Driving in Damascus

7 January 2009 – 9:45ish, with so much studying left to do augh.

I am now firmly convinced that if I am going to meet my end in Damascus, it will be inside one of the death trap mini-buses and at the hands of the crazy motherfuckers who drive around this city. Believe me, the epithet is well deserved.

Damascus doesn't have driving so much as it has roads. There are wide roads and there are narrow roads, there are roads against the side of which cars are parked two deep in whatever direction the driver was in when he felt like getting out, and there are roads you have to cross in special underground tunnels or above-ground bridges. In some places on the roads you can tell that at one time in history, a valiant civil servant made an effort to divide the width into some kind of lane-type structure. Nay, laughed the terminally peeved members of the public transport sector, we shall not follow your painted white lines. Instead, we shall drive as fast as we can wherever there is room! Ah, there is a space ahead to the left four feet wide, but I must cut off three cars to take it? Do not doubt me and my tiny tiny car. That gap and its two second gain are mine.

Besides the thousands of yellow taxis that roam the streets, Damascus is home to a unique system of mini-buses. These old Cold War-era Volkswagen-y high-center-of-gravity box-like buses (think Gerdie) seat upwards of 15 people and careen wildly from randomly chosen stop to randomly chosen stop, narrowly missing a citizenry that stands permanently in the gutters in an attempt to cross the street. Passengers jump in, often while the bus is moving, hand SY10 ($0.20) up to the driver who often makes change while driving, and then calmly sit back while the bus and its driver suffer from the shared delusion that they are and are driving a Mini Coup. This is going to be my daily method to and from class and to and from my private tutor; after three rides, I am still not dead. Cheers, crazy motherfuckers.

In this I must give credit where credit is due: considering how reckless the pedestrians are (and I now count myself amongst them), the drivers must possess some solid driving skill that prevents absolutely everyone from ending up dead of car smush. While there are traffic signals in some places, actual traffic at busy intersections seems to be directed by a guy with a stick and a whistle. Somehow it works. In very very few spots do pedestrians actually cross as a uniform body when pointed at with said man with whistle. The common method of crossing the street -- whether it be a one lane bi-directional alley or a traffic circle six cars deep -- goes as follows: (1) Stand in the gutter and watch the direction of traffic. Look for a one- to two-second gap in the cars. (2) Upon spying a gap, walk forward and let the car in the lane closest to you just miss you as you walk behind it. (3) Watch emotionlessly as three more cars bear down on you. (4) Walk quickly, stopping if necessary to let a car pass so that you can walk behind it. (5) Yes, this means stopping in the middle of the street while more cars, unaware that you have claimed this two-second gap, honk and speed up. (6) Run the last few feet, perch on the median. (7) Repeat.

Seriously. I'm totally not dead yet. And I have yet to see any sort of car accident or pedestrian injury. We have it too cushy in the West.

Other serendipitous moments of my day:

- Coming home for lunch today after classes and AIDs results (don't have AIDs, hooray!) to find the power out at my apartment. When I ask why, I am told that the Christians used it all up for Christmas and New Years, which has created random rolling blackouts.

- Arriving at the apartment building where my tutor to lives to discover that the elevator for her side of the building isn't working today. We take the elevator for the other side of the building to the top floor, piling with a family of three into a four foot square box with an inside door that doesn't shut. I watch as 11 concrete levels and 10 external doors chug by about three inches from my face. We arrive at level 11, climb the stairs to the roof, cross over the roof through a jungle of satellite dishes and random cables to the other side of the building, and walk down the two flights of stairs to my tutor's apartment on the ninth floor.

- Sitting at dinner and having my two host sisters sing along to Akon's Smack That on the radio. Oh sweet ubiquitous Smack That, how your gentle rhythm unites the world.

- Realizing that all day long, including several times in my class, in front of other students, and to two different professors, I mistakenly said that I was from the Exam-y States of America. (Al-weliaht al-imtehan amreekeeah, instead of al-weliaht al-motaheda amreekeeah.) Oops.

Today, though exhausting, was not as bad as I expected. Level Three is not going to be too bad -- it's hard right now because I'm three days behind and I've missed out on the foundational vocabulary taught in the first two levels, but I was able to talk on my own during the conversation section and understand a good two thirds of everything talked about during class. After four hours of class (with a total of 35 minutes break split up on the hour) I had just a few moments of down time before heading across town for two hours with my private tutor. By the end of the tutoring session Ghoozea (everyone in my life here has a name that begins with gh, غ, the gravely r sound in the back of the throat) could tell that I had reached my limit and was mentally breaking down. But even so, my breakdown point here came after six hours of Arabic instruction, on top of general Arabic to my family and Arabesk people -- it took about ten minutes for me to reach this point during my first week in Tunisia. I'm encouraged by that, though looking at my homework and its limited relation to the vocab we discussed in class makes me feel disheartened again.

Okay. Time to figure out what the hell مسابقة means.