DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) -- Even in the capital of a country torn apart by civil war, Syrians have to find some way to enjoy themselves on a hot summer weekend.
So the pool at a Damascus luxury hotel was packed on a recent afternoon. The children playing in the water paid no attention to the frequent thump of artillery and shells from fighting on the city outskirts.
"This part of Damascus, the center, is like Paris. But beyond that, you don't go," said a 26-year-old bank employee, lounging on the deck with his buddies, who took puffs from a thick cigar they passed among themselves. Like several others who spoke to The Associated Press, he talked on condition he not be identified, wary about drawing the attention of either side in the conflict.
Not that the center is entirely safe. Just a day earlier, a mortar fired by rebels on the city edges landed just a block from the hotel, across the street from a church, knocking a chunk off the balcony of an apartment building. A few days later, on Monday, another mortar hit a neighboring mosque, cracking its minaret and killing a passer-by.
The veneer of normalcy is thin in Damascus, the stronghold of President Bashar Assad's rule, at a time when a conflict that has dragged on more for than 2 1/2 years nears a potentially crucial juncture: possible U.S. and Western airstrikes against the Syrian military in retaliation for an alleged chemical weapons attack last week.
Firmly in the hands of the state and the military, the capital has been spared the widespread destruction wreaked on battle zone cities such as Aleppo and the rebel-held districts on Damascus' outskirts. Instead, the city of around 2 million feels small and hemmed in.
For much of the conflict, it has been cut off from its hinterland, the densely populated towns and villages that surround it in the area known as "Rif Dimashq," or "the Damascus Countryside." Rebels have controlled most of the Rif since last year, and regime forces have launched repeated assaults trying to dislodge them, devastating the area.
Nearly daily last week, military artillery stationed on Qassioun Mountain, the plateau that overlooks the capital from the north, bombarded the rebel-held suburbs east of the capital, just a 20-minute drive from downtown.
The shelling sent booming echoes across the city, raising the occasional plume of smoke in the east. Rebels in the Rif responded with rounds of mortars that fell into Damascus's eastern neighborhoods.
In the middle-class district of East Tijara, a 70-year-old retired government employee looked glumly at the burned-out husk of his 1993 Volvo, which took a direct mortar hit only a half-hour earlier. A hole in the crumpled roof showed the impact, the interior was mangled and charred.
"We'll have to throw it out," he sighed. "It's the only car I have."
