Word: courtyards
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...Georgian and South Ossetian blood is very closely connected," says Fatima, 50, as she hems a pillowcase while sitting in the courtyard of her apartment building in the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali. "South Ossetian girls would marry Georgian boys and South Ossetian boys would marry Georgian girls. But today, today there is no connection - it's all been lost." South Ossetia, in northern Georgia, had been a source of tension long before Russia and Georgia fought their brutal five-day war over the region a year ago. Since then, South Ossetia has declared its independence, but Georgia refuses...
...Friday Check in at Beit al Mamlouka, www.almamlouka.com, a boutique hotel in a restored courtyard house in the Old City, and one of Damascus' best. Dine on French and Syrian cuisine in a pretty courtyard round the corner at Elissar, tel: (963-11) 542 4300. The mezze are a meal in themselves. (See 50 essential travel tips...
...Paul) was baptized after being healed of blindness. Wander down Straight Street (also referred to as Via Recta), and allow the scent of cardamom and roasting coffee to waft you back to Ottoman trading days. Gaze at the stalls selling damask roses and leeches. Step into the 18th century courtyard of Khan Suleiman Pasha, once a caravansary on the Silk Road...
...marble floors. Move on to Umayyad Mosque, one of the world's oldest, having been completed in 715. Before that, it was successively an Aramaean temple, a Roman temple and then a Byzantine church. Over the centuries it has become a meeting place for the city. The mosque's courtyard - an inadequate term for this vast plaza of glittering marble - is alive with afternoon strollers and gossiping families. When you're done people-watching, track down one of the mosque's great curiosities: a shrine that purportedly holds the head of John the Baptist...
...while its history is rich - most agree at least 2,000 years old - many Uighurs in Kashgar see their culture and heritage as under attack by the Chinese government. In the latest move, authorities have started to demolish Kashgar's old town - an atmospheric, mud-brick maze of courtyard homes, winding cobblestone streets plied by donkey carts, and dozens of centuries-old mosques. By some accounts, at least 85% of Old Kashgar will be knocked down. Many expect the ancient quarter, considered one of Central Asia's best preserved sites of Islamic architecture, to disappear almost entirely before...