Enjoying the Lack of Safety Laws

Went on Sir'an yesterday. On Friday, the only day of the week most people have off, tons of families load up and take off for the countryside, with argila, grilled meat, and the children in tow. Yesterday some friends and I went off to Deir Mar Musa, a monastery up in the desert mountains around Nebq (small town hour away from Damascus). We packed food, though not grilled meat, and an argileh from Sali7, who decided to stay home and study like a loser instead of coming out. At the bus station, we realised we had a problem in that both Tareef and Rachel had no ID (a trickier issue for Rachel, as a foreigner who needs her passport). The police also made us empty the gas burner we had brought for the argileh, citing possible explosion as their concern. To empty it, Tareef opened the spigit and we stood nearby as the flammable gas rose in the middle of a busy bus station. No danger here. They let him stop before it was empty, leaving us to carry a mostly-empty cannister of gas, which is actually most likely to cause it to explode. Oh, whatever.

We had to get permission from the police to let those without IDs come, and we just said that Rachel, who remained mute and can easily pass for Syrian, was Syrian too. Her name is Lana.

At Deir Mar Musa, after climbing the crapload of steps to the top, we met up with Marios, at a lunch of mujedera (lentils and burgal), chicken, and salad prepared by the monks and nuns before hiking out a ways into the mountains. There we set up camp and the argileh, realizing after everything else had been done that Sali7 had neglected including the pipe. We tried hilariously to smoke straight from the argileh, which yielded good pictures but little else.

We spent the rest of the afternoon climbing up the mountain, for which i was yelled at to stop running around the mountain and climbing things (how familiar). With the sun getting low, we left not sure exactly how to get to Nabq. Luckily some guys had a flatbed truck and we jumped in. While some sat, the rest of stood, screaming with the wind in our face and waving at other trucks and people at the side of the road. I think this saved the trip for Manar, who until then had not expressed much interest in the climbing, preferring to chill with her beer. We would never be able to do that in America. Riding in the truck would probably get you stopped by the cops, and standing up while navagating the hairpin turns on hills and going 40mph definitely would. The drivers passed us bags of nuts and we passed them some candy. At Nabq we declined their repeated requests to join them at their house for coffee.

Once we got back, everyone came to Jerimana for ice cream at Bouza Ummaya, Damascus' best ice cream. Oh, happy days!