Damascus

Taste of a City
By Rafik Schami & Marie Fadel

'This is a long way from your usual travel guide or cookbook but it encompasses elements of both. Damascus – Taste of a City is, in fact, a phone conversation between brother and sister, he being exiled in Germany and she walking through the streets of their beloved Damascus.

They say that when a man has lived seven years in Damascus, Damascus lives in him. Rafik Schami lived in Damascus for twenty-five years so his very soul yearns for the city. He was offered the chance to write a book about a culinary walk through the streets he knew so well, but how was he going to manage that when he couldn’t return to Damascus?

Rafik’s sister Marie Fadel came to the rescue with an audacious plan to collect all the information via the telephone. She would interview family and friends, collect the recipes and test them before passing them to her brother. Rafik would do the translating and turn all those notes into a book.

This is a true step by step guide to Damascus but through the eyes of an insider. We meet neighbours, friends and family. There is a favourite chicken recipe from an aunt, a lentil soup recipe from the family around the corner, and so the tour continues, each encounter punctuated by delicious food and generous hospitality.

One has the impression that we are eavesdropping on this conversation but it’s fascinating. Maria reminds Rafik of school friends, of cakes eaten, of kibbeh cooked on Sundays and of times spent together. She describes her route in meticulous detail and points out, more for our benefit than her brother’s, historic buildings and places of interest. We can follow on the map and imagine ourselves walking beside Maria as she chats on the phone.

Each alley has a story of tragedy, of courage and of fortitude. We meet people that have had to endure so much but manage to live life with grace and good humour. The recipes, however tasty, seem to fade in importance when compared to the human element of this very personal travelogue.

We are at the end of our walk. Maria returns home but she decides to ring exiled Rafik one more time. She falls silent and holds the phone to the city. It’s the background noise that we all take for granted but it’s the noise of home, of memories, of family. If you keep a dry eye through those last pages you are made of stronger stuff than I.' www.mostlyfood.co.uk

Rafik Schami, a prize-winning novelist and exile, lived in Damascus for twenty-five years. Unable to return to the city he loves, his sister walks him through the streets by phone, vividly describing the sights, sounds and flavours of the ‘Pearl of the Orient’.

It is said: ‘When a man has lived seven years in Damascus, Damascus lives in him.’ Rafik Schami lived in Damascus for 25 years. Then he went into exile and became a prize-winning novelist. But he never forgot Damascus, the Pearl of the Orient, the city he loves more than any other in the world. So when he was offered a chance to build a book around a culinary-cultural walk through his former hometown, Rafik Schami, who lists cooking as his recreation when he is not telling stories or writing or reading, was hooked. There were, however, two seemingly insurmountable barriers – time and geography.
 ‘No problem,’ his sister Marie said on the telephone when he explained her the idea and the problem. ‘We can walk through the city together on the phone. I’ll visit the people and get them to cook me their favourite dishes. Our family here in Damascus can try out the recipes afterwards and I’ll write them down together with all the secret tricks. I’ll describe the places, alleyways, houses, personalities, curiosities and pearls of our Old City. It’ll be a unique walk through the Old City. All you need to do is write down what I tell you. I’ll send you the recipes to slot into the appropriate points in the text. You should try out the recipes again just to be certain. So I’ll be your eyes in Damascus and you’ll be my translator and taster in Germany. What do you say?’ And she burst into laughter.
They wandered through Damascus for a year. Marie Fadel in the city and Rafik Schami – almost torn apart by longing – on the telephone in Germany. His joy came not only from strolling through the city, but also from realising how the diversity of peoples that have migrated through Damascus have combined to create an outstanding cuisine. He added their stories to the transcriptions of the walks from the tape recorder that captured every telephone conversation. His second sister, Therése, and sister-in-law, Atir, assisted Marie Fadel. The outcome of their joint endeavours is DAMASCUS – TASTE OF CITY. Enjoy it with all your senses.

‘Damascus: Taste of a City has to be one of the oddest travel books I have ever come across. A Syrian living in exile in Europe, Rafik Schami spent a year going for “walks” with his sister through the teeming alleyways,markets and street-kitchens of Damascus – she on her mobile and he at home in Europe.
So this is really Marie Fadel’s book – her words bringing the sights, sounds and smells of the city alive, and her recipes coming at the end of each chapter. It also has the distinction of being perhaps the only piece of travelwriting whose putative author was as armchair-bound as its readers.’

Ned Denny, The Daily Mail