My initial impressions were ominous: sharing my service taxi, crossing from Lebanon to Syria, was Mohammed - a mullah from Aleppo, Syria’s second largest city. We experience an interesting culture clash. Chain smoking and quietly intense, Mohammed spells out his job as ‘propagandist’. ‘You mean prophet?’ I ask. ‘No. Propagandist is the correct term. I have checked in the Collins dictionary’. His beliefs: ‘We will crush Israel like a beetle!’; his views on the stage of history we have reached: ‘We live in Kohmeini time’. Er, right. Driver, any chance you can turn the taxi around and head back to Lebanon?

Like Iran, Syria’s soaked in religion and heavy with history; though, as I later find out, Syria has an openness and quiet joy that in Iran fundamentalists have smothered. Not knowing this on my arrival, Damascus appears on the horizon and I have a strange sense of déjà vu: it resembles Warsaw... if Warsaw was stranded in the desert.

Syrians like to boast that Damascus is the world’s oldest continually occupied city. Unfortunately, recent history has found Syria not only embracing Soviet-bloc politics but also their school of urban development. Damascus’s cityscape is dominated by tower blocks and squat, concrete buildings; Stalinist brutalism being the heavily favoured architectural style. Mohammed directs the taxi to my hotel of choice and with a parting ‘Inshallah’ the friendly fundamentalist is on his way. But getting a cheap room isn’t as simple as I think. Damascus has, it appears, become a magnet on the backpacker trail between Istanbul and Petra.

It’s mid-afternoon and 37 degrees, so the first bit of my equation - hot, oppressive, uneasy - appears correct. Syria gets very,very hot. A walk around central Damascus suggests that the latter parts are also borne out. My visit was before the death of President Hafez-al-Assad. At this time he seemed not only the Republic’s ruler but its poster boy too. From A4-sized photos in every shop, restaurant, café, work place and hotel, through kitsch billboards and murals to seven-storey high banners, his image was everywhere. No dissent is tolerated in Syria and one glance at The Great Leader’s thin-lipped and hawk-eyed visage, often flanked by Bashar, his son and successor, helped reinforce this fact.

All of which makes Damascus a pretty strange choice for backpackers: yet here they are - Japanese wearing operating-theatre masks; Germans quibbling about the price of a cuppa (5p); French still acting sniffy about the Syrians turfing them out 55 years ago; Australasians on their way to Gallipoli; and Brits... no, there are no Brits. Maybe if Syria got its football team together...

Warsaw in the Desert

Syrians are welcoming, if amused by the baggy shorts and piercings worn by travellers. Unlike Iran - whose rigid dress code must be observed by visitors - Syrians favour casual, conservative clothing. Indeed, the late leader’s emphasis on a secular Syria has made alcohol available; and, while a fair percentage of the female population may wear head scarves, another section strolls around as if dressed for a Mariah Carey video. Encountering Zahar and Mahmood, two youths with a fascination for the West (‘Britney Spears! Very beautiful!’ joyously proclaims Zahar), I’m invited for a ride in what turns out to be Mahmood’s father’s Mercedes. ‘You can’t go down here,’ I exclaim as Mahmood tears down a pedestrian boulevard in the New City. ‘My father is a General in the police force,’ answers Mahmood, ‘we drive where we want’.

While Mahmood and Zahar love the New City for its modernity, there’s little there for those seeking the flavour of ancient Arabia. Yes, it has Pizza Hut and designer shops and cinemas showing Jackie Chan, but it all feels a bit like Birmingham. Crammed into the centre of Damascus, surrounded by freeways and flyovers, overflowing across the ruins of the citadel, the Old City is Damascus’s beating heart. To enter this labyrinth is to stumble into narrow (narrow!) streets; lopsided, Dr Seuss-style buildings; commanding mosques; and glittering, covered souks. It’s a rush, literally. People flow across the pavements, cycle through the souks and skip through the surrounding multi-lane traffic accompanied by a symphony of beeps and toots.

The Old City is divided into quarters: from soft toys to iron mongers, everything has its place. The ancient gates that once welcomed Saul after his eventful journey, now choke with big American cars (Syrians tend to favour these) and tour buses. Ancient this area may be, but its real magic rests not with myths but among the ebullient bustle of the souks: imagine Ali Baba’s cave with the treasure swapped for tack. Here exists a cornucopia of consumer goods over which the dense wail of Arab pop carries. Great golden piles of baklava tempt you while the juice bars pulp oranges, bananas, mangoes, kiwis and apples into great pints of pure-fruit cocktails. Vegetarian alert, however: Syrians like to eat meat. A pyramid of cooked sheep heads rests silently next to noisy cages of live rabbits and poultry, and a restaurant banner advertises ‘Boiled Oily Meats’. Thanks, but I’ll stick to falafel.

Syria’s also a taxidermist’s paradise. Around the souks, youths insist that the gift you need is a creature - an anaconda, wolf, vulture or bird of prey - mounted for eternity on a wooden plinth. Tiring of one merchant’s spiel, I suggest that the magnificent specimen he holds - a hawk frozen in flight - is surely a protected species. ‘Protect? No! We hate! It eat the sheep!’ he says. ‘What’s a few sheep?’ I ask. ‘Bedouin people love the sheep!’ comes the reply. Gobsmacked, I fall silent. So he adds, ‘There! Is nice hawk for you!’

Everyone male - and Syria remains a very male society - smokes, whether it’s the throat-stripping Al Sham cigarettes (at 12p a packet!) or the honeyed tobacco that fills the nargileh (hookah) pipes and allows you to while away an afternoon in the Al-Nawfare Coffee Shop. (Though you’ll find tea is the preferred Syrian tipple.) And if you fancy something stronger? Don’t even think about the puff, pills or powders that may nourish your London existence. However, the Christians - who make up 13 per cent of Syria’s population - are allowed to sell alcohol. That said, Syria remains a fine place to give the liver a rest as the wine’s mediocre, the arak’s headache inducing and the beer as potent as Uncle Russell’s homebrew.

Still, having spent all afternoon wandering in the heat it’s easy to feel in desperate need of beer. Which means you’ll probably pitch up at The Piano Bar, a generic sub-Hard Rock Café joint, and a favourite for travellers and locals. ‘Beer good?’ asks my waiter. ‘Beer very good,’ I reply. This keeps him smiling though I should really be saying, ‘Beer pissy and expensive’ (it’s £2). Wandering in the Old City you can’t escape the epic Omayyad (Great) Mosque, one of Islam’s holiest sites and home to John the Baptist’s head. Yes, it’s open to appropriately dressed infidels. There are also several museums in the Old City, all more impressive for their Ottoman architecture than their actual contents.

Some are quick to dismiss Damascus as a one-day city (ie arrive, observe, depart). True, it’s hot, noisy, dusty and, so far, doesn’t give a damn about tourism. However, it’s also a fabulous mesh of the ancient and contemporary, a confident city that feels engaged. Whereas Beirut’s sacrificed to commerce, Amman’s uninspiring, Cairo too polluted and Tehran grim, Damascus retains its tough, vital Arab character.

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