DAMASCUS IS a city of cafes. There are cafes for every level of society. Glitzy cafes for the rich, grimy cafes for the poor, cafes with long histories and cafes that spring up overnight like mushrooms and disappear with the dawn.
The cafes of Abu Ramaneh Street cater for wealthy clientele. Silver-haired men in beautifully tailored suits sip tea and smoke water pipes (shisha) in open cafes where blazing gas torches warm the chill night. Modern middle-class Sale Sucre offers croissants, panini, salads and fruit drinks to young lovers and students huddling over books and exchanging class notes.
Sale Sucre used to belong to former vice-president Abdel Halim Khaddam, ousted from the ruling Baath party in 2005 and living in exile in Paris.
Spanish-style Aroma Cafe, famous for its cakes and ice cream, is popular with young women in headscarves and chain-smoking men with unshaven chins.
The dour Havana Cafe is the haunt of intellectuals, poets, journalists and novelists with frayed shirt cuffs who can sit for hours talking over a tiny cup of thick Turkish coffee.
Strip-lit Kamal, nearby, is a vast, dingy-windowed cafe filled with retired or unemployed men in their 60s and 70s playing backgammon, drinking coffee and tea. and smoking shisa and cigarettes. Naufal, located behind the Omayyad Mosque in the Old City, still boasts a story teller in a red fez. He regales porters and street vendors with dramatic tales of heroism and daring. Naufal’s generations of storymen predate television by centuries.
Today the main topic of conversation at all levels of cafe society is the crisis with the Arab League. Many Syrians, rich, middling and poor, feel betrayed by the league which is set to suspend Syria’s membership today if it does not, in their view, meet impossible demands.
Uncertain assessments of the situation are formed by watching official news bulletins along with coverage by Arab channels received by satellite dishes that sprout on every roof.
Sanctions imposed by Europe and the US do not hurt the rich but impoverish the middle and lower-middle classes and devastate the poor. Men and women struggle to feed families by taking on two jobs. Shivering Muhammad in ear muffs and thin jacket is a Kurd who cleans rooms at my hotel and hawks woollen caps, socks and underpants on the pavement near the Hijaz railway station. Police have moved him off his traditional pitch, forcing him to display his wares on the spiral staircase of a footbridge high above the main thoroughfare, where cars and buses flow from quarter to quarter. Muhammad has no time and no money for cafes and no place in Syria’s multiple cafe societies.
Dr Nabil Sukkar, a former senior economist at the World Bank, argues, sanctions “will not topple the regime and will not cripple the economy” but inflict “economic and social damage [on] government finances and citizens’ livelihoods.
“Syria will be able to mitigate the impact of sanctions, through deepening economic ties with Iraq, Iran, Russia and other Asian countries.” EU targeting of specific individuals and firms will deter investors from forging business relations with figures in the establishment.
Syria has $18 billion in foreign exchange reserves but restrictions on trade in US dollars have curbed commerce. If the EU imposes restrictions on Syria’s use of the euro, the government will have to shift to the Japanese yen or the British pound.
European oil giants Shell and Total, which lift and export two-thirds of the country’s oil, have reduced oil production because there are no markets for Syrian crude. But, Sukkar predicts, Damascus will find markets outside Europe, tankers from countries not bound by sanctions to transport the oil, and banks to handle transactions.
Nevertheless, Syria could earn 15-20 per cent less for its oil exports and could have to pay 15 to 20 per cent for refined petroleum imports. This means that the period of adjustment could be costly. Syria will cope, he says, as long as a ban is not imposed on production or imports. Consequently, Syria’s economic growth could slow to 1 per cent this year, as compared to 5 per cent last year and there could be a shortage of goods on the market and inflation.