A House in Damascus - Before the Fall Read online

  An Arabian Horse Journey

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  Wilfred Scawen Blunt was one of those odd Englishmen who came to Arabia to become obsessed. In his case it was the later nineteenth century and mainly in Egypt, but his obsession was distinctive in one sense that had a huge influence around the world. Most visitors then got hooked on the desert, but Blunt did not. He returned to England with several of the horses known as Arabians. In their original form they were wiry, compact, long distance and endurance specialists, although over time they sometimes had more height bred into them. Arabians are super-smart and beautiful, the distinctive dish-nose on the pure-breds immediately identifying them to horse people everywhere. They also have a history.

  For the Bedouin of pre-Crusader times, these horses were a gift from Allah in the service of war. A particularly high tail came to represent pride, the greater the arch of the neck the greater the courage, and the greater the bulge in the forehead the more blessings from Allah. As a result, the breeding genealogies of horse lines became as important as those of the people who owned them. When Gertrude Bell visited a Damascene nobleman's house early in the twentieth century, she paid an early visit to the stables. There she found two magnificent Arab mares, from the great bloodlines developed by the Rualla, among the most famous of the desert tribes and who made up most of T.E. Lawrence's army.80

  Mainly a poet and polemicist, Blunt established what became the world-famous and still extant Crabbett Stud back in England, in addition to one in Egypt, and run in partnership with his wife, Lady Ann Noel, granddaughter of the poet and tragic traveller, Lord Byron. When they divorced following one mistress too many (he attempted to shift this one into the family home while Lady Ann was still in residence), the stud became the centrepiece of a messy battle between him, his wife and their daughter that lasted until his death in 1922 at the age of 82. Blunt's part-solution to his consequential financial woes was to asset-strip as many horses as possible, and several were sold to Australia. Being isolated, the Australian Colonial Arabs, as they became known (from an imperially-minded English perspective, of course, an irony in that Blunt was an anti-imperialist), retained the original Arabian characteristics and so, into the twenty first century remain short, wiry, endurance specialists. Throughout that run of years, though, occasional imports of other Arabian stock enriched the Australian bloodlines.

  One of the most famous of those was Shahzada, a stallion imported from England in the 1920s by the Grace family, of Australian department store fame and fortune. By curious circumstance, a few years ago we acquired several Colonial Arabians, the prize of which was a gentle, rich chestnut stallion descended from Shahzada, named Codex but promptly nicknamed Cody, and who remains a central member of the family. Over a university council dinner one night a few years ago, a Grace family descendant was astonished to learn we had a horse descended from his family's import. He recalled that his grandfather always had two photographs on the desk: his wife, and Shahzada. That was a direct reflection of the Arabian reverence for genealogies of both people and horses. Our Cody descended directly from Shahzada on both sides of his line, so provides a direct link back to what in Blunt's day was still known as Arabia.

  Being now in one of the most famous areas of the original Arabia we must, of course, see horses. The Affable reckoned there was a solution to everything in Syria, you just had to find it. In this case it was in the Yellow Pages, the modern successor to word-of-mouth and the grapevine. Several studs are located on the outskirts of Damascus in what were once relatively distant locations, but are now almost outer suburbs as the city devours more and more hills and valleys to build apartments and houses. The studs, market gardens and farms that support the city are good reminders of what it once was like.

  The stud turned up by the Yellow Pages was a gem. Located at a "getaway escape" resort that included a swimming pool and restaurant, it turned out later to be well known to several Damascene friends. As soon as we turned into the gate, there on the right was a stable and yard complex. About half of the perimeter was lined with individual stables, and about fifteen horses were there, including foals. Sandi, the expert and enthusiast, immediately spotted three or four really good ones, and the fun began.

  The owner was one of those marvellous people who made it so wonderful to be in Syria. He did not know us. He was rung up out of the blue. He immediately appeared and greeted us as if we were old friends, and spent the best part of three hours showing us his horses. They were all first returned to their boxes—and already for Sandi this stable design had become the one for a new complex at home. Then they were turned out individually, a couple of the mares accompanied by their foals.

  As soon as these horses began to move, we were reminded why they have been revered for so long. Arabs float rather than run, they flow over rather than cover ground. Head up, tail up, no matter how fast they travel, they seem to be in slow motion with vast power in reserve. Even the foals pick it up immediately and no matter how gawky they look, small bodies on impossibly long and spindly legs, they still have the inherent grace that marks them out as special. A couple of these horses were clearly special. One was the offshoot of a Syrian mare and an Iraqi stallion. There was an immediate, if unspoken, understanding that such a breeding option would not again be available for some time, thanks to politics. The other had a French connection, and that had produced a quite different confirmation.

  The French connection also opened up another surprising dimension. The stud owner was an engineer whose brother, it emerged, had been based in Bordeaux for a long time where he, too, bred Arabians, this time for the racing circuit in France and around the world. Some of his horses had won major races including in the all-important centre of Dubai, and he appears in photographs with Sheikh Makhtoum, the famous boss of Dubai and even more famous international thoroughbred owner. The Sheikh's renowned Godolphin Stud in Australia's Hunter Valley is enormous, and has more recently come to include his growing collection of Australian Colonials. The very name of the stud recalls the importance of Arabian horse history. Godolphin was the name of a sire imported to England in 1730, and whose progeny founded the worldwide thoroughbred racing industry as we now know it. For a while in Australia, there were apocryphal stories about the Sheikh or his emissaries turning up unannounced, and offering $A25,000 for Arabian horses that normally traded for twenty percent of that figure, so keen were they to retrieve some of the original breeding characteristics. He never called us.

  As we drove away from that stud near Damascus, I reflected that Cody now seemed even more significant, residing in our rural Australian paddock. We had seen something of his family history.

  Straight Street Weaver

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  There were diamonds among the tourist rough of the modern Straight Street, and one of them was the weaver. He had a tiny shop at the bottom of an otherwise anonymous apartment block, just past the Roman Arch heading towards Bab Sharqi, and somehow into that he had fitted an over-two hundred years old loom on which he, his son and some apprentices created silk magic. This was the public face for a factory he had elsewhere containing another twelve looms, this one maintaining the connections to the and turning out timeless art pieces.

  He had an ageing but open and welcoming face, greying short hair and an unfailing private charm that, combined with his craft skill, removed the urge to bargain from most clients. Given the amount of skill evident in the work and the sheer experience of being there to watch it being made, any price was a bargain. He would recount his family's history in the trade, work done for the former Shahs of Iran before the advent of the Ayatollah in 1979, and presentations of work by his father to Queen Elizabeth II, as well as to many regional dignities. The name cards he displayed came from ambassadors and politicians, all shown without ostentation while he sipped tea as if there was all the time in the world.

  Well, there was, really. He was there almost every day from ten in the morning until ten at night. Walk along the street late almost any night and
most all shops would be shut, but not his, he was the constant factor in Straight Street.

  Anyone showing any interest got an immediate demonstration of the loom on which only a few metres a day of fine silk could be made, given the elaborate nature of the designs and the large number of colours involved. He or an assistant would willingly get in behind the wooden bar, flick the shuttles back and forth and under and over, before crimping another infinitesimal row of ordered silk into a much bigger picture. The pattern templates feeding down into the loom were all his creations, and on most visits there was something new to be discovered, small though the place was.

  He was constantly looking for new ideas or, to use the current jargon, be innovative. One day, that turned out to be a re-arranging of the shop. The loom sat right up front near the window. To one side was the entrance, festooned with scarves, ties and lengths of fabrics in all the rich colours that might be imagined. A step led down between the loom and the wall, a space that could hold one or two average-sized people at most, as they squeezed past yet more products hanging off the wall. Past the loom he had a small glass cabinet sitting parallel to the walls, and behind that a small settee where he sat, designed, or worked on other projects. Now, he turned that glass cabinet perpendicular to the walls, so opening the space up to an additional two or three people. At high tourist time that made a difference because, sometimes, people just kept walking past when they saw the doorway blocked. Those who did not come back missed a marvellous experience, but the weaver was always thinking about how to minimise that loss of custom.

  In many ways he was a return to the past, because from this tiny shop and his invisible-to-us factory he carried on a global enterprise. His business partner might currently be in Kuwait. Or the weaver himself might be preparing for another of his visits to Washington—the precious loom is loaded onto a container, and he goes off to ply his trade for two weeks before appreciative audiences. His products go all through the Arab world and beyond. The return of the tourists had, at that point, spread his influence ever more widely, even if one particularly fine scarlet silk hand-made and custom-made waistcoat had not been collected as promised, by its Canadian commissioner. That was two days work, said the weaver, but "no problem, someone will buy it."

  There is a curiosity here because the modern world likes to think of itself as having created globalisation and all its problems. Anti-global protestors at G-20 and other meetings, for example, seem apparently to believe they are the first to encounter and confront "globalisation." The same might be said of rock activists like Bono and Geldof. Yet all this activity had gone on for a very long time, as epitomised by this little shop on Straight Street from where a humble and skilled man conducted a global business. Weaving was long a practice in the region, and the French built on that, opening the first spinning factory in 1840. At that point, however, the industry's future was uncertain because of the impact of European goods arriving in wake of the industrial revolution. Because the Christians were prominent, the industry's trials were aggravated by the 1860 massacres that saw large number of Christians killed. Soon after, there were over three thousand working looms in Damascus, and weaving was rebuilt. Towards the end of the century there possibly up to fifteen thousand weavers at work.81 By 1912, there were almost two hundred factories in and around the Old City. Allied trades like dye-making were also numerous. By that point, however, European goods were back in the markets, at competitive extremely prices, and rising immigration was reducing the ready supply of female labour. The Straight Street weaver will tell you that all his silk now comes from China—while those threads had long been present, it was also around the turn of the twentieth century that they came to dominate.82 There used to be a local supply but silkworms need trees, and all those had long gone from the areas of Arabia where they once were. Of course, we are reminded immediately of the Silk Road, that legendary ancient and medieval trading route along which the precious fabric and spices moved in the massive caravans.

  There is a modern twist, though, in the way the weaver loaded the spindles that fed the silk thread into the loom. He took a roll of thread, attached it to a spindle, then held onto the roll as he attached the spindle—to an electric drill. He then turned on the drill at full speed and the spindle was loaded in no time. That innovation did not come in with the camel caravans.

  Careers

  ~

  A walk from the house through the Hamidiyeh to the underpass and on through the "New City" leads, in one direction, to the Tekkiye Sulamaniye that is one of the most beautiful sights and sites in all Damascus. Incongruously, it is sandwiched now between a parking station behind, some nondescript office buildings on one side, the National Museum on the other, the concrete channel that effectively carries what remains of the Barada and, on the other side, the Four Seasons hotel. At that time, the hotel guests' view of the Tekkiye Sulamaniye was due to be blocked by an enormous shopping mall, just the latest monument to Damascus' long trading history.

  The complex was created in the mid-sixteenth century to replace an earlier palace wrecked by the latest round of warfare, and it was designed as a pilgrimage centre. Here, those making what was then the long and arduous haj to Mecca had a place of rest and contemplation before they set out. With an exquisitely crafted mosque as its focal point, and a series of dome-topped rooms around the central pool and gardens that led off to a madrasa, it would have been a calm place before the trials that were to come, because casualty rates on the haj were high.

  These days it houses the cleverly-conceived craft souk where silversmiths, glassmakers, brass and copper beaters, artists, lute-makers and textile sellers sit side by side providing easy access for busloads of tourists. In one shop, through a very low doorway and under a dome, there was a trove of artefacts and fabrics and glass and curiosities in glass cases, piled up the walls and along the floor. The keeper of these treasures was a genial, articulate man who really knew his trade.

  "Where are you from?"

  Australia

  "You have come a long way to visit Syria."

  Well, luckily, I am living here.

  "What are you doing?"

  I am on a project designed to upgrade the university and higher education system.

  "I must give you my other card", he said, retrieving one from under the counter.

  He was a French-educated scientist who held a university position as well as running this obviously well-stocked Orientals and antiques shop in the Suleymaniye.

  "There is much to do in the universities," he continued

  This was a common comment, because many Syrians had a lot to say about the state of their universities. The public universities were huge, and the country's young demographic demographic pipeline meant they would probably grow even more. The planning for this was rudimentary, qualified and experienced staff were at a premium, yet teaching positions were demanding and lowly paid. University management was heavily process rather than strategically oriented. One very competent senior executive, from Aleppo University, had an amusing photograph on his phone that he showed me during a break in a workshop. We were discussing efficiency. The photograph was of an enormous pile of papers and files on a high-backed chair, the mountain reaching to the top of that back. I asked him what it was. He smiled:

  "That is my daily consignment of papers to sign."

  Daily?

  "Yes, the same pile appears every day."

  He explained that no matter what he did to try and reduce this, the paper flow continued unabated, as literally the smallest thing needed a forest of signatures to validate any action. This was repeated through all levels of the university, and all the universities were the same. Getting anything done was difficult. On top of that, rising student numbers raised serious infrastructure questions, the supply of good academic staff was lagging, and the numbers of universities were growing. The system had serious capacity restraints, even though the regime considered higher education to be an important lever for social and econom
ic growth.

  I thought of him and his chair many times after that, especially after I left Syria and most especially when the later reports came in of demonstrations being broken up at the University of Aleppo.

  Because of that general situation, then, thousands of academics like the antique dealer in the Tekkiye Sulemaniye created other lives and incomes for themselves. His conversation centred around that, and around the frustration of not being able to commit fully to his intellectual career which was important to him, not just as a profession but as a way of life. He embodied the continuing Arab love affair with knowledge and thinking. In his case, that was shaped and formed in Paris where he studied, then taught for a while before coming home to pass on his new skills. Being able to do that only partially was an obstacle to Syria's growth, he reckoned, because his experience mirrored that of countless others. The inability of the government to maximise all those skills was holding the country back. Meanwhile, he turned his energy toward his antiques.

  Back over on Straight Street, meanwhile, another acquaintance had a much clearer set of plans for himself, by selling carpets.

  Straight Street was already running the ever-present tourist site danger of becoming a caricature of itself. The dilemma is always there, of course: because tourists want to come and visit, authorities then promote it, allow souvenirs to overtake craft, do not control development, and very soon the things that made it attractive start disappearing under attack from far more inferior things.

  At the Bab Sharqi end of the street lay the main churches. From that end until Bab Touma Street T-junction, a range of "Orientals" shops sold the boxes and brasses that made Damascus famous centuries ago. The theory was that the Christians made the boxes, but that exclusivity really disappeared long ago. Nevertheless, in the side alleys up from the Bab Sharqi end, it was still possible to find small factories making wonderfully distinctive things, each box having a unique character through a mark or a flaw that characterises the true craft piece. Even in that block, though, jewellers and trinkets and fashion designer clothes had started to appear, rendering it more like the main tourist traps in Venice, Rome or anywhere else.