Damascus

The cloth and the steel both remember Damascus.

English damask points to Damascus, long a source of patterned silk and of famously worked steel. The city name became the word for those techniques in Europe.

The plum is a damascene fruit in miniature.

Damson comes from damascene, “of Damascus.” The fruit was associated with Syria in Latin and Greek naming, then shrank into an English orchard word.

The watered steel carries the city that traded it.

Blades of this steel reached Europe through Damascus, and the city's name attached to the banded surface pattern rather than to the making of it.

One blinding flash on a Syrian trade road now describes any change of heart.

Acts describes Saul of Tarsus struck blind on his way to Damascus to persecute Christians and rising as Paul, on a real road into one of the longest-inhabited cities on earth. The English phrase is far younger than the story and is now applied to politicians who switch position as readily as to genuine revelation.

One of the world's oldest cities is now shorthand for changing your mind.

Acts describes Saul of Tarsus struck blind on the way to Damascus to arrest Christians and rising from the road as Paul, and English writers turned the journey into a stock phrase for any about-face. It attaches most often now to politicians reversing a position, which is rarely as sudden as the original.