Day 24: Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Exploring Old Damascus

            We had the morning free today, so I slept in and felt a lot better when I woke up. Around noon we met with the Deputy Minister of Syrian Foreign Affairs, and he gave us a brief history of Syria’s stance and actions towards various conflicts in the Middle East. Although Syria has been relatively stable over the past few decades “His Excellency,” as we were instructed to call the Deputy Minister, stated that Syria is “in the center of the fire burning around us.”

His Excellency explained how important the stability of its neighbors is to Syria itself. With over 1.5 million Iraqi refugees now living within its borders, the War in Iraq has greatly affected Syria. The Lebanese civil war and Israeli occupation of Syrian/Lebanese territory have also helped to shape Syria’s foreign policy.

It seems that Syria promotes peace in the region, but His Excellency noted that “peace [with Israel] is impossible” with the new right-wing Israeli administration and the recent war in Gaza. Peace can only come when Israel returns land that the Syrians consider to be part of Lebanon. His Excellency was critical of the recent Bush Administration, but said that they were waiting for the Obama Administration to make the first move in normalizing U.S. relations with the Middle East.

After we returned from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, I went to get lunch with some other students in the main marketplace of “Old Damascus.” I ended up getting some shawarma, shaved meat wrapped with pickled vegetables and garlic sauce inside of a pita. As we ate our lunch we perused the marketplace to see what it had to offer. The markets here are very different than the Khan in Cairo. It was nice to not be yelled at or grabbed or asked for money every few minutes. Some of the goods such as wooden clogs also seemed to be hand-made there in the shops rather than imported from China, as a lot of the things sold in Cairo were.

We popped into a very popular ice cream shop to get scoops of ice cream covered in pistachios. The ice cream here tastes a bit different than in the states, and more like frozen yogurt than ice cream. After the ice cream and a bit more shopping we hopped in cabs to return to the hotel. I’m blogging now with hopes of uploading this post later, perhaps at an internet cafe. We’re supposed to get wireless in our hotel lobby, but its pretty choppy and we are in kind of a suburban area where things are far apart, so I will have to venture out to find good internet to upload my blog posts. Hopefully I’ll get this one up soon!

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