Playing Chess in Damascus

What the fall of Baghdad, the occupation, sectarianism, and callous American adventurism could not erase: a sense of humor, of food, of hospitality and humanity.

Looking east toward Bab Sharqi in the Old City of Damascus, 2009. (Photo by Frederick Deknatel)

I wrote the following story from Damascus in 2009, during a year I lived in Syria. It originally appeared in Wunderkammer Magazine as “Refugee Chess.”

They lived well in Baghdad; their eldest daughter had two cars. Six years later, the Iraqi couple moves their mattresses out of the bedroom each night to sleep on the living room floor. The only bedroom is left for their daughters while they live in this concrete refugee suburb of Damascus.

It was Friday and quiet on the balcony above the street. The fried fish lunch was over and the mother was reading fortunes in the bottom of coffee cups. The father skulked past the couch and flashed his pack of cigarettes. He didn’t smoke before the war. He was a chain-smoker by the time he arrived in Damascus. He shrugged when his wife explained his new habit — “he’s always with a cigarette, always, but he never smoked before.” She brought her index and midd…