The road from damascus

In his restaurant in Abou Roumaneh, an upmarket district close to one of the Syrian capital’s few luxury hotels, Mohamed Takki looks on as customers pour in.Business has been good since the first wave of Gulf tourists fled the bombardment in Lebanon, packing Damascene hotels and triggering a mini-boom in the city’s tourist business. Yet there’s more to it than a bit of extra cash.“I came in one morning to find a Lebanese pharmacist and his family waiting to drink tea,” says Takki. “They’d just run away from Beirut and didn’t have anywhere to stay. All the hotels were fully-booked and they couldn’t find a flat, so I insisted they stay at my house. You have to help: you have this humanitarian feeling.” Takki is only one of thousands of Syrians who is hosting a stranded family. A sense of popular solidarity with the Lebanese – perhaps surprising given the