-Qalanisi, for example, recorded several examples in the early twelfth century where shortages caused discontent through resultant high prices.30 As villages grew into towns and cities, the supply chains for bread developed and grew. By the nineteenth into the twentieth centuries, commercial flour mills were well into production, and by the later twentieth century government-run and controlled bakeries were in action. The production and distribution of bread was, in effect, a marker for social contentment and political order.

  In his marvellous book Everyday Life & Consumer Culture in 18th-Century Damascus, James Grehan devotes an entire chapter to "Bread & Survival", reaffirming the significance of this humble product.31 As he points out, the city was overjoyed in June of 1749 when the wheat harvest arrived, because it followed serious shortages and hardships. Bread was a social litmus test for the well-being and health of the city. Wheat was the preferred staple with even the West's other standby, the potato (which arrived in Syria only through the eighteenth century) struggling to gain popularity. Wheat made bread. The fields themselves that produced the necessary grains were referred to simply as "bread", and Damascene bread was renowned as the best. The major industry for the city was, in many ways, the production of bread because that involved growing, harvesting, transporting, milling, production and distribution. For the ruling classes it also represented a major form of taxation, along with political trouble when shortages occurred. Stockpiles of wheat were already being put aside for such moments, because rulers knew that low supplies of bread meant high supplies of malcontents ready to turn out on the streets in protest. They must surely have understood the impulses of the French Revolution when it broke out in 1789. Grandees manipulated the Syria/Damascus market, and that led to suspicion and rumour of all kinds. Price controls and taxes were an attempt to regularise supply, whereas the populace in many respects still believed in a free market. Bread the staple was also bread the political barometer.

  As Grehan points out, the bakers were invariably the meat in the sandwich, as it were. Governors and citizens were often united by just one thing: a high disregard for the honesty and probity of bakers who determined the state of bread consumption. In extreme cases, miscreant bakers were hanged publicly for their alleged indiscretions. Inevitably, they were caught up in the bread riots that appeared constantly throughout the mid-eighteenth century. In 1743, a severe grain shortage, exacerbated by supplier hoarding, drove bread prices high and supply was low. A hungry crowd stormed the courthouse to threaten the authorities, then raided all local bakeries in search of supplies. The intersection of supply and demand, control and discontent culminated in 1757-1758 when severe shortages produced the highest grain prices of the entire century, at the precise moment of serious political uncertainty. A governor installed by the Ottoman powers immediately encountered allegations of grain hoarding by city leaders. The general discontent led to full scale street battles. Then the Haj caravan was almost completely destroyed and the governor, who survived, fled rather than return to the city and chaos set in. Shops closed and bread prices soared one hundred and forty percent. A new governor set about restoring order but with a heavy hand, especially in the always-restive Midan where bakeries were deserted and bread production halted, the whole condition worsened by yet another crop failure. Again bread, its availability and price, symbolised a much deeper malaise.

  There is an eerie continuity to this in Syrian and Damascene life. In 2008, for example, severe drought in the country's main wheat growing areas led to extreme shortages. By then Syria was consuming somewhere around four million tons of wheat annually, and had already gone from being self-sufficient to becoming a wheat importer. Food prices rose and inflation set in, and that was intensified by the government having to reduce subsidies on fuel and energy because of the straitened economy. Those price movements had a direct impact on bakers: petrol price rises were reflected in higher transportation costs for wheat deliveries, and rising natural gas prices added to the bakers' bills because their ovens were now all driven by gas. Bread prices went up, along with discontent, and the government had to very carefully balance the competing social pressures.

  When the broader troubles broke out in 2011, it was not long before bread featured in the protests. As Homs and other centres came under siege, food price rises and bread shortages soon further stoked the discontent. In mid-2011 one demonstration in Banias, held to support those under siege in Daraa, featured the crowd lifting its bread aloft—"raise the bread to lift the siege of Daraa", they cried. By early 2012, some families in the poorer outer districts of Damascus were eating only bread (because of escalating food and vegetable prices) but needed up to four kilos of it a day, so were queuing at all local bakeries in order to fulfil their quota. The Damascus bakers reckoned they needed about three thousand tons a day to satisfy demand, but flour prices had risen by two hundred percent. The authorities, as earlier in history, saw the significance and implications here so not only attempted to guarantee supply, but also to use the opportunity to pass on their own messages. One report had bread distributed from all government-controlled bakeries carrying printed messages such as "the nation is bigger than the upheaval".

  Oddly enough, then, the Ottoman rulers of the eighteenth century would have understood and may even have sympathised with the position in which Bashar al-Assad found himself.

  Coffee

  ~

  At the eastern end of the Umayyad Mosque, near the end of the main walkway down from Bab Touma and just by some steps, sits Al Nofra, the most famous and most photographed of Damascene coffee shops. The Nofra has been there a long time: Karl Baedeker noted it on his 1906 map of Damascus.32 It is always full, a crowded, bustling place that mixes ages and traditions, women included. Tourists sit writing their postcards, soaking up the ambience amidst hardened locals for whom it is still a principal social gathering point. Patrons spill out of the crowded shop and along the walls onto seats around a little well and beyond, watching anyone still walking around. There is a constant hum of conversation, and the inevitable gurgle of the nargileh. This is the ultimate in the modern coffee shop hangout.

  Up the steps and immediately on the left through the arch, though, sits the ultimate traditional coffee shop. Its front step is really a patio, where groups of men puff and sip away. And they are only men, mostly older but with a mix of young. There is rarely a woman to be seen, because they never went to the coffee shop in the traditional settings. These guys will sit out there for hours, puffing the hubble bubble, drinking coffee, playing backgammon while watching "the life" walk by. There is another example of these traditional coffee shops off Straight Street near the Medhat Pasha end and walking through to pick up Al Amin Street—it opens in late evening and all the neighbourhood men drift in for a chat, a coffee, a smoke, and a game of cards. Outside the Old City, in the "centre", on A
l Muttanabi Street that runs down from the Four Seasons to Port Said Street, there are two huge versions of these older style coffee shops. They have open windows, many tables, and perhaps hundreds of men sitting in groups.

  The Azem Palace has a fixed display of a coffee shop that explains how important these institutions were and, to some extent, remain in Damascene and Arabic life. In their original form, a main attraction was the storyteller who would recount long and elaborate folk tales to help while away the hours. The storyteller may still be seen at the Nofra, but is a reminder of the past rather than a constant in contemporary life—like so many other aspects of life everywhere, the arrival of the electronic media in the form of 1920s radio was the beginning of the end for the Damascene storyteller. In the West the coffee shop has a history, too, but has become increasingly the site for a hurried stop to pick up coffee "to go" along with a muffin. That would never happen here. The Damascene shops are timeless, an escape from the outer life where, even in the Arab world, the clock has gained more of a sway. The Azem Palace interpretation depicts the coffee shop as a place for men to relax, escape the pressures of the household, get a chance to think, and socialise with people who thought like them. Modern feminists are scarcely likely to see that as an unalloyed social benefit. Nor would they appreciate the other Azem Palace display's explanation—that the coffee shop was a place for men to ease their stress while awaiting the birth of their children, because childbirth was dangerous! Well, yes, but more for the woman involved and the child, surely?

  One romanticised mid-nineteenth century print depicts "coffee shops along the Barada", a time when the river ran and still retained its natural contours. The only thing that comes close now is the coffee shop in the ecological gardens, just near the Citadel along from Bab Al Faraj. It is very pleasant, but the gardens put a respectable distance between it and the summer fetid canal that is the modern replacement for the river. It runs mainly during heavy rains that are now more unpredictable in these days of climate change. What that print confirms and underlines, however, is that the coffee shop has been an institution in Damascus for a long time.

  It is widely reckoned that the world's first coffee shop opened in Damascus in 1530 with the influence of the bean spreading widely and quickly throughout the region, and eventually around the globe. Some twenty five years later, a man called Shams from Damascus and a colleague from Aleppo were said to have opened the first coffee shops in Constantinople. (The term "Shami" is commonly used for "Damascene" in everyday expression, coming from "Sham" as the name of the city that dominated Greater Syria). Similarly, the roasting of coffee beans is thought to have begun in and around Damascus during this period, so in many respects "Turkish" coffee might just as easily have been "Damascene" coffee. Samer Akkach recounts how from this sixteenth century beginning, the taking of coffee entered the Ottoman and Damascene popular cultures, so that for the next two to three hundred years not only did coffee shops flourish, but coffee became a central part of leisure activities, including at picnics along the Barada river and down in the orchards of the Gouta.33 The famous mid-nineteenth century Bartlett print captured one of these occasions, and was probably set outside the Tekkiye Suleymaniye complex and mosque that appeared in the mid-sixteenth century, and now houses the quality crafts souk. It stands directly across from the Four Seasons hotel, separated from it by the concrete channel that now directs what is left of the Barada.

  That is not to say the tradition remains unchanged. Foreigners obsessed with the search for "good coffee", which some cynics might consider an oxymoron, are automatically shocked when asked if they want "Turkish" or "American" or even "Nescafe". For a country with such a deep coffee tradition that seems an oddity. It is, however, a simple reflection of a tradition unaffected by the arrival of ""skinny decaff latte" and "moccachino with more chocolate" via Starbucks or some other chain. There is coffee, Turkish, or the modern snap frozen varieties. But there are some concessions. One favoured coffee additive is cardamom, and the coffee shops sell prepared packs that have either a little, more, or a lot of added cardamom.

  Yes, there is Arabica, but that is really the coffee bean prepared to the Arab taste, bitter (that taste for bitter is replicated in a lot of Syrian chocolate), which is why the inevitable question comes at the time of ordering: "sugar?" Even the hardened addict of "good coffee" cannot but be charmed when the coffee arrives in a long handled, beaten copper urn of varying size, and poured direct into the cup at the table. This coffee has had the sugar added to the water, if necessary, then been boiled, taken off the flame and at that time had the coffee stirred in, then brought back to the boil at least once. The more it is boiled, the stronger and thicker the brew. Then it arrives at the table by the copper express.

  The ubiquitous "Turkish" tag is fascinating, a reminder of just how long the Ottoman Empire ran this part of the world, and of just how hard it is to change popular culture. Syria and other regional powers might have thrown off the Ottomans, regained independence, adopted new institutions and habits and practices, but they still drink "Turkish" coffee.

  Sweets Are Us, and We Are Nuts

  ~

  Along at the corner of the lane at the bottom of the steps, behind small wired windows, a little factory space contains what look like six cement mixing machines, except that they are scrupulously shiny. Early most mornings, their whir was heard by pedestrians padding by on their ways to work, school or coffee.

  This was part of the sweets-making chain integral to the Damascus scene, because these machines prepared the basis for many of the treats that later appeared in the stalls and shops just a few metres further up the lane that leads to Straight Street, and along the lane leading off it past the madrasa and into the bottom of the spice souk that by then was the sweet souk. Similar little factories were dotted throughout the area, outnumbering the wedding dress shop, the provisions stores and the general merchants, along with the tiny offices whose purposes remained unclear.

  On my first venture into the sweets souk, before the advent of the house even, I was adrift in front of mesmerising choices at one stall that would become a favourite. From early in the morning the goodies were spilled out onto stands atop the cobblestones, forming an aisle into the shop where even more goods are displayed in boxes or packed in glass jars stacked almost to the roof. There were chocolates of a million varieties, jellies of all descriptions and colours, rumballs (as we might call them but probably lacking the essential ingredient here), liquorice, sherberts, gums, glaced fruits and more. You might be forgiven for thinking it was more about the packaging than the content, because these delights came exquisitely wrapped in brightly-hued wrappers, so that a box of chocolates was more a box of paper accompanied by chocolates.

  As I stood confronted by this array and clueless about what I might buy, a young couple with their very young kids took pity. The mother handed her young daughter a sweet, and nudged her in my direction.

  "Try that" she said, her husband smiling as the girl handed the tiny packet up to me.

  Thank you, I replied, unwrapping what proved to be a stunning cherry-flavoured chocolate.

  "It is that one there" said the husband, pointing to a table on the left just outside the shop, "and you will find some of those excellent as well", indicating to the other side.

  The shopkeeper joined in: "You are from?"

  Australia.

  He smiled. "You are very welcome in my shop and you must come often. These ones are very good", and he shovelled a selection into a brown paper bag.

  By now we were all good friends, and I was humbled by how easily these people had helped a stranger they would most likely never see again, although the shopkeeper probably reckoned, rightly, that he might.

  That began a love/hate relationship with the sweets souk: love, because it embodied all the fables of the market, its long history and reputation; hate, that lay with the certain knowledge of the likely results of extensive fieldwork among all those calories. Back in my PhD st
udent days in New Delhi, a Bengali sweetshop at the bottom of the stairs to my apartment on Connaught Circus inflicted severe damage on my cricket-playing weight in just a few short months. Now, again, and especially after I moved into the house just a few short steps away, at least twice a week a 100g or 200g bag of temptations would somehow end up at home after another visit to my friend in a vain attempt to sample all he had on offer, not to mention his colleagues' selection as well. However, with effort, I drew the line at buying sweets en route to the morning taxi—that would have been way too much.

  Nuts are the other great casual filler in Damascus, and up on Straight Street several tiny shops overflowed with an amazing array of options: walnuts, cashews, peanuts, almonds and all the other favourites along with more exotic options. On my first foray along Via Recta I fell victim to a very clever nut salesman. I was across the road from his shop, checking out a bakery, and he sailed over bearing products.

  "You must try these."

  I did: almonds, not my all time favourites.

  Thank you, but I do not need any.

  "But you will like these." Out came some cashews which are a favourite.

  They are splendid, thank you.

  "Come over to my shop."

  By now I was in that classic traveller position of feeling obligated having tasted the wares, so I went over. Ten minutes later I escaped but only after having bought half a kilo of several different varieties and at a price, I discovered subsequently, well above the going rate. In my subsequent walks past that shop, there were few occasions when he did not have another foreign buyer lined up. He was very good at what he did.