Around the corner of the hotel is a nice square with a couple of café’s, wooden benches with pillows and different counters that borrow money, drinks and costumers from each other. I try to drink a coffee in the morning without smoking, be it cigarettes, a nargilehs or a two minute stroll alongside Damacus’ crowded streets.

Osama sits a few seats away, and clearly invites me to join him, and the beautiful girl he is talking with. “I learn English”, he explains. “It difficult, but very authentic!” I take up one of his books, which should be read backwards. It’s full of bureaucratic idiom, sprouts with spelling mistakes and collects a rare variety of completely useless phrases. On the page where he was making notes I find the sentence “He was killed by a scorpion”.

“Have you ever been Tartus?”, asks Osama. He points at the girl, who takes off her sunglasess, tells something to Osama and puts her glasses back on. She kept lines around her eyes, faded on its ending, giving her a mysterious touch. As Graham Green wrote ‘she kept her lines for people that care about lines’. Osama did, and so did I. “She from Tartus. She very authentic!” I could have known. Maybe it’s the Mediterranean breeze, a milder climate or a lucky twist of faith, but opposed to other parts of Syria, Tartus is a very liberal city – girls stroll around its boulevards in short skirts.

When she leaves her nargileh aside and moves to the toilet, Osama comes sitting next to me. “She very authentic, no?” Yes, I nodd, and smile at him. I pay for the coffee and as I grab my bag I lean to Osama and tell him “make sure she doesn’t get killed by a scorpion”. He grabs his book and starts looking for the page he saw before. When I am nearly around the corner he shouts: “Yes! Not-authentic! Welcome!”

• De Danseartstraat is Brussel in het klein. Het begint druk, je ziet er mooie restaurants, gekke kledingwinkeltjes, een sympathiek plein, een uitgerookt cafe en een fantastische boekenzaak. Dan zie je een eerste nachtwinkel, een tweede. Belgisch – Turkse voetbalkantines, auto’s met lekke banden, kebabzaken en aan het eind van de straat zijn de belwinkels gesloten door deurwaarders.
• Op oudere verkeersborden is ‘Rue’ vertaald als ‘Steenstraat’. Danseartsteenstraat.
• Marokkaanse meisjes in Brussel zien er steeds mooier uit. Donker haar, donkere ogen en een sluikse blik. De opgeschoten gasten die er altijd naast lopen zijn geen spat veranderd.
• In de Brusselse metro speelt David Bowie. Toen ik alsnog verdwaalde klonk zowaar U2. “But I still haven’t found, what I am looking for!”
• In de GB-supermarkt, een verademing na twee maanden Sovjet-eten, draaide men een album van Bob Dylan. “Fantastische muziek”, zeg ik tegen het meisje achter de kassa. Ze bedenkt zich. “Zijn er veel mensen die dat leuk vinden?”, vraagt ze. “Dit is Bob Dylan”, zeg ik. “Dat is geen kwestie van leuk vinden of niet”. “Ca me nerve”, zegt ze. En ik maar denken dat Dylan een idool was.

Shims of lighted buildings in the fog deem from far away. It happens all of a sudden. Just a second ago you were drinking drafted beer in a café – the usual happens. A woman sits and stairs out of the window, two Bulgarians sip away a glass of wine. Some argue about a bill and a drunk husband falls from his chair. Then, out of nothings those buildings. The escalators that never work. A kiss. The metro blows away, a turn, more stairs and there you are: Rue de l’Avenir. This should be ‘Wordingsstraat’ in Dutch, but be graceful to heavens that it’s not. This street is not registered with the city-council, it not on maps sold in cigarette-stores where old men argue about last week’s news.