From Souk to Souk (5 page)

‘Hello! Hello!'

It was the young man from the nut and dried fruit shop, enthusiastically beckoning me across. I felt a strange sense of relief to see a familiar face. After a moment's hesitation, I walked over to where he was standing, his slim form squeezed into a pink T-shirt and a pair of the tight, faux-designer jeans that seemed so popular here.

‘Try these, my friend,' he said, pushing a few pistachios into the palm of my hand. ‘They are from Iran. The best!'

I cracked open the shells and began tasting the little green nuts.

‘Yes? You like them?' he gave an appealing smile. ‘Where are you from?'

‘I'm British,' I replied, after a brief pause, wondering how he would react.

‘Manchester United!' he grinned. ‘You like Manchester United?' I was not sure if his enthusiasm was real or merely sales banter, but he seemed to take it in his stride when I said football was not quite my thing.

I bought half a kilo of pistachios and now had two bags to carry: the dried roses and the nuts. Dipping occasionally into the latter, and, somewhat irrationally, feeling reassured after the brief conversation, I continued my stroll and contemplated the long history of the narrow street with its modest architecture. Perhaps Saint Paul had also once stopped to buy pistachios from a street vendor all those centuries ago, I mused. Once again, here in Damascus I felt the sensation of continuity derived from the banal: everyday actions we repeat, as did countless generations before us, which link us to our past in a way that mere masonry and stonework cannot. As I walked along lost in my thoughts, an art shop suddenly caught my eye. Pausing to look in the large window, I wondered how I could have missed it earlier. Two paintings, one of what looked like a Damascene street scene, the other a still life with fruit, were propped on easels surrounded by an assortment of
objets d'art
. Yet it was not the paintings that caught my eye, but a marble bust on the floor between them. A strange mixture of the modern and the traditional, it was evidently new, though at once evocative of ancient Assyrian art, famous for its stone reliefs of human-headed winged lions and bulls. I looked at the long, angular face of the bust, the beard carved with deep-cut swirls; the thin, unseeing eyes little more than two lines, a stark contrast to the generous, almost pouting, lips. My eyes drifted to the sharp patterns of the carved headdress, deliberately broken off on one side at an angle. I was intrigued, I was tempted, and I knew exactly where in my house I could put it. For a while, I just stood gazing at the bust. The more I looked at it, the more I liked it and felt drawn to it. Suddenly, reflected in the shop window, I saw a dark figure, hands in pockets, leaning against a wall on the other side of the street behind me. A wave of nervousness slid over my body, cold even in the warmth of the Syrian afternoon: I was sure it was the same man I had seen before. Paranoia now gained the upper hand, choking off any rational thoughts. I decided to seek refuge in the shop.

Closing the door behind me I felt, illogically, as if I had reached sanctuary amidst the art. I looked around at the hotchpotch of paintings, some hanging in frames, others stretched over canvases and stacked against the rough stone walls. Smudged women reclined in the cooler corners of the shop, a strange contrast to alpine landscapes in thick oils and abstract compositions of lines and circles. There appeared to be no theme to the gallery, but all the works seemed recent and, in some, one could see the hand of the same artist.

‘
Bonjour
!' said the gallery owner, rising from a wooden chair next to a desk covered with stacks of papers. Brushing crumbs from his shirt, he began to make his way carefully past the obstacle course of canvases that were leaning against various tables.

‘
Bonjour!
' I replied, somewhat surprised. Although Syria had been part of the French Mandate between the wars, the thin-haired man now approaching was the first person here to address me in the language of Molière; in neighbouring Lebanon, half the country seemed to speak French. He adjusted the gold-rimmed glasses that sat on the bridge of his broad nose before looking me up and down. I imagined the man outside observing me just as closely.

‘
Vous êtes français, monsieur?
'

‘
Non, je suis anglais mais j'habite en Belgique,
' I replied.

‘Ah! English!' His eyes flared a little and his eyebrows, two unkempt lines of fur, arched momentarily. ‘Welcome to my gallery. You are interested in Syrian art? As you can see, I have a lot of fine things here. Come, let me show you something: I have a beautiful painting by a local artist that I think you will like. Syrian art is becoming very popular, you know.'

‘Actually, I wanted to ask the price of the bust,' I said, turning to point a hand towards the statue, just visible from where we were standing. Now facing the window, I discreetly looked towards the street. The man with his hands in his pockets was still there, but, looking at him directly rather than merely seeing his reflection, I could see more clearly. He was wearing a black shirt, not a navy polo top. I felt my shoulders relax as I realised I had never seen him before: dazzling sunlight, strange shadows and preconceived ideas were potent fuel for the imagination in the ancient streets of Damascus.

‘Ah, that! It's lovely, isn't it?' said the gallery owner, wiggling his fingers in mid-air as if about to help himself to a display of cakes. ‘It's also by a local artist. Would you like to look at it?' He lifted to one side a portrait of a woman sketched in a style that had echoes of Picasso and moved a table with a collection of reclining grey figurines. Walking over to the bust, which was almost a metre high, he bent down, and, with a bit of a struggle, managed to lift it and carry it over to where I was standing. Setting it down carefully in front of me, he dusted off his hands with a cloth that was lying on a table and then wiped his brow. I crouched down and ran my fingers gently over the cool marble, in parts smooth like the floor of the Great Mosque, elsewhere rough as the day it was hewn. The motionless head was impervious to my caresses. Its exaggerated length and stylised features embodied it with a strange elegance. Here, before me, was something even more ancient than this city: the stone was literally as old as the hills. But I was curious as to something much more recent: the thoughts of the sculptor. What, I wondered, had inspired him to take a chunk of our planet and fashion from it this piece of art to create an intriguing take on antiquity?

‘Perhaps you would like some tea?'

I looked up to see the rather portly gallery owner peering down at me through his spectacles and holding a round tray with two little glasses on it.

‘Thank you,' I said, rising to my feet. The tulip-shaped glass was hot to the touch, steam rising from the copper-coloured brew. I took a sip; it was strong and very sweet.

‘You like it here in Syria?'

‘Yes,' I nodded. ‘The people are very friendly.'

‘Then I am sure you would like to take something back to your country with you,' he smiled.

‘It's interesting,' I said, pondering the statue, ‘but I couldn't possibly carry it on the plane back to Belgium.'

‘But,
monsieur
, it is not a problem: we can ship it for you!'

***

When Mr al-Abboud said he would ‘ship' the statue, I took his word literally and envisaged it on board a boat sailing across the Mediterranean and through the Straits of Gibraltar before picturesquely ploughing its way up the Spanish and French coasts until it reached Antwerp. Not for a moment did I imagine he would post a 45-kilo stone bust by airmail.

I look at the statue staring blindly up at me with the two slit eyes, sightless lines carved into mottled cream marble. I feel a wave of excitement that this most unusual of holiday mementos has arrived after its long journey. Pulling back more of the straw, I inspect it to make sure that it is not damaged. Everything is fine. Anton and I lift the bust out of its crate and carefully carry it up the main staircase where an empty niche is waiting for the new arrival. The statue is a perfect fit and silently takes up its place. The angular features and the long beard are unmistakably modern, yet allude to a Syria of many, many centuries ago. The country from which I have just returned is very different from how I imagined. I have no illusions about the regime, but the people themselves showed me nothing but friendliness. The impression so often conveyed of widespread hostility to the West was not borne out by my experience and I returned from Syria with a changed view of the country. In a way, I have had my own little Damascene conversion. I look at the bust and know that every time I go up and down stairs and see it I will think of that trip, of the city where history and belief are inextricably intertwined, of the welcoming people of Damascus. I decide to call the bust Saul.

The letter Q must always be followed by a U. At least that is what I had always thought. Qatar was the first exception to the rule that I encountered as a young child. As in the case of another country on the Arabian Peninsula, I first became aware of the tiny state through my stamp collection. Qatar's philatelic output made a particularly colourful contribution to my favourites with its depictions of exotic beasts such as oryxes and camels. The inexplicable spelling of the country's name prompted me to demand an explanation from my parents. I do not recall any coming, but I remember I remained fascinated with the strange land whose postal authorities seemed to stand in defiance of everything teacher had told me. The sense of mystery was heightened by it being the only country in the whole wide world whose name began with the seventeenth letter of the alphabet, one so rarely used that, like Z, there was but a single tile in my favourite game, Scrabble, where managing to use it merited ten points. The seed of interest was sown. For a long time, I pronounced the state's name with the emphasis on the second syllable, making it sound like an unpleasant flu symptom and only years later, when the diminutive but activist state began to make television news headlines, did I discover that political correctness and squeamishness seemed to have rebranded the country to sound inoffensively like someone employed to catch domestic felines.

I first visited Qatar, on some counts the country with the highest per capita income in the world, many years later on the way to Yemen, a state languishing at the other end of the development scale. Even as I was busy building up my boyhood collection of worthless stamps, these two countries were already going along very different economic paths. In 1940, prospectors had struck oil in what was then the tiny British Protectorate of Qatar and black gold was rapidly transforming the former pearl fishing peninsula. The discovery of vast gas reserves three decades later provided another boost until, today, the barren sands of what passes there for countryside stand in abject contrast to the opulent glass and steel towers along the crescent-shaped waterfront of Doha, the Qatari capital. The flowing oil means the government has money to lavish on its quarter of a million citizens, providing them with free health care and education in a fiscal paradise devoid of income tax and VAT. But it also has endless cash reserves to pay for energy-intensive desalination plants that make seawater drinkable. In this arid emirate, water, perhaps the region's most precious resource, is free for all.

Yemen, meanwhile, is still the poor cousin for whom the outlook remains bleak: in the Land of the Queen of Sheba, the aquifers are sinking as quickly as water disappears into sand and there is no money to pay for hi-tech alternatives. And, while Qatar is busy using its wealth to punch above its weight on the world scene by doing everything from supporting Libyan rebels to hosting the Al Jazeerah TV network, on the other side of the Arabian Peninsula, Yemen's slide into ever deeper poverty has been accompanied by the struggle to fend off Al Qaeda.

As my plane prepared to land in Doha, the economic cleavage between the two countries was not, however, at the forefront of my mind. My attention was focused on the uninspiring view from the aircraft window: a flat sandy realm over which ran a vague network of roads and tracks, some little more than sketched outlines, work in progress like Qatar itself. Low buildings, many the colour of the ground as though camouflaged, dotted the bleak and barren landscape. As a child, I had never imagined I would one day set foot in this far-off country and now, despite the unappealing scene through the porthole, as the airplane's shadow grew larger, I began to feel a warm glow of excitement at finally fulfilling a dream.

The airport was being rebuilt at great expense and so, amidst a mixture of apologies for the current inconvenience and fanfares about the glory to come, the well-drilled crew dealt us coloured cards depending on whether we were in transit, merely using Qatar Airways' home base as a hub, or actually intending to enter the country. The lucky few who had opted for the limousine service were deplaned like royalty, while the rest of us were ferried to the distant airport buildings in long buses. At the transit terminal, everyone except myself and a ruddy-faced man in his fifties poured off, pushing their way through the glass doors of the building like sales-shoppers desperate to be first to snatch the best bargains. A few minutes later we reached the arrivals hall, vast and almost empty, with rows of immigration officials wrapped in perfectly ironed Arab robes, the men in long white
dishdashas
, the women in flowing black
abayas
, patiently waiting at their booths for a passenger to turn up. A short while later, with a new stamp and visa in my passport and baggage collected, I was in a taxi heading towards my hotel, passing cranes, reinforced concrete skeletons and glittering realisations of architects' dreams. Things were looking up.

***

Apart from the country itself, my main point of interest in Qatar was Doha's recently opened Museum of Islamic Art. I cannot pretend to be a specialist in the sphere, but the museum's collection was already the subject of international acclaim and a ‘must see' on any visit to the country. It was only a short walk from my hotel, but striding over high kerbs and negotiating my way across unfinished pavements was not what I had expected. I picked my way towards the sea front, doing my best to stay in whatever shade there was to avoid the glare of the Arabian sun. As I rounded a corner, the museum came into sight, a stack of cream-coloured boxes rising out of the waters of Doha Port. I.M. Pei, the Chinese-American architect of Louvre pyramid fame who designed the place, wisely insisted that his creation stand on its own island to set it apart from other buildings. Walking slowly up the causeway to what appeared to be a virtually windowless structure, a double row of well-tended palm trees standing on either side, it was easy to imagine one had been transported back in time to some ancient civilisation with the path leading to the palace of its munificent leader. As I got nearer, lines of round Islamic arches came into view, softening the building's cubist style and hinting at the nature of the treasures within.

Inside, in darkened rooms, behind glass, glistened wonders of gold; wonders of gold among swirls of calligraphy, folds of silk, carvings of ivory and sets of ceramics. Here were the finest examples of centuries of Islamic art from lands as diverse as Spain and Turkey, China and Iran, countries in many ways different, yet bound together by the common thread passing through Mecca. It would have been easy to create a collection so vast as to overwhelm the visitor by its sheer size, to produce a sensation of smallness when confronted with such wonders, to mirror the very meaning of the name of the revered religion itself: submission. Yet the museum in Doha has taken a different approach, choosing instead to display a modest amount of exhibits of exceptional quality. I meandered from room to room, listening to the audio guide, transported to other worlds by the chocolate voice and the riches around me. Together with the black walls of the galleries, the clean lines and understated decor of the building – a rare feature in this part of the world – discreetly accentuated the intricacy and detail of the objects on display. Stopping to marvel at a jewel-encrusted falcon, countless precious stones set into its golden form, I imagined it could have been lifted straight from a fairy tale about a powerful caliph offering the hand of his daughter in marriage to anyone who could make a fantastic creature of this kind. As a child, I used to devour such stories, running headlong into the colourful worlds of heroes and adventure they described. That the seventeenth-century artefact was actually from India only added to the exoticism, rulers in these legends often filling their palaces with fabulous treasures from far and wide. Like latter-day characters from one of Scheherazade's tales, the country's ruling Al-Thani family have spent fortunes on amassing the museum's collection, as if magically transforming the thick black liquid and invisible gas brought forth from beneath the Qatari earth into an Aladdin's cave of magnificent art.

As I was admiring the glistening raptor, I became aware that a man standing at my side was looking at me and saying something.

‘I'm sorry?' I said, pulling the headphones of the audio guide away from my ears.

‘It's fabulous, isn't it?' he smiled. ‘The craftsmanship: it's exquisite.' With his short dark hair and swarthy features he looked Middle Eastern, but there was something about him that made me think he was not an Arab: perhaps it was the bulbous nose or the small chin. I reckoned he was in his late thirties, but with the subdued lighting it was hard to be certain.

‘Yes, I was just admiring it,' I agreed. ‘In fact, the whole place is pretty spectacular.'

‘You like Islamic art?

‘I don't have a special interest in it, if that is what you mean,' I shrugged, ‘but it would be difficult not to be impressed by the things in here.'

‘Is this your first visit?' He cocked his head slightly to one side, the light from the display case showing up his heavy stubble.

‘Yes,' I nodded, ‘first time in the museum, and in the country. What about you? Are you from here?'

‘No,' he laughed quietly. ‘I'm not. Can't you tell? You wouldn't find a Qatari walking around Doha dressed like this! I'm Lebanese.'

Indeed, his striped shirt and sandy-coloured chinos were not typical Arab attire. We moved away from the glass case with the falcon so a young Arab couple could get a better view.

‘You are on holiday here?'

‘Sort of: more passing through. I've always wondered what Qatar was like and thought I would stop off to see. And you?'

‘I work here. Not all the time, but I come quite often.'

‘I see,' I said, wandering over to a display case where a collection of ornate rings was laid out, each one a tiny work of art. The man drifted after me and then stood by my side looking at the jewellery.

‘They are so beautiful.'

He ran his fingers over the glass, as if trying to make some form of spiritual contact with the centuries-old jewels on the other side. The simple band of gold round his wedding finger came a poor second to the filigree and craftsmanship that lay just beyond reach. He seemed to become lost in his thoughts as he stared at the masterpieces glowing gently under the perfectly positioned spotlights.

I slipped away into the shadows and onwards to the next room where I stopped to study a pair of blue and white
Albarelli
– porcelain jars for storing medicines. In warm tones, the voice on my audio guide recounted how cylindrical pots like these from Damascus were in use in the Levant long before they were adopted in Europe and given an Italian name. As I turned away, an elderly tourist with a dowager's stoop gave a brief smile as she shuffled by, milky eyes making her look like a figure from a past era revisiting the present. Knobbly fingers clutched a guidebook and what looked like a pile of scrawled notes that had been dropped and hastily gathered back together. Only her casual clothes and Birkenstock-style sandals gave any indication that she belonged to the here and now.

I moved on, exploring one angular chamber after the other, walking over geometric shapes cast on the floor by the miniature spotlights that shone through the glass cabinets. I stopped in front of a show case to admire a bluish-green glass bowl, traces of gold round its rim. After surviving many turbulent centuries, the fragile dish from Egypt had finally found refuge, a place to rest and bask in the adoration of its beauty. Surrounded by the dark walls of the exhibition rooms, the artefacts on display lay like pieces of hidden treasure, waiting, as if by some strange sorcery, to convince each set of eyes that fell upon them that they were the first to do so. A deep-blue page from a Koran seemed to positively glow, the intensity of its colour drawing me over as soon as I entered the room. Across its width were shining golden letters, stylised Arabic calligraphy that could have been an art deco interpretation of the normally florid swirls were it not for the fact that the page was over a thousand years old. In one room, portraits of nineteenth-century sheikhs locked in rigid poses, elegant beards stretching to their waists, watched me with cold, black eyes as I crept past, an infidel violating their jealously guarded hoard. In another, silk carpets flattened against the walls looked as if they might spring to life at any moment and begin flapping against the glass that protected them, as if desperate to escape, to fly away. The exhibits were truly fantastic, but, by the time I finished the tour, even in the coolness of the museum, my thoughts were becoming feverish.

I left the shadowy chambers and made my way down one of the twin staircases that curved their way into the atrium. It was on a very different scale to the exhibition rooms and flooded with daylight by floor-to-ceiling windows. At the bottom, I looked up to admire the cavernous space around me, letting my eyes follow the lines of sand-coloured walls that gradually became ceiling, seamlessly merging modern geometric design with traditional Islamic patterns, continuing ever higher until finally forming an octagonal dome. I craned my neck to look at the layers of triangles that repeated until the almost circular opening at the top through which sunlight fell. It was as if the entire cupola were a cut diamond of immense proportions: Pei had managed perfectly to evoke the fantastical world of the Arabian Nights through the medium of the most contemporary architecture.

‘It's very well done, isn't it?' came a voice.

I turned to see the Lebanese man from earlier on. I could hardly disagree.

It was only as we walked over to the cafeteria that I noticed he had a slight limp, a poignant reminder, I felt sure, of his country's civil war. We each bought a coffee and a small bottle of water before sitting down at one of the little round tables. As the familiar aroma drifted up from our cups, the man introduced himself as Michel.