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Romance in the Middle East: Real-life love stories from Syria

October 25th, 2009

If you think Romeo and Juliet was Shakespeare's genius, think again. The story parallels an Arab legend, "Majnun wa Layla," which tells of two star-crossed lovers, their relationship forbidden by their society, ending in death.

The tales of hidden love continue in modern-day Syria.

***

Ehab and I met during Arabic class breaks at Damascus University's Higher Language Institute. He currently works for a cultural and Arabic language program for Americans. Perhaps because he was refreshingly "American" for a Syrian, or simply because of common interests, we bonded - over discussing Utopian novels such as 1984 and A Brave New World, over shaking our heads and laughing at my crazy living situations, etc. I've learned to appreciate guys that don't hit on you immediately, and with whom you can smile and joke with without worrying about them hitting on you afterwards, and I definitely appreciated the little chats with Ehab.

As he works with a lot of foreigners, and foreigners get a lot of stomach problems, he knew exactly what to do when I mentioned I'd started to have strange pains. He took me to his favorite gastroenterologist, who I bet gets good business from all the Americans with stomach bugs.

Over the course of the next week or two he helped - pharmacy, medical lab, back to the doctor, back to the medical lab - you get the point. And naturally, that gave us more time to chat together. We were on the subject of the Americans when he mentioned that one of them was his girlfriend.

I stopped and stared at him. "...Wait, are you serious?" He looked back quizically.

"You're dating an American girl - and I'm in love with an Arab guy!"

We laughed together like two shipwrecked sailors who just discovered they were in the same lifeboat.

"Does your family know?" I asked.

"Of course not!" he laughed. "If they knew, they'd think I was an infidel!!"

I laughed again in surprise - that was exactly what Abdul (my boyfriend) said when I asked what would happen if his family knew about me!

We dove into comparing notes; it's not too often that you get to talk to someone in a parallel cross-cultural relationship, especially the sort that usually gets kept under wraps. We analyzed the pros and cons of long-distance relationships, and sang our praises for Skype. We shared the feeling of hypocricy - how we're both somewhat religious, yet engaging in what religion says is wrong.

And we discovered that our thought patterns were remarkably similar to those of our significant others. I tried to explain why his American girlfriend acted the way she did sometimes, and he gave me cultural and reality perspectives on my own relationship and thinking. In a society where you may not even be able to tell your best friend about your lover, we both felt refreshed to talk openly, no subject taboo.

"You know, I've had both Syrian and American girlfriends," he offered. "If you like, I can answer any questions you have about dating here." Yesssss... This was a guy practiced at cultural exchange.

We found a spot in a park to continue our conversation (ironically, people walking by will almost certainly think we're secret lovers), and dove into all the secrets.

***

Ehab

"In high school, relationships usually don't go beyond making out. But, they almost always get that far. Once I'd been dating a girl for a few weeks, and I thought we'd gotten pretty close, so I tried to kiss her - and she freaked out!! Isn't it natural when you're with someone you love to want to kiss them?

"The lower-class Syrians, though, they're not as exposed to modern dating ideas. For those guys, their ultimate goal might be to kiss the girl. Anything beyond that? Forget about it.

"University is a different story. You know, it's called "Jam3a" for a reason - you have people from all parts of society gathering to study. For sure people go far beyond kissing, but it really depends on the guy, and what kind of relationship it is.

"There are three general types of girls who date at University. First of all, the more religious/traditional girls. They set the promise of marriage as a prerequisite. Of course maybe both change their mind later, and they might even do a lot of sexual things not accepted in the tradition, but there's still that thought of marriage that comes before anything else.

"The second type are wild girls just looking for fun." I smiled; both types I recognized in my own culture, but particularly this one. I could name a few...

"And the third type are those who believe in love." I nodded; Ehab and I fell into this third category. Maybe the notion came from the West; I say rather the notion existed in the Arab world before (how old is Majnun wa Layla?), but western media has encouraged it to flourish. And so it does at the university scene.

"As I said how far they go often depends on the guy," Ehab continued. "Of course all clothes may come off, and they might do ANYTHING... but the girl MUST stay a virgin. That's too important in this society; it might ruin her chances for marriage, or bring shame to her family." Once again I recognized the trend of outer appearance of acceptability (i.e. innocence in this case) as more important than what you actually are on the inside.

"BUT that doesn't mean it doesn't happen. For example, I have a friend, and his girlfriend lost her virginity to him. He'd sneak into her house at 4am and hide in the closet, then when all were sleeping he'd come out and have sex for a few hours.

"They were asking for it - her father caught them one morning. Surprisingly, he didn't beat the guy out of the house; he gave the guy permission to marry his daughter. The requirement was that he start working. As the guy was genuinely in love, he took off to Saudi to work for two months, then came back...

"...Only to find the girl engaged to another guy. Turns out she wasn't at all serious about the relationship, she just wanted to have fun." Ouch, that burns.

This same couple also got pregnant and got an abortion during their relationship. This is illegal in Syria of course... But you can find doctors who will preform the operation. Syria's medical education is pretty amazing, so my thought is that it's safer than the "back-alley abortions" everyone fears, but with something illegal, there's not much way to be certain.

Ehab himself was surely not a virgin. But his reasons were not about just messing around; if this is the girl he might spend his life with, he really wants to know the person.

I mentioned the guys in Syrian society who have a girl(s) to mess around with, but insist on marrying a virgin. He nodded; we both know about them. I suspect my older host brother is one. "For me, it's not important whether she's a virgin or not. I really don't care. What's important is the relationship we have together."

He told me of a close galfriend who had gotten engaged. Her and her fiancee had started having sex, and she trusted Ehab with this information. But, he was pretty sure she wasn't telling anyone else about this.

And if you're wondering about safe sex, it exists. Surely they have no education for it in public schools, but condoms are available in most all pharmacies. You should never go to a pharmacy in your own neighborhood, though; the pharmacist probably knows your uncle. Or is your uncle.

A final note, one that we repeated throughout the conversation: NO ONE must know about this.

***
Miriam
"When I first met my lover, I was riding in his taxi. He invited me to dinner. I said yes. But he took me to a dark place, with bad music. I could not see his face. He tried to kiss me - I said 'NO! I am a good girl! I will not do this.' And I left. In Syria, boys have this idea about girls, from movies you know, that the girl will do sex right away.

"But afterwards he called me, and he was crying," she laughed, "and said please please, I promise I won't do that again, I will be good. And we went to another restaurant, this time with light, and I could see his face, and it was very good."

She closed her eyes and smiled up from the matress on the floor, I sitting at the foot next to her. "He takes my hand, and kisses it" - she mimes the action with her own hand - "Muah!" She has the biggest grin on her face. "Your lover - do you kiss him?"

I look down shyly. "Yes," I say.

Miriam sighs. "Ahhh, is it wonderful?"

Over time, I guess that she and her lover do more than just kiss hands. It's hard to tell with this girl, because she loves to pull the wool over your eyes, and you never know when she's joking. But, my guess is that they probably kissed. If not, they are at least fairly comfortable with each other; she has no qualms about grabbing his arm, or biting his wrist, and he puts his hand on her shoulder. He's seen pictures of her without hijab, but never without hijab in person.

Oh, and did I mention she wears the pants in the relationship? He gave up drinking alcohol for her, for one. During an argument, he went home and drunk a beer. He was so ashamed of himself, he came to her crying and apologizing for the slipup.

I shared some of my own stories. "My lover and I, we know we might not be together forever, so we say to each other, 'if you meet someone you think you will be happy with, please go - I want you to be happy in this life'!!"

"NO," she shook her finger at me. "My lover, if he no happy with me - I MAKE him be happy!!!" she slaps her hands together. I can't help but to laugh; Miriam doesn't stand for any nonsense.

And that proved true about two months later. One night, I went upstairs to find her crying on the phone. I closed the door to give her some privacy. Later, as we were going to sleep, she spilled all.

Turns out she found out Miriam lost her evening job at 7pm. She was rather upset and crying, but didn't want to face her lover's criticism - "Why are you crying about work??" she feared he'd say - so she took a taxi to her former boyfriend's house. She'd dated him for three years, but it was over now, though they still talked.

Then, her lover called from his taxi. "Where are you? I'm at your work, I'm ready to take you home."

"I'm there, just give me a few minutes," Miriam lied. She jumped in a taxi and hurried to the back door of her work, hoping her lover was parked in his usual place where he couldn't see her.

But he saw her.

"You lied to me!!" he said. "Where were you?"

"At my friend's house!" She named one of her galfriends.

Over the course of the next two hours, he found out she was really with a boy (and a boy she used to date, at that), accused her of being a bad girl and a liar, said he just wants to die, ran out in the middle of the street to try to kill himself, she ran after him and tried to pull him out, he took her home, she got in another taxi and followed, she told him to go, he went somewhere and broke his arm, ended up in the hospital, she walked around the center of town alone in the middle of the night just crying and wanting to die, when he found out he ran out of the hospital with no medicine at all, and took her home. She got home at 9pm - just two hours after she found out she'd lost her job. ...Wow...

At night, she used all of her and my and her sister's phone credits to argue with him over the phone, ending essentially in breakup.

Later we talked - about how the relationship could not work - what if she were to marry him, but every time they argue he turns crazy and suicidal? And he treats Miriam like a goddess; if his mother says anything against Noha, he immediately closes his ears to her. Miriam is his world, more important than family or religion. He can't drink without thinking of whether she is thirsty; he can't eat without calling her to see if she wants to, too.

Miriam, on the other hand, does not return the feeling. Experiences with men in the past have hardened her heart - as with the guyfriend she'd visited last night, whom she'd dated for three years.

"I was engaged for just ten days," she told me. "But he insisted I give up my work, and my studying. I convinced him to be okay with it, but his mother - no." She motioned pulling off a ring and throwing it on the floor. "I will not give up my work. That's what's most important to me, and if a boy wants me to give it up, I'm finished with him." The same guy still tries to convince her to come back, but she refuses. She's been betrayed, and and that's the last of it.

Another time, a coworker told her he would marry her. He would come with his family on the last day of the Eid (celebration) for the engagement ceremony.

Excited, Miriam told her family, and all the neighbors. 5pm rolled around on the last day of Eid and he still didn't come. People began to whisper throughout the alley; where is he? The phone rang and rang at her house - "I don't know, I don't know!" she proclaimed worriedly. She called him so much that day, but his phone was out of service. And the next, and the next...

10 days later, he finally answered and said that actually his mother wouldn't let him. She wants him to marry a girl from Damascus, not from Aleppo. Thanks for letting us know, buster...

"Now, when any man tells me he wants to marry me, I do not believe him," she told me. "They are all the same - all liars. And now I am a liar too. I feel nothing for them."

"I think your heart has been hardened by all that," I told her.

She nodded. "My heart has become like this." She tightened her fists. "I don't believe the men when they say they love me." With my experiences with Syrian men, I don't blame her; they either fall way too easily, or they say it like an off-handed comment. I've had guys say "I love you" to me after following me for less than a minute. Is that a cucumber in your pocket...

"But my lover... he says the same as the others, but he acts different. He does everything for me. I'm always on his mind. I'm the most important thing in his life. He treats me so well..." she stops and thinks. "I think, he actually does love me. But I don't feel the same. I'm just a liar all the time so he does what I want."

She looks down sadly. "I think... I am a bad girl. I never do anything bad (i.e. sex), but I lie all the time, to someone who is so good to me. From now on I will only tell him the truth. But, I don't know where the relationship will go now..."

I honestly praise her strength. She knows what's crazy and what's not; she has too much self-respect to stand for erratic suicide attempts and rages like he did. What if they were married with children and he did that?? And I told her the lying/exalting imbalance can't last forever. She agreed. Her lover was strong on the outside, but soooo weak on the inside, whereas she was exactly the opposite.

This is the kind of Muslim girl I've met so often in Syria: Strong, protesting when they face oppression or disrespect, but sticking to their beliefs. Miriam is a good girl in a changing society, where girls now value getting educated and working if they can, but should still get married if they ever want to leave their parent's house. The problem comes from how many husbands don't want them to work - leaving the strong ones like Miriam, who will not compromise any of her values, stuck in the middle. Luckily her lover wants her to keep working, but they have plenty of other issues to handle.

"My world is black now - in two hours I lost one job and my lover." Somehow she still has a half smile lingering on her face, in spite of the water in her eyes. She's practiced at hiding how she really feels. "Thank goodness I still have my other job."

I longed to tell her some of my own love stories - now, the conversation was opened, and I had the opportunity - but it was late.

Could you just turn off the light already?? called out another sister from under her blankets, for the 20th time.

As I drift asleep, I wish that life works out for this girl. She wants to leave the house to work and live on her own, but the only way out is to get married. And her chance to get married was lost because she would not give her work.

I hear her crying as she falls asleep... A heart of rock, trapped inside a hard place. I have faith she will not break.

A few days later...

"My lover and I, we will get engaged. We have the money now, and we can save for the wedding later."

"Are you sure this is what you want?" I asked, skeptically. I had my doubts about the relationship in the long term.

She nods. "Ay. He's a good man, and he loves me. We'll get married, and I'll only have to work one job, and then I can just work and be with my lover and LEAVE this house, leave this family." She nodded again. "Ay. It will be good."

I wonder which she loved more - her lover, or the thought of finally being free of this house, where her brother would ban her from leaving the alleyway if he even knew she had a lover.

Shh, don't tell. It's a secret.

***

Qamar is another girl I know will not break, though her heart may still be soft enough to allow for a marriage. Twice now she's been engaged, and twice she's broken it off because the man wanted her to give up her career. The first breakup sent her into a depression - "It's a big shock, your first relationship" - but she had her priorities, and she was strong enough to keep to them.

Qamar graduated from Civil Engineering at Damascus University a few years ago, spent some time working for an engineering company, got hired by the University's CE department as a TA, and is now working on her masters in Water Resources. She also loves project management, for which she got a scholarship to take a course in Netherlands this fall (she started just last week). In addition to her work in the CE department, she helps her professor friend Ahmad in starting up the university's career center.

Ahmad and Qamar have a close platonic relationship, but such cross-gendering is still semi-taboo for much of Syria. Her family understands and is OK with it, but she does not tell them how much time they spend together, or how often he gives her rides around the city. Everyone else in the faculty was certain they were lovers, or going to get married; when Ahmad got engaged this summer, Ola proudly took the honor of announcing to all their coworkers that he was to be married, and to a girl who WASN'T her.

Ahmad's getting married primarily because he's getting up there in age a bit, and he wants to have children. The wedding was arranged quickly. As is common, they didn't know each other well before, and it surely wasn't a love relationship. I hope he will be happy, and that they will fill their house with children as they both want. Family is most important here.

Ahmad noticed her relationship with Ahmad drifting apart; he was so busy now between work and his fiancee. And the fiancee was jealous of Ahmad; Ahmad would've loved if all three could hang out together, but the fiancee wasn't open to that. Instead, she knew Abdul's place now is with his new wife. She even made him a powerpoint presentation reminding him to take some time to tell the wife he cares, no matter how busy he is. Ahhh love in the engineering world...

But back to Qamar: She has a friend, a former classmate from their undergraduate years. He went back to his home in Jordan afterwards, but they still talk on the phone. Problem is, she thinks of him as a friend, but he thinks of her as his future wife, no matter how much she protests.

And he's changed. Back in college, he was more relaxed and never restricted Qamar when they hung out. Now, he's out to not only marry her, but make her life the way he believes his wife should.

Qamar and I were shopping for new clothes one night (out of necessity - neither of us like to shop much). He called as we were walking back to Qamar's apartment and asked what we'd bought. They made an agreement to talk later when we were back home.

"I think he wants to have an argument with me," grimaced Qamar. "And I think I know what it's about. He doesn't like that I bought a shirt with short sleeves."

I looked at her quizzically; Who is this guy, to try and control what she wears all the way from Jordan?

I learned later that not only does he want her to change her dress, but he wants her to stop working on her masters and quit all of her jobs. Recently she started working for another professor at his office, doing transportation analysis for the city of Damascus. Transportation was another of her passion areas, and she didn't mind working late three nights a week to get to work on such a dynamic project.

But the Jordanian friend was not OK with this. "Why do you need another job? I can just give you money. Then you don't have to work."

"It's not about the money!!" she protested.

I probed Qamar more about the situation, trying to understand his mindset. "I think he's also jealous that I have more certificates than he does," she said.

"I bet you got higher grades than him in school, too!!" I exclaimed. Qamar confirmed. Why should she stop working then, if she's more qualified than he even is? Someone has self esteem issues, using culture to mandate he's better than others...

"If I love someone, I'm willing to wear hijab for them," said Qamar. This coming from a girl who never started covering her hair, and who walks about in short sleeves in spite of people's disapproving stares. A Christian girl, OK, but Muslim girl like Qamar dressing in this?? For shame... "And when I wear hijab, I will wear the full hijab, not the headscarf over a low-cut shirt like some girls do here.

"But I will NOT give up my studies or my work. Those are the two most important things in my life, and I won't give them up for any man, no matter how much I love him."

I ask her what he wears - if he's so concerned about a girl showing her elbows, does he also dress conservatively?

She walked bitterly to the bathroom to take her shower. "He's a guy. They don't even ask."

End of conversation.

***
Breakfast with Handsome

Yes, I did have breakfast with Handsome. Handsome as in, that's actually his name in Arabic.

Waseem is the brother of the friend of my former Arabic teacher from last summer, and also a friend of one of the girls from the camp this July. (It's - a small world af - ter all.... As his sister got called into work at the phone company, he took me out to breakfast instead.

He's one of the guys who falls into the "chill" category - i.e. he already has a lover so he's not interested in hitting on me. He's a university student, about the same year as me, studying in a neighboring city. Going to the restaurant felt totally natural, and the conversation fell easily too.

We talked about relationships, and the double standard for boys and girls that exists to some extent in both of our societies.

"Yeah, as a guy I'm more free to do whatever I want," he said. "But my girlfriend's father, he doesn't approve of our relationship. Well half the time he forbids her from going out with me, and half the time he asks, 'do you need any money?' So I really don't know what's going on with him.

"My girlfriend is also two years older than me. People don't like that very much. I mean, it's not that bad, but she's already graduated and working and I'm still in college - how can we get married??"

"One time I dated a Muslim girl (he's Christian), but I didn't tell anyone, he said hushedly, as if the walls might spread his secret. "I mean, I'm the guy so it's supposed to be okay for me, but I couldn't tell my family, not that!!"

Cross-religious relationships happen, but they're very rare. I heard of one family friend of a Christian friend whose daughter got married to a Muslim guy. The girl's mother was over the shock after about a week, but the grandma got sent to the hospital with a heart attack. Definitely not widely accepted; imagine cross-racial relationships in the US 50-60 years ago.

One last note on Handsome - he's addicted to Facebook. Like, majorly addicted. Last time I saw him, I don't think he'd slept for about four days. Check out his profile - it's filled with all those little applications.

Some things are different across cultures, like the dating scene. But technology is bringing us all together.

***

Samiha and I finished the last of our Turkish coffee as we sat in her little house in the Old City, which she shared with her mother and their little white dog Lucky (currently happily jumping up onto Samiha's lap). All her other siblings were married and/or working in another country, leaving just the three of them in Damascus. That was unusual, to find a single woman I'm guessing in her mid thirties.

I asked her about her life - yes, she has friends, but just a few close ones she visits with. The rest have moved on, like her siblings. She goes out and parties downtown a little bit on the weekend; everyone needs to relax a little, right? Besides that, she's preoccupied with her two jobs, one for the government and one at a hotel selling drinks.

I ask her if she'd want a boyfriend. "Of course," she says. "But I would not sleep with him. If I did, he would not marry me; he would leave me the next day. Men here want to sleep with girls, but they want to marry a virgin." I don't know how true that actually is, but it happens enough to keep girls wary.

I wonder how she feels - single, in her thirties, childless, where nearly everyone around her has a husband and kids, or at least a boyfriend. Regardless of particular relationship rules, it's tough to be an outcast in society.

***

"I've been listening these songs for fourteen years," he told me drably as the theme song from Romeo and Juliet came on. For the 14th time. Today. Ahhhhhhhhhhhh save meeeeee....

On another day, we were walking through the city when he told me about his love relationships. "My first girlfriend I was with for four years. Actually I was in love with her for four years. She was only in love with me for two."

"How old were you?" I asked.

"Actually you're going to laugh - I was 12." I kept the laugh inside. Calculating back fourteen years, I do believe he started listening to those love songs at the same time his lover ditched him...

"But she would always come over and sit with me to talk, even when she was dating another guy. She knew I needed that."

I frowned. "Wouldn't it have been better to just cut it all off, so you could get over it?" Two years is a long time to be "teased" with visits like that, when you know your lover is lost to you.

"Of course not!!" he exclaimed. "I needed that!"

"I had two others since then. One I was very proud of. Over 20 guys were trying to date her, but she chose me." He looked smugly straight ahead. Something tells me after the first relationship the love was lost; now, relationships are conquests.

Now he lives his life like a hermit, rarely leaving his little apartment in the suburbs, listening to those love songs as he studies. Methinks he's still stuck on his first love, lost at age 14. Like Miriam's lover, he's hardened on the outside, but weak on the inside - a trend I'm noticing with Syrian men, and the opposite with women.

But not all are like that.

***

Abdullah and Mahmoud are brothers, Mahmoud an English teacher at a private institute, and Abdullah running a local clothing store. Both are very nice guys, whom I put in the "decent" category, but for different reasons.

Mahmoud is a gentle but fun guy with an impressively accurate American dialect with his English. His passions in life are first of all his faith, and second of all English language. And thirdly dinosaurs, his childhood passion.

We discussed that when I visited his English conversation class. "Guys here in Syria, their only goal is to get money so they can get a house so they can get married, then MAYBE they'll see if there's something else after that. Don't they have any other dreams??" he shook his head. "I mean, there's so much we can do here on earth - why focus only on getting married?" I felt that searching for a pretty girl was pretty low on his priority list. Definitely in the 'decent' category. Mahmoud has dreams for his future that go beyond getting an apartment with kids in Damascus.

Afterwards he invited me over to his house for Ramadan dinner, introducing me to his kindly parents, lending me books on religion and American fantasy movies to curb my homesickness. Also, he translated for his brother Abdullah as we discussed society and family throughout the evening.

Abdullah, on the other hand, has a lover. They've been dating for about a year now, but she's never been to their house - even though I have. As I'm a foreign girl, they make some exceptions for the rules, but if a Syrian girl comes over to visit?? That means something official. Like engagement. No watching sitcoms with your boyfriend's parents in this society.

Having the privilege made me feel weird at first, especially because I'm friends with Abdullah's girlfriend... But she understood. If Mama knew I went to his house... she pantomimed a beheading. Mama knows about Abdullah, but does her best to keep the relationship under control.

It makes me really appreciate my own culture, where relationships can be shared in the open.

Here, in my little backwards backalley of Syria?

No one must know. Or, at least not big brother.

***

Who is the singer? I ask Noor, who's listening to music on the laptop. I've gotten more literate in Arabic music, but still not quite proficient enough. And I had a feeling this was someone famous.

He's Egyptian, from old times she responded. He's very good for when you're missing someone you love.

I raised my eyebrows at her; no matter how many times she tells me her relationship with her lover finished when he moved to a city eight hours away, I will not believe. The fact she never takes off the necklace with his initial says all...

***

Sireen's cell phone was also sporting an initial that was not her own. Who's name starts with R? I ask.

"Ramzi - My friend!" she responds happily. Wow, seems like everyone has a semi-secret lover these days!

But Ramzi wasn't her friend for long. One night I went upstairs to find her holding her cell phone and crying. "My friend went to the disco with another girl!!" she exclaimed, tears steaming from her eyes.

I sat down next to her, concerned. "Did you break up with him before?" I inquired. I knew they'd been arguing; that's rough to have him go out with a girl so soon after breaking up, but if they hadn't even done that...

"NOO!!" she exclaimed. Ouch. And the fact he went to the disco, somewhere the girls in my family are forbidden to ever go to, surely made things even worse.

For the next week she became a whirling fireball - patience normally at zero but dropped to -42 C, head heating up to 100+ degrees, yelling as she wielded the mop during daily chores, begging everyone for money to buy phone credit to call him back. 17 going on 18... Love is hard.

I told her to finish it for good; he's a bad boy and life's better without him. And I think she's mostly moved on; three weeks later, sitting with us again and happily returned to flipping through music videos.

But she still hasn't taken the initial off her phone.

***

"I had a lover once," she told me. "He was my cousin."

*Note: CULTURAL DIFFERENCE. It's totally accepted to marry your cousin, though in modern times a second-cousin or more distant is preferred. Tradition encourages people to marry within the family network. This actually makes sense back when girls weren't allowed to go mingle with boys. I'd surely rather marry a cousin I'd met than some random guy I don't know.

"We were together for two years."

"Then what happened?" I asked.

"He told me he loved my sister," she said flatly.

I stared at her. Double ouch, in any culture.

"Then there was one guy at my school I was with."

"What did you do?" I asked.

"Nothing, nothing - just looked at each other, and knew that we both liked each other. But we didn't get together.

"And another boy asked me to marry him. But I didn't want to."

"Do you want to get married?" I asked.

"Mmm, someday. But not now. Not soon."

"And your cousin - did your sister like him back?"

"I don't know. Forget, forget!!" she commanded. She looked out at the trees in front of us. "This is the park where my friends and I used to have picnics and play football..."

On the outside, I forgot, and asked her about her high school days, whether she still saw her old friends, how it was like with both boys and girls playing football together casually.

On the inside, though?

I've collected a lot of secrets.

Domestic violence hotline: right here in your alley!

October 2009

Disclaimer: I lived essentially in the ghetto for over two months. All my Syrian friends outside my neighborhood are pretty shocked at a lot of my experiences. Please don't take this as the norm in Syria! One of the positive sides of the Middle East is the strength of family bonds, and I found healthy happy families all over Syria. Just not so commonly in my alleyway.

Don't get me wrong, in spite of its reputation my neighborhood has no crime, and isn't any dirtier than any other part of Damascus. I actually had less troubles with guys bothering me there, in this family-oriented network of alleys where little boys and girls play unafraid, than in downtown.

The families for the most part are, however, lower middle class/upper lower class, relatively recently displaced from other cities, and somewhat less open to new ideas and freedom of women than the more upscale parts of town. Because they have less money, they usually can't send their kids to the best high schools, therefore they have a much lower graduation rate. Traditions take hold instead; instead of the world at large, life focuses in on the happenings in the alleyways. The neighborhood is like your extended family, and as is typical of Syria, the family bonds are much closer; your family is there to take care of you in times of need. It prevents people from falling through the cracks better than any corrupt government can (*cough cough* I didn't write that, the President is a gentle man, a doctor...).

I found this out very clearly during my last week with my host family. Mom and Fatma, the youngest sister, had gone to Aleppo for an extended holiday visit; at the moment, it was just the other girls, me, and a brother or two in the house. It was after midnight, and we were all getting rather sleepy and ready to pull out the matresses and pillows.

Suddenly, we heard screaming coming from next door!! A man's angry voice, a woman's please, the sound of a slap and a scream...

Noha and Nahed shot worried looks at each other. "Firaz!" Noha gasped under her breath. We all hurriedly threw scarves over our heads and peered over the rooftops or through the front door to see if we could catch what was going on. One of the brothers dashed out to investigate.

I asked Reem for clarification, and she explained that Firaz was the elementary-aged son of the couple that lived next door. When his parents fought, they usually had him sleep over at our house until everything settled down.

After a long anxious time, all seemed to have calmed down; Firaz was in a safe place, and others were helping with the situation of his parents.

As Nahed and Noha debriefed with our neighbor friends, Reem and I sat down in the living room, and I questioned her on the issue. My belief about more conservative countries is that they have many of the same issues as we do in the US, but they aren't allowed to deal with them openly in society. Nor are they encouraged to talk about such issues much. Here, sitting on the floor with Reem, was my chance to learn.

"What do you do when this happens?" I asked her. "In the US the wife can go to a safe house, if she knows about one, or to the police. Do you have safe places like that for women?"

"No, we don't have those," she said. Even if Syria did have those, life would be incredibly difficult for the woman; to leave your family in Syria is basically to exit all of society.

"And you don't go to the police," I continued. "Big punishment, right?"

She nodded definitely. "Very big!"

"And the family does not want to take away its father, especially if there are children." She nodded again. "So in Syria, what do you do?"

Reem explained the neighborhood system: "First, someone takes the children and has them sleep there for a few nights. They separate the husband and wife who are fighting. The woman's famiy and friends take her somewhere, sit with her, talk to her, calm her down and make sure she's OK."

"And the husband?" I ask.

"The men of the alley take him and hit him!" She motioned beating someone up with her hands. "After a few days, the neighbors bring the family back together."

"Does this happen very often?" I ask.

"MM, not very," she denies. "Maybe one, two times a year. Not much." I got the feeling that although maybe major issues only came up a few times annually, the family next door had a lot of internal problems. The fact that they had a routine system for this problem said a lot to me. Suddenly, my erratical controlling host mother and all-brawn-no-brain host brother seemed a lot nicer.

I know of at least one other woman in the neighborhood whose husband beats her. When I was visiting, she pulled down her tshirt and showed me the bruises on her back. She motioned to her husband sitting in front of her, indicating it was him. Actually she even had an arm around his shoulder, though more obligatorily than lovingly.

What do you do? I mouthed in Arabic. She shrugged. What can she do? It's Syria, she can't leave her family.

In a country with severe capital punishment, going to the police will tear your family's life apart more than trying to make things work. Especially if the father is the sole source of income, you don't want him to be taken away.

So what do they do? They go to family and friends. It's an informal system, but when you think about it it has much wisdom. The kids are cared for by people who know and love them, the wife essentially gets counseling and therapy from her companions, and the husband gets a stern reminder to not abuse his wife.

Disclaimer reiterated: Other SYRIANS don't know all this information. When I talk to my friends outside the alley, they are astonished that domestic violence even exists in Syria. The country prides itself on its appearance of peacefulness, and on the strength of its family relations. I have seen a lot of wonderful families, far more close knit than what we have in the US, with the grown sons and daughters still laying their heads lovingly on their parents laps.

But that doesn't mean the problems aren't there.

Forget the legal system. Sometimes the traditional way works better. For, when your whole life is with your family, what else can you do...

Cultural adjustment: A duel of two personalities

October 19th, 2009

I sit on the balcony of my new apartment. I've lived here less than a week, but already I feel more at home than I ever have in Syria.

I lived with a Syrian family for over two months. In some ways, this family was very typical of Syria: a household where the old traditions clashed with new dreams, leaving the current generation caught in the middle. In other ways they weren't typical; they had a healthy dose of dysfunction going on that wasn't related to societal change, and essentially all other Syrians I talked to about the family were pretty shocked at some of the things I experienced, especially my friends from the upper classes.

Don't get me wrong, I had great times there; the Ramadan nights of eating together and playing cards with the neighbors and laughing will always stay with me like magic. And I will always keep those girls in my heart as my Syrian sisters, for I truly became like one of the family. If I hadn't felt that way, I would've left a lot sooner, but this is Syria and you don't leave your family.

But I'm not a Syrian girl. I tried to be, and a big part of me has become Syrian. I had a huge identity crisis about three months into my stay, as if the American "Catherine" and the Syrian "Cath-reen" were competing for personhood. I went weeks without seeing an American, my only connection to my home culture the internet cafes and the US horror movies my host family loved to watch.

I learned a lot staying with the family, far more than just language. But I knew that I would be happier living alone - so I did. This last month in Damascus, I will live the "ex-pat" life; I've discovered the havens for American students like me, and though I keep my Syrian friends I no longer strive to immerse myself. A part of me will always be an American girl, and I need to cater a little to that.

Now, as I sit on my new balcony looking down at the city lights and up at the faint shadow of Mt. Qassioun against the night sky, I feel the perfect mix of "Catherine" and "Cath-reen." As I write my blog, Cathreen sips yerba mate and argile, and Catherine munches on apples and chugs water. My Europop, the choice of music for tonight, sounds out and mingles with the Arab pop blasting from cars that drive by down below. I'm alone at the moment - nigh unto impossible with my old host family - and when my flatmate (another American girl named Mary) comes back we'll ramble about all the crazy things we deal with in Syria. Tonight I'll share how our landlord gave my phone number to one of our neighbors so he could call me and propose a marriage.

After a few months of language barriers and people wondering why I'm upset, it's refreshing to be with someone who's had the same cultural frustrations, and who also appreciates the beauty of a well-made chai latte. Don't get me wrong, I have no regrets about my homestay; I love my host sisters, I know how to blend in and understand the culture now, and my spoken language is miles ahead of the students who jumped into the ex-pat life from the start. I'm ready to spend some time actually letting myself live as a foreigner, though. I'm out of the closet, and I can't deny my otherness any longer.

I hope some of "Cathreen" will stay with me when I go back to the US. After nearly half a year here, a part of me will always be Syrian. From what I hear, going back may be just as tough as adjusting to here; when you have homes all over the world, you'll always be homesick for somewhere.

I'll be ready to go back to the US come December. But for now?

Yalla, ya Syria. I'm not finished with you yet.

Guests, and I the host

From the September Eid al-Fitr holiday

I've experienced many a'time the guest side of the Arab hospitality tradition. Plates of fruit and mukassarat ("broken bits," like seeds and nuts), Turkish coffee, tea, and a TON of food. Remember, you eat as much as you like the host.

Today, though, I got to experience the host side of the tradition.

The house was all a bustle as we got ready. It's the middle of Ramadan, and the oldest sister was to arrive from the coast with her husband and two kids, in less than an hour!!

We'd already cleaned everything, now we just need the food. We'd prepared a big meal, even buying some special nuts to lay atop the rice, which only happens on special occasions. I took my post at the door of the kitchen, taking what was passed to me over to the dinner mat.

Then, nearly an hour late as is appropriate in the Arab world, here's Sumeya!! Somehow even thinner than Suhehr after two kids, and with the attitude of the cool big sis even after several years absence from the house. Her husband seemed like a nice guy too, equally skinny and loving to joke.

The boys, I quickly became friends with. There's four-and-a-half year old Ali, who cries like a girl. I used to babysit so many boys about this age, and it was I will never forget playing cop and zombie with Ali and his brother, letting them shoot me with fake guns until I startled them by waking up and grabbing them and spinning them around the courtyard. You can go far on not much language with little kids.

Little bro Haydor was also a ton of fun. What a hammy!! I've never seen someone his size eat so much cake. He has the slim figure of the Pilsbury Doughboy, and I can't help but to poke him in the stomach, which I'm sure confused him greatly.

Before too long Sumeya turned from a guest into one of the family; it's hard to stay a guest for too long in a house where you lived for 20+ years. We played with her boys, and readied the hookah pipe for Sumeya who gave herself priority over her brothers for it tonight; she was the oldest, and she wanted to smoke argile!

She happily jumped into playing Turneeb with us, surprising me as she played on English language, adding suffixes to Arabic words. She hasn't studied for over ten years, but English was one of her best subjects, and it's stuck with her. And whenever I sneakily played my trump cards, she'd grab my head and ruffle my short hair; I'm definitely one of the family now.

It's nice being a member of the host family, especially such a big one. I'm past the guest stage, so I'm past being required to sit with everyone all the time; if I'm tired, or want to go read in the other room, that's totally fine. In this house, if there's no cleaning to do, and you're ABLE to sleep with all the people around, it's totally fine to turn the lights out at any time.

Two weeks later we'd have even MORE guests - the final sister (Hanan) and brother (Jassim), plus an uncle and the sister's little boy Maazen, not quite a toddler, who doesn't speak coherently but puts out his arms when you say "come!" and shakes your hand when you say "Hello!" His mom had his favorite songs saved on her cell phone, and he'd stop and smile from ear to dumbo-sized ear when he heard them, a special dance for each one.

Grandma, Uncle, all 11 offspring (including one fireball teen who just went through a nasty breakup), and three of their offspring, two of them wild ones around whom the world must revolve. 17 people in one house. I trust you, our holidays consisted of a lot of shouting. Happy Eid, everyone!!!

But at the same time the house got a lot happier. It's hard to stay frowny for long when you have three cute kids to play with. And Uncle made everyone happy - he played silly card games with us all together, told jokes, and treated the sisters to backrubs.

Now, the house is a bit quieter. Sumeya, her two boys, Uncle and Jassim have already left. Suhehr, Noha, and Riyadh are at work during the day, and Mohammad and Ehab are sleeping. Tomorrow Um Riyadh, Hanan, and little Maazen might go to Aleppo, too. This morning, Reem and Nahed went to the university, and everyone else was at the neighbor's for breakfast, leaving just Fatma (the youngest) and I and a few sleeping brothers. Weird...

I may go visit Sumeya next weekend and become a guest once again. But not for long.

I'm one of the family now.

Rules for Turneeb

Turneeb is the national card game of Syria. Let's learn how to play!

Players: 4

Deck: Regular, no jokers

Deal: One person shuffles, then holds out the cards to the person to the left of them to cut. After the cut, the dealer puts the bottom card face up in front of him/her. This card determines the trumph suit; trumph is the other suit of the same color as the suit of that card. For example, if the card is a club, the trump suit is spades.

Then the next three from the bottom of the deck should be dealt to the other players, one card face up per person, dealing clockwise from the dealer.

Then deal commences starting with the person to the right of the dealer. Four cards at a time. When all cards are dealt, each person should have 13 cards.

After that, the bidding starts. Each person should say how many tricks they will "eat" (take) that round. 2 is the minimum, even if you don't think you'll take any. If your accumulative score is 30 or higher, your minimum bid is 3. If it's 40 or higher, you have to bid at least 4. Bidding is supposed to go around counter-clockwise, but at our house we usually ignore that rule and just ask each other what numbers we want.

Then, playing commences; the person to the right of the dealer leads the first trick. Regular play for card games with trumph suits. Not required to play higher than the other cards, or to trumph, even if you can.

At the end of the round you determine the scoring. If you "ate" the number of tricks that you bid or higher, you earn your bid. If you didn't, you subtract the number you bid from your total score.

The first person above 41 wins. Actually it may be 42 or 43... but somewhere around that number.

Have fun!!

I'm still alive!

14 October 2009

Hey all! Just putting a note out there that I'm still alive and well - with a usual round of some sort of minor stomach ailment, but that's been my life for more than half the time I've been here, so it doesn't bother me too much.

I'm also in about three different temporary residencies this week, including a) an incredibly happy Sudanese family, b) an American hippie couple who helps Iraqi refugees, and c) the family of an Iraqi intellectual who pushed for the west to take down Saddam. As a result, the father is #2 on the hit list for the terrorist group consisting of Saddam's ex-honchos. It's almost an honor to stay with them... in a very strange way. Don't worry, I'm totally safe, I just shouldn't go to Baghdad and say I'm friends with them.

I have a lot written to post here, and a lot more to write. But for today, I have to go deal with the immigration office to renew my residency permit, which basically means going to the office, paying someone off-the-record for the stamps and to help me fill it out, pushing through a crowd of people to the desk of the immigration official, and going up and down some stairs several times to the different officies. Oh, and I should go to the one that's lax on actually having a rent contract; sometimes that's difficult in Syria, depending on whether or not your landlord is nice (my first was too lazy to write a contract). And if your housing was actually built legally.

They also tend to use the fact I'm a foreigner to say "come back later" even when I know they understand my Arabic. Gotta love beaurocracies.

A tidbit to munch on for today:

Imagine a tall, gray-haired Sudanese man in white prayer robes and cap. He smiles as he plays with his family's little tabby kitten, his big hands patting playfully against the wide-eyed critter as she tries to bat back. His wife sits next to him in a colorful orange dress, playing cards with me and WINNING - "Me Ali Baba, Ali Baba!!" she laughs as she grabs all my pairs. Her belly shakes merrily, widened from birthing and cooking for seven beloved children. They excitedly tell me about Sudan, about how African people talk straight and honestly, and smile at each other in the streets; opposite of my experience in Syria.

And though traditional and innocent, they were incredibly knowledgeable about the world. We had a pretty deep conversation about colonialism, World War Two, and a bit on the Soviet Era, all in my broken Arabic with lots of enthusiastic sign language from the father to help me understand.

These people are not formally educated... The father spent his school days as a shepherd boy, then worked most of his life as a driver in various countries. He has a minimum level of Arabic literacy... And yet he and his wife were more educated about world politics and modern history than most people who graduated from my high school. They know in modern days it's important to have degrees and certificates, though, so they push all their children to learn as much as they can; knowing how to use a computer is not enough, they must have language skills. The father couldn't work for long after he had a stomach surgery, but he used his savings to send his oldest child to learn English at a private institute, and now the son has a very good job that helps support the family.

The West would judge him as uneducated. I say he's had a life filled with experience as education, which gave him more than a bachelor's degree gets most anyone in Syria.

World, have your say.

September 11, 8 years later

September 11, 2009

I still remember stumbling over to answer the phone that one Tuesday morning.

It was Mom. "Just wanted to let you know, it might be crazy at school today. The Twin Towers were attacked."

"OK, thanks," I said. What are the Twin Towers?

I soon found out what had happened at school (I'd just started 7th grade). And, well - you all know the details.
It was interesting to compare perspectives on 9/11 with another of the American girls at the camp, who studies and works in DC. She was already in college at the time, so she had a much different perspective. She felt more survivors guilt, had more questions, where as my reaction was mostly psychological.

Our perspectives on patriotism were also different. In my little suburb, which is about 50-50 Democrat-Republican, whether or not you "waved your flag" had a connotation of your political position towards Mr. George W. Bush. Especially when the Iraq War started. But for her, supporting the flag meant supporting the values it stood for and keeping the government in line with them.

9/11 had deep significance for her, and as this was a "safe-space" dialogue camp with a good number of Muslims and Arabs (not necessarily the same), she brought up the subject in a number of conversations. She was amazed at the number that told her off-handedly that the US government had actually arranged the whole affair. Of course the US government isn't telling us everything, and she's aware that the US played a historical role in raising Al-Qaeda to its modern state. But it seems pretty clear the actual attack came from outside. How could so many of our intelligent campmates believe in that conspiracy so easily?

"Think of all the corruption in the governments of Arab countries, and what they do to their own people," pointed out one of our Arab friends. "We've all grown up with it as a fact of life. With that in mind, it's easy to believe US government would do something like 9/11."

Of course everything has a good side, even violence like 9/11 and the Iraq War. During the French occupation of North Africa, there was a sudden increase of genuine interest in studying Arab Anthropology, language, and culture amongst the French people. Perhaps simply because of a new focus on the area, they learned a little, and started to wonder. The same thing is happening now in the US, with a huge increase in Middle Eastern Studies and Arabic Language majors.

I'm part of that movement. I probably wouldn't be here in Syria if it weren't for 9/11, a sad but true fact.

In the midst of all the friends who have died (*American and Iraqi body count*), both American and Arab are making friends with each other. In the midst of all the places that were destroyed, people are discovering new places, Iraqis fleeing to new lands and Americans discovering the Middle East.

Is it worth all the death in destruction? No, I don't think so.

But I'm still glad I'm here.

God Bless all that have been touched by September 11 these past eight years.

A Ramadan day in the life

September 2009

Thump! dadadum ta-Thump! dadadum ta-Thump! It's 3:30 a.m. - time to get up for breakfast!

Our Muslim neighborhood has two drummers, father and son, whose job it is to wake the people during the holy month of Ramadan. At the crack of dawn we will fast - from food, from water, and from smoking, which bodes unbearable for our local chain smokers (which believe me, are pretty common in these parts. The "Bob, I got emphysema" sign hasn't reached Syria yet, though I did see it in Lebanon). In other words, now is the time to PIG OUT!! (But not eat pork - that's forbidden in Islam).

Half of us haven't slept yet, but the other half rub their eyes sleepily as we bring the food. Breakfast (or "suhoor," as this particularly early meal is called) consists of some combination of cheese, yoghurt cheese, scrambled eggs, sweetened sunflower seed cake (helawa- see below), jam, and butter, all eaten with Arabic flatbread as we sit in a circle on the floor around the platter of food. We complete our breakfast with sugar, taken with a small cup of tea. I'm not kidding - the Arab world doesn't want life to be bitter, so they compensate with several spoonfuls of sugar per a teacup smaller than any we'd use in the US).

And of course everyone drinks a big cup of water or three; fasting from food for 14 hours really isn't that hard, especially when you stuff your face for the remaining 10, but if you don't drink water you'll be miserably dehydrated in the afternoon. Especially in a Middle Eastern summer.

And there it is- Allahu akbar, Allahu Akbar, "God is the Greatest," the call for the dawn prayer and the beginning of our fast. We carry the dishes into the kitchen, and those who pray wash and get their prayer mat and clothes. We convert the house: four common rooms become four bedrooms with the addition of matresses and blankets, with the three older girls in one room, the two youngest plus Mom and I in another, and the three boys crashing anywhere upstairs. I wonder what the arrangement was like when the additional two sisters (married), brother (working in another city), and Dad (deceased) were still living here...

By 5am, everyone falls into deep slumber.

***

At 8am I get up to take my medicine with food and drink. Islam may seem strict from the outside, but it's actually quite flexible; if you're sick, pregnant, nursing, old, young, or on your period, you're exempt from the fast. There's a good side to everything, even bladder infections.

The house is oddly still for having 10 people in it - it's just me up and about, and one brother upstairs watching a movie on the laptop after working the night shift. The two oldest sisters will wake within the hour to go to work - Noha to the bank, Suhehr to the beauty salon - but they're still sprawled out on their matresses in the other room.

I eat a little, take my medicine, and tiptoe past Mom to my bed; if she wakes up she'll make everyone else get up and start cleaning within five minutes, and I want my host sisters to get their beauty sleep.

By nine I've fallen asleep again.

***

It's 11am, and Um Riyadh ("Mother of Riyadh," aka Mama) is awake - we should be too!!

"Fatma!! Reem!!" she shouts at the two sisters sleeping next to me. "NAHED!!!" she calls to the other room when they don't move.

I roll over and see the youngest of the family, pretty 17-year-old Fatma, raising her head drowsily. Behind me I hear a series of pops as Reem (my age, 20) twists in her blanket to crack her back. They drag themselves out of bed and stumble to the bathroom.

The bathroom, by the way, is a squat toilet. Singular. For 10 people. It works out because the sink, shower, and mirrors are all in separate places, we clean like crazy, and everyone sleeps or works at different times so you never don't have to wait too long.

By now Um Riyadh is already folding the blankets stiffly and stacking them atop one of the dressers. She finishes by covering them with a sheet that matches the furniture - you forget there's even blankets there. We stack the pillows in the corner and put the matresses back into their "couch" arrangement against the wall - this is the room everyone gathers in during the day.

Each of the five girls has assigned chores throughout the day (traditionally boys don't do chores in this culture). They rotate throughout the month - this week Fatma cleans upstairs, Reem does the two rooms downstairs, and 23-year-old Nahed takes care of the kitchen and courtyard. In the meanwhile Um Riyadh puts on her abayya and goes to the souq to buy anything we'll need for dinner.

The abayya, by the way, is very practical; the girls in this family don't wear it if they're going to work or downtown, but if they're just in the neighborhood they prefer this traditional garment. Muslim girls here usually dress first in a long-sleeve shirt, with a short sleeve shirt over it (usually going down over the hips, though hugging the body), jeans, an "under-hijab" that holds back your hair, and a headscarf. If you're just going on a 1-minute walk to get snacks from the minimart or to drink tea with the neighbors, it's much much easier to just throw on the long black abayya and wrap its matching scarf around your head. As said before, let's not sacrifice practicality for modernity.

But back to the house, where the girls are cleaning. In spite living in one of the most water-scarce regions of the world, all families I've visited in Syria have no concept of water conservation (excepting the one whose father is a hydrogeologist). The typical way to clean the floors in Syria is to take bucketfulls of water and throw them around the entire house, then squeegee it all into the drain, then finish by drying with a rag mop. We do this 2-3 times daily in my host family.

On the good side, this is really fun when you're a bunch of sisters and it's summertime - water fight!!

***

By about 2pm the house is sparkly clean and drying nigh unto instantly in the sun (you can't clean like that in a temperate zone), and we return to our fan-cooled "bedroom" (now the living room). Um Riyadh has returned from the market and has the TV on - always Qu'ran on Friday (prayer day) mornings, but usually one of the multitude of Syrian TV series. They have a culture of TV here, especially during Ramadan; the best are reserved for the evening, but we also have our favorites during the day. They vary in topic - family affairs, romance, historical, sitcom, you name it, but always with a ton of emotion. Imagine if the acting style of soap operas were the norm; that's Arabic drama. They're a very expressive people.

Depending on the dinner of the day, Nahed and Um Riyadh start preparing the food. Reem folds the laundry and puts it in the proper closet. One of the girls gets Noha's laptop from upstairs so they can listen to music and play solitaire when they're not watching a TV series. In the meantime, I get out my Arabic books and study, or type up a new blog post, as I'm doing now, or ask Reem for help on my vocabulary list. This is really fun because Reem speaks with the most adorable lisp, and I always write the wrong letters, to her great indignation. "Not kha, gha!!" she tells me.
Um Riyadh always does her five prayers, and Reem and Fatma usually do too. They put the white prayer clothes with the pretty green trim over their pajamas, and bend down in the traditional pattern, whispering the prayers quietly to themselves.

And we read the Qu'ran, some days more than others. I have my own little book with 20 or so of the shorter passages that I'm working through. Fatma helps me pronounce the words, then leaves me to my translation. You learn really sweet vocabulary by reading Qu'ran - like "to tear asunder" and "to become gloomy at twilight" and "witch woman who spits on knots." I don't know when I'm going to use these words, but they sure do sound cool.

And of course we all take a good nap sometime during the afternoon. It's perfectly normal to find Mom snoring on the floor of the living room, or a girl curled up on one of the couches in the other room, or a brother sprawled out with mouth gaping in the most awkward sleeping position, a picture that's just begging to be posted on Myspace.

Zzzzzz... Fasting is much easier while unconscious.

***

By 5 or 6 pm we're all awake again and get ready for dinner - the day's fast will finish with the sunset call to prayer, at about 7:15. We're hungry and thirsty, Mom's grumpy from not smoking all day, we're behind on cooking and bringing things from the fridge upstairs, Noha just got home from work and she didn't buy juice, oldest brother Riyadh just got home and he wants the laptop, and for Reem to bring him his other shirt, someone saw Mohammad (youngest brother, 19) drink coffee during the day so everyone's upset with him for breaking his fast... You're supposed to be nice during Ramadan, and getting angry with others technically makes your fast less valid, but this is reality in a household of 10, and usually around 6:45 there are some harsh-sounding words exchanged.

I help as much as I can with setting the dinner mat, laid on the floor of the living room. At 7 we start bringing it all out - cups, spoons, plates, bowls, bread (which I consider an eating utensil here), etc.

Usually we switch the TV from a series to Qu'ran recitation at about 7. After I decide the kitchen is too crowded for me to help out anymore, I sit next across from Um Riyadh and watch the TV, trying to read the script along with the drawn-out recitation. It's nice to have something slower for reading practice - with street signs they're gone and by before I finish the third word. Riyadh sits behind me on the cushion, playing solitaire. The girls bustle in and out, trying to make all ready before the call to prayer.

Suddenly the TV switches to footage of the three minarets of the grand Umayyad Mosque in Old Damascus. "Allaaaaaahu Akbar!" sing out three powerful voices. "Allaaaaaaahu Akbar!" echo two dozen more as the camera zooms in on their chorus arranged in the mosque's courtyard. Ashadu an la ilaha illa Allah! "I witness that there is no god but God!" Their's is my favorite rendition of the call to prayer I've heard in Syria. A few seconds later, a more familiar voice calls out the same words from the local mosque around the corner.

Time to dig in!! The hustle and bustle of last moment is quickly forgotten as we all sit around the Iftar (meal for breaking fast) and begin the feasting, first with water or juice, then dates, then soup and everything else. All forget their problems or any troubles they had between one another. Even the fact that Mohammad is sitting in the corner in his current boycott of the family Iftar doesn't bother anyone, including Mohammad, who's happily smoking away at a hookah pipe.

About Mohammad- Maybe it doesn't seem so with this introduction, but he's really a cool guy - like a kid brother who acts like he's too cool for school, but still is always genuinely friendly and likes to chat, always asking and you kind of want to grab him by the hair and give him a nougie, even though he's 19. Though I'd never say which of the five sisters I like best even if I had a favorite, I'll easily say Mohammad is my favorite of the three brothers. I almost never talk to Ehab due to his night shift and shyness, and though at times he plays a kindly father role I can't shake the opinion that Riyadh is an jerk.

But we're hungry - back to dinner.

The drinks: Water, yoghurt, orange juice, and sweetened Tamarind juice.

The food(!): sauteed dates (brings out extra sweetness, if they weren't already sweet enough), lentil soup, Arabic salad (cucumber, tomato, parsley, lettuce, garlic, other herbs), foul (broad beans), pasta, spiced ground beef, rice, yoghurt, and grilled chicken. For example. Of course we have other dishes, like grape leaves, or yoghurt salad, or koosa meshi (mm... see below post).

In short time we fill our bellies and sit back. We clear the table in stages; if two people are still eating, we take away the empty plates and the food we know they don't like. We leave out the juice and water for a while too, and the dates for Reem and I to munch on.

Then we turn on our favorite TV series as everyone finds their place on the cushions. The girls take everything to the kitchen, the assigned girls clean the floors and table mat, someone brings out two ashtrays for Um Riyadh and Riyadh's cigarettes and any fruit remainders, wrappers, etc we'll make throughout the night, and Reem brings out the sugar. I mean tea.

I know I shouldn't judge much - cultural relativism, remember - but I have a beef with the after-dinner tea process. Riyadh, the oldest brother that traditionally has a special place in the family, immediately lays down on the couch after he finishes eating, taking up the laptop and a lot of room on the cushions. When Reem brings out the tea, she brings a big glass for him and small glasses for everyone else. She serves him first- with extra sugar- and he essentially ignores it for several minutes. Then he tastes, adds even more sugar, and drinks a little more. He usually only drinks half the glass before it gets cold (so why does he need a glass that's twice as big?), and an hour later puts out his cigarette in the cup and asks Reem to make an additional small pot just for him, which he also only drinks half a glass of.

But what I love is what sister Noha does - in my opinion in response to the above. Even though it's the job of the oldest son (i.e. Riyadh) when there's no father, allegedly Noha contributes the most to the family income.

And she KNOWS it. So Reem fetches a bigger glass for Riyadh? Noha gets herself a glass that's TWICE as big and fills it to the top, with more sugar than anyone else. She eats more meat, works more, and stands up for herself no matter who's standing opposite her. Um Riyadh? I want to call her "Um Noha" (except Mama's, ahh, not too fond of Noha's strongmindedness).

After our favorite program Sabaya finishes- a sitcom featuring a group of five girlfriends living together, not unlike us - we carry the leftovers upstairs. Later on we'll also watch "Bab al Harra," the most popular series in Damascus, a riveting historical drama set during the French occupation period and filmed in traditional Damascene houses. Many restaurants have installed TVs just so people can watch this program during Ramadan. If only I could understand...

Then, ding-dong!! There's the doorbell - the neighbors have come to visit! Meen? "Who is it?" I hear Fatma call as she goes to open the door. A few seconds later, she walks to the room, holding...

"Haaadi!" we all call out as the pudgy 5-month-old baby enters the room. He blubbers in response. I love this baby, he looks like he's an intelligent capable person on the inside, yet stuck in this body that's too uncoordinated to even make proper facial expressions, let alone do more than flail as he gets passed around, flown like an airplane, and kissed by half the crowd in the room. Reem, Fatma, Mohammad and I take turns playing and making faces at him, with visits to Um Riyadh in between. We balance him standing up on our laps (this kid doesn't know how to bend at the waist), holding his chubby arms as he gapes and stutters with wide eyes around him. We pass him to Nahed, who cradles and kisses him and strokes his forehead until he falls asleep. We lay him on a free space on the cushions and cover him with a towel.

Um Hadi came in shortly after him; she's usually the first guest of the night to come visit. She's pregnant with her second kid, and boy is she going to be a cool mom; even when Hadi cries (which is rare), she responds with an enthusiastic "Ya Hooodi! Ya helua!" and hugs and kisses him all over as he squeaks in protest. I can't imagine her being shaken by much, and I always enjoy her visits, though as she's the first to come so she's usually the first to retire to her bed.

A bit later neighbor May comes in and steals the hookah pipe from Mohammad or Ehab. Ehab is the middle brother, a skinny guy who dresses in a tie and white shirt with sleeves rolled up, whom I imagine speaks Arabic like he's from Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. (How do you say "Yeah man!" in Arabic?). Sometimes also two or three other neighbors come. By this point, Nahed's brought out the maate (see below post) and we're sipping away as we munch on grapes and cookies and chat happily, the TV series and solitaire playing present as always in the background.

Um Nader comes, too. The first time I met her, I had just moved into the house, and she'd come to pay a visit. We were sitting in a circle in the courtyard, exchanging polite conversation with the family.

"She's crazy!" said Mohammad as he passed by.

Ahh, I know that word in Arabic! I thought to myself. "Crazy - Majnuna!" I translated happily.

Um Nader shot a pair of raised eyebrows at the teenager and jumped to her feet. I will never forget the image of Mohammad fleeing into the other room, shirking beneath the onslaught of Um Nader's shoe.

And one of the most common visitors is Miriam. For those who know her, Miriam reminds me of a 40+ version of J-Ru. Every night when Miriam comes over we play Turneeb ("Trumph"), Syria's pastimed card game. Four people sit around a folded-prayer-mat turned card table, and we deal in a special way that determines the trumph suit. Each person declares the number of tricks they will "eat" (take) during this round. Playing commences. Different people in our gatherings have their own reputations - Fatma holding all her trumph until the end, Um Riyadh always overtrumphing, Miriam trying to say she made her bid when she didn't, etc.

Over the past month I've developed a reputation for trumping super early and brutally, stealing the cards from others even if they have the ace. The last time I did this to Miriam she glared at me from across the table. Kus ukhtik, she swore at me, then they all laughed because of course the foreign girl doesn't understand that! I smiled to myself in response; if only she knew. Ohh, the things I could say to her in English about her own sister's pussy...

(This is a very common curse in Syria, used kind of like "Fuck you" - when said often enough, it loses much of the power of its initial meaning. I hear little boys say it as they pass by me on their bicycles. However, I hear if you say it in Saudi it may ignite a fight in the street).

After at least two rounds of Turneeb and two pots of water for the maate, it's after midnight and even Miriam heads home. After finishing the dishes, Suhehr and Noha usually head to bed (they still have to work tomorrow), the boys head upstairs, Nahed listens to music on the couch, and Reem, Fatma, Mama and I arrange our room for sleeping. Sometime in the wee hours of the morning, we turn on "The Servant Yousuf," aka "Joseph and the Coat of Many Colors," except "Ten Commandments" style and then some; we're halfway through Ramadan and his father just got to Pharoah's yesterday. I love it partly because Yousuf's character looks really silly with too much makeup, and partly because it's originally in Turkish but dubbed ie formalized Modern Standard Arabic, which is the form I actually study in class (see post about Arabic language). And it's a story I know, so I can follow what's going on even when I don't understand the words, unlike TV series like "Bab al Haara."

Half the time I fall asleep in the middle of "Yousuf"- it's 2 in the morning, people, and I don't nap well - and sometimes Reem or Fatma join me in slumber, but since the beginning of Ramadan there's always at least one of us awake until the beating of the drums for suhoor. Fatma and I jump up to peer out the window, trying to catch sight of the drummer as he passes by our alleyway.

In the twilight zone of 4am, where the Ramadan cycle neither ends nor begins, we take our breakfast and tea. With the call to prayer say goodnight to the morning sun and dance away into dreams of good times with friends and family, ready to repeat the day again.

Ramadan Kareem - Blessings of Ramadan to one and all.

Everything you know is wrong

Early September, 2009

I knew jumping into a new culture would bring its share of troubles, but I didn't expect for all the little things to get to me.

For one, staring is the Damascene pastime. Are you a little different? Stand out from the crowd at all? Ohh, are you a foreign girl with short fair hair and blue eyes who looks clueless? STARE. Especially the guys.

The American in me really wants to make a face back at them - like a mirror, so they could see how incredibly stupid they look - but I know they just won't get that I'm making fun of them. The staring has died way down now: partly because I know better how to blend in; partly because the proper way to walk in the streets here is by looking disinterestedly straight ahead as if you're one of the horses pulling the watermelon carts with blinders on, so I don't see the stares; and partly because the stares and the whispers of Ajnabi! "Foreigner!" as I pass by have become my norm.

I've even started to adopt this custom myself, though the American inside still rebukes - "'tis rude to stare!" A couple of foreigners will walk by in the Old City, and I'll stare at them over my shoulder, trying to decipher what country they're from. I usually try to smile at them, something Syrians don't do to strangers - it's my foreign comrades! - but in a way I, the Ajnabi, have become one of the locals, and they ignore my stares just as I learned to.

Oh, and then there's ignoring. So when someone does stare at you, or tries to sell you something in the souq, or a guy comes and talks to you on the street, you're supposed to totally ignore them. This also felt incredibly rude to my American self at first, but it's basically your only option. Any minor rebukes (or major, really) will only encourage them - you acknowledged their existence! - and inspire them to cling to you with persistance.

Take one night when I was walking home. A man was walking nearby, and I made the mistake of looking in his direction. Nooooo I groan on the inside. I should know better by now!

He walked over to me and started muttering under his breath. Hey, what's your name, where are you from, are you married... The usual questions.

I'm a foreigner, I don't understand Arabic I responded sharply. I'm going home. GOOD NIGHT.

He moved closer, and closer, and closer...

KHALAS!! Don't TOUCH me! I whipped around and glared at him, finger pointing in his face as he scuttled away sideways across the street, still muttering incomprehensibly. Bothering girls in the street? That's considered macho. Actually upsetting her, especially in front of the men who were sitting nearby? That's shameful, I know it and he does too.

I was really in no danger; it's nigh unto impossible to be alone in Syria, and if he tried to do anything the five other men lounging in the streets nearby would be culturally obligated to defend me. It's just a hassle to deal with. US = little annoyance (hey, we don't even like to make eye contact in Seattle, let alone talk to strangers on the street), but some real danger. Syria = huge annoyance, but excessively little danger.

Being in Syria for three months has changed me, that's for sure. The American Cat would not have shouted in someone's face like that. But though I know it helps me, I'm not sure I like this straight-faced girl I've become as I walk through the streets of Damascus. She's hardened, inside and out, she'll snap back when she's pushed to, and she makes sure she walks stiff and proud even when she's sad on the inside. A good Syrian girl. The American Cat was too nice, she'd get pushed over in the streets here like nothing, but the American Cat still isn't fond of the Syrian she's become.

That's really how I feel - as if I have two personas, American and Syrian, that either compete for correctness or both flee from me, leaving me in identity limbo. It's like freshman year of college again, except not nearly so bad. I've adopted too much Syrian to truly be foreign, and yet I'm still unshakeably different. My routines have changed, my appearance has changed, my soul has changed... The American Cat doesn't have so many of the things she misses (her bike, going to the pool each week, tortillas, pants getting wet from the rain as you walk to school, and Chinatown oddly making the top ten, in addition to more obvious things like family and friends). She's also too shy in this new place to be her own silly self, and so I feel that self drifting further and further away.

The Syrian Cat, on the other hand, is too new to know shit, which leaves me with just as many problems and a sense of emptiness when the old Cat is far away.

I felt pretty silly at first, getting upset at things like not knowing how to clean floors properly. "Cat, that's wrong! Go sit, you don't know," says host sister Noha as I try to sweep the floor. Well sorry if I don't throw a bucket of water on the ground before I sweep in the US. Or how to this day still double check before I eat to see that others are eating from their spoons and scooping from the main dish again; as Syrian as I try to be, the wrongness of double dipping embeds itself deeply. When I explained my feeling to Noha, she thoughtfully got an extra spoon for the main dish at the next dinner so I could use that to scoop instead. But by the end of the dinner one of the other sisters had adopted it as her own.

I guess I just have to accept that I'm on a tightrope between two cultures now. I'm neither me nor her, American nor Syrian. When I return to the US, I'm going to have changed from what I was before I came, and that's OK.

It's all about learning. The feeling of being empty is just the preliminary requirement for being filled with knowledge.

Keeping up appearances

September 2009

While driving into Beirut from my friend's house in the suburbs, we pass many billboards, most featuring sexy people posing in sexy clothes. In Syria, it's acceptable to post an advertisement for women's undergarments featuring the actual garment; in Lebonan it's acceptable to post the actual woman wearing only those undergarments. And to actually wear the equivalent (a bikini) in public. Regardless of the surrounding cultures, Beirut sure has an image of liberalism it likes to project.

One sign in particular intrigued me, though. It was a woman in a sleek jacket, with the caption saying something like "Plastic surgery worked wonders for me." Displayed at the bottom of the sign was a bottle of whiskey. I was completely baffled by what it was actually trying to advertise, and voiced my confusion to another Lebanese friend. "Maybe it's an ad for Beirut," he laughed.

Plastic surgery is HUGE in Lebonan. In the US, and somewhat Syria, it's considered fairly shameful to get cosmetic surgery - what, you're not naturally beautiful? - sort of like winning by cheating. Lebonan's a bit different, though... You see people openly wearing their nosejob bandages. Girlfriends graduating from high school might get their noses done together in celebration. Entire villages will go to the same surgeon. I don't know exactly what percent of the population gets it done - certainly not the majority (I hope) - but more than enough to keep plastic surgeons busy.

And my, are Lebanese girls pretty... Usually very shick, stylish, and thin. As the majority of the surrounding culture prefers family and food and a little bit of fattiness ("You eat as much as you like the cook!" one friend explained), and Lebanese are very similar genetically to their neighbors, something tells me their thinness is not quite natural.

The idea of beautiful=thin is certainly spreading quite widely here in Syria, but not enough for girls to obsess over it. Very chubby girls still wear tight clothes and strut their stuff. Ula actually TRIES to gain weight - "My face is so thin, it's not beautiful, so whenever I go home I just eat and eat." My host sisters tease each other about being fatties all the time (Ya dib! "You bear!"), but instead of becoming anorexic they laugh and reach for another piece of cake. My oldest sister Suhehr (the one who works in a beauty parlor) is pretty obsessed with keeping her slim figure, but she still eats quite nutritionally, and none of the other girls in the parlor are thin. The other four sisters have no trouble laughing about their tummies, either. You think she's fat now, see her in two years! they tease Nahed, who has a big grin on her face as she munches on her cake.

In spite of that, appearance is still everything, and if you're not in line with fashion or custom you will surely get stares. Of course I got a lot of girls looking me up and down in distaste when got here, being fashionably inept by nature. For the religious tradition, because Ula wears short sleeve shirts and no hijab, she'll hear strangers openly praying to God for her as she walks by. And yet you see girls wearing hijab with long sleeve but low-cut shirts and hooker boots, who probably have a lot less religious conviction than Ula, who reflects on the Qu'ran in her mind as we walk down the lane together. A piece of cotton on your head is a pithy indicator of your true devotion to Allah, in my and Ula's opinions.

Religion here too is a lot about outward identity and image. There's a big focus on whether people are dressed correctly, whether they're known for going to mosque, whether they're seen breaking their fast... Not for everyone, of course, but it seems like the outward expression of the religion is often more important than the inward conviction. This is strange to me, coming from spiritual Seattle.

Religion aside, FASHION is SO essentially crucial here. It's not P-town, where you're normal if you go out in eccentric clothing, and people try to be different. You should fit in with the latest styles, or the other stylish girls will stare down at you. For more conservative women, a tapered trenchcoat with matching hijab is perfect. For most girls, it's tight jeans, topped with a solid-color long sleeve shirt with a fashionable short sleeve over it, usually hugging at least part of the hips. For the head, they wear a headscarf that matches their shirt, plus huge "Lindsey Lohan" sunglasses. Long baubly necklaces hang in front below the scarf. (The above outfit is for Muslim women, by the way; Damascus has a large Christian population, but I don't hang out with them enough to observe their fashion trends).

For the men, OMG I have NEVER seen so much Dolce and Gabanna in my life. Seriously, as a native Oregonian I'm in shock. Tight designer jeans with huge shiny belt buckles, ridiculously pointed black shiny shoes, a brand-name shirt, and dark hair slicked back with WAY too much grease. I know it's the culture of appearances here, and they're trying to dress to impress, but I can't help but to label so many guys I see here as "jerks." Then again, considering my encounters these guys, maybe the label is justified...

Of course not everyone fits into these categories. I've seen girls dressing far more sportily, especially teenagers when I went with sister Reem when she registered for college, and my girlfriend who used to be on biking and swim teams (now THAT interested me...). And guys often reject the "jerk" look too, especially the university students I meet through cultural exchange or on the steps of the language institute; they dress more casually in plain loose t-shirts, ditch the hair gel, and usually converse far more intellectually.

I've started to blend into this culture. I still can't tell what colors of clothes go together to save my life, but I do care enough to ask. I had Suhehr help me pick out a new outfit, and I know enough to generally pick out what's fashionable here, and expect criticism from the corners of people's eyes when I walk through the streets in some of my old clothes. I join my sisters Reem and Fatma in front of the mirror as we primp ourselves before an outing.

Appearance is everything, people. Here in the Middle East you have to show what you are, whether it's keeping in line with religious standards or keeping up with the latest fashion. Regardless of what you actually are on the inside you'll be considered a heathen/fugly if you go against one of these two on the outside. The concepts of inner beauty and inner faith get pushed aside.

...I miss Portland...

Hitched into a Family

An old tidbit that happened mostly in July

I love traveling alone. For one, you're much more free to choose where you want to go. Life is an adventure, and if you suddely decide you want to go here and not there tonight, no need to ask, just go.

What about traveling alone as a girl in the Middle East, you ask? You heard it's dangerous? Impossible? Wrong! Saudi Arabia put aside (possible, but very difficult), the Middle East is a wonderful place to travel alone as a girl, especially Syria and Lebonan and I've met quite a few others doing the same on my journeys. Contrary to popular belief, it's WAAAAY safer than most of Europe; I heard Syria was rated the third safest country in the world, with violent crime at almost zero.

This is partly because of a culture of respecting women, and partly because of tough punishments. The one rape case I heard of, the death penalty was put into action in less than a week. All you have to do is mention "Police!" and any man bothering you will flee the scene. When a Korean friend of a friend was fondoled in the marketplace, the police quickly got him in jail. Whatever corruption exists in the system, when it comes to being a woman victim, the system works in your favor.

Surely, you'll get a lot of questions traveling alone here. In the tight-knit Arab culture, you really can't be alone; singularity inspires extra inquisitiveness. And of course you'll get the heaping spoonful of men after a foreign girl (the thought of "Green Card!" makes American girls especially attractive). But once you get used to the questions, and learn that such men are usually pussies that back down when you shout in their face (which is sometimes necessary), you'll find yourself quite free to do as you please.

But back to the GOOD of traveling alone. For one, you're rarely truly alone; singularity makes you more approachable, and you'll quickly make friends - especially in places like Syria, where lack of foreigners outside Damascus + tradition of hospitality + a defined social culture where upon meeting everyone is questioned to determine where they fit in the society = amazing opportunities for picnic blanket and couch surfing. Language barriers don't even seem to matter so much; halfway through one bus ride, I found myself locking elbows with the woman next to me, who didn't seem to mind that I couldn't understand 90% of what she said.

With a bit of language and an open mind, you won't even have to wait for opportunity. Take my visit to the city of Hama for example. I had an extra couple hours before meeting a friend, and I'd already stared at the city's ancient water wheels for some time, watching tourists ride the decked-out camel (which by the way I've seen only at hard-core tourist places). On my way to another set of wheels, I passed by an amazingly green park by the river, reminiscent of the nature in Portland or Seattle. Even better, it was chock full of Hama families eating watermelon and snacks and drinking tea on their Friday picnic. I had no family, and I was for sure the only foreigner in the entire place, but I decided to brave being different and enter. I established myself on a shady bench, and took out my notebook.

Within two minutes a group of boys ran up to me with a large jug of water, whispering "Ajnabi!" Foreigner! excitedly under their breath. They offered me some, and I gladly accepted; mine was stale, and in spite of the shade and the riverside it was HOT.

"Your number?" one middle-school-aged boy asked. His older friend and I both gave him a look that said "there's no way in hell;" this kid had a lot to learn before he could get a girl's number. Hookup not in question for him.

An older man saw the boys' pestering and came to shoo them away, in the same motion inviting me to his picnic. I checked first for a family - I knew better by now than to sit with a single man - and was rewarded by several women sharing the blanket, with boys running on the grass next to them. I happily accepted the invitation.

For the next several hours I became a part of the family. I learned the man had been married once before, to a woman in Czech, and had three kids before the divorce. His second wife was seated across from me on the blanket, next to her mother, sister, and brother-in-law. They had four kids - all boys, and with the energy to prove it as they leap-frogged and bike-rode and wrestled on the lawn. Dad called the oldest one over so he could practice his English. The 10-year-old stood straight and tall and recited a song he'd learned in school: "Can you walk, and can you talk, and can you eat an egg? Yes I can walk, and I can talk..." I gave him a round of applause after he translated the whole song back into Arabic, showing he understood. Dad has reason to be proud of this clever kid.

The dad spoke some English, some German, but the wife and sister were both fluent in French, but that didn't help me much. By this time though I'd learned most of the Arabic vocabulary related to family, which is the main subject of chitchat, so we were able to bond through that. She loved her kids, but four was enough - especially all those boys!! I could feel the patience radiating from her. She and her sister both majored in French, but at different universities.

The sister-in-law invited me for a walk along the river, and I happily jumped up - only to discover my leg was completely asleep. Note: One great way to break the ice is to allow yourself to be ridiculous. It's easy to relax even with this strange foreigner when you're laughing at how her leg is stuck - a normal experience the world wide over.

Leg back in business, we linked elbows and walked between the lane lined with swingsets and slides and the Arab babes jumping all over them. We arrived to the riverside and looked jealously at the shirtless men swimming and floating on inner tubes in the river. If there's one bad side of wearing hijab, it's this; my mind flashes in thanks to the designers of swimwear for Muslim women, which sadly hasn't reached this local yet.

I get out my camera and snap some photos. After taking a look at them, I clicked over to the beginning of the camera memory to show my new friend my life in America - my sister, my parents (the family-oriented Syrians always ask about you), my fatty kitty (she always gets a laugh), a video of my friends having a piggy-back war...

When I look up again I find we're surrounded by the girls from the picnic blanket next to us. We'd been exchanging shy smiles and glances for the past hour, and I was glad to get to say hello to them up close.

I learned my new friend was to start English studies the next month, and that Syrian girls have the same problems with the pestering guys after marriage in the street; it was nice to feel solidarity, that I wasn't singled out as a foreigner.

Just as we got our ice cream, the person I was to meet called, and we had to say goodbye. I parted ways with the family with exchange of numbers, offers of help if I ever found myself in trouble in the area, and much thanks for a lovely afternoon. I love getting hitched into picnics.

Another time I was on the bus from Damascus to Yabroud. The fact I was wearing Hijab and the fact they were all studying English ignited almost instant conversation between me and the three Yabroudi women around me. Within fifteen minutes we'd discovered how we were connected - one of them had a sister who works at the same school as Fatima's mother... Sheesh, Arabs are the masters of the "seven degrees of separation" game. Everyone's connected, including this random Ajnabi. I bet they would've found a way to relate us even if I'd never heard of Yabroud.

By the end of the hour-long ride, Hanaan and I had become fast friends, and she invited me to her family's weekly picnic the next day, and to spend the night afterwards. I happily accepted; I always try not to turn down opportunities here in Syria, especially when it's with a female friend I feel I can trust.

The next day I taxied over from Fatima's to Hanaan's parent's house, where I met her sister Imaan and Imaan's two kids. Then to Hanaan's house! She has three kids: A shy, quiet older boy, a sweet girl who's taller than her brother, and an impish two year old that demands the world gravitate around him, mentioned in a previous post. Her husband was wonderfully nice also, kind-faced and friendly without strings, a refreshing change from the single guys in the streets of Damascus. Hanaan was all smiles as we toured the house.

Then it was onto the motorbike and up to the family picnic - Gramma, Grandpa, six brothers, two sisters (Imaan and Hanaan), all their spouses and spouses-to-be, and a gaggle of grandkids running about. Plus maybe a friend or two; who knows? Some of the girls I'd actually already met at Ula and Fatima's cousin's wedding. Again, the power of connection is amazing here.

We shared barbecued chicken, watermelon, and jokes about marriage (see post "Your Task"). I met the sarcastic truck-driver brother, Imaan looking sporty in half-hijab and workout pants topped by a baseball cap, her tall husband, the woman in all green who was to marry the third youngest brother, the sister-in-law whose husband was away working in Saudi, who was raising her two boys essentially on her own - "I was afraid to be alone in the house at first, but now I'm not. I can take care of myself." World, watch out; these Syrian women are strong.

After lunch Hanaan's two-year-old proferred a box of date cookies, saying "tafodol" in his cute baby voice - definitely the most polite I've seen him. As the sun began to sink, Imaan hurried everyone to clean up so they could fit in a good round of football (soccer). AT that moment a girl rode by on a bike, the first I'd seen in Syria; a soccer-playing Muslim mom and girls on bikes? I felt refreshed by the new view of Syria.

Half on foot and half on motorbike, we all met again at the open space behind Hanaan's house. Imaan set her toddler atop a small mound, gave him something to play with, and turned her focus to the game. She and I, 4-5 uncles, and any kids who wanted to join. Hanaan the other women set up a small spectators' section, complete with maate to sip as they watched.

I quickly proved useless, but man, was Imaan GOOD at football. Her team always had the advantage, even when they were outnumbered as players came and went. It was wonderful to feel free to play with the boys again, to run as fast as I could with Imaan and not fret if I crashed into one of the uncles by accident. I think Imaan was happy to have another girl on the field, too, Hanaan's daughter not included. That was a month ago, and I'm still sad I haven't gotten the chance to take up their invitation to come again.

That night Hanaan let me borrow a pair of pants and shoes to replace my dirt-filled ones from football. We ate watermelon on the porch, and I shared my "I spy" book with the daughter, she practicing her English and I asking for vocabulary translations. Until late at night I talked with Hanaan's husband and one of the brothers, the husband especially patient with my lack of Arabic. I slept at Hanaan's with her three kids, the daughter on a matress on the floor so I could have the bed. And the next day was filled with eating - "Eating eating eating!" Hanaan commanded ("Eat, Mama" the daughter corrected). And drinking maate, and drinking tea, and sharing pictures and children's report cards (1st and second in their classes), and lots of talking.

"You are my sister," Hanaan said to me, "This is your home too." And I felt amazingly at home; treated (and fed) extremely well, but permitted to help clear and set the table, and throw water and squeegee all over the house for the daily floor cleaning. I love being allowed to help with chores; usually I'm not allowed to as a guest, but Hanaan gave the perfect balance of hospitality, sisterhood, and friendship. She even let me cook rice!! I loved my time there, even joining Hanaan and her husband on their daily 5am walk through the orchards. ...Man, I miss Yabroud now!!

Lastly, getting hitched into a family could end up meaning a lot more than a one night stand; it could turn into a long-term relationship. Nearly two months ago, I met a girl named Noha in the mini market, and she spontaneously invited me over. A month later I moved in with her family. She is my sister now, with whom I exchange secret lover stories, who slaps my ass when I'm not paying attention. At this very moment I'm sitting with my new sisters Nahed and Reem, watching TV as we wait out the day until Ramadan dinner. Mom snores gently on the cushions beside us.

So, all ye travelers in heart, be ye not afraid. Seize the day, and go out and meet someone new, even if it's someone in your own hometown. There's a world of wonderful people out there, and most of them are good. Get hitched - you won't regret it.

A few of my favorite things

September 7, 2009

It's hard to explain to your Syrian host family how a picture of bike commuters and a mention of a cyclist attacking a Trimet bus can make a Portland girl incredibly homesick, as I felt after reading the Travel section of the Oregonian that Abdul had brought along. I started dreaming of jumping into Spring River, wishing to play my Irish music while driving through the trees to visit Seattle or the Oregon Coast, and lamely calling Damascus "D-town" in my head. For some reason, the song "My favorite things" from The Sound of Music has been going through my head.

To distract myself, I'd like to share with you some of my favorite new things in Syria - for this post, food, the items I will miss eating greatly when I go back to the US. The problem with having homes all over the world is that you're always homesick for somewhere...

Foul (pronouned like "fool"): What better item to start with than the way Syrians like to start their day! Foul is a breakfast dish made of broad beans and chickpeas, plus parsley, olive oil, garlic, cumin, onions... all eaten with the thin Arabic bread. Unless of course you're gluten-free. People here are always amazed when I say I don't eat bread; "How do you eat foul??" they ask. "With a spoon," I respond. Culturally, you have to understand that bread IS your preferred eating utensil here. Life without bread is like life without forks.

Helawa: Another breakfast food, it's basically sesame seed paste + sugar. Incredibly delicious.

Other typical breakfast items include yogurt-cheese, cheese (salty!), scrambled eggs, tomatoes/cucumbers, and olive oil with zaatar (oregano and thyme), most all eaten with bread (or fork for me). And very sweet fruit preserves, especially in winter when there's not so much fresh produce.

Koosa meshi: My absolutistly most favoritist food here in Syria. It's zucchini (koosa), hollowed out and stuffed with spiced rice and ground beef, then boiled in tomatoey-broth. MMMMMMM. My host family keeps offering new dishes to try, and I do politely, before going back to the leftover koosa meshi. "Khalas (enough), that's what she loves," my sister Noha says.

Anything with eggplant: Definitely waaaay more commonly eaten here. Screw the vegetarian eggplant casserole, let's just adopt Arabic food.

FRUIT: Holy cow everyone was right, the Syrian fruit is amazing. In Yabroud we just pick ripe apricots right off the tree. I love going to the market and picking out a half kilo of whatever looks good: plums, apricots, those little pears, grapes, canteloupe... Drive on any road and you'll find mountains of watermelon next to fruit stands overflowing with fresh produce. Some I've never actually eaten before, like that weird prickly orange fruit they sell everywhere. And TEEN (figs) - man, fig newtons are nothing after you have the real thing...

I'm also in love with the fact that there are smoothie stands EVERYWHERE in Damascus. Again, screw Jamba Juice, I'll go back to my favorite smoothie boy who works next to the falafel stand anyday. Lately I've been hooked on Mouz wa Haleeb (banana and milk), which Fatima's mom also made for me for breakfast at the beginning of my stay in Syria.

Pistachio and honey-filled sweets: 'Nuff said.

Ice cream from Bakdash: Erm, in how many posts have I expressed my love for this? Pounded into heavenly creaminess, and topped with pistachios. You can get it plain, or in chocolate or fruity flavors. Bashar's sure got one thing right.

Fruit (again): And this time I mean how they serve fruit for dessert in restaurants. There's something wonderful about a plate of watermelon, or a heaping pile of apricots and cherries, after an equally delicious meal.

On a non-edible note, I love the idea of playgrounds in restaurants. In a family-oriented society, restaurant owners quickly discovered that if you make the place too stiff, you won't have much business. Most restaurants are equipped with playground equipment so that kids can let out their energy while their parents enjoy a nice meal. Recalling how miserable it is to always be shushed or shushing in fancy eateries, I give my thanks to this idea. Play places should not be reserved for McDonalds.

Bolo: The most refreshing drink ever on a hot day in Damascus. Think lemonade blended with crushed mint and ice. Mmmmmm...

Turkish coffee: Drunk everywhere, for most at least once a day. It's a powder, mixed with water and heated on the stove before pouring into special cups shaped like coffee mugs, except you could probably drink everything in a mouthful and a half. It can be drunk sweetened or unsweetened, though most people prefer the latter. Just don't try to drink the powder at the bottom of your cup!

Chai (tea): They say a hot drink can actually cool you down the fastest. Usually had after meals but also anytime you feel like it, Syrians drink almost purely black tea, sweetened in the opposite manner of Turkish coffee, with a heaping spoonful and a half of sugar - in a glass cup about 1/5 the size of your coffee mug on your work desk. I think I'm getting a sweet tooth during my stay here... hopefully without the accompanying cavities.

Mate ("Meh-te"): Many ExPat Syrians moved to South America, and when they came back to visit family and friends, they brought Yerba Mate with them. Now it's drunk in most all households: You fill one of the cups used for tea halfway with Mate leaves, plus the required dash of sugar, and fill the cup with hot water. After it steeps a bit, you sip it through a special metal straw with holes to filter out the leaves. Rinse, add more sugar, and repeat. Some families all share one mate cup, rinsing the straw and passing it about to guests in companionship, and others (like my host family) have one cup per person.

At least one of the above three drinks will be brought out whenever guests come over (which happens almost daily), if not all three over the course of a long evening of conversation.

Mukassaraat: Literally, "broken bits." These are the little seeds, nuts, and other munchies commonly brought out with the above drinks. Among them: roasted pumpkin, sunflower, and watermelon seeds, peanuts, occasionally cashews or almonds, and my personal favorite Daame, or roasted chickpeas. Of course they may also be accompanied by a plate of fruit.

So these are a few of my favorite (edible) things. I hope you're hungry now!

Note to self: Do not write such a post while fasting Ramadan.

The Language of Arabic

September 1, 2009

First, I must apologize for the title, because it's very misleading. There should be an "s" at the end of "language."

Most every Arabic language book starts out by explaining the three types of Arabic: Classical, Modern Standard, and Colloquial. The Classical comes from the Qu'ran, still preserved from the Prophet's time in the 6th and 7th centuries. It's written in high register, extremely poetic and formal, but close enough to today's Arabic that readers can still understand the meaning. Impressive - especially when you compare it to the linguistic history of English. Beowulf came about at around the same time as the Qu'ran; any English speaker who can read the tale in its original form deserves a cookie.

Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), called "Fus-Ha," is the form taught in school for both natives and foreigner. People study it the same from Morocco to Dubai. It uses the full extent of Arabic grammar, even that which is not pronounced when read aloud. All written material and some TV programs such as intellectual discussions, translated Mexican soap operas, and the news use MSA as their medium. I heard newscasters at Al Jazeera get fired if they make more than three deviations from MSA - a tough standard, once you realize how differently they speak when they're not in front of the camera.

When I first got here, I only knew beginner's Fus-Ha. To speak this in everyday life sounds to natives like I just jumped out of Shakespeare. I had one little girl cover her ears when I tried to talk with her, her reason, "why do I need to know how to talk like that?" Abdul gets teased for being a Mexican when he speaks Fus-Ha. Luckily most people I've met have been very understanding, and when they see me struggling with the colloquial speech they try to use as much Fus-Ha as they can, with some difficulty. Do recall that they probably haven't needed to speak it since high school.

Colloquial Arabic, or "3amiyya," is another story. Most all of the formal grammar is tossed out, especially the case endings and joining prepositions. Fortunately for foreigners, the languages are still somewhat related, and many words are the same, or changed slightly - for example, the word "shay" becomes "shee." Some letters change sound or disappear, especially the sounds most difficult to say when talking fast; the word for "minute," "daqiqa," almost disappears into "da'i'a."

Other times it's completely, completely different. For example, take the sentence "I would like to go to the market." In MSA, you'd say "Uridu an athhub ila assouq." In 3amiyya, you'd say something like "biddi ruhhe a sou'." ...How many languages am I learning?? There's even a completely different 3amiyya word for "3amiyya."

To make matters worse, 3amiyya varies from country to country. People refer to speaking "Khaleeji" (gulf countries, like Saudi), or Misri (Egyptian), or Shaami (Syria/Lebanon/Palestine - where I'm learning), like you'd refer to the different European languages. The word for "what," "ma" or "matha" in MSA, becomes "aysh" in Khaleeji and "shoo" in Shaami. The 'q' disappears in Shaami, becomes 'g' in Khaleeji, and sometimes becomes 'k' in Iraqi. We can't even play cards together, because we have different names for all the suits!

Just like cultural differences can ignite problems, what's OK in one dialect might be horrible in another. For instance, one of my Arabic teachers back in Seattle was an Egyptian. He told the story of a female relative who was buying fish from a North African man, and they were discussing which parts she wanted. Turns out saying "Would you like the tail?" in one dialect means "Would you like to finger in the ass?" in the other. That one ended ugly.

The dialects are not even purely Arabic. The North African dialects are half French, and nigh unto unintelligible for the more central Arab nations. In Lebonan you might find Arabic, French, and English in the same sentence. I know Shaami and Turkish have exchanged much of their vocabulary over the past few centuries; for all I know, I'm learning Turkish too.

And the cherry on top is the variation of accents WITHIN the country. Yabroud is only an hour away from Damascus, and yet many from the city have a hard time interpreting their speech. One of the favorite TV shows in Syria is a comedy that features the coastal accent. Every now and then they have subtitles explaining words found only in the cities by the sea; just a few hours away, the Dimasqis have no clue what they mean. I'm wondering what kind of accent I'll turn out with, studying in Sham (Damascus), living with a family from Halab (Aleppo) in the North, in a suburb where almost everyone is from the coast. My friends from Yabroud are already having a hard time understanding me; what will it be like when I go back to Seattle and practice my Arabic with my Khaleeji friends??

Many people here in Syria ask me if Arabic is a difficult language, with all its abstract and complicated grammar rules. ACtually, that's not the hard part; rules are rules, you learn them and you move on. What's difficult about Arabic is that you toss those rules out the window the moment you leave the classroom and navigate your way through several variations of the language.

I'm certainly learning a lot of Arabic. It's just a bit more dauntings when you have a Ramadan dinner table of different Arabics laid before you, and there's no way you'll eat even half of it in just six months.

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