"Small Riot" in Damascus

One of the biggest differences in culture between the western world and the middle east is the way men communicate with each other. In the west when two men are having a conversation they generally keep their voices down and maintain a very steady demeanor. However, in the middle east even a simple conversation between two adult men can sound like a huge argument. They tend to talk really loud, really fast and get very animated. By the time we made it to Damascus,Syria Lindsay and I had grown quite accustom to this, however, one day while exploring the "souqs"(markets) we had quite the surprise. We saw two men outside of a little shop yelling at each other. We brushed this off as being the norm and were shocked when all of the sudden one of the men slapped the other. We of course could not take our eyes off the scene unfolding in front of us and kept watching from a distance. Eventually the man that was slapped stormed off and we thought the whole ordeal was over...we were wrong. Withing a matter of minutes the scene turned to compete chaos. All of the sudden there was a large crowd of men running towards us and another group of men behind us yelling and calling them on. The scene came to a climax when one man took off his belt and began swinging it over his head like Indiana Jones (honestly). Lindsay went in to "stare" mode and just stood there in shock staring at the complete riot unfolding in front of us. I on the other hand had a moment of instincts and just grabbed Lindsay's hand and started running the opposite direction. The last situation I wanted to be in was to be an American stuck in a Middle Eastern riot. We eventually got our way out of the chaos and within a few minutes the fighting had stopped and people were beginning to get back to normal. We spent the rest of the evening almost laughing at what we had just been a part off...it was an experience we will never forget.

The first picture below is of Lindsay in the market before the craziness started :)