MISTAKEN VENUE

MISTAKEN VENUE

Last Friday we set off in the hope of being able to visit the museum.  Some time ago the European Union had a reception at the Damascus Historical Museum which we did not attend, but I had kept the map of how to get there which came with the invitation.  We followed the instructions, but from the main road nowhere was there a sign indicating that any of the buildings was the museum.  We turned around and tried again.  This time we saw two young boys sitting on a wall swinging their legs in a state of utter nonchalance.  We stopped and I asked them if they knew where the museum was.  Museum?  Oh no, we’re from Aleppo and we’ve only just arrived.  Typical.  Isn’t it always the case that when you are in a strange place people always seem to choose you to ask for direction to this place or that. I had just done the same.  As they babbled on, suddenly we caught sight of a minute sign on a nearby wall just behind a military guardpost indicating that the museum  was somewhere around the corner.  We drove around and into a makeshift carpark in the middle of ruinous buildings and remains of Roman columns which were being pressed into service as gateposts with metal rings embedded in the stones which served to hook red and white painted chains into as a means of keeping unwanted cars out of the area.  We parked and picked our way among the debris to the door of the large building with the guardpost in front.  No, this was not the museum but some official building.  The museum is there - a small low building just next to where we had parked the car. But it is closed.  It will be open tomorrow.  Then we went back to the medina as there were several other places we still have to visit, but these too were closed. So home again.

The next day we went back to the museum.  The virtually empty carpark of the day before was now full to capacity and over-flowing.  A major traffic jam had developed, but we managed to find a space and gave the guard something which would ensure that he would take care of things while we were away.

The historical museum turned out to be a different place from the museum we thought we were visiting.  This is a small nineteenth century building built by the same Turkish  family which built the Azem palace, but the scale is smaller.  The gates open on to a fairly ample patio with a fountain in the middle and flower-beds either side with plants trained over a trellis.  A group of men were sitting on plastic chairs in the shade of a tree playing a board game and drinking tea.  Straight ahead of the gate is the iwan or covered  reception area with cushions lining the walls for guests to sit on.  The walls and ceiling of the iwan are of richly decorated wood.  On either side, just below ceiling level, are two trellised windows through which the women of the house could observe and listen to what was going on below without being seen.  

One of the men indicated that the entrance to the museum was behind where they were sitting, so we went there to pay the entrance fee.  As usual they wanted to charge us the tourist rate but Robert produced our residence permits which, in theory, entitle us to pay the same price as Syrians.  Ahlan, ahlan - Welcome, but no.  You must pay the foreigners’ price.  No, what have we got these cards for?  We pay the same as Syrians here and in hotels throughout the country.  Welcome but no.  Repeat performance.  At last, the young man decided to give up and called on someone hidden in an upstairs office.  Permission was given and we paid  the Syrian fee.  Then another man appeared with a key and proceeded to guide us around the museum.

The basic structure of this museum is the same as the Azem Palace.  It is divided into two distint areas, the salamlek where public life was conducted and the haremlek or centre of family life.  In practice, this meant male and female domains, because the men were charged with conducting all affairs ouside the home - just as they are today - and the women reigned supreme within the home.  However, only one section, the salamlek, is incorporated into the museum and the upstairs quarters are used as offices.  Once again, the decoration is based on richly painted wall and ceiling panels depicting flowers and geometric patterns.  One item which attracted our attention was the fountain in one of the rooms which resembled a kind of maze.  This type of fountain was designed for racing small boats or other floating objects from one end to the other.  It is quite an ingenious invention and must have filled the long hours of tedium spent within the four walls of the home.


As we went around, we were joined by a young man on holiday in Damascus.  Although he was German, he could speak good Spanish so we had a chat with him.  He was most impressed with my command of Arabic, which just goes to show that in the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king! It is indeed a pity that I do not have much opportunity to speak because, if I did, I would be quite good by now.

When we came out again, we set about asking where we could find the main Damascus Museum, but the guards at the building below did not seem to know that such a place existed and kept sending us back to the small museum we had just visited.  There were two women chatting at the gate so I decided to ask them.  It turned out that one of them was the director of the historical museum and she had an appointment with the director of the general museum, so we gave her a lift in the car and she directed us to the elusive place, once we had managed to negotiate our way out of the carpark where gridlock was the order of the day.

At the main mumseum, once again the girl at the ticket office wanted to charge us the tourist fee, and once again Robert refused.  However, on this occasion the girl in question would not even look at our residence permits and, as it says in the bible, “closed her face”.  Robert asked to see the director.  He isn’t here.  A manifest lie as we had just brought the director of the other museum to have a meeting with him.  Anyway, as she was such a tough cookie, we decided not to insist but Robert refused to pay the tourist fee insisting  what was the point of having paid all that money for the residence permit if it was not worth the paper it was written on.  We went for a cup of coffee instead and then went home.

July 26 1998