Damascus

Damascus holds the oldest continuously inhabited claim among the world's capitals, and it holds it lightly, the way a city does when Abraham is local gossip: the Street Called Straight has been Straight since Roman surveyors and Saint Paul's conversion; the Umayyad Mosque rises over a temple over a temple, its eastern minaret named for Jesus, whom Damascene tradition expects to descend there; and the souq's tin roof, holed by another century's bullets, lets the sun in as a ceiling of stars.

When travellers walked freely here, they walked like this: in by Bab al-Yaman's cousin gates to al-Hamidiyah's roofed river of commerce, ice cream pounded with pistachio at Bakdash, then the mosque's marble courtyard that holds evening light like water; jasmine over every second doorway — the city's own surname —; damascene brocade and inlay in the artisan lanes; and Mount Qasioun above, where the whole oasis spreads green against the desert's edge.

The Guide's honesty, with hope: Syria's long war has turned a page, and the door stands ajar — travellers have begun returning, cautiously and with arrangements — but most chancelleries still counsel patience, and conditions differ by region and by month; the prudent traveller awaits mature counsel and books, when the day comes, through operators who know the ground. This page does not wait idly: it keeps its lamps lit, and its jasmine watered, for the mornings that are coming.