Poolside story

I’m lying down on a poolchair at what used to be the Sheraton pool, but has since had to change its name after Sheraton stopped its operations in Syria during the war. It’s a sweltering 109 degrees, and has been every day this week, as the height of summer draws near and the drought grows worse. The next day I’m going to find out that from now on, the municipality will be turning the water on every third day instead of every other day. For now I’m enjoying that five-star unlimited water and electricity that you could never cease to find at places like this no matter how many people were starving across the nation.

Khaled leans over the small table that’s struggling to contain two plates of manaeesh, coffee and watermelon juice, and says to me quietly, That’s Mona Wassef. I look over at the woman he’s pointed out. She’s easily 80, with a deep glistening tan and white visor that wouldn’t fail to fit in at a Florida retirement home. She does her slow laps across the pool, as she apparently does everyday, he tells me. I ask him who she is and why he’s so excited about her, my cultural incompetence revealing itself once more. She’s been my favorite actress since I was a kid, he responds, and pulls up a Google search of her, but of course while I say she looks familiar she really doesn’t. She’s like the Meryl Streep of Syria, he translates, and I glance over again, trying to see if I could get a better look at her face, but like every Arab icon she’s hiding behind a pair of large black sunglasses. 

I tell Khaled how crazy it is that if we had been sitting here a month earlier we would have watched as an Israeli missile struck down and hit the defense ministry located just across the same roundabout the hotel sits on. The roundabout is, of course, shielded by palm trees and a large concrete wall that resembles the façade of the brutalist hotel behind us. We talk about how grim that realization is, and how vile it is that Israel has the guts to bomb the central square of Damascus and face no retaliation, and how in spite of how crazy it is to be here again, in 2025 under a new regime and new layer of societal trauma from a war no one thought would end, it still feels natural to us. For him the feeling must be crazier than for me. I’d never properly lived here before. 

But it’s true, the country seems to never change. The songs on the radio are the same ones that played 15 years ago, and the cars they play in are at least twice as old. The kids run around in the street the same way I used to, and probably the same way my parents did. Everyone is still smoking indoors in the hotel lobby cafe my mother would come to when she was my age, and indulge in the same overpriced coffee with the same overpriced petit fours I’m indulging in today. The only thing that changed is the influx of new passports everyone seems to hold, after returning home from a decade of refuge abroad. 

My mother asked me if it was still okay for me to be wearing a bikini at the pool, or if anyone had commented on my choice of swimwear. To my right, a young mother removes the straps from her floral swimsuit in order to avoid tanlines, exposing her chest to the bright rays of sunshine most people would hide from. I comment on how everyone seems like they want a deep tan, and Khaled says that’s been the trend for a long time now, and you can find tanning products at any pharmacy. I realize no one has really commented on what I've been wearing, and I've largely been self-policing based on how I see everyone else dressing. But at the Sheraton no one cares, not even me, and I’m transported into a make-believe world reminiscent of 1978 when its doors first opened, with its imposing geometric walls, likely unwashed since opening day, concealing me from the outside world I’m finally starting to feel less scared of.  

We take our liberty in the cool water, I’m kicking my legs trying to stay afloat while being splashed by kids. My sunglasses are getting so blurry from the stray droplets that I need to take them off. I’m ever slightly too short to reach the floor without my head going under water, but every once in a while my toes manage to touch the tile and give me a little boost up. The pool water is surprisingly not chlorinated, instead it’s slightly salty and easily the most refreshing thing I've experienced in the nearly two weeks I've been here. Actually, me and Khaled arrived in Damascus around the same time but had just met that week, and while our respective schedules had been full beyond belief, the slowness of daily life made it feel like we had already been here for months. At the edge of the pool are two brothers, twins I think, in their fifties, whose bellies reflect the shine of the water. They’re local celebrities, known for being the deaf twins. It seems they’re also regulars at the Sheraton pool, and the impossibly fit lifeguards seem to know how to communicate with them without knowing any sort of sign language. All the regulars in this city speak a language of their own.

Sitting in the hotel lobby to take advantage of the free internet (for someone had stolen the entire electrical box in my neighborhood that weekend, rendering us all phone-less and WiFi-less for three days), I see a bride with her delegation walking towards the pool. She wears a strapless dress with long lace gloves, and a matching veil held up by a bridesmaid in chartreuse. No wonder they had kicked us out of the pool at 5, that was the place every bride in Damascus dreamed of getting married. The first wedding I ever attended was there. My uncle’s wedding. I remember the bride and groom each walking down a side of the double staircase, her dress spilling over each step as she made the descent. My four-year-old brain thought it was the most beautiful wedding ever, and it probably was. I always thought that staircase would remain suspended in my imagination as a fleeting memory from childhood. Now, it seems the next wedding I attend in this courtyard is imminent, and my memory has suddenly become sharp again.