We are proud to post the following beautiful reflection by Matthew McNaught. Personal accounts like this remind us of the Syria we love and miss. Matthew maintains a blog called Ibn Sifr. A white box on four wheels, about ten seats, a sliding door on the side, a sign on the roof with the route written in large letters. But three years after leaving Damascus, the servees is often on my mind. I went to Damascus at the start of with a plan to study Arabic for a year.
The city won me over, and I decided to stay on. I worked there as an English teacher until the end of Some days, I still have pangs of nostalgia for the servees. When I look at the timetable and see I have thirty minutes till the next one.
This is the kind of time when I indulge myself: I imagine for a moment a battered white servees sailing down the street towards me. Riding the micro is one of the most efficient ways I have known of getting around a city.
It came regularly, responding to demand at busy times but also running late into the night. You could flag one down wherever you were, and you could get off wherever you wanted. They drove fast, weaving through traffic at bum-clenching speed. They were also absurdly cheap. When I first arrived, you could ride the servees five times for the price of a falafel sandwich.
Sometime in , the fare doubled, but it remained so cheap that even regular rides failed to make the slightest dent on my wallet. But it was not just the practical advantages that made me love the servees.
