Saturday, 6 September 2003, Jaramana, Syria
70 degrees, sunny, pleasant

Wake up, breakfast of olives, eggs, bread, tomatoes and tea. As we're eating on the terrace, the groom from last nights wedding returns for breakfast at his new wife's family next door. He seems to be walking with a slight swagger . . .

Next, to Naeif's school so Diana can meet his friend Issam, the "Wizard of Oud" who will arrange for her to buy an oud, and take a lesson - her new obsession. We listen to Issam and Kinan, a clarinetist, perform a duet, written by Issam, to be played at their upcoming concert. We've seen the posters, but sadly, we can't attend their concert, as we'll be on our way to Aleppo. Naeif shows us around the school a bit more, and we have some tea.

After that, we visit the National Museum of Damascus nearby. This is where we meet the man we refer to as "the Doctor", a Syrian man, professor of history, who gives us a tour of the Museum. He's very knowledgeable, and his English is excellent - he's also fluent in French. Next door is the silver souk, so we shop around for awhile and look at all the handcrafts, but rightly decide we'll find better stuff in Aleppo. Then, we head off to Old Damascus for some browsing around, and meet Naeif at Vino Russo for some beers. Then, we pop over to the train station to get our tickets to Palmyra.

We're invited over to the neighbor's after we get home, quite late. These are the neighbors on the next door terrace that we always see out on their porch too. We head over, and they have a tremendous spread of food, all delicious stuff. Stuffed grape leaves, two kinds of chicken, two kinds of baba ganouj, hummus, steak pieces with potatoes, fatoush, taboulleh, pickles and the lamb-peas-rice mixture. Jeremy digs in and bonds Syrian-style by eating like a locust. This endears him to our hosts, who egg him on and keep the Arak flowing. The Arak is flowing pretty freely for all of us, now. While sitting at the table, we occasionally burst into spontaneous bouts of clapping, dancing or singing. At one point, a crazy Debke winds it's way thru the dining room, into another salon and out onto the porch, the music now cranking. Jeremy learns what I dub the "Kleenex Dance", a sort of modified Debke dance while waving two tissues around.

We finally call it a night, tired, slightly drunk and stuffed with food around 3 AM.