Handicraft Souq

This the handicraft market (Arabic = souq) in Damascus; a lovely place, where I could happily spend hours browsing. Each little shop sells different things - woodwork, pottery, jewellery, silks… I bought cups, bowls, cushions, wall hangings, wooden boxes, and a gorgeous mirror. I had been eyeing this mirror on and off all year, but thought that it would be really expensive. Finally, a week before I left, I went and had a chat with the shopkeeper and asked about the mirror. He told me that because I spoke to him so nicely in Arabic he would let me have it half price (hmmm… does he say that to all the girls?) and it turned out it was dirt cheap! I could probably have haggled a bit more, but I loved the mirror so much I bought it on the spot. It’s a lovely dark wood with inlaid mother of pearl. Beautiful.

Related?

WordPress has this new tool called Possibly Related Posts, designed to allow people to read posts that have similar content, and thereby potentially increase blog traffic. So far, I’m intrigued to see if this will work, but a little dubious as to how they decide what is related. Seems somewhat random to me. I’m also unsure about appearing to endorse sites that I have never been to - so I think WordPress should give us the option to approve these links, like we can approve comments. I’ll keep an eye on it for now…

What do other WordPress users think?

My Lord

Heard another great sermon today.* It was on Jesus’ discussion with the Samaritan woman, John 4:1-26. Leaving aside all the issues about this woman being a Samaritan and therefore shunned by Jewish people, she was living in a way that was not fulfilling her needs. She had many men (at least 6, from the passage) and was not married to any of them. Now, this is a contentious subject nowadays. I do not intend to go into the debate about marriage, as I know that even Christians can differ in opinion about this. But this woman was lonely. She was at the well by herself, something very unusual in that society. She is also concerned about physical needs. Jesus points her to her spiritual needs:

Spiritual water, that never ends. When we drink from the living water that comes from Heaven we will never be thirsty again. How wonderful. The Pastor challenged us: when we walked into church today were we more concerned about our physical needs or our spiritual needs?

If we are lonely then finding sexual partners will not satisfy our needs. We need, first and foremost, a relationship with the One True God, and then meaningful relationships with other people. The Pastor reminded us that the church should be where we find, at least in part, these relationships. We look to God first, but this relationship with Him should be reflected with our relationships with each other. And this is how other people will know that we are saved. I am reminded of that verse in John:

By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another. (John 13:35)

Jesus came to seek and save the lost, broken and hungry of this world. In Luke 4:16-19 it says:

He [Jesus] went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. And he stood up to read. The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written: 
 ”The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
      because he has anointed me
      to preach good news to the poor.
  He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
      and recovery of sight for the blind,
  to release the oppressed, 
      to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Graham Kendrick has written a beautiful song about this:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me now
Poured out like oil over me
For the Lord has called
And anointed me
To preach Good News to the poor
To bind the broken heart
To free the captive soul
Open blind eyes
Make broken people whole
And I know this is the hour
Of his favour and his power
And His Spirit is upon me now

Our God is truly an awesome God.

* I forgot to bring my notebook to church so if the Pastor does end up reading this then I beg him to be merciful and not judge me too harshly if I miss-quote him in any way!

I Think I’m A Clone Now

For all the Star Wars geeks out there: Red Wine Gums has put a wonderful fan video on his site. Unleash your inner nerd!

The Risen King

How do people who don’t know the Lord cope with death? How do they reconcile such loss, how do they get on with their lives again? And what is my role as a Christian? I can listen and give cuddles, but where is the comfort, where is the hope?

How grateful I am that I know the Lord of Life. The Risen King who is alive and will reign forever, who has conquered death and made it possible for us to live with Him for eternity. Whenever someone I love has died I have always been in the midst of a community of people who have hope that this is not the end, this is not it forever. We will meet our loved ones again and we will rejoice together in Heaven with our Lord and God.

How I pray that this Risen King who loves this broken world so much that He died for it will make Himself known and that He will use me, weak as I am, to bring about His good, perfect and pleasing will.

A Few Gross Stories

I saw a hilariously funny story over at Navel Gazing at it’s Finest yesterday. I laughed so hard I actually sprayed coffee all over my computer screen. I got to thinking and I remembered that I actually have a few gross stories of my own - so I thought I’d share them with you all:

…

When I was in my teens I had 3 small sisters, one of whom was potty training. To set the scene, we lived in a Victorian terraced house, which was very long. You had the living room, then the hall, then the dining room, then the kitchen and the utility room with the potty was at the back. Sister no. 2 was in the living room and said (quite urgently) that she needed a poo. So my mum took her through the house to the potty - but she didn’t quite make it. She dropped blobs of poo all through the house. She sat on the potty and finished the remainder of her poo. My mum left her to it and came back to the living room and hallway to clean up the blobs of poo. While she was doing that, sister no. 3 (not at the potty straining stage yet) had found the poo in the potty and was PLAYING with it. She smeared it EVERYWHERE. All over the floor, the walls, the windows, the door - EVERYWHERE. Including all over herself. She, of course, was utterly unrepentant and giggling gleefully - as were the rest of us! Possibly with the exception of my mum.

…

When I was about 9 we had a hamster. We had all been out one day and returned home to find that the hamster had been running in its wheel and had trapped its leg. In doing so it not only killed itself but it also popped both of its eyes out!

…

Another hamster story: I was really little when this happened so I don’t remember it, but my mum told me and I think she’s a reliable witness. She had been cleaning out the hamster’s cage and she did not close it properly when she had finished. She woke up the next morning to find that the cat had eaten the hamster and had left a tiny heart and lung on the kitchen floor as a present for my mum. Nice.

…

Now for my last, and possibly most disgusting story. For me anyway. We had 2 tortoises when I was growing up, one of which is still with us. The other one, called Gonzo, had escaped from our garden one winter. One of our neighbours found it a few weeks later, in his garden. He brought it back to us, and I cleaned it up. It had a bloody eye, so I gently wiped it and put it back in its tank to heat up, because it was cold, poor thing. Went to bed, got up the next day to a horrible smell throughout the whole house. I realised that the tortoise was dead, and had been for some time. Being in a heated tank overnight had caused it to swell up and start to decompose!!!!! It’s body was all swollen, and was actually popping out of it’s shell! I’m gagging just at the memory of it. I had cleaned A DEAD TORTOISE’S EYE!!!!!!

…

I hope you enjoyed these memories from my childhood.

Syrian Driving

This is a view of the new city of Damascus. Bit different from the old city, yes? It’s busy, bustling and slightly mad. When you are new to the Middle East it can be terrifying crossing roads. Drivers toot their horns for every little thing and yell out of their windows at each other. In Aleppo the traffic lights count down the seconds until they go green, so drivers get out of their cars to chat with each other, and then leap back in with 1 second to go. Disconcerting. If there is a traffic jam then you might just as well get out and walk because Syrians are incapable of sorting these things out. They just sit there, toot and shout, and then pour themselves a cup of tea from a flask and settle in for the duration.

The yellow cars are taxis. Most journey’s came to about 25p with a meter, 50p at most. So you can imagine my outrage when a taxi driver decided to charge me £5 one day. He thought I was some stupid little tourist - he thought wrong, didn’t he! I gave him a really good lecture in my best Syrian Arabic and then refused to pay him anything. He was so stunned that I spoke his language that he just sat there with his mouth open. I was gone before he had time to argue. He’ll think twice before he tries to dupe another foreign woman.

As I said earlier, crossing roads can be terrifying to the uninitiated. But after a while you learn to just set off, and hold your hand out with a pacifying gesture to oncoming traffic, and they just let you pass! Thus unfortunately does not work in the UK. I have tried it as it became so natural in Syria, and I’ve nearly lost my life a few times as a result.

A Shop, A Box And Some Rope

Here is a picture of a little shop on the outskirts of the old city of Damascus. As you can see, it is a very poor area of town. The people in the shop sell small domestic items, and then put them in a box and get it down to the customer on a piece of rope, like a pulley. Ingenious!

Straight Street

This is Straight Street, mentioned in Acts. In Arabic it is Shari’ al-Mustaqeem.

In Damascus there was a disciple named Ananias. The Lord called to him in a vision, “Ananias!”

“Yes, Lord,” he answered.

The Lord told him, “Go to the house of Judas on Straight Street and ask for a man from Tarsus named Saul, for he is praying. In a vision he has seen a man named Ananias come and place his hands on him to restore his sight.” (Acts 9:10-12) 

It’s pretty cool. But not remotely how I would have imagined it. It’s just a road in the old city of Damascus, about 5/10 minutes walk from where I lived. There’s a big Greek Orthodox church on that street, as well as one of the only Italian (I use that term loosely) restaurants in the city. I had an OK pizza there once, but I didn’t feel too good a few hours later.

I think Straight Street was also the street with a good bar called L’Auberge. Happy times were spent there. Pretty good, vaguely Latino dance music, and the only alcoholic drink I ever found in a Syrian bar - bright blue, with dubious alcoholic effects, it may have just been a sugar overload.

This street highlights one of the really great things about living in Damascus - here you can see history. Sights from Roman, Christian and Islamic periods are all in the same street.

At the east end of the street is Bab Sharqi. At the west end is Bab al-Jabiyye. These are 2 gates, entrances to the old city of Damascus. Old doesn’t quite cover it. Ancient is more appropriate. Roman temples once stood here. When the Greeks ruled Damascus the streets had a grid pattern, and Straight Street was widened when the Romans came along. Columns and arches marked it as a main thoroughfare. These are still there today:

St Paul’s chapel is also nearby, where it is said that the apostle Paul managed to escape from, by being lowered in a basket out of a window in the wall.

Straight Street is also known as Suq at-Taweel (The big, or long market). It’s a brilliant place. Spices, textiles, you name it. It’s part of the Suq al-Hamidiyye, more on that later.

It’s fun to just wander up and down the street and watch life. There are people selling fruit, sheeshas (a water pipe - I have one. I’ll take a pic and post it on here), men sitting outside their shops, talking, watching the world go by, playing backgammon.

My Loo

 

 

This was my wonderful loo (toilet for my American friends) in Damascus. I lived with a family in the old city of Damascus. More about them later.

The house was pretty old and I thought it was fantastic that my friend who lived in the new city had a ‘real’ loo. Ah, happy days. Believe me, it’s not pleasant when you’re having a bout of food poisoning and you’ve been squatting for so long that when you get up your legs have gone numb!

Another lovely memory is having to kill a cockroach while I had my head over that hole… We won’t go there.

And of course, I couldn’t put loo roll down there, it would have blocked the sewage system, so I carried a little bag with me. Good times.

To be honest, I had some lovely times in that loo - I became quite attached to it! The was a line of ants that used to wander through there - we became close.

WordPress

OK, so here I am, I made the change. Less painful than I thought it would be as I could import all my posts and comments from my other blog over to this one - yay! No heartrending goodbyes to the posts I have become so attached to.

However, I do have one teensy complaint: I’m not a huge fan of the ‘themes’ so far. I have never liked having a white blog, I prefer a darker background. But none of the themes I’ve found so far have the spring or bounce that I’m looking for. I really like that Chaos Theory one, but all the links and stuff go right down at the bottom of the page, which I think is a bit too much hard work. Ho hum. Can’t have everything I suppose!

Syria

About 3 years ago I spent a year living in Damascus, Syria and I have decided to start writing about some of my memories of that time. So stay tuned folks!

The picture above is the main street leading to my house.

Calm

I’ve had a good afternoon. I talked with a friend about some of my worries. I’m grateful for her; she may not fully understand me but she accepts me. What more can we ask from our friends?

I listened to some music. I realised that if I had done this earlier on in the week I may not have spent so much time worrying. As soon as the music came on I felt my worries ebb away. Calm flooded into my body and mind. I want perfection and I will never get it - not in this life, anyway. All I can do is deal with each situation as it happens. It’s too much to hope for that this state of calm will last, in fact, as soon as the music stops I can feel fear creeping back before I put another album on. But at least I am now in a place in my life where I know what I need to calm myself down and allow my mind to be free.

Back In My Life Again

When I was 18 I had this wonderful album by Freddie Mercury and Monserrat Caballe - do you know the one? Barcelona. I lost the CD when my family moved house and I have just come across it again. It feels like a massive gap in my life that I had almost forgotten was there has just been filled again.

This album quite simply makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up on end. It’s utterly captivating. The unique blend of Freddie Mercury’s expressive voice and Monserrat Caballe’s amazing operatic voice is just beautiful. They complement each other perfectly and combine to make this powerful music.

I have it blasting out in my flat as I write this and I leave you now to go and get my hairbrush so I can pretend I am singing my heart out next to Freddie Mercury, who in my opinion is one of the best artists who ever lived.

Interruptions

I’ve had an extremely interrupted few days at work this week. I work at my old university and here is a snapshot of my life this week:

Monday: Two modules have essays to be handed in - cue 150 students traipsing in and out of my office, panicking about the font size, did they put enough references in, blah blah blah. I did absolutely nothing productive that day. At one particularly low point in the afternoon I had 15 students in my office, and 6 part-time students had emailed me their essays. Of course, they all wanted confirmation I had received their oh-so-important emails. Within 10 minutes. Or less. As I was busy dealing with the near hysterical students in my office I could not also email confirmations. They just had to wait. Then I noticed my computer beeping at me to let me know that there were more emails from students asking why they had not yet received confirmations. Seriously, people, they had only been in my inbox for 10 minutes!!! Ignored the new emails. 5 minutes later my phone rang. “Hi, I’m just asking if it would be OK if you could email me to confirm that you have received my essay.” Naturally I would, as soon as I possibly could, because of course nothing was of greater importance. She then said, “Oh, right, you must be quite busy”. Really? You think?!!!

Tuesday: All the essays should have been handed in, but unsurprisingly, at least 20 students hand theirs in late. Team meeting in the afternoon - cue long-winded discussions concerning dissertations and annual lecture.

Wednesday: Seems to be going relatively well, until 4pm when the Director phones me from the room where he is chairing a conference to plead with me to see if I can buy enough sandwiches for 20 people. Cue much grumbling from impatient students as I hold up the queue in the shop whilst trying to squeeze mountains of sandwiches into bags.

Thursday: Again, all going well until about 2pm, when the recently retired, lover of wine, ex-Director calls me to ask if I would mind terribly nipping down to the restaurant he is currently in to drop off some essays that he has been called upon to mark. “Mind? Of course I don’t mind. What else could I possibly desire than to walk 20 minutes in the raw wind to give you some essays just because you are too inebriated to stagger your way over here?” (I did not actually say this, because I am in fact far too nice, but I thought it) So off I went. To be honest, it turned out OK in the end, because I got a glass of wine for my troubles, and that certainly helped me to stay in a better mood for the rest of the afternoon. And it’s always amusing to observe 3 extremely tipsy, slurring professors of law.

Of course, each and overy one of these interruptions came when I was deep in the middle of a task that requires meticulous attention to detail. Well… that’s the nature of the job! I wonder what Friday afternoon has in store for me?