Dimashq #9: The Pace of Things

The Pace of Things

“Why I am I in this grim, grimy place?” I have to ask. The rain drops are coming down in a pitiful drizzle in the darkness of the avenue, tumbling off the bus windows after a moment of stability, as if they’re trying to hold on but can’t. It’s a wintry, disappointing dark outside, one that I was hoping to avoid upon my return to Syria, my head filled with visions of rich Levantine spring warmth. The man to my left in a tight black jacket and light beard steps out into the darkness as the bus slows and the back door opens. He yells to the driver in rough Arabic to stop at the roundabout up ahead, “'cuz the young guy going there doesn’t know.” It’s true. I’m way outside my narrow Damascus world out here in Duma.
My muscles are tensing involuntarily. I take a deep breathe and focus for a moment on my center, but a minute later my shoulders are back up at my ears and my jaw is tight like I’m about to take a blow. Another deep breathe, and I continue to wonder deeply why I put myself in such uncomfortable situations, or if I’m really doing anything at all that warrants such anxiety. Maybe I’m just “a sensitive guy”, as my old flatmate Anton brilliantly put it once, back in the early days of my stay in this locked-away Middle-Eastern land.
“belediya!” the driver yells. I hop off, and another kind fella (one of thousands of people I have come across in my life who help me across the bridge when I’m feeling feeble) guides me one block over to the courthouse. I give a ring to Ayham, my soon-to-be employer, exchange a dozen how-are-you’s that are never actually answered, and a minute later he swoops in like a smiling eagle to spirit me over to the ma3hed (“institute”). “ena ktīr ēsif” (“I’m so sorry”) comes constantly to my lips for… not seeing Ayham sooner after I came down from an enormous 30-hour voyage through three continents, for not knowing how exactly to get out to Duma, for… Nothing really worth apologizing for at all. I tell the light-faced, French-looking Ayham about my journey to Damascus, and the situation in my new house, and just before we step in the pretty door of the ma3hed, he turns and says with a little smile “3arabitak minīħa!” (“Your Arabic is good!”). O, right… THAT’S why I‘m in this place.
Within the quiet, florescent-lit, marble interior of the spot, we sit on leather chairs, he on the boss side of the desk, me on the employee side, and he gets going speaking to me about the teaching system here at the ma3hed. Every teacher works a dewra (“cycle”), and each dewra has so-and-so number of jelsa’s (“sessions”). It’s complex, and I’m not getting it all. Not so much for the speed at which he’s speaking, but just because I was never good at putting together multi-piece instructions like the ones he’s giving me now. “OK, these are not classes, they’re ‘sessions’, and I’ll be focusing on teaching the students English pronunciation and idiomatic expression” is about all I get from the bombs of instructions being dropped on me in Arabic.
I sit in my cushy leather chair for what seems like an ever-expanding drop of time, reviewing blankly the material within the WorldView English textbooks that Ayham gives me. Ayham puts my schedule together at his computer. I’m still tense as ever, and have no idea what I’m seeking as I flip through pages and pages of dialogues about travel and business and explanations of grammatical concepts in the textbooks. People come in and out of the office, like one thicker-boned guy with dark features, looking more Iraqi to me than the typical Damascene, who moves in and out, and every time says, “Nice to meet you, Mister Sam.” Ayham, after innumerable clicks and inspections of books around his computer, prints my schedule and hands it to me delicately, as though it were a page of the Qor’an. A few words between me and Ayham confirming my work slots over the next few days, I pack my things tidily into my backpack, and Ayham hurls me a smiling “Goodnaaayt Sam!” I don’t want to forget the secretary, Bēsel, who sits patiently in his sweater vest at his desk even at this late evening hour. I look his way and as humbly as possible, say “inshālla raħ shūfak ba3d tlēt iyēm?” (“God willing I’ll see you in three days?”). He looks me right in the eye and says with force “bi’izin illēh” (With the permission of God”). Yea boy, I’m sure such a serious affair as my coming out to work at your institute requires the full permission of God. We’ll see.

Since then, I’ve returned to the institute, trembling with nerves less and less every time, in the early morning when only old men in checkered red head wraps roam the streets, and in the evening with the commuters headed out of Damascus. I’ve begun to organize lesson plans for my very humble contribution to the English “sessions”. I’ve learned new grammatical vocabulary in Arabic that helps me explain concepts to the beginning English students, with thin mustaches of beginning puberty, or wrapped tight in sparkly hijabs. After my first session in the evening alongside Nāsir, a proud English teacher from Iraq who wears corduroy jackets and looks like he hails from the intelligentsia of 1960’s Baghdad, the fine fella of big words and dark skin gave me a box of sweets. He explained to me in his crystal-clear Iraqi Arabic that they are sweets made with a nut grown and harvested only in the north of Iraq, in the mountains, where it’s cool enough. He said they are sweets given only to close friends. After a heap of compliments in English about my “new Methods” and “experience” as an English teacher (not all completely deserved, I think), he handed over the load of sweets, and I felt rejuvenated having met such a big-hearted person in this new place. “Yes, Mister Sam, we are very happy to have someone of your level here.” Well, Nāsir, glad to be here too.