10 Days in Syria
I packed my stuff in the back of the car, buckled my safety belt and tried as hard as I could to keep a polite interest in my uncle’s small talk on our way to the airport.
***
Everyone I’ve met, at some point or another, brings up that dreadful question, “What do you want to do when you finish your degree?” To which I have a very simple answer, “I really don’t know.”
***
A three-minute stroll along al-Thawra street in Damascus, can single handedly crush all disillusion in any future, present or past for this little country.
***
The taxi driver smiled as his car ran quietly over the neatly lined asphalt on the new highway to Dummar. He looked up to the mountain in the distance and said quietly, as to not let me even hear him, “Don’t you wish the presidential palace overlooked all of the streets in Damascus?”
***
A dear friend of my family lost his mother on my first day in Syria. In her eulogy, two men spoke. The Sheikh who prayed for God to have mercy on her, bring her closer to him in the heaves and to protect the leader of our nation. The other was the friend who grieved for his mother and lamented the lack of freedoms and the rampant corruption.
***
Damascus is becoming everything that I hate about Cairo and Beirut. Latakia is becoming a complete and perfect nothing. And I am falling more and more in love with airports.
May 4th, 2009 at 2:38 pm
Tsk tsk tsk : )
May 4th, 2009 at 2:40 pm
i’m falling more and more in love with your writings..
ironically, you just made me miss Syria so freaking much !!
May 4th, 2009 at 4:04 pm
“and said quietly, as to not let me even hear him, “Don’t you wish the presidential palace overlooked all of the streets in Damascus?””
WTF!!…
Reading this post reminded me of what I was telling my friend yesterday. It has always been a complex thing to describe… The contrasted feelings and hopes, every single morning, at every single sight in Damascus.
A mixture of love, hate, disgust, pride, shame and GUILT. It’s so complicated and overwhelming… at least to me.
Sometimes it’s so difficult to maintain a hope in such circumstances… and in those times I just put-on my iPod and get involved in a book trying to avoid looking at people’s eyes in buses, and avoiding looking at windows, don’t want to think or feel a thing, just wanna get to my destination. In a way …trying to be comfortably numb.
May 4th, 2009 at 7:19 pm
7amdellah 3alsalameh yaz
i SOOOOOO wanted to c u : (
cuz i missed u loads.
and i share the same simple answer with u…..i dont know what to do next….it’s just the next couple of months….then, ” i dont know” would become a problem for me!
anyway…..it was nice and refreshing to hear ur voice “though i dont remember anything of the last one :P “
May 4th, 2009 at 10:11 pm
Oh how I love your words.
May 5th, 2009 at 1:41 am
Too bad we couldn’t make it. Thanks again for the bottle.
I need a moment of serenity to consummate the Sake as it was intended to.
May 5th, 2009 at 1:54 am
It’s a …60-70% chance that Dubai was in your travel itinerary from Japan to Syria or back, so it’s a legitimate question to ask: why didn’t you stop by here?!
Brilliant post, as always. Don’t you love the slyness of taxi drivers
May 5th, 2009 at 3:27 am
Alex,
Shu tsk tsk?
Layla,
Love is blind, my dear. ;)
Dania,
There’s a feeling of helplessness all around. It’s more than obvious.
Dimah,
It’s a shame we couldn’t meet up. It was barely a vacation, rather a week-long marathon from one city to the other.
Abu Fares,
I am confident you will come to appreciate the subtlety of Japanese shochu. It’s fast becoming one of my all time favorite drinks.
DJ,
Unfortunately, I flew with Qatar Airways this time, so I stopped in Doha. :(
Taxi drivers? they should make films upon films about them!
May 5th, 2009 at 5:26 am
Welcome back Yazan. The stroll in Thawra is a scenario unfortunately duplicated for me not only in various neighborhoods, but in certain gatherings as well. Your sentence made me remember feeling my heart sink at the repeated realization of how damn stuck we were as a society, as a country, with a system that will never cease to suck our blood dry. That said, I miss so much of it!
I don’t know if loving airports is a good thing; Dubai isn’t too bad, but a couple of trips through Heathrow should put you off for a long time! Not that this should put you off visiting me here at any time. :)
May 5th, 2009 at 8:13 am
Talking of films about taxi drivers, There’s an interesting one I watched in DOXBOX, directed by “Meyar Al Roumi”. six interviews with six Syrian Taxi drivers, it’s called “Six Ordinary Stories”. Regardless from the direction techniques used that weren’t exactly original, it’s a quit interesting reality film
.
http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/default.asp?page_id=2&blog_id=640
May 5th, 2009 at 12:04 pm
With all of the above though you cannot deny its charm for being what it is without being ashamed of it
May 7th, 2009 at 9:33 am
I have been to Doha – I had an interestign time there. Could not decide if I loved it – the freedom to dream up and build such crazy things …. or dispair in it’s lack of …. soul.
How did you end up in Japan? I suppose I will have to read further.
May 8th, 2009 at 4:02 am
hey there curly….
when airports are more like home… u know you’re in transition.
Well, not to say that life itself is not a continuous phase of transition too, but yeah, airports really highlight that… the truth of it is liberating and poignant. Isn’t that a strange word? Poignant? Shoo ya’ni? It hurts in a subtle way…and it gives strength in wisdom in a subtle way…
ya’ni, bil akheer, words don’t really hold much…
shhhhh