The Syrian capital proved to be a calmer locality in the Arab world compared to other capitals I was able to visit as a correspondent
Few cities in the world, especially on our continent can look at millennia backwards. South American written history is so recent that it does not cover a tenth of the years of some cities in the Middle East. It is considered by many historians the oldest continuously inhabited capital in the world and this is exactly why its narrow streets and stone children keep remnants of multiple empires.
To visit a city of over 5,000 years of history is to confront its different influences in each of its neighborhoods and in each layer of land that marked the beginning or end of many civilizations. The Syrian capital proved to be a calmer town in the Arab world compared to other capitals I was able to visit as a correspondent. Baghdad, the endless noise of Cairo or the great tension in the Jerusalem environment is not present through the streets of Damascus. The sounds were worldly, but permeated with tranquility.
During the recent Civil War, Damascus was the scene of many of the initial protests against the Assad dictatorship, but in its central part was not as harshly hit or devastated by war as the also Milenares Alepo or Palmira. The Damascena population lived the dramas of war through other nuances. The constant lack of energy and water, mass unemployment, frequent devaluation of Syrian lyre. Talking to the places, just in my early days in the country, I could see that even though they were little hit by the bombs, each carried a story of the war of various corners of Syria, which in one way or another crossed in the bazaars of Damascus.
The Great Mosque of the Hoist, erected on the ground of a Basilica in the seventh century, after Islamic Invasion of the Levante, also reproduces the Damascena essence. Unlike circular structures, with tall domes and opulent crystals, the fourth most important mosque for the Sunnis is more sumptuous outside, with a huge central marble atrium, where caravans traders have been located for centuries. The sincere smile of the Syrians in finding that the country has returned to receive foreign visitors, including from Latin America, showed the relieved countenance of a people who now glimps a slightly more hopeful reality.
Less than 1 km away from the mosque, we have the Christian neighborhood, where the apostle Paul in the first century walked, while the persecution of primitive Christianity was gaining shape. The Armenian, Catholic, Syriac, Syriac, Syriac churches, Greek-Orthodox, and Roman Catholic only complement the wide religious variety that has always been part of the uprising and felt threatened in its essence during the height of the Jihadist terror of the Islamic State for less than a decade. With each corner turned and observed everyday scene, a new facet of the era presented to me.
Visiting capital is often to know the makeup reality of a nation, since in the center of political power the amenities offered to that population tend to be better than that of other urban centers and rural areas of the country. In the Syrian case, Damascus was a beautiful showcase of a plural life. A small bottle of a few thousand years that brings the imperfections of historical trauma, but the aromas of cultural diversity only found here so genuinely.
*This text does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the young Pan.
