Letter From Damascus

DAMASCUS, Syria — We’re on the road out of Syria, taking the bus through the hard, sun-baked landscape that the Crusaders we’re studying crossed on foot and horseback. It’s quite a bit faster and easier on an air-conditioned bus with plenty of rest stops along the way. Most importantly, we’ve got a fridge full of bottled water and enough Imodium AD to lock up an elephant for a month. Thankfully, no one has been in dire intestinal straits so far; it would be really nice if that trend holds during and after our return to Alanya, when my beard can get trimmed and we can stop being so petrified of tap water and most foods.

The past 10 days have been fascinating and challenging as we’ve moved east and then south from our little tourist town on the seashore through the increasingly conservative and Muslim eastern regions of Turkey and then into the Syrian Arab Republic. From beginning to (nearly) end, we have observed a tremendous amount of variations and apparent contradictions in the political and religious theories and practices of the places we’ve seen.

Politically, there are two crucial differences between Turkey and Syria that make themselves immediately apparent. First, the cult of personality surrounding the political leadership is creepier than in Turkey because the cult in Turkey is centered on Atatürk, the founder of the Turkish Republic who has been dead for somewhat less than a century, while the cult here concerns the current president and his late father, the previous president. Being stared at by pictures of an icon of the state is weird in both places, but the Big Brother feeling seems stronger when the man staring at you is currently The Man. Atatürk worship, by contrast, feels more like the usual veneration of a “founding father” on steroids.

It’s also notable in this case that the current president, al-Bashar, succeeded his late father as president (for life) under rather unusual circumstances. The previous president had a couple of sons, but did not groom al-Bashar to take up the mantle of the office. Instead, al-Bashar’s brother—by most accounts a thug—had been a lock to take over for his father in due time. The untimely death of this thuggish brother put a serious wrinkle in the plans, however, so the leadership was faced with a choice between al-Bashar, then working as an optometrist in London, and a cousin at least as thuggish as the original choice. It was decided that the family name should be prioritized over thuggishness, so al-Bashar got the call and was elected president (effectively for life) by a 99% margin upon the death of his father.

These days, an official portrait of al-Bashar stares down at all and sundry from walls, car windows, and every other place you can think of. Looking at these pictures, I have gotten the distinct impression that the president looks quite unhappy in all of them, especially those in which he is dressed up in military uniforms. Whether gazing seriously from his dress uniform or sporting fatigues, aviator glasses, and a scruffy beard and looking through binoculars (at a border station?), President al-Bashar does not look like a happy camper when he is forced to play soldier for propaganda reasons.

This brings up the second major difference between Turkey and Syria: where Turkey is a heavily-militarized state with a big inferiority complex, Syria is a police state with an inferiority complex so severe as to dwarf Turkey’s. In Syria, there is a cop on every corner, beckoning drivers on through green lights and stopping them at red ones. Then there are the other policemen with different shoulder boards who man sentry booths and/or stand around watching the world go by; these are still not as scary as those who wear plain black fatigues and casually wave AK’s at the world. Still scarier are the cops you don’t see but know are out there, watching your every move.

So strict is Syrian security that there are significantly fewer weapons visible on the streets here. In Turkey, it seems like everyone from the official soldiers, jandarma, and police forces to the lowliest rent-a-cops at museums and such, is carrying—and often with a distressing disregard for basic weapons safety. In Syria, those who do carry—openly, anyway—are equally casual in their methods, but they are much fewer and further between than their Turkish counterparts. The power of the police state is such that there is simply no need to arm the traffic police with anything more than little orange-and-white-striped PVC batons to direct cars with. The real enforcers are the guys with no ID’s but pistols in their pants who will spring into action at the first sign of trouble, and everyone knows they’re out there.

As tourists, we knew we were being watched closely at all times, but the police presence was not terribly intrusive on our experience of Syria. This might be a country that lists about a dozen different versions of “911” on signs at major intersections so you can call not just “the police” but the appropriate kind of police to suit your needs (civil, traffic, military, etc.), but all those cops are more concerned with protecting Syria from us than protecting us from Syria. Much more impactful on our day-to-day experience were the social and religious mores of a much more conservative and less secular Islamic state than Turkey.

For the first time this semester, I really, truly felt like a foreigner in Syria. Turkey felt different, but still like a secular, Westward-looking, prospective EU member state. Syria, for reasons of language, culture, and religion, took me aback in ways that Turkey has not. For the first time, I was so aware of the gender differences in (public) society that it felt truly oppressive even to me. Many of the girls in the group found it nearly unbearable.

Whereas most Turkish mosques will ask that women dress respectfully and cover their heads when they visit, the Syrian mosques we visited had stations out front where they handed out drab full-body coverings to all non-Muslim women who wanted to enter, regardless of how much they had covered on their own. Once inside, too, things felt different, as various guides conflictingly demanded that our girls go to the women’s side because they were female and to the other side because they were not Muslim. Eventually, the non-Muslim side won out, but the experience on the way in had already cast a pall over the visit before it had really even begun.

One of the strangest parts of the gender divide was the apparent contradictions it produced. One night, walking home from supper, we saw a woman with a black shroud covering her entire face playing with something with her hands under her veil. After a few moments, we realized that she was texting, showing an odd juxtaposition of the 10^th century and the 21^st.

Everyone was also struck by the phenomenon of “indoor fashion” that has been produced by the covering culture. Almost every other store displayed X-rated lingerie of every variety imaginable in its windows, as well as skimpy, sequined, brightly-colored dresses and skirts. Outside most of these stores would be a cluster of fully-covered women, gesturing and apparently talking about the styles that appealed to them. More often than not, there would also be a few men inside, picking out some new private-sphere wear for their wives. Even the Muslim Barbie-doll equivalent we saw in the souq (bazaar) came dressed in her burqa but accompanied by what the packaging described as her “indoor fashion:” a shiny, sheer and skimpy little number that must mirror what most of the covered women we see on the streets wear inside their homes.

This dichotomous fashion sense seems to point to a vicious circle generated by the religio-social mores of the society. Women are told to cover because men are simply unable to control themselves in the presence of exposed female flesh, which both provides cover for the men to be almost nastily aggressive in their looks at our un-burqa’ed girls and forces the women to feel like they have to distinguish themselves beneath their burqas because they all look exactly the same on the outside. For married women who can no longer even make up their faces, the big fashion items are shoes and handbags to help differentiate themselves outwardly (imagine trying to pick your mother/sister/wife out of a crowd of fully-covered females) and lingerie to feel unique and sexy underneath their shrouding.

***

All of that said, Syria wasn’t all bad and I’m certainly glad I saw it. On a basic level, we’re all pretty strung out from all the time in buses and moving from hotel to hotel, but—knock wood—no one has gotten sick so far and the Syria trip has a reputation for decimating McGhee Center students each year. On a more involved level, we have seen a lot of interesting things that have both challenged us and helped to put our other experiences in perspective.

Though Turkey is 99% Muslim and is an undeniably a Muslim country, it really has not felt overwhelmingly “Other” so far, and this trip to Syria has really driven that home for me. Favorite Turkish catchphrases like “secularism” and “Turkish Islam” mean a lot more to me now that I’ve glimpsed some of the alternatives that Turkey is trying so hard to differentiate itself from. This became especially apparent when our program secretary, a Turkish woman, came to join us for the last few days of the trip and kept mentioning how happy she was to live in secular Turkey, where she is free to dress, act, and worship (or not) almost entirely as she pleases.

Syria also gave us an important perspective on the relative economic fortunes of Turkey and the Arab world. While both countries make fairly extravagant claims about all the developments they expect over the next five, ten, twenty-plus years, Turkey’s claims feel much more realistic in comparison to Syria’s. Our hotel might have been across the street from the imposing Four Seasons Damascus, but the group’s overwhelming impression of Syria was of an economically depressed, socially immobile country. Turkey feels like a nation of people that are individually and collectively pulling themselves up by their bootstraps to become a regional and even global economic and military power, but Syria has a very dead-end feel to it, like a small town that almost nobody gets out of.

While it’s obviously not excusable, the rage Arabs are often purported to feel towards America and the West becomes at least a little more understandable when you see how little their societies have to offer them. As one of my professors pointed out, once the oil money dries up, these states won’t even be able to provide the socialist benefits they now do to keep their citizens quiet. We saw how long the lines were at the state ration stations for rice and sugar; when those goods dry up, will the cult of personality surrounding the political leadership be strong enough to hold the country together?

Finally, there were some things in Syria that were just plain cool to see. We visited one of the three Aramaic-speaking villages left and got to visit the Convent of Sts. Sergius and Bacchus, where we heard the Lord’s Prayer said in Aramaic, the language in which Christ first spoke it. It was also surreal to see statues of the Virgin and churches and other Christian sights labeled in Arabic, as everything in that little village was. Arabic might be the language of Syria, even its Christian parts, but it’s still a little mind-bending in a post-9/11 world to read and hear it in a Christian context when all that is Arab/Muslim and all that is Western/Christian are so often depicted as being diametrically at odds.

Also, as the land of the Crusades, Syria has some really exciting castles and citadels and other Crusades-era things to see. That was part of the reason for the study tour in the first place, but seeing the Krak des Chevaliers (where I gave a presentation on the Knights Hospitaller) is a very different experience than reading about the castle in a textbook. We also got to see the tomb of Saladin, whom we’ve read so much about and whose name still resonates strongly in the Arab world today.

***

And now we’re back in Alanya, complete with beards, scarves, and daggers galore. The weather is a bit cooler and cloudier than it was a week and a half ago, but the sun is peeking through and the sea looks inviting. It’s good to be home; suddenly Turkey and Turkish (the people and the language) seem even friendlier and more familiar than they did before. Everyone’s glad to be back, except for the looming reality of all the homework we’ve ignored for 10 days. Oh well, off to Cappadocia with my friends on Thursday…

On the Road Again

Goin' Places That I've Never Been

ALEPPO, Syria—It’s just before 10:30pm, and I’m bedding down in Syria for the first time. We’ve been on the road since 7am this past Friday morning; in that time we’ve made it from Alanya to Tarsus to Urfa to Hatay (Antioch) and, now, across the border and into Aleppo.

Wow, is it different. Sure, we’re a couple of days’ bus travel from home base in Alanya, but it feels like we’re a world away. In many ways, we are. We’ve left more-or-less-democratic, EU-accession-hopeful, secular Turkey for a piece of the honest-to-goodness Middle East. After trying so hard for so long to communicate in Turkish, we now have to leave that impulse behind and go back to relying on English and whatever shreds of French we might happen to know in order to communicate here. We got a 30-second lecture on important Arabic words, but the only one that seems to have collectively stuck is “shukran” (thank you). Life comes at you right to left and in Arabic script; fully-covered women (both traditionally burqa-ed and the so-called “Muhajibabes”) pass you in the street; pictures of the president stare down at you every 10 to 15 feet. Suddenly, Turkey and Turkish seem quite a bit more approachable/manageable than they first appeared.

It’s been a long journey. It started last Thursday night, when my roommate and I went out to a Turkish barber together to get matching haircuts for the Syria trip. It was an amazing experience: my first buzz cut and my first proper shave all in one wonderful package, finished off by a flaming ball of cotton torching off all my ear and nose hairs and a wonderful upper-body massage to send me on my way. Certainly got my 20 Liras’ worth out of that experience. I don’t have much hair left on top of my head (don’t worry, Mom, it wasn’t a full-fledged buzz: I still have some of my golden locks and they should be more or less normal by the time you visit in November), but there’s plenty on my face. Over the semi-objections of my girlfriend, my roommate and I have made a No-Shave Syria pact; I’m currently way ahead of him in the beard-growing standings, but still haven’t quite exceeded the acceptable-scruffiness zone in my girlfriend’s estimation, so it’s good both ways.

The ride across southeastern Turkey was exhausting but incredible. Tarsus, our first stop, was no great shakes as a city, but we did get to see a great ruined Roman village on our way there. Urfa, where we spent the next day and a half, was the consensus pick for the group’s favorite city since Istanbul. It’s a very different feel from Istanbul—everyone felt really foreign for the first time in a while and it’s a much more conservative and agriculturally-based place—but the people were unbelievably friendly even by Turkish standards and the city had a great energy to it that everyone enjoyed. There was also a lot to see: the still-impressive citadel, the cave in which Abraham was born, the fountain full of fish that would supposedly turn anyone who ate them blind, and a particularly happening bazaar.

The past two days were spent in Hatay/Antakya/Alexandretta/Antioch (nobody really knows the name of this city anymore, apparently). Hatay was a big let-down after the fun of Urfa. It was nice to spend two consecutive nights in the same bed for the first time in days, but the city itself seemed to rub everyone the wrong way. It was gritty, small, and unfriendly—even the citadel we’d gotten excited to see turned out to be a hilltop with a café and a few old-looking stones on top of it. We did get to see the ancient Church of St. Peter—essentially a worship space in a cave with a nice façade—which was interesting, but it was a long couple of days there nonetheless.

This morning, we got on our new tour bus and headed for the border. It was about a 45-minute drive out of Hatay to the border crossing point, and it became clearer and clearer as we drove that we were leaving the semi-Westernness that reaches even into southeastern Turkey for the undeniably Other of the Levant. The last few kilometers were essentially a no-man’s land, with barbed wire fences springing up from the semi-desert landscape, guard towers, and a constant though not overwhelming flow of military traffic towards and away from the border itself.

Once we reached the crossing point, we had to dismount from the bus, walk up to the customs officer, hand over our documents individually, and then walk across a few hundred meters of empty concrete parking lot to get to the Syrian side. Once across the open space, we walked into the Syrian immigration control station, where we sat on benches for what must have been about a half-hour while our tour guide and professors wrangled with our passports and group visa to get everyone over the border in one piece. Eventually, we got the word that we were good to go, and got back on the bus to head into Aleppo proper.

Our first stop outside of the border area was a part of the old Roman spice road that intersected the main road to Aleppo. We paused for a few minutes of picture-taking, then boarded the bus again to get into town and lunch, which we ate at a nice café right outside the walls of the famous Citadel of Aleppo. Sated, we got ourselves checked into the Baron Hotel, which has hosted everyone from Lawrence of Arabia to Agatha Christie to Atatürk. It’s lost a little of its edge since then, but it’s still fun to be staying where all those famous people did.

fter lunch, we got a quickie tour of the local bazaar, then got turned loose with what felt like oodles of cash (the Syrian pound is roughly equivalent to two U.S. cents, so we’re all walking around with wads of 500-pound notes in our pockets like it’s Monopoly money). I spent a productive afternoon racking up the brownie points by playing Brinks truck/bag man/attentive white man for my girlfriend and one of our other (girl) friends as they shopped the bazaar for scarves and little wallets and such. Thoroughly shopped out after a couple of hours, they took pity on me and we resurfaced from the covered bazaar to take a sunset walk around the citadel, which was glorious. Wanting to see the butchers’ and spice merchants’ section of the bazaar, we decided to go back in and see what we could see.

Turns out that closing time is sunset around here, so the sides (and heads) of lamb and chicken were coming down off the meat hooks, the steel curtains were rolling down over the storefronts, and everyone was rushing to get home. After tourist hours, the bazaar became a much more intimidating place, and we started looking for the exits ourselves. Thankfully, no less than four or five Syrian men decided to lighten the mood by complimenting me on my two wives. One of them even called me “Superman.” I might be the Man of Steele, but where I come from we keep it to one girl at a time.

Once we’d worked our way out of the bazaar, we emerged onto some kind of a surface road but were still amongst crowds of men and without a solid idea of how to get back to the hotel. After skedaddling up towards a better-lit portion of town and taking stock of our surroundings, the “wives” proved their worth by coming up with the bright idea to ask directions at the Aleppo Sheraton across the street. (This is why Superman always travels with at least two wives in tow: it doubles his chances of having a good idea.) The Sheraton’s bell captain came to the rescue, providing a map of the city with clear directions on it for us to get back in time for supper. We followed his directions, made a lucky guess on which left to take (street signs have not caught on yet in this part of the world), and made it back to our rooms safe and sound—and with a new appreciation for the power of sundown in an Arab town.