‘Let me guess – sunny and warm?’
Without even looking we proffered this appropriate greeting to our first full day in Damascus. After a four-day tour of Lebanon (recounted in some earlier articles), my friend and I moved-on to Syria, primarily Damascus but with planned trips into the surrounding countryside, first to Bosra and then Palmyra.
When it came time to negotiate a taxi to Bosra, about two hours south of Damascus, we were so accustomed to the experience that we burst out laughing at the outrageous first offers from the drivers. Clearly they were not used to dealing with such quick-study tourists because they couldn’t quite catch themselves smiling at our bargaining prowess. (Hard-earned, to be sure, after we locked ourselves in a Lebanese taxi, forcing the driver to give us our correct change or else forgo an afternoon of additional fares.) We eventually agreed to a price less than half of where we started and felt tremendously satisfied; only later did we find out from a local that we still overpaid. ‘Said the spider to the fly…’ Those smiles, we should have known.
Less beguiling was our experience of Syrian politics. The situation is complicated, far more so than one might think after reading, for example, the description offered by the U.S. State Department: ‘Officially, Syria is a republic. In reality, however, it is an authoritarian regime that exhibits only the forms of a democratic system.’ All of which is true, and to be sure, talking about politics with Syrians can be surreal. We had the following exchange with a Syrian student at the American University of Beirut:
‘Did you vote in the last election?’ [To confirm Syrian President Bashar Al-Asad.]
‘Of course.’
‘Who was the opposition?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘If you didn’t vote for the president, who would you have voted for?’
‘No one, it was either Yes or No.’
‘Do you have political parties in Syria?’
‘What is that?’
When he grew wary of our questions, fairly pointing-out that many westerners just want to hear that all Syrians hate their president, we tried to explain that our interest was purely academic:
‘So, for example, whereas Syria amended its constitution in 2000 to permit Bashar to become president before age forty, Britain doesn’t even have a constitution.’
‘What is a constitution?’
What’s complicated is that while political discussion is clearly self-censored, it took us days to realize that Facebook is banned in Syria because most internet cafes used proxy servers. We met two other Syrians, Sary and Radwan, both employed by the same local private firm, who, after learning we were Canadian, asked us why Jon Stewart was always giving Canada such a hard time on The Daily Show. Most perplexing of all: the U.S. considers Syria ‘a regional hub for Iranian support to terrorist groups, such as hizballah’. The only building between the Lebanese and Syrian borders, its pink and orange sign resplendent with hegemonic glory? Dunkin’ Donuts.
Just for fun, we challenged Sary and Radwan to an arm-wrestling contest to see who would pick-up the cheque for our drinks. (We invited them for drinks after they translated our explanation to the Syrian military of why we were taking pictures of an abandoned school that turned-out to be a military facility.) The catch: Winner pays. (We paid.)
This raises some interesting observations about male culture in Syria. There were very few women out-and-about, shopping or working, even in more cosmopolitan Damascus. (We saw almost no women, other than tourists, in the desert town of Palmyra.) What we did see were many men walking around, arm-in-arm, even holding hands. Most gay culture in Syria is underground (necessitated by Article 520 of the Syrian penal code, which punishes ‘carnal relations against the order of nature’ with three years imprisonment), so at first we didn’t know what we were seeing. After we gave it a go and no one seemed to notice (my friend and I are clearly not Syrian, so it could have a different significance for us), we started to think the situation was more like being in an all-boys school: with no females around, there is less pressure to appear hyper-masculine in the perpetual competition for mates. The West, of course, struggles in the opposite direction, where there are many more women in public but just as many men worried about ‘looking gay’. Two ships, alas, pass each other in the night.
To end on a lighter note, it turns out that the Syrians (like the Lebanese) are crazy for football. On our way back to Damascus from Palmyra, three hours through the Syrian desert, we stopped at the Baghdad Cafe (about 130km from its namesake) to purchase water. There was nothing but sand, rocks and highway as far as we could see in every direction. My friend emerged from the shop to report that the owner ‘likes Germany in the World Cup’. Of course he does. Back in Palmyra the previous evening, we joined most of the town crowded inside the only restaurant with a subscription to the World Cup channel, watching Spain defeat Paraguay in the quarter finals. As the game wound-down a donkey-cart lumbered by outside, taking advantage of the cool evening atmosphere (about thirty degrees centigrade). The second-loudest cheer of the evening erupted when Spain scored the winning goal, eclipsed almost immediately by an even louder cheer as the camera panned the crowd to show distraught – but beautiful – female Paraguayans. Of course we joined in the enthusiasm.
