Damascus Arrival: Welcome to the Grinder
The air hits different here. Not just hot – thick. Like breathing soup strained through a dusty army blanket. Damascus International. Used to be a place you’d grab duty-free and maybe a stale croissant. Now? Looks like a heavyweight brawl went down and nobody cleaned up. Bullet-pocked walls, shattered windows boarded with plywood, whispers of better days. I remember landing here years ago, chasing some half-baked story, feeling… different. Sleeker. Now it feels like landing inside a lung infection. Why Damascus? Why now? Let’s just say curiosity killed the cat, and my expense account has nine lives. And maybe a ghost I need to lay to rest, buried somewhere under this rubble.
Immigration’s a slow-motion ballet of suspicion. Guy in a uniform two sizes too big, and radiating a weariness that seemed ground into his bones, eyeballs my passport like it holds the secrets to cold fusion. Every stamp feels like a hammer blow. Questions fired off in Arabic – harsh, guttural sounds scraping the back of his throat. Where you from? Why you here? Who you know? Standard paranoia playlist. Finally, the nod. Freedom. Or the local equivalent. Into the arrivals hall – a cavernous space lit by flickering fluorescent tubes, echoing with the ghosts of tourists who aren’t coming back anytime soon. The air tastes metallic, like old blood and fear.
Taxi Roulette: Haggling with the Vultures
Need wheels. Outside, the symphony begins: the low growl of generators battling the silence, the acrid tang of diesel fumes. And then they descend. The taxi drivers. Human vultures in worn leather jackets, eyes scanning for fresh meat. “Cham Palace? Mister? Good price!” They swarm, a flurry of cheap cologne and desperation. One guy, all nicotine-stained fingers and missing teeth, latches onto my sleeve. Feels like a grappling hook. “Cham Palace, yeah,” I manage, wrestling my arm free.
Time for the ritual. He throws out a number that could buy a small car back home. I counter with an insult disguised as an offer. Back and forth, the dance of the damned under the buzzing neon glow. We land on a figure that still feels like extortion, but the flight melted my brain cells and arguing feels like too much effort. Fine. Take the damn money. My notebook feels heavy in my pocket; gotta get the colour, the feel of this place.
Navigating the Ruins: A Drive Through dystopia
The chariot awaits: a Peugeot held together by hope and duct tape. Smells like a lifetime of stale smoke, and maybe a more recent whiff of despair? The driver, wiry, jumpy, introduces himself with a name I immediately forget. I slide into the back, onto springs that gave up the ghost sometime during the last ceasefire. Every pothole – and reader, there are legions of them, craters big enough to swallow small dogs – sends a jolt up my spine. Feel the grit under my fingernails already.
The drive is pure, uncut anarchy. Forget lanes, forget traffic lights, forget basic physics. It’s a swirling vortex of dented taxis, sputtering motorbikes belching blue smoke, and the occasional, bewildered-looking dude on a donkey cart seemingly oblivious to the chaos. Horns aren’t signals; they’re primal screams. Near-misses are the norm. The driver grips the wheel like he’s wrestling a python, eyes constantly flicking to the rearview, to the shadows between buildings. Paranoia is contagious here. Who’s watching? Everyone. No one. My own heart’s doing a drum solo against my ribs.
“Place has seen better days, huh?” I venture, trying to sound like I haven’t just aged five years in five minutes.
He catches my eye in the mirror. A flicker of something – suspicion? Resignation? “Changed,” he croaks, the word catching in his throat like gravel. “Big changes, mister.” End of conversation. He swerves violently to avoid a twisted metal carcass that might have been a delivery truck in a previous life. Silence, except for the engine’s whine and the thump-thump of the suspension bottoming out.
Ghosts of Assad, Whispers of HTS: The New Abnormal
Outside the grimy window, the city unfolds like a nightmare reel. Concrete skeletons clawing at the sky. Buildings pancaked, exposing intimate details of lives abruptly ended. Walls scarred by shrapnel, peppered with bullet holes like some grotesque modernist art installation. The silence from these dead zones is louder than the traffic. What used to be here? Homes? Markets? Places people laughed? Just ghosts now. The air hangs heavy with unspoken stories. You can almost hear the whispers in the shadows, voices swallowed by the conflict.
The driver mutters, jerking his chin towards a checkpoint. Ragtag crew, mismatched fatigues, beards wild enough to host wildlife. AKs held with casual menace. “HTS,” he spits, the acronym tasting like poison. “They run this part now.” He pauses, glances back again, lowers his voice. “Assad… pfft.” A dismissive flick of the wrist. “Gone. Like smoke.”
Assad gone. The headlines screamed it, but here? It’s not news, it’s just… the air. The iron fist rusted away, leaving… this. A power vacuum sucking in every armed group with a flag and a grievance. HTS here, maybe the Turks’ boys over there, whispers of Russian advisors still lurking in the shadows, pulling strings invisible to the naked eye. A fractured mosaic held together by fear and temporary alliances. Feels like the whole damn country is balanced on a knife-edge.
Cham Palace Blues: Faded Grandeur, Current Dread
The Cham Palace emerges from the haze. A concrete beast, Soviet-chic aspirations slowly crumbling under the weight of reality. Grand once, maybe. Now? It looks exhausted. Like a dowager queen who’s seen too many revolutions and just wants a stiff drink. We pull up to the entrance – sandbags piled like tired, slumped shoulders, a guard whose boredom looks dangerously thin. The driver names the price again. I peel off the worn Syrian pounds, feeling the texture – rough, flimsy, like the promises made here.
Stepping out, the air is different. Heavier. Charged. The Cham Palace lobby is a study in faded glory. Dim light catches dust motes dancing in the stagnant air. Smells of mildew and cheap disinfectant. Chandeliers missing teeth, carpets worn thin, whispering tales of forgotten galas. A few lost souls linger in cracked leather armchairs, their faces masks of weary endurance. Where else do you go when the world outside is burning?
Check-in. Kid behind the counter has eyes that have seen too much, too young. Barely meets my gaze. Hands over a heavy brass key, feels cold, like a relic from a tomb. The elevator groans its way upwards, shuddering protests with every floor. Is this place a metaphor for the whole damn country? Holding on, barely, waiting for the final collapse?
Damascus After Dark: The Edge of the Abyss
The room. Functional is generous. Wallpaper peeling like sunburnt skin, furniture chipped and weary, a bathroom that screams ‘don’t touch anything’. But the bed looks… horizontal. And the window offers a panorama of the wounded city. Lights flicker sporadically below, islands in a sea of darkness. Generators hum their mournful song.
Damascus. She’s still here, breathing raggedly. My old stomping ground turned upside down. Assad’s portrait gone from the walls, but his ghost lingers. Russia’s influence a palpable weight, even unseen. The vultures are circling, picking at the carcass. And somewhere, in the shadows, maybe… maybe a flicker of something else? Or is that just wishful thinking?
Looking out at that darkness, that vast, swallowing uncertainty, a chill snakes up my spine. Not just the desert night. It’s the cold, hard dread of knowing you’ve just checked into the heart of the storm. Bought a front-row seat to whatever fresh hell is brewing. And the ride, my friend, the goddamn ride is just getting started. Time to sharpen the pencils. Or maybe just pour a drink. Yeah, make it a double!
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