Maysaloon - ميسلون

I was in Damascus for almost a month and a half, yet it felt like a lifetime ago that I first got on the plane to go back home. There is something beautiful about hearing the call to prayer five times a day, of mixing with the people in the old markets and pushing your way through queues to get something from a shop. Whilst walking up the steep hill to get to our home, twice people slowed down to give me a lift to the top of the road. There seemed, in spite of the growing materialism of some parts of Syrian society, a genuine warmth and innocence in people. At times it could get suffocating, but once I regained my familiarity with how to deal with unwanted space invasions or nosiness, I learned to swim my way effortlessly through my home city. I had been exhausted before my return but now, for the first time in as long as I can remember, life seems good again.