Damascus Nights

I finished Damascus nights last Wednesday and decided to wait on posting my final words about the book. I was testing the lasting power of the book's impact on my life. It was a great book. I don't know if it stands up to many of the classics I have been reading lately, but it definitely is worth reading if you ever get the chance.

The story was the perfect amount of fantasy and truth. The way it did this was by placing a very small fantasy plotline into a story of modern living in the city of Damascus. There was very little magic or mystery in the story, but the one magic thing that happened opened your eyes to the stories that Salim and his friends tell. The morals of their stories are sometimes ambiguous and sometimes obvious, but the parables themselves gave me hints of spirituality that made the book incredibly rewarding to read. The characters in the book were all sympathetic and likable. By the end of the novel I wanted them to be my friends, or perhaps for the book to be the first in an indefinite series of books involving these characters.

It is always exciting for me to experience new cultures through literature. I had never really read anything set in the Middle East or written by an author from the region, so this was like a whole new world to me.* The story even touched on that a bit when one character told stories of America and none of the other characters would believe the things he said. The best of that was his story of trying to barter in department store in New York City. As I said before, the stories that were being told sometimes had simple and childish morals that were written to remind you of them in a creative way. Sometimes the stories had larger themes and were focused politics rather than simple morality. Those stories were usually very tragic and affected me in a more intimate way ( i.e. Made me want to learn more or get involved with solving the probles mentioned).

Anyhow, enough Jibber jabber. Great read! Check it out!


*(Funny that I said "a whole new world" because the story of Aladdin and the seven theives is in the book A Thousand and One Nights which is one of this author's main influences. This was done completely by accident.)