Just Another Day in the World

Well look who’s up. Here, let me get, do you want cream? Coffee’s in that thermos. I assumed you wanted as close to regular coffee, as the coffee you can get here in Aleppo often has hints of cardamom, as the Syrians like it. I don’t mind it sometimes. This stuff here is espresso from Italy, they got cans of it at the. So, over the jet lag? Often you need, I don’t know, at least two days to get back in the—that was the call to prayer. Yeah every morning, the muezzin over loudspeakers without a trace of subtlety reminds the faithful to offer supplication and thanks due to Allah. God is Great and Mohammed is His prophet, so come gather and receive some blessing is a rough translation. Often the muezzin spices up the preface with recitations from the Koran. I think so. Oh, around four in the morning, something like that. It’s like living next to the train tracks: after a while get used to it, part of the sonic architecture of the country. But one of my students told me her father gets up with the call, goes to the mosque to pray, then goes to work. All in all, not a bad way to start the morning. Better than donuts. I remember reading Jalal al-Din Rumi, the Sufi poet—he actually got part of his education here in Aleppo around the twelve hundreds—saying something like “If you wake up in the middle of the night, listen, for the early hours have much to teach you, don’t go back to sleep…” I like that idea. No, I never do either. Wish I could, though. It’s always so quiet, just songs of birds. So eat something, do you constitutional business, and let’s get out so I can show you a day in the life. If you want we can—no, don’t bother, the power’s out. Goes out around this time every morning for an hour or so. Government does it. Like everything else, you get used to it. Just kind of plan your day around it. Nights are harder, though. You’re right in the middle of cooking and bam. Darkness. But you deal: light candles, pour a glass of wine, wear a headlamp to read. … Okay, got my keys, got my wallet, where’s my, all right, got my passport for you never know. Head of school instructed us to always keep around five hundred U.S. dollars around, easy access, just in case we have to flee the country. Wild, huh? Sun’s out! Beautiful day. Weather here’s pretty much like we had in Oakland, except the summers are painfully hot. Dry heat my ass. It hurts to be outside, saps your energy. No, let’s walk up this street, we’ll catch a cab downtown. The field across the street looked nicer in the dark, didn’t it? What you see through the trees, besides the ubiquitous trash, are people. See the clothesline? That crumbled concrete shack is where they live. Like I said, really poor people here in places. Oh yes, the honking. Cab drivers honk at everyone, potential fares. They don’t make much. Cab ride downtown to Azizyeh or the Citadel or Jedidah or wherever is like a buck. The average guy in Aleppo makes the equivalent of like ten bucks a day, most of these guys. And if you’re at a stoplight? Second it’s green they’re honking. Before even. Yeah, the trash. It was the hardest thing to get used to. That and the exhaust. But see that kind of dirty guy pushing that cart? Guys like him go around and scoop up trash from the gutters. Folks here just kind of drop their trash in bags in the gutters and in the morning they. “Salaam alaykum! Kayf Haalak!” “…” “Mabsuut Al Hamdulillah!” We walk by this shop every day, guy always smiles and greets us. Little hole in the wall, a lot of these shops are like that. But notice all the fruit? Juice shops. You just go in and get a big one point five liter bottle of fresh fruit juice, he squeezes it right in front of you. Grapefruit, orange, pomegranate, whatever’s in season. No preservatives, no pasteurization crap. And it’s like three bucks for the whole thing. How much is a little Odwalla? Here kitty kitty! No, they won’t come. The cats are all feral here. See that one’s kind of dirty. They hang around the trash bins and. Check it out up ahead. Horse drawn cart coming down the street. Clop clop clop! The red head scarf around the guy’s head? He probably lives in the outskirts of Aleppo, maybe in one of those tents we saw driving from the airport. Bedouin. Like I said, people here don’t have much. Probably comes in to sell vegetables or I don’t know. Now I bet you don’t see that in—where are you living now? No kidding. She took the house? Dude, you got hosed. You should have just told her to. No. Make a left. More cabs on this side. … “Jedidah, min fadlak, shukran.” We’ll head to Jedidah, oldest part of the city. Which is ironic as jedidah in Arabic means new, and so the oldest part of the city was once the newest. Shows how old. I know. There aren’t really rules of the road so to speak. Cars just scoot and swerve and drive on the line. It’s all very fluid. At first I was annoyed, but then I thought: who the hell cares if the guy crosses over the line? You just slow down or speed up. Result is that you’re very much more aware of your surroundings driving here. You still get idiots with cell phones stewing in a toxic combo of oblivious and smug, same as the States, but you just flow, and everybody else flows with you, give and take. Driving’s fine here, like driving on the sea, shifting with waves and wind. What’s really annoying is—like that guy. Just walks out into traffic. Everybody does it. Just start walking and dash and swoop between cars. Little kids, old women. What you have to do is—see them all?—just keep driving. It’s a dance: they plan their dash according to your speed and approach. So you don’t pause, that’ll upset the rhythm. Okay, see that clock tower there? This is near city center. Prime location for a public hanging, don’t you think? One of these days soon. Some guys robbed a jewelry store in Khaldiah, killed the owner and some other guy out front when they shot through the glass. Anyway, they caught the guys, and one’s going to hang. Other guys aren’t nationals, my students tell me, so they’re in for life instead. Couple years ago these five guys hanged, same clock tower. That kind of crime is rare here, killings or robberies. Perhaps because the punishment is so swift and sure, I don’t know. Well yeah it’s kind of barbaric. But hey I’ve been checking out news from the homeland: guy stabs one sister then decapitates his other little sister? Guy rages in and sprays a nursing home killing all those old people? School shootings, practically every other month or so, parking lot shootings, what the hell kind of barbaric country you living in? If you thought—“Hone!” That means stop here. We’ll get out here and walk. “Bikam?” Seventy-five lira. Let’s see what. Here’s a hundred. “Tfaddal. Shukran! Ma Salaama.” Not bad huh? For that cab ride downtown. That was about a dollar fifty. What do cabs start at in San Francisco? … Yeah these streets are narrow, and look, cobblestone. Much of Aleppo at one time or another was destroyed either by earthquakes or invasions. And here it’s all about the small shops. See that guy sells all kinds of roasted nuts. There’s the butcher, all that meat in the. I don’t know what that is. Sheep probably. Those guys over there are. All the vegetables and fruits are fresh. See how ugly the oranges look? Juiciest sweetest oranges you’ll ever eat. See how deep almost burgundy red the bell peppers? I make great salads here. Lettuces, arugula, frizze, cucumbers, tomatoes, it’s all fresh. Let’s walk down this street… You see, these narrow streets kind of grimy and dusty have sections where the same kinds of goods and whatnot. All these guys sell pipe fittings…all those guys sell jewelry. No, not here, Khaldiah. Yeah, people stare. They just don’t see foreigners much. They’re fascinated by foreigners. They all give this deadpan stare, but the minute you smile and wave, they smile wider than you and wave back, even call out Ahlan wa sahlan which means welcome very much welcome, something like that. No, you’re not pronouncing the h. You have to pronounce the h. Forget it, you’re not going to be here long enough. Oh him? No, there are no child labor laws here that I know of. No idea. What, he’s around ten years old? It’s different here. People just work. Syrians are industrious. You wouldn’t know it from some of these guys sitting on white plastic chairs and having tea and watching the world go by. But if you. Look at this wall, pockmarked and weathered and crumbling almost. Probably what you looked like after the divorce. Let’s get a shwarma. We’re close to a place I know…. Here, take it. They’re like Middle East burritos. The bread is xubz arribyy, Arab flatbread, and wrapped up inside is chicken, garlic cream, chopped tomatoes, shredded lettuce and pickles. They’re wrapped then flat pressed fried on the grill. These two? A dollar for both. Good huh? Let’s head up this way. I’ll take you to the Christian quarter….No, not much color. That kind of yellowish brown like faded clay is the color of Aleppo buildings. In the upper income newer neighborhoods you’ll see a dusty pink, but that’s the stone. One thing you’ll notice about the apartment buildings, there all about four or five floors high, that’s it. And the reason some of them look abandoned is because, like there, see all the dark brown shutters on the windows? Looks like the building’s boarded up. But it’s filled to capacity. People here just shutter the windows. It’s like they entomb themselves. I’ve asked and my students say folks don’t want people looking in, seeing their business, whatever. But it’s not like they’re running around naked acting out the leper scene from Jesus Christ Superstar for chrissakes. I mean, they’re having tea or watching TV together or doing the bland motionless living we all do. It’s just depressing to me: no natural light—ever! And yeah that’s the hardest thing to get used to here: the women having to cover up. And in black! Black is the color of invisibility. A negative of the spark of life. See, like those women there in front of that clothing boutique, eyeing those slinky dresses! And all of them completely veiled, head to toe, black gloves, the works. Thing is. Okay, here’s the thing. An acquaintance of ours, originally from—dude, watch where you’re walking; that taxi almost took you out—from Iraq gave us the run down: seems back in the day invading, marauding armies would storm through villages. Besides bestowing on the unlucky inhabitants your garden-variety pillage, they’d also steal the prettiest girls to use and abuse at their leisure. Kind of like frat parties. Anyway, villagers learned to veil the girls when the rampaging armies sauntered through. So then the armies couldn’t see the faces of the pretty ones. So but here’s the thing: don’t you think if you were a thirsty invader looking for a few sheep and a pretty young thing to love, you’d go straight for the veiled ones? I mean hello. But now it’s just a religious requirement. Women aren’t allowed to be “seen” by other men other than their husbands. At home the women unveil. And that’s when their husbands get to see his wife in one of those slinky strapless numbers in the shop window. I don’t know. I don’t really like it either. But like it was explained to me: women here cover up, then get dressed up stylish for their husbands; women in the States go out in the world looking dressed and stylish, then turn into frumps wearing sweats, tying rubberbands in their hair at home for their husbands. Whatever. You can just as easily—let’s duck in here. Here’s one of the many video shops. All pirated. All the new movies not even on DVD yet in the States, but you can buy them here. Here, buy this one: Brad Pitt’s all in it. I know you idolize him. You’re such a fairy. Check it! DeNiro in “Taxi Driver”. You talking to me? Are you talking to me? Let’s totally watch this tonight. Okay, we’re out of here. This DVD? A buck. See, we don’t even need to rent. Everybody just buys them, other teachers, and we just pass them around to each other. Sometimes I think it’s not—no, most of the folks you see here are Christians. Arabs or Armenians. No, they’re not the same you dumbass. What, did your ex take your brain too as part of the settlement? Armenians many of them settled here after the Turk genocide of 1915. See, there’s Armenian church, over there’s a Greek Orthodox. This neighborhood is called Azizyeh. You’ll see more restaurants, cafes here. People stay up late here. If we came back at midnight all those tables there would be filled with people. Okay, this is boring, let’s head home…. So basically, my day is school. At my desk by 7:30 every morning, we leave around 5:30 or so in the afternoon. Carrie goes running or walking. I go home and play guitar, read. Carrie does Yoga a couple times a week. Weekends, not much. Although we are planning on heading to the village of Maluula about an hour north of Damascus. It’s a town set in a cliff, a Christian town, and people there still speak Aramaic, the language old Jesus spoke. Cool, huh? Let’s head to the Sports Club on the school campus, start hefting beers. See if the cabbie knows where the school is. “Ismahli…?” … So the nice part about working here are the grounds. It’s like a park in here. All the trees, a good bit of shade, gardens, flowers. Ah, you’ll see cats all over the place here. Like a sanctuary for them. Brutal Aleppo streets. See the terraced lawn? All that lawn furniture. We hang out here with our friends quite often. Sometimes it’s after work and. Yeah, that’s the tennis court, over there’s that tented structure is basketball court, soccer field behind that. There’s a narrow running path through a small sort of forest. That building’s a squash court. Showers, all that. We have dinners in—well let’s get some coldies first and start drinking. It’s past noon…. So the different thing about living here is that our friends are generally somewhat older than we are. Not so when we lived in Cali. The benefit is that most of our friends have second houses, or first houses in nice locations. And we’ve made fast friends here; the expat community, you know. But in the years to come we’ll be able to visit friends on a beautiful stretch of coastline in Australia; friends in a village in France; friends in Segovia, Spain; friends in Cyprus; friends in Borneo; friends in Mexico. We ain’t couch-surfing in trailer park in Fresno, I can tell you that. So we meet after work here and—damn, my beer’s gone. Must have spilled most of it. I’ll get us a couple more….Yeah, I can’t believe it either: drinking beer from a can. And a lager for chrissake. Would you believe I actually last summer poured beer from a can over ice in a glass to chill it? Desperate times call for desperate measures. But like I said, we’ll just drop by and there’s always somebody here, sitting out at one of these tables. More folks will show. More beers. Then somebody says “Hey, let’s fix dinner at my place” and we all drive on over. The people here make it enjoyable, and worthwhile. Like anywhere. Let me tell you a story. The other evening Carrie and were finishing up dinner, and the people upstairs like two flights up start hosing down their patio. So it’s like splashing and dripping on our patio of course, dirty water. So I’m pissed. I don’t know how many glasses of wine are sloshing around my brain, but there I go, storming up the stairs. I bang on the door. The guy opens it. And I’m slightly aggravated and explaining forcefully in English that “No more!” “Khallas!” I say, which means Finished! Like stop it, enough. The guy doesn’t speak much English, but he gets my drift. But here’s the thing: as soon as I finish my rant, he asks me to wait, then to come in. I follow him into the kitchen, his little kids are milling around, and in a mixture of Arabic and pointing he prepares to give me a gift of honey. He’s a beekeeper! On the kitchen counter’s a wooden box, and it’s filled with wooden files of honeycomb! He motions that I’m to take one. A dark rich amber honeycomb, filled in cells of dark honey. He’s apologizing with honey. Of course, I’m feeling like an idiot for getting so mad. But I’m suddenly humbled, and I pour out my appreciation and thanks like a waterfall. See what transpired? A Muslim performing a Christian act of love which transformed my proud self-righteousness into a binding peace. A miracle, no? Here are small wonders to amaze, like glowing sunset red wildflowers dancing out of limestone slabs in a windswept field. Ah. The call to prayer again. Evening prayers. Yeah, why not. I don't have to work tomorrow. I'll take you to a dead city. Haunted sky. We'll make a picnic in the ruins. The beer’s not bad, is it…?