Rational Grounds

The house is an aged and slightly crumbling two story deal with the standard traditional Syrian setup - a completely nondescript outer wall with one door placed almost as an afterthought, but inside there is a central courtyard overshadowed by the one upstairs and the now two-story lime tree that rises up out of the house. Our rooms ring the central common areas. Windows and doors don't generally shut all the way, but curtains provide the rest of the necessary privacy.

The folks living downstairs - Ahmad and Hannine - are both Arabic teachers and speak little English, so the environment is highly conducive to my studies. Ahmad is a middle aged, stolid and dependable seeming fellow, and a professor at the University of Damascus. Hannine is 27 and a firecracker - a day without some tirade from her over the phone in high-speed colloquial is rare. Still, she's a sweetie to all us housemates and frequently calls us together for tea and meals with whatever friend or relative has dropped by.

Upstairs we have Khaldun, a high school science teacher and general student of politics and religion. Of the bunch, he's the most religious (meaning he doesn't drink and has read both the Koran and the Bible more than once) and I've had a couple really interesting discussions with him about regional politics and Islam.

As to the non-Syrians in the house, we first have Rashed. Rashed is from Toronto, but of Palestinian descent and grew up speaking colloquial Arabic at home, so in a pinch he's our go-to translator. Rashed oscillates between overly serious and impish, and he's the practicing Muslim of our group. He doesn't drink or smoke (except hookah) and he prays daily. He's also got two nipple rings and a belly stud. There's a lot of Rashed's history I haven't sussed out yet.

Julia and Lily are two students from Bucharest, Romania, who share the largest room. Originally they were staying with Julia's step-sister in Mughaim, a Palestinian refugee camp. But a combination of Turkish toilets ("squatty potties" as us expats call them), screaming children, and the fact that Julia's sister's husband turned out to be a pimp who wanted to sell them to the local mukhabarat agent to help defuse some vague problem he had with the law, convinced them to move in with us.

Then there's Maria, an Italian intern with the UN High Commissioner on Refugees here in Damascus. She's quite a bit like Audrey Hepburn's character in Breakfast at Tiffany's - flighty and fun and "high society on a budget." We don't see an awful lot of Maria as she's usually at the Iraqi refugee camps all day and partying all night when she's not traveling around with her boyfriend here.

Maria has promised to see about taking me along one day to the refugee camps as an observer. There are some 1.4 million Iraqi refugees in Syria these days, mostly in and around Damascus. The sheer numbers have been driving housing prices up and turned the ordinarily chaotic immigration office into a nightmare. I've run into a few on the streets, or at least I assume so because native Syrians probably wouldn't bother asking an obvious foreigner how to get to the UNHCR, the city center, or the Hejaz train station. I've also gotten to talk to a few young men who were translators for KBR or the Marines until recently. One asked me if I knew of any way for him to get a visa for the US - he'd been waiting for 5 months for a response from the embassy here. I didn't have anything for him of course, and he nodded and walked off. More uncomfortable was my visit to the Sayyidda Ruquayya Mosque, a preferred hang out and shelter for the Iraqis here. Just about everyone stared at me the entire time I was there, and a few asked where I was from. I said Canada.

On a bit of a lighter note, last weekend I hopped a bus over to Beirut, Lebanon, for a friend's wedding and fell in love with the country all over again. From the first moment, driving down Mt. Lebanon towards Beirut as the sunset bathed everything in red's and purples, the weekend was a dream. Well, okay, so I got dropped off in South Beirut only after I realized the driver wasn't stopping at the official bus station and instead heading to Sidon, but that was the only real hiccup. I checked into the hotel I stayed at last summer, and the hotel concierge (plus the internet cafe manager down the street) remembered me! It was as if I'd imagined the intervening year: everything looked and felt the same. I spent the first day with some friends touring the National Museum and then having dinner at a classy and authentic restaurant in Dahiyeh, the Shiite southern suburbs of Beirut. Not only did we have a fantastic meal with real rural food for a pittance, but there was another wedding celebration there at the same time, complete with ululations, zithers, and drums. Mumtaz!

The wedding I actually came for was something else, though. A substantial slice of Beirut Society was there (Nir Rosen of the New York Times, Juliet Wurr of the US Embassy (and Founder of SIPA Follies, class of '89!), and faculty from the American University of Beirut for starters). The bride and groom were both Armenian Catholic, and the service was conducted entirely in Armenian. The reception that night was at St. George's Convent in the Metn, the mountainous region just east of Beirut. Two giant buffets of gormet food, a dessert buffet, open bar, a band with a multi-lingual opera singer, fireworks, a big screen TV for people who weren't close enough to the stage, and dancing until 3 AM. The bride sang a love song to the groom (well!), and they both did a dance medley to kick things off (salsa, tango, swing, etc.). The whole thing must have cost a pretty penny, including the open-bar parties before and after the day of the event (invariably at rooftop pools overlooking the ocean).

I got a slew of business cards from media, NGO, and private sector folks and I'm keen to see if any of those can turn into an actual paying job. If I can get a new visa for Syria (it seems I can get a Lebanese visa at the border with little problem) I'll be visiting again real soon (at the urging of a number of folks over there). Between Beirut, DC, and New York I've gotta find *someone* willing to pay me a living wage, right?

Back in Syria we've had a bit of fun as well. Yesterday was spent at a swimming pool close to the Lebanese border, and then shopping in the tax-free mountain town of Bloudan nearby. Once back in Damascus we changed and headed out to Serail, a club over in the Christian Quarter, where we drank and danced until 4:30 AM (Ahmad and Hannine came with us - Hannine parties almost as much as Maria, and can cut quite a rug). It's comforting to know that you can still shake your booty to "YMCA" and "Hips Don't Lie" in just about any corner of the world.

Alright, that's way too long so I'll cut it off here. Ciao!