Preserving the Old City of Damascus

1. Unlocking the Secret of the Old City

33 1 Unlocking the Secret of the Old City Shortly after I arrived in Damascus in October 2003, Ramadan started and I was able to indulge my passion for Syrian TV serials, which dominate the airways the entire month. One series that especially caught my attention was Dhikryat Al-Zamn Al-Qadm (Memories for the Time to Come) (hereafter Dhikryat) directed by Haitham Hakki and filmed in part in the Old City. The TV series dealt with the social and political impact of economic liberalization in Syria and included some aspects of the recent gentrification of the Old City.1 I recognized some of the sites in the Old City, including the homes and restaurants where the series was filmed, and the story arc included a dramatization of some of the social and political issues I hoped to address in my own work. There was the trend of ‘awda (return) to the Old City by members of the upper classes that lived outside the wall. One protagonist, a successful artist, who lived in a modern 1. In several postcolonial societies, television has been important for producing national culture, and in the process of nation-building, directors and writers see their role as modernizing agents with a pedagogical mission to create “good” citizens (L. Abu Lughod 2005). Although Syrian television is not a free medium but rather controlled by the state through censorship, funding, and other means, it remains pertinent for understanding the ways in which local social issues are publicly debated. Moreover, many serials , especially those aired during Ramadan, have an overt political and social message. The recent work by Christa Salamandra (2008, 2011) introduces the ways Syrian TV series address contemporary sociopolitical issues. She has also studied the role of television in creating an idealized Shami Old City (1998, 2000, 2004). 34 • Preserving the Old City of Damascus apartment, returned to his parent’s bayt ‘arabi in the Old City to open an art studio and gallery. New immigrants to the city became part of the transient population in the historic quarters that included students, single young professionals, and soldiers, who eventually moved once their status changed. The powerful images of life in the Old City compared to the modern neighborhoods created a difference I already knew was reductionist . The rich lived in comfortable apartments equipped with modern conveniences in the neighborhoods outside the wall where they owned and drove cars. The poor, disabled, and frustrated were confined to dilapidated houses in the Old City where they walked. Watching Dhikryat I wondered: Why did the director use the transformations in the Old City to address social change? How is the gentrification of the Old City important for understanding the socioeconomic dynamics in Syria? How does the Old City configure in the ways social actors identify themselves and relate to others? Answers to these questions depend on understanding the ways social actors experience the built environment and navigate their identity inside and outside the wall. The powerful mental images of the Old City revolve around “civilization” overrun by “backwardness.” Though Dhikryat is critical on the causes and sources of decay and decline in the Old City, the serial nonetheless uncritically portrayed the marginalization of the intramural neighborhoods from the rest of Damascus. Many social actors in Syria had their experience of the Old City mediated through TV series filmed there, such as Dhikryat (Salamandra 1998, 2000, 2004). Dhikryat was instrumental in promoting the intangible heritage of the Old City—the civility and solidarity among long-term residents, which supposedly disappeared in the modern neighborhoods. Many Syrians “rediscovered” the Old City after watching popular series that caught the national imagination when they capitalized on the public’s nostalgia for the idealized past in traditional urban quarters. Upscale restaurants further encouraged Syrians outside the wall to “venture” to the Old City. For Damascenes whose parents and grandparents had lived in the Old City, it was a form of return, even though it did not include their actual relocation to the Old City. Unlocking the Secret of the Old City • 35 How social actors negotiate identity through imagining and experiencing the city is the subject of the brilliant and beautifully written monograph Picturing Casablanca by Susan Ossman (1994). Ossman extrapolates on how Moroccan cultural and social change can be understood through an analysis of the historic images of the city that remain in mass circulation . It is an interesting approach to...