Fresh, Cleaned Up, Some Distance and Perspective

I wanted to retread my last Syria post, more palatable this time. I had a few emails from people thanking me for my honesty. Speaking and writing freely should be our banner, always and forever. To those championing free speech, I wanted to do them honor.

As for the rest... Perhaps the insulting and obscene comments can be kept at bay? Just read/reread with an open mind...

Homestretch. Last school year in Syria, the last months of living there. Come June we were gone. Our plan was to stay three years, although the usual contract is two years. But we knew we wanted to settle in a place, a region, for awhile, to live there. If we’d just sweated out a two-year stint, we’d just finish our first year, and then would have to start looking for employment elsewhere, with all the forms and finances and anxieties accompanying the move—plus, all of the baggage accumulated to ship. Our sea shipment took months to arrive; I can’t imagine wanting to pack that again so soon. Many folks will sign on for two years and vacate when the contract runs out. Quite a few of our friends, who came here a year after we did, disembarked, too, their two-year contract fulfilled. Turnover, it turns out, is high. Why? For one, Syria can be somewhat boring—or at least I got bored there. This might seem strange, considering the recent political upheavals: getting shot at for protesting isn’t boring. But as modes of expression are banned, and having been banned a few generations instills banned expression as a way of life, people naturally and even affably simply don’t express much. Why take a chance on making art when you could be pulled in for questioning? When authority is absolute and strictly from your leader, individual initiative is, of course, stifled. Perhaps there’s a distinctive mode of Western First World living long marrowed in our bones. After you’ve eaten at a few of the restaurants, most of which have exactly the same menus cooking nearly similar styles, you tire, and then either eat at home or eat with Western friends. Not that the cuisine wasn’t good—we’ve had some fantastic meals in Syria. We saw a smattering of music; we heard about an interesting dance group that blew through, but we neglected to catch that breeze. But for myself I’ve recognized what I deem a self-imposed barrier. What we’d intended before we arrived in Syria we never accomplished: learn the language as a gateway—the true gateway—into a new culture. A few furtive attempts at Arabic, and then we gave up. Enough to get by, that’s what we learned. And we did get by. But that’s all we did. So advertisements for a concert could very well have been sprayed across a billboard, but I’d drive by and think the woman pictured was hawking shampoo. I don’t quite know why we never kept up the Arabic lessons. Part of the reason is a very settled lifestyle I acquired, just keeping my own garden cultivated. Stepping lightly around trash day every day—there’s nothing encouraging in suggesting, as some have, that “after awhile you get used to it” as if deadening sense and myopic vision are survival tactics. I don’t want to survive, I want to live. When visiting a lovely beachcove last Spring near the mountain village of Kasab, a few of us actually spent our last morning walking the sand and picking up the trash the locals left. What is redeeming about all this? You will not find a friendlier, more welcoming people anywhere in the region. When charting up what we’ll miss about living here, it all comes down to friends: we’ve made some of the best friends of our lives here. But they’re almost all Westerners. To slough off the worn, threadbare jackets of our culture and suffer the tiny steps into an unfamiliar climate I find honorable. But in the end I find I’m too enamored of the good old West, liberal, environmentally uppity, animal-loving, creating and sustaining styles of music that defy categorizations, churning our theater and song and film and poetry and essay and food and story and dance and painting and sculpture, mundane, punk, heady, angry, desperate, savory, kickass, sultry, delicate, revelatory, whirling and wild, soft and silent, hymns and bells and whistling angels. Case in point: just now, dear reader, you might have noticed a pause in the narrative. Consider yourself astute. Indeed, I laid down the typing finger and walked into the night-lit front patio to investigate a noise like rain toppling and tinkling on the granite. Or whatever the pavement is. I knew what it was: one of our upstairs neighbors from one of the four floors was rinsing down their balcony railing with hosewater. Syria is dusty, incredibly so. Dust settles on all things living or inanimate. On balcony railings. So folks—or their housekeeper—hose the railings off. Of course, the dirty railing water splashed onto our patio, and so dirties it up more. Reader, I’ve trudged upstairs probably a dozen times over the last two years, complaining to seemingly understanding ears that their dirty railing should not be hosed off onto our perhaps clean patio. Dirty water sprinkling onto our cushioned lawnchairs. Go back, dear reader, and note how many times I brought this to their attention, including the owner of the building, a very nice rotund man you met early in this blog, who’d held my hand during the call to prayer one warm August evening and explained that Jew, Christian, Muslim, we all pray to the same God. First off, how many brain cells does it take to figure out that pouring dirty water onto someone else’s patio isn’t acceptable? Got a brain cell ballpark? Good, okay, then how often do you have to be told before you cease and desist, or perhaps—oh man, a wacky thought, this, hold on folks, we’re racing round the rickety end of the wooden rollercoaster soggy and peeling, two wheels off and flaring, no seatbelts—perhaps you can just get a rag warm water wet and wipe the railing down. I’m sorry, am I in line for a Nobel Prize for that brilliant idea? So I just walked out in righteous indignation, looked up in despair, thought I’d take the wet cushion up to the 4th floor, bang on the sweet guy’s door, and present him with his housekeeper’s damn failings. But I just shook my head. Why bother. Daily experience here is split between the lauded and the lame. A positive: a few weeks ago I was attempting to connect the natural gas tank for the stove. The nut wouldn’t screw, no matter what I tried. Frustrated, I went round the corner to the little shop and asked the proprietor how it works. Without a thought, he happily locked up his shop and accompanied me to our apartment, and connected our gas. A negative: the prevalence in this day and age of the 7th century symbol of oppression of women: the hijab. You just can't get used to it. The empowerment of women IS the one tried and true thing that lifts the economy of peoples. I defy every male on the planet to read Mary Wollstonecraft's "A Vindication for The Rights of Women" written in the 18th century and then try to argue rationally why women should be covered. A positive: the utmost hospitality that is hallmark of the region going back to nomadic times. We’ve experienced nothing but kindness and smiles in almost all of our dealings here. And as it never ceases to amaze me—as writ in these pages—if you don’t have money enough to pay for the dozen bottles of wine picked out, George (there are Georges selling wine and booze on either side of this one street in the Armenian quarter) hands you your bagged wine, scoffs at your apology, and says “Next time, next time!” and trusts you’ll pay then, which you do. And so, let’s end on a positive. All in all, we’re glad we made the journey, found friends, travelled, and lived in Syria. But I can’t live without Art. And a decent Jewish deli within a stone’s throw.