Thubron in Damascus after 50 years
The city that comes into view is of course bigger than I remember - its population must have quadrupled. Since I was here its suburbs have swamped the Old City that I loved, and even inside its walls a rash of restaurants and boutique hotels has appeared.
But they're all closed now, or empty. It's a city at war. Whole streets are fenced off by tank blocks and razor wire. Less than a mile away from my empty hotel I can see burnt-out tenements still in rebel hands.
This is perhaps the oldest continuously inhabited city on earth. In the Muslim world it had grown open and tolerant. A quarter of its people belong to Christian and other minorities, including Alawites, a sub-sect of the Shia, who dominate the government and army. However reluctantly, the Damascenes cling to the regime of Bashar al-Assad. The Islamist alternative, just outside the walls, might be fatal to them.
Fifty years ago I was almost alone here, because tourists hadn't yet come. Now I'm alone because they're gone. Yet I see an Old City miraculously intact. It's escaped the devastation of Aleppo.
But late every night the regime's artillery opens up on the enemy suburbs. It sounds like far-off thunder. In the dark I stand outside my hotel, listening, wondering how this can continue. Once a week a defiant mortar-shell flies the other way.
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