Damascus, Syria

Early May 2002

Didn't have much time in Damascus. Just one day of wandering around these fabulous city with it's giant covered markets, mosques and medieval walls. Maybe next time.

Umayyad Mosque

Girls covered head to toe in robes prior to going into the mosque

The Umayyad Mosque. It contains the head of John The Baptist in a special room off to the left of this courtyard. The room was full of heaps of people and women were rubbing cloth and money up against the grill enclosing the relic for good luck or something.

Have to say, the mosque felt like a community centre with people chatting, students studying, men talking business, kids running around and an Imam giving a lesson. At the call to prayer, people stopped what they were doing, prayed for 10 minutes and then went back to what they were doing. The women prayed separately from the men either to one side or behind them. It's a distraction apparently to see a woman's butt up in the air while you are praying and trying to think pure and holy thoughts. I can see their point.

Military Museum

MIG 21 jet fighter

Renault tank

Armoured truck

Renault armoured ammunition carrier or reconnaissance vehicle

Wreckage of an Israeli F4 Phantom

James Bond style gyrocopter shot down during the 1973 war. It was used for reconnaissance and target spotting.

National Museum

At the National Museum, there was a series of paintings called Palestine: Exodus to Odyssey by a Palestinian artist showing another side of the Israeli-Palestine conflict. The Palestinians were ethnically cleansed from areas where they had lived for hundreds of years. You never hear this kind of thing in the western media. If you say anything anti-Israeli these days, you are branded anti-Semitic and a Nazi. The Israeli lobby is too strong.

Still, whether you agree with the artists interpretation of what happened or not, you can't deny it's not powerful stuff. If there had been a book accompanying the exhibition, I would have bought it. Seeing this kind of thing and talking to people was one of the reasons I wanted to go to the middle east - to find out the side of the story that we don't see in the western media.