The “Arab Rambo”

At the risk of sounding like a Lonely Planet travel guidebook or an orientalist (these two dovetail pretty well, by the way), the old souq in Aleppo is a labyrinth of sights, smells, and sounds. Any traditional souq—and the souq in Aleppo is one of the biggest—is, depending on one’s personality, a delight or an assault on all five senses.

As one walks through the souq the wave after wave of colors displayed is mesmerizing. It seems without end and I usually end up meandering along in a trance (or is that my normal state?), much like strolling along a beach gazing at the surf rolling and crashing, rolling and crashing, rolling and crashing, rolling and crashing…infinitely. There is gold, gold, and more gold, yards of multihued fabric in every pattern, neon-colored sweat suits, sequined underwear, a rainbow of hejab wrapped on a rank of vacant-eyed mannequins, flashing lights racing around kids’ toy guns and trucks, and strings of blinking lights over the entrances of shops and on the dashboards and grilles of trucks. The colored lights on the trucks swirl around in hypnotizing circles, making it all the more difficult to remember to step out of the path of their turning wheels.

There is something captivating about symmetric displays. When I was on the high school dance team I realized that it didn’t matter how cheap a step was, when everyone danced in unison it looked amazing, and I feel the same way about the wares in the souq: the rows and rows of scarves, garden trowels, stacks of blocks of brown olive oil soap, packets of tissues, rolled rugs, squares of sweets, and giant barrels of chamomile, coffee, peanuts, and a fluffy white gel that upon asking I realized was Vaseline. The smells in the souq range from the pleasantly aromatic, like coffee (my favorite), cardamom, and cumin, to the less pleasant, such as cigarette smoke and people sweating too near each other.

Three other foreign students and I were wandering through this maze of shops, nibbling pistachio candies and listening to the honking horns, ringing mobiles, and little kids crying, when out of this cacophony a tall man with a shaved head in a blue sweatshirt called out to us, “Hello! Where are you from?” I turned my head away and attempted to scuttle off into the crowd but a wall of people and my naïve travel companions thwarted my escape. “From America!’ I heard my friend answer him. My heart sank and I tried to flee again but heard the man call after us, “I have a friend in America!” That’s great, I thought. Perhaps I know him? No, I don’t want to buy any of your jewelry. It’s beautiful, but I don’t have any money. No, really I don’t have any money. The man caught up to our group, “I have a friend in California, his name is Arnold Schwarzenegger.” Uh-huh. By this time we found ourselves delivered to the entrance of his—that’s right—silverwork jewelry store. I was aggravated at my peers’ gullibility and also with my lack of money (his jewelry really was beautiful). I was cynically slouching in the doorframe when he placed an aged photo album on the counter and proudly urged us to flip through it. It was filled with decades of snapshots from bodybuilding competitions.

In page after page of photographs, our silversmith friend was posed on the champion’s podium, wearing only the tiniest piece of narrow leather loincloth, with his colossal muscles bulging and gleaming with a slathering of bronzing crème. I recognized his titanic form in the Syrian championships, the Mediterranean championships, the Spanish championships, etc. (Incongruously, there was also a photo of his three-year-old daughter smoking a water pipe. It was taller than she was). I was astonished. My friend Charles exclaimed, “Holy shit man! I thought you were full of shit!” The Syrian man gleefully removed a long coral and silver necklace from his case and modeled it on his own neck. Once it was fastened, he playfully flexed his pecs, hurling the necklace ten inches into the air off his chest. We all jumped in shock and then burst out laughing. My skepticism vanished, and for the next two hours I sat smiling as we drank cups of tea and coffee and he and Charles excitedly discussed bodybuilding. He told us that starting ten months before his competitions he ate nothing but “breast of chicken,” or else a high-protein shake of water and puréed chicken breast. He told us he was known in the souq as the “Arab Rambo,” and if we ever came back through town he urged us to ask anyone where Rambo’s store is, and they would point us in the right direction.

Dancing in Damascus

Beit al-Fan, or “House of Art,” is a non-descript building in the Meze suburbs sandwiched amidst a boutique that sells saccharine Valentine’s Day trinkets year round, an ice cream shop, and a long row of stores specializing in up market pens.

Every Monday and Wednesday evening I have been taking belly dance classes at Beit al-Fan with my Syrian-American friend, her three cousins, and several other women. The studios at Beit al-Fan offer ballet classes, jazz, some kind of aerobics (the poster says “raqs sporty”), yoga, and raqs al-sharqi, literally eastern dance but better known as belly dance.

Before the first class we crowded six women into a single car and excitedly careened around the chaotic traffic circles, over the heaving overpasses, and down the autostraude at breakneck speed. The highways in Damascus are full to overflowing with honking cars, just as Marwah’s little black Chinese-manufactured Chery was bursting at the seams with giggling girls. Marwah’s cousin was sitting between the two front seats on the gearshift with her back to the windshield, one hand braced against the roof of the car, animatedly talking to the three of us in the backseat.

When we arrived at Beit al-Fan I let out the breath I hadn’t realized I had been holding, thankful as always that we hadn’t died in a traffic accident. We walked down the white granite steps to a wrought iron gate, where a sign on the door warned that men were forbidden to enter. The studio was small but warm and brightly lit, with two walls of mirrors and a barre. I am always overjoyed to dance in such a nice space. I remember the basement room in the dingy Elks Lodge in Idaho where I taught dance classes didn’t have a proper barre, and I recall something that had me doubled over in laughter at the time. Once one of the eight or nine year old girls in my class asked her friend, “What’s a barre?” and her friend replied matter of factly, as only a poor child from Grangeville, Idaho, might, “You know, like Oscar’s or the Triangle, where you go to get drunk.”

I thought about how many of the Syrian women packed into the Beit al-Fan studio would never touch a drop of alcohol, as I watched them shed their hejab and throw their scarves onto the large pile of jackets, shoes, and purses in the corner, and I delighted in the fact that nonetheless I felt instantly comfortable there in that studio on the other side of the world. That’s the beauty of any modern dance class: it’s familiar regardless of language or place. Someday I’d like to organize some kind of cultural exchange program with dance as its focus.

And there are cultural differences: notably, whenever anyone’s mobile phone rang during the middle of the instructor’s explanations, the recipient would eagerly bound to the back of the room and for several minutes ardently carry on a loud conversation whilst pacing back and forth, weaving in and out of the women still attempting to follow the routine.

Our teacher has black hair dyed blonde and permed. She always wears thick pink lipstick, and chastises us in melodious Syrian Arabic, “Moooohaik! Not like that! You’re women; not kick boxers! Why so stiff?” Often she’ll smile approvingly through the pink lipstick and softly offer a heartening, “Eeiiii like that.” If the praise is directed at me, often the other astonished women look at me in shocked surprise and exclaim, “How do YOU move like THAT? You’re not even Arab!” How to explain it’s not in one’s blood but a matter of practice, enthusiasm, and also the culmination of countless late nights in a Turkish bar in Washington, D.C., when, encouraged by lots of rum and coke, I was inspired to diligently emulate my Palestinian friend’s gorgeous dancing.

In the car on the way back from the first class, the girls were laughing and talking as before. They were talking about how much anxiety they felt about work, commuting, and upcoming engagements. Marwah nodded her head so vigorously in agreement that she almost dislodged herself from her gearshift perch and said seriously, “I have so much stress, andi katir stress…” It seemed apropos that she said “stress” in English, as the culture of the English-speaking world has certainly perfected the concept. I also have “katir stress” from the uncertainty of learning my way around a new place, worrying about money and needing to find a job, and being convinced that I’ll never learn this language, but this dance class mostly banishes my worry and nervous tension. It makes me feel marvelously energized and accomplished, so much so that even the strain of the harrowing car ride home fails to disturb my gleeful contentment.

Ma’aluula

A couple of weeks ago I visited Ma’aluula, a small Christian village set between the mountains north of Damascus. The community there still speaks Aramaic. I had learned about these villages a few years ago when I was writing my history thesis about the Assyrian Christians, and I had always wanted to see them.

The Munchkin

We had the Munchkin in class again today.

The Munchkin is a term of endearment and derision for the professor who shares half of the teaching duties for the level three classes at the Arabic Language Institute. He is, as my friend described him whilst sitting at a restaurant table, “about the size of this two-liter water bottle.” He dresses sharply, with starched clothes and attentively gelled hair, in a clear attempt to command respect, but his minute stature gives the impression that he is wearing his father’s shirts.

Overall he is charming and he seems like a sweet man, but his teaching style is maddening. Like American tourists in France who insist on repeating the same incomprehensible English phrases louder and louder until they are understood, when a student in our class is confused about the meaning of an Arabic word the Munchkin hops around the room pronouncing it again and again in the same cheerful lilting Aleppo accent. This is cute and entertaining but it is not helpful. “Excuse me, professor, what does munasabat mean?” the student sitting next to me asked. “Ahh, munaasaabaaat!” he repeated, drawing out the long vowels enthusiastically. “Munaasaabaat! Munaasaabaat!” The student looked confused and I stifled a chuckle. “Ahh, munaasaabaat!” I leaned over and whispered to the student who had asked, “It means holiday.” “Thanks.” The munchkin was still skipping around the classroom.

An academic friend of mine is spending the year here researching the development of private education in Syria. As much as I respect the concept of accessible national education, after listening to the Munchkin speak for 95% of class time; leaving us with the opportunity to speak for the remaining 5%, I am starting to see the appeal of private universities.

Equally vexing is the way the Munchkin instinctively perpetuates all kinds of ethnic stereotypes. On the first day of class he asked everyone to introduce themselves and talk about where they were from. After the three Italian students introduced themselves he thanked them loudly—in Spanish—with a “Gracias!” He had difficulty pronouncing the Koreans’ names, which is understandable, but to this day he still teasingly refers to Popkong, who is from South Korea, as “Pyongyang.”

When he asked my friend where she was from, she said, “The United States.” “Where?” “From Washington, DC, in America.” “But where are you really from?” he insisted. “Where is your family from?” She sighed, “from India.” Almost everyday he references India in some way, and then looks to her for input and/or approval. When someone asked what thaqafa, or culture, meant, he turned to her. “Is thaqafa al-hindia different from thaqafa al-amerikia?” It didn’t stop there. After she wrote an essay about her travels through South Africa the professor asked her, “Are there many Indians living in South Africa?” “Um, perhaps. I don’t know.” “You know Nelson Mandela had many Indian friends, during the peace movement.” “Okay.” Today, when discussing a point of grammar that when added to a sentence gives the words following the meaning of “while it hasn’t been possible to do x yet, I really want to in the future,” he demonstrated by asking her, “Have you traveled to India?” “No.” “Do you want to travel to India in the near future?” “No…” “Is it possible for you to go to India?” “Sure.” It was all she could do to refrain from rolling her eyes. Later the class was talking about what arqsoos, or licorice, was, and this led into a discussion of Syrian food and he turned to ask my very American Indian-American friend, “What is your favorite food? Do you like Indian food?” Exasperated, she said pointedly, “I love nachos.”

Later, when someone asked for clarification as to the meaning of hudud, or borders, the Munchkin drew a map of Syria on the white marker board and explained, for a change, that “This is Syria, and these are the hudud of Syria…to the north, Turkia, to the east, Iraq, to the south, Jordan, to the west, al bahr al mutawasat.” The Mediterranean Sea? “What about Lebanon?” someone asked innocently. “Oh, well, most people in Syria, they say to the west of Syria is al bahr al mutawasat.” The class raised a collective eyebrow, but remained silent–as we do 95% of the time.

The Letter

I spent three hours at the US embassy in Damascus a couple of weeks ago, trying to get a letter required by the University of Damascus that says the embassy (or the US?) has no objection to my studying at the university. Turns out the US embassy is the only embassy that doesn’t issue such letters, though they do write letters that say they don’t write such letters. In order to get the letter stamped and approved, I first had to wait about an hour in a large room filled with Syrian-Americans, blue plastic chairs, and posters of the Manhattan skyline and fall foliage in Vermont. After an hour had passed, I was able to hand the letter to a second employee, along with my passport. Then I had to wait for another hour. The children’s movie “Madagascar” was playing. The dancing lion at the end makes me laugh, because he sings “You got to move it, move it!” This is a joke between my friend’s daughter, who I used to babysit, and myself. She moves like molasses when chores/homework/getting ready to go somewhere is required, so I would sing (but my tune is so bad that it was an effective threat), “You got to move it move it!” Appropriate lion dance moves tended to accompany this ritual. I restrained myself from trying to prod along the embassy staff with loud calls of, “You got to move it move it!” After another hour had passed, I was able to pay for the privilege of waiting by forking over 1,380 lira to a third employee, who told me to continue waiting. I ended up chatting with a Syrian man sitting next to me. I asked him, “Do you think I should check what’s taking so long?” “Oh no! That will disrupt the system, they will make your life miserable.” I sat back in my blue plastic chair. “Time means nothing here,” he told me, and added, “The only good things about this country are the weather and the food.” Coming here from London, I must say that good weather and food are nothing to be scoffed at. “The people are really nice here,” I tried to add helpfully. “Sure, but like everywhere. Most people are nice, but some aren’t.” Fair enough, but then he gave me his mobile number and offered to take me around the city. People really are nice here.

The Deluge

It was hot and dusty when I first arrived in Syria a few weeks ago. A thin layer of dust coated the streets, the cars, my skin. It mixed with the thick exhaust and smoke in the air and left grit in my teeth and a film on my sunglasses. Some of the more crumbling buildings seemed made of dust and soot. People scribbled declarations of love and perhaps, in handwriting too hurried for me to decipher, the Arabic equivalent of “Wash me” in the dust on the rearview windows of the ubiquitous Kias and Great Wall trucks. Those owning gleaming Mercedes were constantly washing them.

The morning I left Amman to spend a couple of months studying in Syria, I waited by myself in the dusty lobby of a service taxi company for the car to fill with additional passengers. I tilted my head to read backwards the curling red Arabic letters stuck on the dusty windows outside. “We go to Beirut, As-Sham, Al-Saudi.” Five old office chairs with the arms falling off were strewn across the dirty tile floor. A fan was turning slowly. I was sweating under my jean jacket in the sun streaming through the sandy windows but I didn’t dare remove it in front of the men staring at me from the other room. For some reason there was a propane tank in the corner, as well as discarded baby stroller.

Abdali station reminded me of being sent on errands for the family business during high school. Once I could drive, my father would task me to swing by the Grangeville Builders Supply in order to purchase insulation, paint, drywall, plywood, rebar, various pvc piping, wires, bolts, and other things that I later realized could never be paid for. I despised and avoided this task and the accompanying stares from the overwhelmingly male contractors who frequented the store, strutting around with their tool belts swinging. However, I am now strangely grateful for the experience, since it has provided me with a level of comfort in such environments.

Nonetheless I was relieved when a young couple arrived and we could leave. The first thing I noticed when we drove into Syria was the immediate change of landscape from the pale Jordanian desert to the more verdant northern version. Now that I’ve been here almost a month, I understand the reason for the difference. It has been raining for three days! The weather in Damascus has changed to be damp and chilly and the dust has dissipated. It’s cool enough to see one’s breath as well as the steam from the basins of boiling corn being sold on all of the flooding street corners. It finally feels like fall here and I can’t discern if it makes me miss London more or less. This deluge, amongst a dozen other things, is not what I expected from Damascus. It seems Syria is full of surprises.

The Feud

I was lounging around at my friend’s house in Amman when I heard a commotion in the apartment’s shared garage. We were watching music videos, smoking grape argeela, drinking tea, and eating sweets and whole limes (they’re good, peeled with salt, though they would be better with tequila) while I attempted to help my friend’s kids with their English homework. I was in the middle of trying to explain what “going green” meant (an unfamiliar concept in Jordan), when we were disturbed by shrieks and crashes from the garage, followed by loud hollering and bellowing. My friend dashed out to see what the fracas was about, calling behind to her daughter to fetch her hejab. She eagerly surveyed the rumble through the peephole in the front door while hastily adjusting the floor-length flower print hejab over her hair and her sweat pants. She threw open the door and darted outside. In the ensuing flurried exchange, I overheard her partially chastise and somewhat encourage two teenage boys in some kind of plot involving a parking spot. When she came back inside she exclaimed, “Ohhhhhh this is going to be good!” It turns out that one of the boys, Muhamad, was vigilantly guarding a coveted parking space until his father arrived in the car in order to prevent his mother’s nemesis, Um Anas, from seizing the space first. Her son, Anas, had discovered Muhamad in his mother’s space and threatened him. Then my friend explained the history of The Feud to me. “See, Um Muhamad and Um Anas have never really liked each other.” “Why?” “Oh, because, well, actually I’m not really sure. Um Muhamad is kind of religious, she tries to push her religion onto everyone else, I don’t really like that, but Um Anas is really a bitch. But I’m not sure how it all started.”

She told me that it might have started when Anas, who is perhaps fourteen or fifteen years old, would sit on his balcony with his girlfriend. They didn’t do anything, they just sat there and chit chatted. His parents didn’t mind; after all, they were just chit chatting on the balcony. Um Muhamad, however, claimed that Anas could see into her daughter’s bedroom from the balcony, and she was livid. She angrily commanded that Anas not use his balcony, especially not to talk with a girl. When Um Anas pointed out that Um Muhamad’s daughter could close her bedroom curtain and ultimately insisted that her family would do whatever they liked with their balcony, Um Muhamad began using Um Anas’ parking space. There was a brief interregnum to the feud when Um Muhamad began building a glassed-in addition to her own balcony to shield her family from the scandalous goings-on upstairs. Officially one isn’t supposed to build anything additional in flats in Amman without the proper paperwork, but this is very expensive and time-consuming, so most people don’t bother. Like everyone else in the neighborhood, Um Muhamad commenced building without it, but this gave Um Anas leverage in the feud. Um Anas would call down, “If you don’t move your car, I’m going to call the authorities and tell them about your little building project!” It didn’t help that Um Muhamad is a Palestinian-Jordanian and worried that she would get in more trouble than most if her new porch were discovered. For a few months she parked her car on the street. Now, however, the balcony had just recently been completed.

As my friend wound up her explanation of the feud, we heard the muffled sound of a car entering the garage. “Um Anas!” She leapt up to run to the door and see what was going on. In her excitement she overturned the argeela, and the hot coals sizzled into the rug while the white ash drifted onto the tabletops. Lebanese pop star and heartthrob Tamer was loudly crooning on the TV and her three kids were jumping around, not sure which was more exciting to watch, the impending showdown in the car park or me yowling and laughing, trying to scoop up the coals and rescue the rug without burning my fingers.

As it happened, the car wasn’t Um Anas but my friend’s father, back from Beirut. As he walked through the door he shook his head and told me, “Do you see why I’m always in Lebanon? They’re like children. Worse than children. Do you see this, fighting over a parking spot? Of course there is no peace in the Middle East. No wonder the Americans don’t want to let us in.”