Seyyednaya

Rachel, Natalie, and I left Damascus for the first time today other than our trip to renew our visas at the Lebanese border on Monday (more on that in a future post). We had initially decided to go to Bosra, the site of a supposedly spectacular Roman amphitheater and ruins. We got a late start though and didn’t feel like taking the two hour bus ride, so we chose to go to Seyyednaya, a majority Christian town (¼ Assyrian, ¼ Catholic, ¼ Orthodox, and ¼ Sunni Muslim according to one of the passengers in the minibus we took) on the side of a hill/small mountain with a famous convent (Of Our Lady Seyyednaya) that holds a portrait of the Virgin Mary supposedly painted by St. Luke. According to one legend, the Roman emperor Justinian ordered the convent built in the 6th century A.D. on his way to Jerusalem.

We got there by taking a taxi to a bus station on the outskirts of Damascus and then a service (minibus) to Seyyednaya. It cost one dollar for the three of us in each direction. On the way there, a man started talking to us in broken English, the same one who broke down Seyyednaya’s sectarian complexion for us. He’d been to “East Virginia” before (Virginia) to visit a friend or relative and really liked the United States. “Who do you support in the election?” he asked. I don’t usually like to express my political preferences here if I can help it, so I laughed and posed the question back to him. “I like McCain,” he said, “because he has a lot of experience.” He might be the only one in Syria. Most other people like Obama, he explained, because they think our willingness to elect a black person shows that we choose our leaders for their ideas and capabilities as opposed to other criteria. He then gave us a short lecture on the importance of democracy and freedom. As we entered the town he invited us over to his mother’s house (he lives closer to Damascus now) for tea or coffee. We hesitated for a minute and by the time we decided to accept, he’d closed the door to the service and we’d driven off. He didn’t seem offended, however, and we were hungry and anxious to get to the convent in any case.

The service dropped us off at the base of a long staircase leading up to the convent. We found a quick lunch of zaatar and tomato sauce fatair (small pizza looking things) and ate on the steps while a couple troupes of extremely cute kids (they looked they were in some sort of scout program) marched past us chanting songs. We then climbed up to the convent.

The convent was well preserved but otherwise relatively unremarkable, as were the views of the rather barren landscape down below. We walked around for a half-an-hour or so, Rachel fed Natalie, I changed her, and then we made our way down to the main road in the town and caught another minibus back to Damascus. Although the convent wasn’t much to write home about, Seyyednaya was pleasant, and it was good to get out of the city and take a short trip with Natalie as a trial run for longer future adventures.