Among the Jasmine Trees. Jonathan Holt Shannon

      Descending the narrow staircase to the restaurant, I find it to be the very picture of authenticity. Stepping through a beaded curtain, I am greeted by a waiter dressed in a fancifully embroidered vest and billowy black pants reminiscent of the folksy shirwāl that peasants wear. As he leads me across the main room to a table, I take in the scene. The walls are constructed of thick black and white blocks of marble reminiscent of the local ablaq (“striped”) style. Various items of “authentic heritage” adorn the walls—large engraved brass saucers, Damascene swords in their bejeweled scabbards, small inlaid wooden frames and mirrors, black-and-white photographs of the Old City. A number of shelves and display cases also exhibit old-style coffee pots, nargīla-s (water pipes), and assorted items such as old glass perfume bottles, ancient oil lamps, miscellaneous old ceramic bowls, and odd trinkets. A sign in English and Arabic reads, “For Display Only”—suggesting that it is a “truly” authentic place, like someone’s home. You can’t buy the décor; in a sense it isn’t even décor.

      My table is a low wooden stand inlaid with mother of pearl supporting a brass saucer much like those hanging on the walls. The paper napkins stuffed in a faux inlaid box labeled in English “Damascus” seem to detract from the scene, but I am soon enough distracted from any thoughts of inauthenticity by the waiter’s invitation to go ahead and fill my plate at the expansive buffet. I rise to get my food and notice a dwarf-like man going from table to table with a pot of unsweetened coffee served in small ceramic cups, like that served on special occasions such as weddings and funerals. Returning to my table with a plate piled high with kibbeh (ground lamb and cracked wheat), tabbuleh salad, fatteh (a Damascene dish made of chickpeas and bread), a stack of olives, hummus, pita bread, and a bowl of lentil soup balanced precariously in my hands, I sit and contemplate this culinary paradise. Looking around me, I find a number of families and a small group of tourists who are also eating, their guide books jutting out of their jacket pockets (mine is hidden safely in my bag), and, like me, ogling the place. However, most of the clientele do not seem to me to be tourists, or at least not in the usual sense of foreign visitors. Some seem to be locals, and many in fact are carrying on in Arabic. Over the course of the evening, I learn that the patrons consist largely of Lebanese and elite Damascenes and their friends coming to eat good food and experience an “authentic” atmosphere—just as the guide book says.

      Musicians at Omayyad Palace restaurant, Damascus, 1996.

      But I am there for two things: the food and the music. Having cleaned my plate and gone back to the buffet for seconds, I return to my table and settle in to hear the music to which I will be devoting my research. My notepad and pen feel itchy in my jacket pocket, but I decide to set anthropology aside and try to just absorb the experience. A group of five young musicians are seated along the back wall before an enormous and gorgeous inlaid wooden chest, a number of swords, and a large golden tapestry depicting a scene of Arab horsemen hanging from the wall behind them. The musicians are dressed in traditional clothing, each wearing an embroidered white abāya or woolen robe, and playing the instruments of the traditional Middle Eastern ensemble (or takht): qānūn (lap zither), oud, nāy, ṭabla, in addition to a vocalist. Not withstanding the garish banner hanging to one side announcing in red and yellow letters “Happy New Year and Marry Christmas” [sic], the scene is entirely “authentic.” To the other side of the ensemble sit two men dressed in flowing white robes with elongated conical brown turbans on their heads; they are the group’s mawlawī or “whirling dervish” dancers, named after the Mawlawiyya Sufi order of the thirteenth-century Muslim mystic Jalal al-Din Rumi.

      The musicians are performing a samāī, one of the basic instrumental genres of the traditional Ottoman-Arab repertoire.⁴ I have already learned several and recognize that they are playing one of the “standards” composed by the famous nineteenth-century Ottoman composer Tatyus Effendi. However, I am a little dismayed at the somnambulant performance. The musicians look as if they are asleep and their playing seems mechanical to me, but still it beats hearing the loud hotel singer and her synthesizer accompanist. After the samāī, the ensemble begins to perform a slow muwashshaḥ, a genre of classical poetry of Andalusian origin set to music. The mawlawī dancers rise and begin their unique dance: twirling slowly counterclockwise, their heads tilted to the right, their right arms raised and left lowered at an angle to their bodies. Their loose skirts billow as they spin, faster and faster, while the ensemble plays a steady beat behind them. Yet the dancers too seem tired—bored, even—and I, though fascinated, wonder what on earth Sufi dancers are doing in a Damascene restaurant.

      The other patrons, soaking up the sounds like so much sonic décor, busily attend to their dishes and conversations. Every once in a while someone pauses to nod a head or shout a feeble Aywa! [Yes!] or Ah! in the direction of the ensemble. Some of them seem enraptured by the atmosphere, while others are apparently less moved. The gurgling of nargīla-s can be heard coming from the corner where a bunch of men sit and stare off into space.

      “Whirling dervish,” Omayyad Palace restaurant, Damascus, 1996.

      Sitting alone watching this parody of “tradition,” I feel depressed. Did I come all the way to Syria to conduct research in restaurants listening to this mechanical stuff?