and then our exile

Say: "Travel through the earth and see what was the End of those before (you)" (Q. 30:42)

Looking on solitudes of streets, -
On palaces and column'd towers,
Unconscious of the stony hours (Meredith)

"if you go to Sham you'll never want to come back" (Z.)

For a very long time, I've been constructing various scenarios of what I will do once "the crash hits": am vaguely unsure of how this is defined, but it is either my personal crash, that ack I have spent too many years in Western society and what has happened to my soul, or the general collapse of society, implosions of anarchism / Orwell-Huxleyism becoming literal. Elements of both are included in "this Syrian sojourn". I've spoken of these before--whether raising koalas on Vancouver Island, or living in a canoe on the BC coast or Canadian north, or building a hut of reeds in the Himalayan Mountains, constructing a hermitage in the Sahara desert. This isn't going monastic--that is extremism, as laid out so beautifully in the tomes of this Deen (=Islam)--it is the retreat and quiet necessary to root one's own Self in fertile ground, to establish yourself in yourself, before one returns to battle the angels and demons of the modern world. Anyways, what I'm trying to get to, after this longwinded explicate, is that the new location for this is Bosra.

Me: we're going to Bosra tomorrow, inshaAllah.
Arabic teacher: to Iraq? to jihad! ?
Me: no no, to Bosra in Syria, not Bosra in Iraq.

We went to Bosra today, my father and sister and I, and the clouds above were dark and beautiful. The earth there is dark red, where here (in Damascus) the dust is nearly orange. Lines of olive trees, freshly plowed fields. Away from the concrete of this city--I appreciate many things about Damascus, I really do, but the fact is that it is a city with millions of people and the past five years of my life have been spent in the countryside where everything is quiet and you do not usually hear the shrill air-horn of the horse-and-cart selling kerosene oil. "These people have graduate degrees in marketing." That isn't saying anything against Damascus, I would rather live in Damascus than Edmonton any day of the week except Saturday evening, it is saying something about the nature of a city, any city. We fell asleep on the bus, my sister's head on my shoulder; when I awoke I heard something from behind yet-closed-eyelids: "nananananaaaa / na na na na na". Assuming the driver'd turned on the radio, I blocked the sound and continued with my life. When I finally did open my eyes I stumbled against a TV screen above, and a dozen nearly-naked women prancing about singing and strutting and gyrating. "Whoa, dude. What is this?" Except then I slowly realized this was the definition of a music video, and most of today's dance for that matter, and where was my place to judge.

me: psst. noor.
noor: what?
me: those women on the tv.
noor: erm. what?
me: they aren't wearing hijab.

Continually sidetracked: spent the day meandering about Bosra's Old City. What the LonelyPlanet people define as a "perfect day trip" and I define as a Delightful Place. Roman ruins, an Ayyubid citadel, old mosques and ancient cisterns, a cathedral and ampitheatre, the monastery of Buhaira the Monk--he who recognized the Sign of Prophethood on Muhammad, sallAllahu 'alaihi wa sallam. Walking the earth where hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years ago, he (s) set his young feet. Catacombs under the Citadel. The Old City is yet inhabited! Where the original buildings were of Nabatean times. We were the only "tourists" in the city itself, and some of those living amid the dark stone ruins looked at me as though they knew I was foreign. Perhaps it was the new toque I wore (I have a new toque from home, and it is my friend). Even though I did not carry the water bottle at my hip (/cough Zacharia cough/). Immediate quiet, and I saw a horse and a donkey. And Syrian hospitality for foods thereafter.

Jingle bells on the way home.

Feel I must do a lot more--first was sick and then preparation for familie, leaving me here with a lot of external knowledge I've been taught but don't know.

Thought: I did not know my stomach was so connected to my emotion. That now I have cookies and brownies and peanut butter and raspberry jam from Wuddistan, I am feeling the lack of other things in/of the same. EVEN THOUGH FAROOQ DID NOT SEND THE O. & C.!!

i i i--that this glob is given to onanism. Who knew the word anani, ie. selfish, was related to ana, ie. the personal pronoun? Arabic is a good language.

Last note--who needs libraries in Syria? [Project Gutenberg] is my new friend.