CHAPTER XX—DAMASCUS—THE GARDEN CITY OF THE EAST.
Dimitri and his hotel—Court-yards and fountain—How people live in Damascus—Parlors, bed-rooms and boudoirs—A bet and its decision—The “Doubter and his Donkey”—The Street called “Straight”—Bab-Shurky—Spots famous in history—Shaking hinds across a Street—Scene of St. Paul’s conversion—The Window of escape—Tombs of Mohammed’s Wives—The “Doubter” figuring on probabilities—An unexpected upset—Visiting the lepers’ hospital—A frightful spectacle—The Great Mosque—View from the Minaret—The Bazaars and Curiosity Shops—Making a trade—A case of Fraud.
THE hotel at Damascus is kept by a Greek named Dimitri, who has been familiar with Syria for a great many years, and was in his younger days a dragoman.
His house is spacious, and more comfortable than I had expected to find it, and in appearance is the most Oriental of all the hotels I have seen in the East. You enter by a low, narrow doorway, and passing a short vestibule find yourself in a marble paved court open to the sky, and possessing a fine fountain When I say a fine fountain, I mean that it is so from an Oriental point of view—i. e., there is a broad tank, with stone sides, where the water is kept constantly changing by means of a two inch supply-pipe, and an equally large waste pipe. To the right of the fountain there is a recess about twenty feet square, where are divans and chairs in abundance.
Beyond the fountain on the opposite side of the court is the parlor or saloon. It is entered by an ordinary door, and you find inside a marble floor as long as the room is wide,—about six feet in width,—and having a fountain in the centre. The rest of the apartment on each side of the marble floor is elevated about two feet and has steps leading up to it.
The spaces thus elevated are richly carpeted and have divans on three sides. They have in Dimitri’s hotel a few chairs in front of the divans; but these are rather out of place, and are only kept there out of deference to the foreign patrons. The roof is high, and the highest part of it all is in the centre. We have reason to know about it, as we got into a discussion while waiting for dinner, and two of the party risked a bottle of champagne on the result.