My memories of Bab Tuma, a predominately Christian quarter in old Damascus, go back to my first Christmas in Syria. Like locals, I was rugged up for the winter cold. There were street lights and decorations, and a towering Christmas tree! Father Christmas’s were handing out sweets and one was stopped on a corner, playing the saxophone. 

If you search on the Internet for a video of ‘Christmas in Syria’, you’ll invariably find, among the list of videos, ones featuring Bab Tuma (also spelt ‘Touma’).

https://youtu.be/lhw14AoKB-U?t=23

In 2003, my excitement probably matched that of tourists in 5th Avenue’s Rockefeller Centre at Christmas, except I was experiencing Christmas in the Middle East!

Bab Tuma is a shopping precinct that attracts locals from across the city, and the friend I was with that Christmas evening seized the opportunity to buy a pair of pointed high-heel shoes, popular in Syria at the time. 

Nearly sixteen years after seeing Father Christmas play the saxophone in Bab Tuma, I was back in this old quarter of Damascus to visit a private child care centre, ‘Be a Bee’.

I learnt that ‘Be a Bee’ catered for working parents as well as those simply wanting to do a couple of hours shopping in Bab Tuma.

After the children had stopped singing ‘Baby Shark’, I quickly grabbed their teacher for a very short interview.

‘Baby Shark’ was new to me, but apparently it’s extremely popular. The video below by Bounce Patrol, a children’s entertainment group from Melbourne, has had more than 1,648,577,908 views since May 2018. Wow!

Bounce Patrol sing ‘Baby Shark’

Susan Dirgham

info.belovedsyria@gmail.com