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The Damascene house was beyond the architectural text ,The design of the homes was based on an emotional foundation . For every house leaned on the hip of another , and every balcony extended its hand to another facing it . Damascene houses were loving houses , They greet one another in the morning, and exchanged visits secretly at night . I immersed myself in the Buzurriya Souq , set a sail in a cloud of spices, and clouds of cloves and cinnamon . I performed ablutions in rose water once, and in the water of passion many times ,and I forgot while in the Souq of spices all the concoctions of Nina Ricci , and Coco Chanel . What are you doing to me Damascus? How have you changed my aesthetic taste? For I have been made to forget the ringing of cups of licorice , the piano concerto of Rachmaninoff , How do the gardens of Sham transform me? For I have become the first conductor in the world , that leads an orchestra from a willow tree ! I woke up from this heavenly dream in panic by the sound of a barrel bomb. My body was stiff from cold; I can’t fix the broken door or windows because the barrel bombs don’t stop.I wanted to make coffee to wake myself up but I found no wood to start a fire. My share of electricity is an hour and half. I share it with five families and the staff of the field hospital. When the electricity comes on I have to charge all the batteries and fill all the water tanks for me and for the neighbours.I browsed the internet to catch up on the news. The news is horrible : the regime army is gaining ground on the eastern front. But I’m used to this. Every day, Damascus lose many civilians . Photos of the martyrs are all over my Facebook feed.During my shifts in the field hospital where I traveled to Damascus to volunteer in , I was in a state of constant emergency. I receive the injured and dead all the time. I want to take a shower to clean all the blood that is stuck to me from my last shift. But the scouting plane is in the air so I can’t heat the water to take a bath because if the pilot sees the smoke they will bomb the area. Everything in Damascus city screams. I spend my days running through the dust of destroyed houses and digging people out of the rubble. Our walkie-talkies don’t stop because the planes are flying heavily over the area. When an explosion goes off nearby, I have no time to recover from the shock before they call us to the scene. There are civilians underneath the rubble. I’m standing on the top of what used to be a house. A sound comes from underneath my feet. It’s the sound of someone in pain, the sound of somebody stuck there. I cry for people to come and help. I say: someone here is still alive. We start digging, my hand reaches inside the rubble and I touch something warm. It is him. He makes another sound. He is alive. I watch as they start shoveling the dust and rubble from on top of him. In his eyes I see my dream that I had this morning Two great tears are falling slowly from the corner of my eyes as I found my dream that I didn’t expect to find in Damascus , and yes it is still alive !