Dimashq #7: A Winter Day in Shēm

End Notes


The year is coming to a close. So is my time here, in this country that doesn’t seem to move, but through which I’ve moved a lot during the last five months.

I just finished lunch-fast out on the terrace of my room, my fingers getting sticky from the orange dribblings running off the rinds, my tongue burning a bit from the bread dipped in hommus spiced with some “oriental” pepper concoction, and my thoughts gaining speed, fueled by the lukewarm coffee I’m pouring from the rekwe (Arabic coffee pot). There’s no chair out there, so I sat with my ass on the dusty terrace, and pulled hunks of bread and fruit from plates I placed upon a stool. The little wall obstructed my view of the street, so I looked upwards, towards the clotheslines crisscrossing the terraces above me, the tired branches of a tree, some unimaginative, beat apartment buildings across from me, and the winter sun, edging around grey-white clouds. Car horns and bus engines rumbled anciently from the main street, shēri3 yarmūk, behind me, and the sharp nasal cries of butane hawkers and their clanging of wrenches against tanks, down in the alley below.

Me and everyone else in Damascus are well into the after-noon part of the day, yet my roommate Ed still lies frozen in sleep on the Bedouin padding in the living room, poisoned a bit from last night’s whiskey, obscure Arabic literature beside him. His two guests, a wicked-smart Brit and his Syrian Kurdish girlfriend, lie coughing and ill and semi-somnolent in his bedroom, just down the darkish hallways from me. The eternal drip from the shower echoes from the bathroom, and makes this apartment sound like a cavernous dungeon when everyone’s quiet.

Out on the terrace, just a few minutes ago, I had space to consider the splinters of reality that have been pressing into my mind over the last few weeks: I need a goddamn job, and one that furthers my aim of becoming a globally savvy, well-rounded journalist. I’ve been so unbearably fortunate all of my life to not only receive financial support from my family on many of my ambitious undertakings, but also to receive their moral, emotional, and intellectual support, but despite such fortune, I must start floating the boat myself. And that ain’t cliché, man, that’s me… that’s cliREAL. “Independent journalist” is not so independent when a non-employer has got the tab on your expenses. And, the key question: how to get that first foot in the door, in the first place, while there’s a crack, wrench it open with all your strength, and jump into that realm of a subject you’re passionate about and get PAID to document it, analyze it, and disseminate info about it? Right, most people who know a little bit about the game will say “Well, just get out there, start writing, and keep sending out your articles. Somebody will pick you up along the way.” Or, with a bit more awareness, someone like Vince, our wicked-smart British guest, says to me in our chat last night that the friends he has who are now making it as journalists, some working for sweet publications like The Guardian, just kept writing articles on a topic and sent them out over and over to publications, beating them over the head with writing until someone got the hint, read their work, and employed them, though he admits it’s a rare thing in a competitive world. OK, I guess I can do that. I just need to work on my assertiveness,
But what’s the first question I want to ask to guide an article or piece? Should I interview, research, fact-find, or investigate? Who do I talk to? What is that issue, in that place, that I want the world to know about and pay attention to? How can I make the issues that I focus on part of a larger struggle for democracy and justice? How can I make my work count for something larger than just my cultural interests and my paycheck? Some practical questions, and a couple BIG questions that take life experience to answer.
Sigh.


A Winter Day in Shēm
Well, I haven’t left the broad, crumbled arms of this city and ancient Arab capital since my last post, when I gave the scoop on Sweida and the Shatila camp in Beirut. But the last month has been plenty full, and there’s been no long bus rides across the breadth of countries or national borders—can you believe it? Just the daily routine.

December 12^th, 2010
Awoke today in my new apartment to the crisp grey wet sad of Yarmouk, my new neighborhood. The ‘a3da beduwiya (Bedouin seating) in this living room, composed of simple green pads arranged around the edge of the room, with back padding and arm rests, is an incredibly comfy place to sleep. Besides, Ed and Tray got the two bedrooms, and I’m paying less for my arrangement in the living room, so it’s all good.
The sky light, kind of dripping through the window at this morning hour, is grey—the first time I’ve not woken to crisp December sunblades jumping in the window since I moved a week & ½ ago to this neighborhood built on a Palestinian refugee camp (thus the full name used when asking directions is muķeyyim yarmūk: the Yarmouk camp), in a lot healthier-looking shape than the Palestinian Shatila camp in Beirut I saw last month. Damn, the air in the living room is so cold I can see specks of fog in my breath, and the daylight is so dim I just want to slip back into the padding… NO. Up and at ‘em. Morning routine, including brushing teeth over a white sink striped with grey stains and polluted with an eternal leak, and jump into the bathroom which is your average Palestinian all-in-one: cheap Chinese washing machine, shower, sink, and toilet. Back to the padding, set the pillows and tacky blankets up, and get into that hour of self-seeking meditating,

I open my eyes. Look out the window behind me and WHAT?! Huge snow hunks, like snowballs tossed down from the gods above. They’ve already coated the little street below the window in frosting, covering up the mild but permanent layer of trash strewn here and there, covered up the everlasting potholes in the asphalt and the chinks in the sidewalk concrete, and obscuring my view of the Yasir Arafat posters pasted to every other surface, his mediocre smile and Palestinian head scarf on display for all to see. I run into Ed’s bedroom and wake the sleeping beast.
“No, fuck off Sam. You’re not serious.”
I prance into Tray’s room and do the same. He moves, and mumbles, and is still again. Only after a good half hour of me in the kitchen putting eggs, veggies, mint, and black tea to work, do both of the young Brits ascend from their bedrooms, covered in long green Bedouin-style gelabiya robes, clashing with Tray’s red hair and Ed’s blond, chuckling and “Yea dat’s brilliant snow, in’t bruv?” at the unusual weather.
Breakfast cooked, I run off to the window, grab my video camera, and document the snow anomaly while it lasts, wishing a Merry Christmas to all the Christian Palestinians in the area. I commence and complete my breakfast, dress warmly, throw books into shitty torn backpack, and I push down the echoing stairs, past the walls of chipped concrete, and past the humming water pump motor and out into the awful cold, wet, slushy grey. It’s the kind of weather that, as my new sneakers become reeeaaal moist inside just crossing the street, makes me wonder why I haven’t chosen a more humor-giving, happy place to make my own, like my friend Sam Steinberger has done with green, fertile South America. I look both ways on the main drag, shēri3 yarmūk, past all the clothing shops that look snappish and clean and newer ‘an a baby against the aged camp sidewalks, ALL of which seem to have “New Collection” scribbled on their windows (new collection of what? Who’s supposed to read that?), and witness every single female in a tight hijab, many of the older ones wearing a lot more than that, including some fierce World War II-looking winter jackets. A land of squeeze, whether from the clothes people dawn, or by the hand of this sternly undemocratic government. Then I get a brief flash in my mind’s eye of the pictures that I just saw on the internet of my gorgeous acquaintance Nabou Gaye off in sunny Senegal land, all colorful and hijab-less, and again wonder what is it that keeps me in this region of the world. Why can’t I make things easy on myself and just settle in Cancún, get my tourism Spanish together, and spend the rest of my life writing for a hotel magazine, making the extent of my activism improving the working conditions for luggage porters?
Stick hand out, step back to avoid fumes and splashing slush from passing automobiles, and hop onto the little white van, es-servīs, that rolls to a stop ahead of me. Within, I squeeze bag close to me as I pack into benches with the rest of the discontented travelers around me: a soldier in camouflage fatigues and low hat, and a man in jeans with a scar by his eye, his hand casually rested on the knee of the soldier beside him, and several women in hijabs and those World War II jackets. Staring out at the passing buildings, I realize that I’ve forgotten a lot of the seventy-five or so vocabulary words for my lesson coming up, and so I frantically yank the list of words from my bag and chant them over and over to myself amid the cramped servīs, making every passenger around me wonder just what language this gringo is speaking to himself.
“qal,” said with force. “OK, that means ‘slaughter’. ‘foox’ is a special incense from the Puntland region. Got it.”
I hop out, trying to absorb the vocab and their meanings from the list even as I cross the street, pass the hot sweet corn soup vendors and smoking men with heads wrapped in red and white Bedouin scarves, and hop onto another servīs, handing the driver another ten Syrian lira. Five minutes later I’ve descended from the little white van, and stand with the list of vocab, shivering under a shop’s awning, chanting the words like a rabbi at the Wailing Wall, as the snow continues to fall. The hour arrives, and I move through the little side streets of Mesēkin Berza, the ‘hood where I ate ifTār with that Somali friend of mine and wrote about all those months ago, and children persist with their street games, even in the snow. As I approach the little purple door of Yūsef, my teacher, and poke my head around looking for a doorbell, a young man in beanie cap, likely a Somali, but skin like a Jamaican immigrant to New York, asks me, alarmed, in perfect English, “What are you doing?”
“Meeting my friend.”
“Yūsef?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, OK.”
Yūsef comes to the door, his dark, Yemeni-looking eyebrows scrunch, and he whisks me through the massive curtains keeping the little warmth there is in his apartment, and shuts the metallic door to his windowless cavern home. I seat myself with commando speed at the little couch with the little desk, observe the real old-fashioned black oil furnace with chimney pipe going up to the ceiling, result of electric heating being far too expensive for this man of humble means, and I pull out my notebook. Even as he heads back to the kitchen to cook up some special Somali tea, Yūsef says with his stern accent, “OK, so as not lose any time, we start about the new words. Now, tell me about what is būr?”
“Mountain.”
“Mmm, and rāħo?”
“Umm, luxury.”
“Gooood!”
And so on and so on.
I sit there at the desk, my feet hovering above the floor for fear of them touching its venomously cold surface, writing every word he says loudly from the kitchen in Somali, and then its English counterpart, my bitty voice recorder sitting beside my papers. He comes shuffling back in with a tray with glasses and a jalmad (kettle) full of tea, pours some for both of us, offers me sugar, but then drops some tiny sweetener pills in his tea.
“I cannot take sugar, you know? I have diabetes.” He mixes in the fizzing pills.
I only put one spoonful of sugar in my glass, all of a sudden hyperconscious of the tremendous amount of sugar I’ve been taking in over the last five months, and this precious thing I’m still holding on to called good health. So many fellas in this region of the world, poor or rich, educated or streetucated, wheeze for breathe, got rotten teeth and skin, are bald, and got a well-formed belly by the time they got thirty years, and I don’t want to slip into that, despite all my trying to just blend in with the crowd.
We sit. He faces me, me hunched over my note papers—real master-pupil type stuff. Conversations about the subtle differences in the words for “Take this” and “spoon”, which sound exactly alike to me, and the various systems for forming plurals, and we take baby steps into the realm of wada sheekeesi (conversation). What an odd language: thick and throaty as a dog’s bark, yet with tiny vowels at the ends of words that clip to completion in quick guttural stops, like a lot of Japanese words do. Couple that sonic aesthetic with my trembling attempts at proper pronunciation, and I look like a white guy learning Japanese in preparation for a trip to the Horn of Africa—strange.
Now, I’m good, I know that, but despite that, Yūsef acts Yoda-like with me, folding his hands and holding his praise with great restraint, but giving those little smiles at certain comments I make that let me know we’re making progress. He tells me about his clan in Mogadishu—where he’s from—and the wide spread of dialects across the Somali-speaking regions, to my immense disappointment, me having begun the study of this queer tongue with the thought that it was relatively unified and homogenous. Not so. Well I just got to bite my intellectual lip, and keep going.
A knock at the door, and Yūsef looks up with the alertness of a frightened deer. He peeks through the curtains, opens it, and with a machine-gun fire of guttural greetings in Somali, lets his boy Maħmūd, rounder and taller and smoother dressed than him, inside. I shout my new word, gal (enter) at him, we exchange some light little Syrian Arabic greetings, and he slips into the obscurity of the little room beyond this one. Before Yūsef sits back down, a recorded call to prayer comes floating up from the speakers of his computer, like as if we got a little mosque right beside the house, and he takes a look at his computer reverently, and closes an open program before sitting down.
So the lesson goes on as before, Yūsef’s hands stay clasped, I stay hunched over the papers, my hands spread tensely over the surface of the desk. As we experiment with a little dialogue, the lesson’s time winding up tight as a spool of floss, we play with the line “waa maxay naaneystaadu?” (“What’s your nickname?”), and he responds slowly with “naaneystaydu waa san dheere”, and I burst out laughing: “My nickname is long nose.” No brilliant comedy, but you know that feeling of elation that makes you giggle when you’re understanding something in a new and unfamiliar language, right? Just thought it was worth writing about.
2:30 comes, we talk for a few minutes past the minute hand, and throwing jackets and scarves on, we crack the door to Yūsef’s curtained fortress, and he witnesses frozen water falling from the sky for one of, if not THE first time in his life. Totally unimpressed at the Middle Eastern snowstorm, he says “O so much snow. We Somalis don’t like so much about snow. So COLD.” Maħmūd comes tentatively out the door in slippers, takes the camera that I shove at him excitedly, and snaps some mediocre shots of us two standing amid the snowballs from heaven.
Then we part ways, shouting jao (from Italian “ciao”: remember, there was an Italian occupation of Somalia for several decades), I snake back through the pretty little side streets of Mesēkin Berza, out to the always-humming highway, and grab a servīce. Within, we all shiver, steam rises off my damp clothes squeezed between other bodies, and some people wear plastic bags on their feet. Brave the cold in this stripped down van, strain to stay awake amid the soft lull of gear-shifting rhythms and easy stops and starts for mounting passengers along the way. Struggle back up the chilly steps of the apartment building, throw backpack down amid living room mess, and throw off wet clothes for nakedness in the cool air of the apartment, as the last bits of early blue sunset fade away from windows’ edge.


SOMETHING EXTRA
So, I penned this poem on the spot in a park in my teacher Yūsef’s neighborhood, just observing the to and fro’ of the ‘hood. Much respect to Gaby Canales for quietly urging me to get back to the poetry. It’s just an impression, and needs a lot of work, so please let the comments and critiques fall like hail.
In the park
On the edge
Of the car-strained
Puddle-busted street
shēri3 mesēkin berza
In the shade,
The last blade of sunlight
Scraping just half the neighborhood.

There’s a rhythm here
And it swells beneath the sandal scuff
Of each Somali woman in black hijab
From the quiet hand of the young beggar girl—sheħħēda
“allah yeselemak ya ekhi”
From the little boy who brushes past
Coughing sandpaper sickness from little lungs
From the NAPKIN in the fingertips of the old man
In a white head dress, wiping his lip
The Somali men, fresh and stale
Bearded and talking holy with cups of tea
Bits of orange on the edge of their kinks
—closer to god.

The rhythm’s always here
The highway always hums
80 meters to my left
The park always specked with trash
The minaret always pointed
Towards the moon.

But we stand before darkness
On the backside of falling winter
And the refugees will have to wait to get asylum
The Arab vendors wait for more passersby
All the immigrants wait for jobs
When winter passes, and long days
And grey smog slide back in.

Until then, we watch the last blade of light
With the old men, perched on benches in the park
Standing before darkness, the backside of falling winter.




----
It’s quiet now. Tray left about five days ago, back to his native island. Edmund and Vince and Vince’s Syrian Kurdish girlfriend left the apartment this morning, Ed and Vince headed south to Saudi Arabia on a cheap bus for Christmas. I got to do the dishes, put this entry onto the internet, stuff my scarf and dictionary into my bag, and get to bed. Last night in town, and I got a plane to catch in the morning. Curtis Mayfield plays on my computer, and he’s singing “The key to our success is we gotta see each other through…”

Peace, Syria.

Dimashq #6: The Druze in Sweida & The Camp

The Druze in Sweida

“Aaaah this is better,” I think, comfortably placed up in the front seat of the bus with my boy Faisal seated beside me. It’s about 9:30 a.m and already we are cruising out of the Đawāħi (outskirts/suburbs) of Damascus, past big, white, terraced apartment buildings that you might find in the rough banlieues of Paris, but which, here, probably house families who employ Ethiopian housemaids and who drive Mercedes just to show off. I’m nearly crushed with the burden of exhaustion from little sleep and a car-crash of a petty lady encounter the night before, and Faisal is wasted tired too, but he handles it with more grace than I. Yet, I’m glad to be accompanied by a man of compassion and intellect like King Faisal over here, and I appreciate his commentary on all things local, from the best bars in Damascus to the very highway we’re riding on, as his perspective is one of native-son-experience, but filtered through an American lens. If that’s too vague, I’ll just say that Faisal is a Syrian Druze, raised in San Francisco, so he can see both sides of the cultural coin simultaneously. He tells me that the highway we’re on, now bending sluggishly through growing foothills of burgeoning green on the route to the Jordanian border, was once called the “Highway of Death”, because all the peasants living beside the highway would pull their carts or tractors or wagons out onto the highway at night, no lights or signals on their slow-moving vehicles, and cars would crash into them. Add narrowness and a lack of lane markings to the mix, and you also got other cars going the wrong way up a lane, the cause of further accidents. The highway has since had some separate lanes added and a side route for the peasant vehicles.
“Awesome history, papa,” I mutter.
My head is back and my eyes are closed, with a fleece stuffed behind my head. My health has been real shaky the last couple of days, and I’m beat, so—
“Faisal man, I’m going to nap for a bit. I just need some…”



“Yo Sam, wake up. We’re here.”
I lift me weary head and peer past Faisal, out the window, at the 11 a.m. sun clanging on fields of volcanic black basalt rocks and boulders strewn as far as the eye can see. The ground is hilly and feature-ful, and as the bus penetrates the outer edges of the small city of Sweida, I look curiously at new apartment blocks and squarish houses constructed among the rock fields. It’s bizarre—they look like fresh marshmallows popping up from rough black asphalt. A few turns, we pass more mansions of gaudy white than I’ve ever seen in one place, some questions are shouted from the rukkēb (passengers) to the driver, and we pull into the humble, open-air bus station. Dismount the bus, ya3Ŧīk l 3ēfia (“God give you health”) to the driver, and we’re out in the sunshine and Faisal is hailing a taxi. I’m just hanging back—too tired and sick to be eager old me—and I let Faisal do all the Arabic-ing with the driver. However, I’m pleasantly surprised to find that the accent in this town, even from the taxi driver (taxi driver speech, to me, is generally an authentic test of one’s dialectal Arabic), is extremely clear and slow, with a number of the sounds that are typically altered or dropped in Damascus-talk, pronounced with the utmost deliberateness. It’s really nice.
3 minutes later, and we pull up before a huge, 3-story house of sweeping staircase yet subtle front columns. Entering, I notice that the bottom floor entrance still looks like it’s under construction, rubble beside the door, which I think is typical of many a Syrian home. Pop our heads inside, some small, well-fed kids stride up to us and Faisal greets them warmly, and I understand every goddamn thing they say to each other. I’m already ready to move here already just for that reason. Mejida, Faisal’s beautiful black-haired middle-aged aunt, comes striding into the big, cozy living room, exchanges long-time-no-see greetings and cheek kisses with Faisal, gets a little basic talk outta me, and then, turning to Faisal, asks in Arabic, “So Sam is of Arab origin, right?”
I make a silent little shout of delight in my head, having somehow fooled a Syrian into thinking such a thing. “Well they speak like professors and think gringos are Arabs. I love the Druze,” says I to myself. Faisal’s shirtless, proudly fat uncle comes down the stairs with a Gillette buzzer on his bald scalp, tan and jovial, and we make the introductions. Nice guy. He should get a shirt on, though.
After a little bit, Faisal and I find ourselves chewing on awesome fresh cheese, olives, hummus, za3tar, oil, crisply cut tomato slices, and bread. It’s great, unsullied food that goes down smooth. I look up at the wall behind Faisal and spy an antique black-and-white photograph of a big guy with a tremendous handlebar mustache, a checkered Arab headdress, and a fluffy black robe looking heroic, flanked by two photos of some other classic-looking figures. The badass with the handlebar mustache, Faisal informs me, is his great grandfather Sultan Basha el Atrash, who is regarded as a nearly, if not totally, holy figure by many Druze, and I think you might hear some words of admiration for him from other non-Druze Syrians, if they know the history. You see, Basha el Atrash, was a great warrior among the Druze, which is already saying something because the Druze have long been regarded as the fiercest warriors of the region, for in battle they would race each other to reach the enemy first, horses galloping and swords projecting from tightened fists. He was one of, if not the, greatest Druze warriors, it appears. In 1925, after the French had settled in their Syrian “protectorate” just 6 years earlier, formerly the Ottoman empire’s Syrian province, as spoils of World War I, the Druze instigated a massive Syrian uprising against French control of their land. The Druze were not ones to have their autonomy trampled and so fought the French fiercely, inspiring other Syrians to take up arms as well through their passion and heroism, or so you will hear from proud Druze, but that’s the story. What is documented, though, is that Basha el Atrash would do mad things, such as charge French tanks on horseback at dawn, mount the tanks, and kill the soldiers within, in order to save a Druze they had kidnapped. After the 1925 Syrian Uprising, which was eventually put down only after the French relentlessly shelled the capital of their protectorate, Damascus, after uncontrollable rioting, Basha el Atrash returned to his farm in Sweida, where he would host local and European dignitaries alike, though the French authorities had tried to buy him off and had offered him positions of power within the government. A fascinating character. I’ve got to read up on him, when I’m not busy studying Syrian Arabic or sitting around, chatting and drinking tea.
I sit on the couch perusing a nice little Arabic-English dictionary, as Faisal and his family don some really hip, smart-casual button-up shirts, silk ties, slacks, black dresses, and the like, while I wallow in my mediocre clothes and sneakers. A little more dilly dallying, and we’re out the door and in the car, spinning through the center of Sweida, watching dull apartment buildings, ancient Roman arches and pillars constructed of that black basalt rock, and a few antique French protectorate-era buildings go past, and uncle is honking the horn mindlessly like all the other cars in the caravan we’re a part of. The honking relents as the caravan pushes out of Sweida and into depopulated farm fields, rock walls built around each patch of olive trees, made of innumerable volcanic stones pulled from the earth. So they’re tough farmers, too?
As we sit, separated by one of Faisal’s little cousins, Faisal clears up for me one of the mini-stereotypes I had heard about the Druze, namely that they’re just an obscure sect of people who drink and curse a lot, and who don’t actually know what their religion is or what it stands for. He lets me know that the reason outsiders think the Druze don’t know their own religion is because, for much time now, the Druze have kept a lot of their doctrine and practice secret, or at least have been reluctant to share it, because, I think, that spoils the sacredness of the practice, and because it ain’t considered humble to go around blabbering about the holy stuff you do on a daily basis. Or such would be the philosophy of a conservative sect whose name I forget, within the Druze that guard the doctrine and old ways, and are all about humility. It’s similar in that way to my meditation practice, and thus I can relate a bit. Plus, the Druze do consider this one early preacher, Anushtakīn ed-Darazī, from about a thousand years ago, wrote a book on Druze doctrine and proclamied himself “The Sword of the Faith”, and many fel that he tried to portray himself as the successor prophet to Muhammed, which is entirely heretical among many Muslims of the Mid-East. So that also explains their reluctance to spill the religious beans. In addition, Faisal adds, it’s supposed to be a faith of introspection, finding one’s own path towards the 7 pillars of the religion, which include science and philosophy and a few others, which the Druze believe are embodied in particular individuals on the Earth at any given time (Socrates, for example, was one of them). To unite these streasms of thought and faith is their mission, thus they are also called el muwaħħidūn (“the unitarians”). So, the Druze community leaves it up to the young individual to discover his/her faith himself. Usually that takes a while, perhaps a few decades. Thus, the line goes something like “A Druze isn’t a Druze ‘till he’s 40.” Hahahaha, I know... gets me every time.
The vehicles, SUVs and frumpy sedans like ours, rumble up and down over the hills, past more rock walls around fields, and I can see a village of white homes up on a hilltop not far off. In minutes, our honking caravan, replete with crazy multicolored buses with Willy Wonka-style musical horns, is rolling up the main street, parking, and Faisal and his family and me hop out. I stand around for a bit in the glad sunshine, too sick and achy to rush forward and try to introduce myself to each one of Faisal’s relatives who asks about me. Observing the men and women around me, it looks like a Mafia family gathering in north New Jersey, what with all the tough-guy slaps on the back, bright Armani suits, gold watches, sunglasses, gaudy jewelry, and huge purses. But my Mafia reverie is interrupted by the sound of gunshots ushering forth from the dirt path to one of the homes. Well, the procession of men towards the home of the 3arūs (bride) has begun, and in double-file the Druze men walk onward, some of them firing automatic pistols or shotguns up in the air. They are really loud.
Soon enough, we are standing in front of the house, elevated from the earth by a high stone foundation, and I stand behind two lines of men facing each other, swaying shoulder to shoulder, clapping at full volume in synchronicity and chanting a repeating verse, African call-and-response style. The chant, though I understand almost none of it, does, I think, include the name of Basha el Atrash, Faisal’s hero of a great-grandfather, sung repeatedly. Individual men step into the space between the two lines, dancing with their upper body bent over, one hand behind their back, waving the other hand, and hopping from one foot to another like one might imagine a band of merry elves would do. One guy in jeans and tight T-shirt, with a mullet and a bald spot on his crown jumps into the center and dances the hell out of that circle, with such wildness that he looks like some unique redneck uncle from the Bayou, if you get the image. The clapping is my favorite part of the whole ceremony, for that part I can do.
Off to the side of the dancing circle, arranged in a line in front of the home, are a mélange of middle-age to elderly men, most of them in black vests and pants, with circular white caps with flat red tops. Some, though, rock the checkered red and white Arab head dress with black robes. A number of the wise old cats sport long grey beards, and some of the younger ones have the badass traditional Druze handlebar mustache. They all hold some holy ceremonial religious position, it seems. They look on, solemnly, shade from the home’s foundation covering them, the light weight of the Fall sun landing just a meter in front of them. It’s a near-surreal, Oriental Bazaar-type sight. I’m glad I’m not missing it.
Now the women and young kids, standing and sitting up above us on the high stone foundation of the house, start doing that wild tongue ululation that we always seem to see Arabs doing in the desert in our tacky Western movies. Some of the ladies, as stated, look like wives of New Jersey mafiosos, yet some of the elders have their heads and lower faces covered in a semi-transparent white veil, the rest of their forms covered in black. Two young men, one in a white skullcap and another in a suit, with a veiled woman behind, escort the 3arūs (bride) down the stone steps. The beautiful young woman (indeed young: I heard she’s just seventeen or eighteen years-old) is dressed in all white, heavy black locks of hair falling past her shoulders, with a thin screen over her face. Even I, though, standing at a distance, can see her big eyes downcast with sadness. She doesn’t smile, and barely moves but for her little steps down the stone stairs. I have heard (but I’m no expert—read up for yourself) from those more knowledgeable than I, that it is considered appropriate by many Arab groups that the bride look sad during the wedding. But I think this is more than just tradition, for the young woman is actually being taken from her family and her home for the last time. Her fam won’t be accompanying her to the wedding, for they are of that conservative religious gaurdian sect of the Druze. Thus, caravans of honking buses and cars, guns firing into the air, singing, dancing, and drinking are not really their zū’ (taste), if you catch my drift.
The young bride reaches the base of the steps, and the dopey, wide-headed 3arīs (groom) steps up in a suit, takes her by the arm, and, the bride’s head still low, they proceed slowly back up the path towards the waiting cars. As this wedding madness goes on throughout the day, I’ll observe the groom and learn about him, and find there’s not much to learn. He’s a bit of a simpleton, with a big mustache, who worked up some money over in Venezuela (?)—where a lot of Druze migrate to work—returned, bought a big house, and doesn’t do much of anything these days. Perhaps, leaving her family and home village to marry a sweet goof of unimpressive looks is what saddens this young lady so. It would me.

Back in the caravan of automobiles, Faisal and I roll up and down over the shrubby hills leading back to Sweida, in a big Willy Wonka bus, full of old men who are far from wildly celebratory. But, in time, we make it to a square in the center of the city, where the wedding shall explode into reality. And explode it does, after an hour or two of standing around in the low, low daylight-saving’s-time sun, watching the rows and rows of plastic chairs under the tents sloooowly fill up with guests. We also stand beside a line of elder guys, some in hip Western suits, some in traditional Arab headdresses and robes, who stand around authoritatively, shoulder to shoulder, greeting guests as they enter the little square, who walk down the WHOLE line of men and say complicated greetings to each and shake the hand of each one. I try it, at Faisal’s urging, and it’s time-consuming, and I don’t feel much more “welcome” after it all. Well, it’s nice that they keep the tradition. Faisal and I stand around chatting, and a street cleaner approaches us, speaking pretty fluently in English, and I can tell by his accent when he speaks that he’s a Kurd. I ask him: right I am! Hot damn, my ear is getting better and better. I toss a few Kurdish words his way, he gives me the classic Kurdish surprised-eyes I saw so much of in Iraq, and he is as chummy and energetic as can be. But, as we stand around, I can feel my state of health deteriorating within me. It’s becoming intensely tiresome to even stand, my muscles ache, and I feel high with congestion in my head.
While I still have it in me to stand and look around with curiosity, Faisal shows me the imposing building constructed of grey stone, housing a spacious, high-ceilinged hall rimmed by simple but beautiful silk cushion-covered benches. It’s a stately place, and he explains to me that each of the big Druze families in this city had a family Şāla (hall), where the family would host events like weddings or religious celebrations, taking in other people from the town, and making the Şāla, for lack of a better word, a kind of community center. It’s sort of a feudal operation, with a strong, well-to-do family raining their bounty down upon the average townspeople, much of it probably a local political favor-gaining move, but despite that this big grey stone Şāla is impressing the hell out of me. So too are the pretty deteriorated stone buildings beside it, where, Faisal tells me, his father grew up many decades ago, which are as stately as an elderly and feeble, yet righteous, revolutionary.
The chairs under the tents in the sēħa (square) are beginning to fill with guests, and if one looks closely one can actually observe the sunrays sinking. Of a sudden, a loud synchronous shouting over the beat of a hand-held Ŧabla drum comes bursting into the little square, and the 3arūs and 3arīs come walking slowly, deliberately, almost grandly into the square, followed by a long train of clapping, chanting dudes, some playing sharp accompaniment on Ŧabla and ney (flute). They’re all decked out classily in white shirts, black vests, and black pants with incredibly baggy crotches, just like I saw out in the Kurdistans. The bride’s head is still weighted by melancholy, bent low, and the groom still looks kind of dopey and happy, his big head almost overwhelming his sharp grey suit. The bride and groom move through the little square, up a few stairs, and they stand on display up on a high platform with a silver crescent moon as a background, like prized GI Joe collector figures in a glass case. Their entourage gathers together shoulder to shoulder, clapping fierily, and, in a rotating semi-circle, they move around older ladies in the thin white headscarves, and younger ones in Burberry outfits who dance freely with arms twisting like snakes. The entourage of chanting dancers too bust out some pretty complex debka (a traditional Arab dance mostly found in the Levant) dance moves in unison, tapping feet quickly and intricately like they might at an Irish Riverdance festival. There is music blasting from some amplifiers that is so powerful it would enrage and disorient me were it not for the sheer awesomeness of the event, and me and Faisal just stand around the edges of the dancing circle making comments and taking pictures. Some fellas lift the groom up onto their shoulders and parade him around, the groom shaking his arms in the air as if he has just won a fight, and the bride continues to look on with eyes on the verge of an abyss, gone.
And lo: there is yet another procession of men who come running into the square like commandos on drill, most with a sword in one hand and a shield in the other, some with big drums, and all with heads wrapped in this badass tight white head dress. The armed men in black outfits, at the command of a big guy with a staff and a huge mustache, start fighting each other rapidly, as you would see in a Jet Li movie, striking and deflecting their dummy sword blows quick as lightning, spinning around each other and dodging lunges. It’s awesome, needless to say, and after a couple rounds of tightly-choreographed fighting, they stand in two lines chanting things about the holy mountain around Sweida that they worship, and of course, praises to Basha El Atrash.

The ceremony goes on, and as Faisal and I wait around in the newfound quiet, waiting for food to be brought out, I admire one young lady on the other side of the square, thin and elegantly dressed, with great legs projecting from a black skirt, and natural hair dark as the deep sea. I had made eyes at her a couple times during the wild ceremonies, and she responded with a reflected gaze, a rare thing for shy old me and a lot of other gringos in this country. This relaxedness, in addition to the generally interesting style, and above-average beauty—such a welcome break from the shyness or straight-up holier-than-thou attitude of many women in Damascus—is one of my favorite parts of this town. It’s as if I could make a life here, which I have never imagined I could in Damascus (though, to be real, as far as relations go, Druze are sternly discouraged, if not barred, from marrying non-Druze, to the point where violent attacks on the trespassing bride by the Druze can result, or so I have heard). Damascus just ain’t my town, to be frank, nor is Syria my country. It’s wild in some ways, and attractive in others, but somehow it lacks the spiritual mystique that has drawn me to the fringes of North Africa time and again. I don’t care if Syria is in a more politically significant region of the world, it just can’t keep me. There you have it, now you know. So, that pretty gal on the other side of the square is pulling my eyes, and I elbow Faisal lightly and say, “Hey man, you seen that woman over there by the tent. The one in the skirt. She’s beautiful, don’t you think? I been watching her for a while. Gorgeous, huh?”
He smiles: “That’s my cousin, man. But it’s nice to hear that. I take it as a compliment on the family genes.” I hush up but keep looking her way, now wondering what the deal is with my companion King Faisal—he’s a handsome guy, and attentive, damn smart, linguistically astute, worldly, and kind: where’s his queen? I am curious if he’s got some kind of secret love tryst going on here in Syria, or a girlfriend back stateside that I don’t know about. But why he is apparently single and not pulling she-attention from every corner baffles me. What I envy, though, is the fact that he seems to sit easy in his current state, without complaints or questions.
Fifteen more aimless minutes pass, and finally groups of men bring out huge platters of food: pounded green wheat gel (what?), lamb meat, fried bread balls filled with meat called kibbe, and a sheep skull at the center, all doused in liquid fat, simna. We, some in sunglasses and big Arab headdress, some in suits, some in average pants and sneakers like me, all gather around the platters and scrape from them with spoons, some clutch chunks of fat and meat with bread, and, disgusted after just a few heavy bites, I desist.
In short, the rest of the day includes returning to Faisal’s house where I take a much-needed nap, taking a lot of pictures, watching an awkward dance between the groom, dressed in a royal animal skin, and bride, finally getting my basic debka dance on with Faisal and a bunch of laughing Druze, delicate, light flirting with the cousin of Faisal, hanging out in the groom’s house as they get pictures taken, proud conversation in strong Arabic with one of Faisal’s relatives, and tormented, infectious sleep, which leads to my early departure from Sweida the next morning, trying to survive as my viral sickness consumes me like fire. I stand, hunched, in the open-air bus station, sipping hot tea, mount the bus, and take pictures of the rocky plains and stark hills in the territory stretching away from Sweida, back towards Damascus, towards home.


The Camp

It’s just movement all around, from the guys in tight shirts zipping past on little motorbikes, to the traders standing behind disorderly racks of DVDs and sunglasses shouting prices for their wares, to my man Ali and his girlfriend Dīna, wrapped in long black trenchcoat, walking up ahead of me, chattering in Arabglish. We pass humble little shops with goods displayed out front, like a joint called “Fashion Jeans”. Up ahead is a big black banner above the street with some slogan on it. It’s probably something about Yasir Arafat, but I can’t read it, for the Arabic script is too stylized. Well, I got a long way to go on this Arabic thing. Before me, Ali, and Dīna make a right turn off this crusty main avenue, we pass a sizeable garbage dump beside the street, with a kid rummaging casually through it. It shocks the humanity in me, and I secretly document it with my camera.
Making the turn, we enter the tumbledown alleyways of the proper Shatila Palestinian refugee camp, here in Beirut, the cinderblock or plaster buildings all grey or crumbling yellow. A man in cut-off T-shirt leans on his cart of what looks like used belts, talking to a woman in hijab. The metal doors of the motor shops and little bodegas are touched with light Arabic graffiti. The buildings are separated in certain places by gaps where the ground is dirt, or covered in gravel, where the November sunlight jumps majestically and where stray dogs sniff around. We bend and twist through the narrow alleyways where the sun has never shined, past some men standing around aimlessly talking, and finally make it into a dusty courtyard filled with suspended flags covered with the face of Yasir Arafat in the checkered black and white kiffeya scarf. Moving into the building and up the dirty stairs towards the association office, I spy a little kid sprawled out on his butt sitting futurelessly on the soiled concrete.
Within the old but ordered joint, the Children and Youth Center, me and my pals enter the office, I shake hands with some ajēnib (foreigner) volunteers there to do good work, and give a strong listen to a kind, older, mustachioed mudīr (manager) of the organization, tell Dīna and Ali how it is going to be in very clear Arabic. Then upstairs to a huge library room of glorious Arabic and English literature, tables, plastic chairs. From here I look out the barred window onto an alleyway of full of dirt, hanging garments, more graffiti, and uncountable exposed cables, which drape the structures of this camp like vines in a garden. More conferencing gets underway, this time between Ali and Dīna, and a short, scruffy guy and a pregnant and dignified, coffee-skinned mudīra, who speaks about some of the Center’s children and conservative families, and the music they will and will not accept in the dance class Dīna is about to give.
So, Dīna is given a batch of rowdy children in hand-me-down clothes, and she immediately commands them all in the most loving and lighthearted way. She makes different hand signals, saying things like “OK kids, this sign means ‘get ready!’ This sign means ‘be quiet!’”, the kids all obey, and the language is all pleasantly clear to me. I am impressed. That’s what years of experience as a teacher will do. Props to Dīna. Upstairs, in a small cubicle of a room with rickety white wooden walls decorated with posters of vegetables and their names, Dīna shows the squirming kids some basic hip hop-ish moves, and they do their best to follow. The young ones do learn a thing or two after about twenty minutes, especially some of the wiry, energetic girls, who seem to possess better rhythm. One of the girls, brown-skinned little Fewē’, is quick to learn, and is confident and playful the whole lesson. One little boy just wanders off the dance floor, dispossessed of this lesson in an alien dance style.
Downstairs, after I talk to a German volunteer and a Palestinian guy with some far out ideas, saying that he thinks much of the desperate state of his own people is really their own fault, me and Ali regroup, and I meet the thin, Brooklyn-Jewish-looking Jo with his guitar. The dude speaks English so naturally and well, I wonder if he’s a foreigner like me. Nope.
“Did you go to an American school?”
“Nope. Just a big fan of American entertainment,” he says.
We sit on the orange plastic chairs of the library and rehearse the rhythm, pitches, and chords of a Bob Marley tune. Over and over we sing the sing to Jo’s trembling accompaniment. When the kids come wrangling in, trying to show off their new dance moves, we sit them in a circle. Ali does his best to calm the wriggling kids, but he don’t have quite the teacherly presence that Dīna has, and some can’t help but let their heads loll about like loose stones on their shoulders. Ali picks up a Ŧabla drum, and pats out a simple rhythm on its taught surface, singing the faint and sweet melody of Fairuz’s Bint esh-Shelabia, which all the kids immediately recognize. Thing is, though, that Ali’s a music student with an astounding voice, a sharp ear, and a perfectionist attitude. So, he works them over and over on each line of the song, none of the poor little souls even approaching Ali’s sweet, precision singing, as Jo strums the guitar. Dīna whispers chiding little comments about Ali’s instruction style, and I just sit still, trying to sing the song as clearly as possible for all the children to follow my lead, but, shucks, they just know the words a lot better than me. Though many of the children remain rhythmically independent, singin’ to their own beat, after a half hour or so of fine-tuning every tremulous grace note, some of the kids can sing it back on their own, approaching “in-tune” level. They seem proud as hell, and I would be too, especially to be able to function effectively in such a structured environment, after living all of their lives in this chaotic grey shanty of unemployment, violent attack, and instability. Little Fewē’ grins with wide eyes. Ali and Dīna and Jo shower them with “Bravo’s” and gentle praise in Arabic, and we make our exit back down to the main office. After the little debriefing, I tell the mudīra lady, who smiles at me like a pleased mom, that I really like this organization and I want to come back to work, and if there’s anything I can do, I’m teħt ‘amrik (under your command).
“Come on back, then. You’re welcome anytime.”
We step out into the afternoon sunshine, and more Yasir Arafat flags are crowding the courtyard area, and some Iraqi debka music pounds hard as hammers from some amplifiers set up by the courtyard. Black and red script on one wall reads فلسطين (“Palestine”). There are men standing around in a group of nowhere no time no future in sight, chatting, and we stride past them, back out through the crumbling cinderblock alleys, towards the open air, the sea, the sunlight, into the city, into Beirut.