The Inner Life of Syria, Palestine and the Holy Land

"The book is written by the wife of the famous adventurer/traveller Richard Burton. I identified with her because she was a Catholic like me, and she loved her posting to Syria with her husband just as much as I did. She was interested in the same things that fascinated me – the old houses in Damascus are just one example (I actually wrote a book about houses in Damascus). When she was there in the mid-19th century there was a fashion for renovating the old houses in a more European style. In The Inner Life she describes the new interior decorations of these houses, houses that I saw when I was there but are now old and battered. In many ways her Damascus doesn’t seem to have changed that much. She describes going to a lady’s day at a Hamam (the traditional bath) – the leg waxing and beauty treatments are still the same today. However there are some things that she describes, things that I wasn’t able to see – like the thousands of pilgrims from all over the world assembling in Damascus to make the pilgrimage to Mecca (the Hajj). Well, at the end of the Burton’s time in Syria, there was a problem and Burton was recalled to London. Oddly enough, this is another parallel between Isabel’s experiences and my own: at the end of our posting in Syria we had some problems too. Isabel Burton wrote that her last happy day was the day before she heard that she had to move back to London. I loved Damascus so much that I identified very strongly with this feeling."