Kareem Rahma brings Keep the Meter Running to Damascus

In Kareem Rahma’s series Keep the Meter Running, the Egyptian American comedian gets into a taxi, asks the driver to take him to their favourite place, and tells them to keep the meter running.

The cab becomes a route into the driver’s life, with stops chosen by them - whether a restaurant, neighbourhood, place of worship or somewhere tied to a personal memory.

Rahma, best known for New York-based web series including Subway Takes, follows along. Previous episodes have centred on yellow-cab drivers in New York; the new Damascus instalment is the first set outside the city.

In the latest episode, published this week, Rahma lands in Damascus and meets Bashar, a local driver who takes him through the Old City, the Umayyad Mosque, Hanania Church, food stops and eventually Jobar, an eastern district devastated during the Syrian civil war.

The episode is warm, funny and, at times, difficult to watch. It also features illustrations by Syrian-American artist Rama Duwaji, wife of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, whose drawings appear between scenes and bring another Syrian perspective to the story.

The film’s local producer, Eyad Nemer, said he wanted the episode to complicate the way Syria is usually presented to foreign audiences.

"I think one of the biggest assumptions is that Damascus is only a city defined by war," he told The New Arab. "Of course, the war is part of our story - and we can’t pretend it didn’t happen. But Damascus is also a living city: people fall in love, laugh, sing, eat together, live together, make plans, and worry about completely ordinary things."

"I wanted people to see that side of Damascus, not to ignore what happened, but to understand that there’s a whole life that exists beyond the headlines."

A city of jokes and history

Much of the episode works because it does not attempt to make Damascus look polished or uncomplicated.

Rahma and Bashar get lost in the Old City’s narrow lanes. At one point Bashar says, "The cat lost its son," a Syrian Arabic expression used to describe being thoroughly lost - appropriate in a place where even someone familiar with the streets can lose their way.

There are food debates, long breakfasts and constant joking between the pair. Bashar moves easily between historical commentary, personal stories and teasing Rahma. The details are often ordinary, but they do the work of making the city feel lived in rather than presented as a backdrop.

Bashar describes the Old City as a "romantic city". He also speaks of its durability.

"This city has magnetic," he says. "I have visited Dubai, Manama, Amman, Beirut - I did not find any city like Damascus. I don’t know the secret about this city, maybe because it’s the oldest city in the world. In spite of all wars, earthquakes, disaster, it’s still alive. Damascus doesn’t die."

The film also makes room for uncertainty and trauma.

At the underground Hanania church, Bashar speaks about religion and how the war affected his faith. Referring to what Syrians saw during the war, he recalls the image of a one-year-old child covered in blood on the streets of Damascus. It is one of the episode’s most serious moments, and it sits sharply alongside its more playful scenes.

Finding Bashar

Eyad said the production did not find Bashar by chance. He joined a Facebook group for drivers, contacted more than 200 people and conducted between 50 and 60 interviews before choosing him.

Bashar’s story, he said, "touched me deeply".

The decision helps explain why the episode has a different feel from a standard travel video. Bashar is not simply a guide pointing out landmarks. He is the person through whom the city is shown: its humour, its history, its hospitality and its unresolved pain.

That pain comes into focus in Jobar, which Bashar calls "a city of ghosts".

The district, on Damascus’s eastern edge, was held by opposition fighters for much of the war and was subjected to repeated government assaults before it was retaken in 2018. Large parts of it were destroyed, and residents remain unable to return or rebuild at scale.

"Every time I visit Jobar, I cry," Eyad said. "It’s super difficult to show the area there, because there’s nothing there, really nothing."

Syria’s war began in 2011 following the Assad government’s violent repression of protests. It killed hundreds of thousands of people, displaced millions and transformed entire parts of the capital. Bashar al-Assad was ousted in December 2024, after a rapid offensive by opposition forces entered Damascus and ended his family’s decades-long rule.

Beyond war

The risk for any programme trying to show Syria beyond war is that it might appear to minimise the scale of what happened. The episode largely avoids this by allowing both realities to stand: Damascus as a place of jokes, meals, romance and religious history, and Damascus as a place marked by loss.

"I think the episode worked really well because it felt honest," Eyad said. "We weren’t trying to create a perfect picture of Damascus, and we weren’t trying to make it only the war either. We just wanted to show the city through the people who actually live there, you know, and I think that really connected with the people."

The response from Syrians has been especially important to him.

"The reaction we’ve had since the episode came out has been amazing – especially from Syrians," he said. "I’ve had people telling me that they recognise parts of their own lives and their own Damascus in the episode and, for me, that’s probably the biggest sign that we did something right."

"We managed to tell a story that could work for someone watching from the other side of the world."

Near the end, Bashar asks Rahma what he saw during his two days in Damascus.

"I saw nothing but beauty," Rahma replies.

"You saw the Syrian people," Bashar says.