The Damascus Dream Part 1 - By Tony

As evident in a previous post, my friend Tony was in Syria (Damascus mainly) for a month or so. Now that he is in USA again he asked that I post his dream on my blog, which I am letting him do. So here it goes the Damascene dream as seen by Tony, Part 1. Needless to say I made minor editings.

The Damascus Dream (PART1)
-every thing started in year 2000; me and few other colleagues from the class of 98 including Bassam will get a contract to start working as physicians in US hospitals making what everybody called at that era "the American dream"
-year 2006 my first trip to Damascus in 4 years... a new era has come and suddenly everybody is talking about "the Damascus dream"
-the cornerstone of any civilization is the advancement of transportation and telecommunication aspects in the society so let's compare :

1- cars: in the suburbs of Detroit (where i stay) the cheapest 2007 car model u can buy is around 10 000-12 000$... in Damascus there are 15 different kinds of 2007 car model that u can buy for a total of less than 8000$... not forgetting that cars don't die in Syria.. every thing is fixable (our previous car was a 1976 Renault 12 and to the moment we sold it my dad was convinced that this car can still function for 20 more years)

2- the concept of the rush hour: (when the city is jammed with cars driving one behind the other) In Detroit, rush hour is split to 2 periods; morning (7:30-9:30 AM) and evening (4:30-6:30 PM)
In Damascus rush hour is simply from 8:30 am until midnight...
You will be the luckiest ((يعني أمك داعيتلك)) if you can get to the city center in 45 minutes wherever you are driving from inside the city.

3- The mobile: ( each time i say cell phone instead of mobile people thinks that i am speaking Russian language and nobody understands what i am talking about) well i had to hide my mobile from the moment i hit the Syrian land simply because the transporter who carried my bags in the airport had a newer and much better version than mine because the cell phones in USA are outdated comparable to the one we have in Syria.. a 15 year old cousin of mind suggested that my cell phone belongs to the Museum of the ancient history

4- TV: in Detroit I pay a total of 99$ a month =1200 $/year to have 70 cable channels + 10 Arabic satellite channels
in Damascus you pay an average of 200$ (+) for one time only to get an access to More than 400 different digital satellite channels.
To make it more simple the only sport channels I can watch in Detroit are the 2 ESPN channels, in Damascus I counted 13 sports channels.. and for a single guy like me this huge number of sport channels is capable of keeping me from thinking about getting married / without the feeling of any kind of deprivation..almost/ ..........
to be followed in part 2


This is me and Tony in front of شاورما الرحمة on the last night for him in Damascus.
Needless to say, Tony will not be responding to comments here, because he doesn't have access. But comments are welcome.