On Saturday, I walked out of the basement internet cafe near my apartment and looked down the corridor to the street outside. I immediately had the sense that something was deeply wrong with the view in front of me, but it took me the entire walk to the door to figure out what it was. Finally I figured it out.

“It’s raining,” I said to a boy who was standing by the door.

“Duh,” the look he gave me replied.

I started to walk home. No one else shared the boy’s nonchalance; everything was upended. I walked over the pedestrian bridge that crosses the divided highway in my neighborhood. The storm drains below were clearly blocked, as there were several inches of water on the road. Cars flew by at their normal pace anyway, sending sheets of water up on either side. I passed an upscale hotel next, that had  large overhand outside their front door. Tourists from the Gulf stood agape, watching the rain fall. I turned up the sloping alley to the souq where I live and saw shopkeepers enthusiastically cooperating to unstop the drain at the bottom. The coffee shop owner at the top of the alley was rolling up the piece of fabric that had shaded his outdoor seating from the sun all summer. Two boys ran through the rain, screeching in delight.

I turned into the hotel where I stayed when I first arrived, where my Arabic tutor gives classes, and where I still have many friends. The younger staff members were running across the courtyard, squeegie-ing the rain towards the drains in the courtyard and pushing back the leaves that were falling from the trailing vines under the strength of the downpour. Gushes of water came intermittently as pooled water was pushed off the sunshade on the roof.

An older man who usually works behind the desk stood beside me watching. “It hasn’t rained in the summer in twenty years. Sure, it rains sometimes in the winter, but almost never in the summer.”

‘Alaa came over, taking a break from his squeegie. “Have you ever seen rain in the summer?” I asked. He is in his early twenties.

“Yeah once,” he answered. “I was in Germany.”

The rain let up after half an hour or so, and life began to return to normal. Drains were cleaned the cafes filled up quickly as people took advantage of the cool air that the rain had brought. The next morning at university, our teacher could talk of nothing else for the first half hour of class.

Sunday afternoon, again the sky began to darken. I was at the hotel again. “No way will it happen two days in a row,” was the general consensus, but Hussam, by Arabic tutor said, “Why not?” The thunder came again, and again. Finally the owner sprang from the office into the courtyard and called out, “OK, let’s go!”

We all sprang into action, moving the cushions on the chairs under the roof. When we were done, I ran home. My door was blocked by a puddle so I stood in my landlord’s shop, where he sells and repairs mobile phones. “It hasn’t rained in the summer in twenty years, and now it rains two days in a row. And I’ve never heard thunder before. Ever.” A minute later he pointed to the car parked across the street, “Hail! We’ve never had hail before.”

Two days in a row, and now thunder and hail. What would be next?

This afternoon, briefly, it rained again.

Categories: Middle East, Summer 2008
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As one walks through the streets of Damascus, there isn’t a whole lot of English around, except when websites or phone numbers are involved. One place where you do see more English than Arabic, however, is on t-shirts. Some simply sport designer’s names or non sequitors that are meant to be stylish, but a few are really quite amusing. It also quickly becomes clear that the vast majority of people have no idea what their shirts say. For example:

• University of Massachusetts (the wearer spoke not a word of English and had never been to America–I asked)
• The Man. The Legend. (with accompanying arrows pointing up and down–the wearer was walking next to his wife, who wore a niqab)
• My boyfriend is out of town (on a twelve-year-old girl walking arm-in-arm with her veiled mother)
• Yeshiva University Alumni Baseball

Categories: Middle East, Summer 2008
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