10 May 2011

An Observation and an Insight

So, when I started this blog, I assumed that I had two groups to worry about:
Syrian government authorities and Islamic extremists.

Well, the first has made it abundantly clear that they are most displeased with me in person. I’ve even seen a few comments posted on this blog that I am 99.9% certain originate with regime loyalists (and a few emailed threats as well … which leave me shrugging: ‘uh guys – just because you like Bashar a lot … you do nothing this way …)

I’ve also seen the usual anti-Islamic and the usual pro- and anti-Israel comments posted …

BUT the one thing I haven’t seen, the one group from which no one has made threats or sent deranged emails nor sought to harass anyone is the ‘Islamic extremists’,

The only things I’ve gotten are some nice notes from observant but gay muslims and a long, really sweet email from a relative who’s in the exiled Muslim Brotherhood (“I’m really enjoying your blog. Keep up the good work, we’re all praying for your safety.”)

That says something.
Well several somethings.

First, as I had very much suspected, that segment of Islam that sees harassing women who don’t conform to their expectations as being a religious duty is under-represented in Syria. I had always suspected that. Now, I know. Al-hamdullilah!

Second, the “Islamist” element in the opposition here is more like the Turkish AKP than the Taliban and quite possibly rather more modern than the AKP.

Third, I have observed in this movement a lot of people from different strands coming together: Kurds and Arabs, Christians, Muslims, and Druze, Communists and Islamists, Secularists and devout, Niqabis and western dress … and not worrying about harassing each other for our common goal.

THAT is what the new Syria will emerge from; this spirit of togetherness and unity in purpose that is growing among us, where the fundamentalist cousin prays for safety of the queer cousin … where the things that have divided us and made us easy to dominate just don’t matter any more.

This people will triumph.

Catch and release?

So the latest is that they are now letting political prisoners out again … Kamal Shaykho, Fayes Sara, Hassan Azm, Hazem Nahar, George Sabra are supposedly out now after a month in jail …
All of them are, by the way, non-violent political activists who’ve done a million times more than me for building democracy and opposing this regime …

But it makes me wonder: are we back to the catch and release game of last month?

Does it mean that they are going to relax the crackdown?

I heard gunfire again today … so I don’t know.

It may just mean that yet again the regime’s left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing, let alone what the gripping hand is up to …

There are something like 17 different secret police formations here. They don’t always coordinate. They have different leaders, different policies, different aims. The ‘joke’ is that after you get questioned by one, the next one will pick you up to find out what the other one knew …

So maybe one group is catching and another releasing?

Why Emma fled

Being right can sometimes be fun. And sometimes knowing that the rumor you heard is most likely true can be too. So, this morning, when I saw this piece in the British press (well, on Google News!), all I could think was ‘my sources were right!’ I’d heard that a week ago.

I showed my dad; he laughed “of course she left” was his comment. His wife (my mother) left too, right?

And then we chatted more about his claim that he’d been asked about me when they were shopping for a bride for Bashar. Maybe he made it up to tease me; I only just heard about it anyway. But we both have vivid imaginations and joked about the idea of what would have happened --- I guess that would be me and the headline would be that Syrian first lady fled to USA, said to be in a well fortified compound in Virginia …
Of course, I wouldn’t have let my spouse be quite so dictatorial … and I doubt I’d have been half as poised in public (I am relatively tall and slender so that part I could pull off).
And forgetting the whole ‘Bleccch!’ reaction that I have as to his looks (and that I don’t go for guys), there’s also the small matter that Bashar has wretched taste. I mean, seriously … Celine Dionne? That is your favorite western singer???
If you want to be a fan of a Canadian torch singer, how about Nelly Furtado? K d lang? Honestly that would have been a deal breaker (I like good music; I like punk, classic rock, classic Arabic stuff, good country … heck, if he’d said “a lot of Cash and Willie Nelson mixed with Camper Van Beethoven, the Clash, Fayruz and Marcel Khalife”, I might, just might have been willing to look over the whole ‘you’re a bloodthirsty tyrant’s son’ and consider it …

But joking aside, one of the truly depressing things about this regime is how many Emmas there are around it. I know that they know better than this. Not just Asma, of course, but also Bouthaina Shaaban and Najah al Attar … in heart of hearts, good decent women who got to where they are for all the best reasons and not by family pull or backstabbing. (Bouthaina is Bashar’s spokesperson, Najah is his vice president). They really thought that they were doing good by Syria, good for its women … (and some of the men too). What are they thinking now? Everything they achieved is getting destroyed … and those are real accomplishments.

However, I have thought about this a lot. And part of it goes to what has been wrong with so much of the ‘modernization’ process here and what’s wrong with the Baath when it comes down to it. That party didn’t get formed in the Habana Café because they were sitting around thinking “how can we get into power, kill people and make ourselves rich?” It got started for fundamentally right reasons; to achieve independence and greatness for the nation, to make us once again the envy of the world, to make us modern …
But they made a fundamental mistake and everything else flows from that: real change doesn’t come from above, it comes from below. They decided to take a short cut instead of taking the time to rebuild the country from the bottom up. Seize power rather than get elected; use force rather than persuasion; bring ‘modernity’ by state power … and it fails. It always fails. You don’t create a modern, free and democratic society by frog marching people and shooting those who object. You don’t gain equality for women or between the sects by bayonetting people. That just makes you enemies and at best gets grudging acceptance.

Those good and decent people in the regime accepted short cuts and this is the consequence. They didn’t trust the Syrian people enough or treat us like adults. So now we are angry. Now, we have to start all over again

And this time, let’s not take short cuts. This time, let’s do the hard work from the beginning. And maybe, then, Emma and the kids can come back from Acton!

The regime says they are fighting Salafis

You be the judge. This is Damascus:

The art of Syrian conversation

“You know,” my girlfriend says to me, “I think you’re cousin is paranoid and a bit racist.”
I’m startled; neither of those traits are things that I would ever use to characterize Raghad. So I ask her what she means …

“At dinner, all that talk of Zionists are everywhere, listening, watching. I mean, really, does she think that the Israeli government cares about what TV show she watches?”

And I start laughing. My girlfriend has just stumbled on to the first rule of conversation in a dictatorship; never speak directly.

We had been dating for six glorious months and I had a vacation coming up from work; Anna is self-employed (she’s an artist) so she can vacation whenever she wants. And since we’d met I had been talking ceaselessly about how beautiful Syria is, how Damascus is the greatest city on earth and how I longed to see her. So, we’d decided to go together …

And we applied for a visa for Anna (I wouldn’t need one), bought tickets and set off. I’d thought I’d been pretty thorough in giving Anna all the details of what to say and do; my main worry was that I was going to be travelling with my girlfriend, and she’s been out (and extremely out) since she was in high school. We’d share rooms and pretend that we were just friends and not make out in front of anyone and on and on … I’d drilled her on which relatives it was OK to be out with, and which ones not, repacked her clothes so that they were less problematic, given her a haircut and made her take out her piercings so she looked a little less punk.

But I had forgotten to explain the rules of conversational euphemism. I had made sure to explain in excruciating detail that it was a bad idea to ever say anything critical about the government or even something that might be so construed, a bad idea to ever discuss religion (or even ask someone what there’s was), and, if asked, about family life by strangers, she was to say “I am still waiting for the right man.”

And that night I had realized what I’d forgotten to tell her.

We’d arrived in Damascus and been met at arrival by my cousin Raghad – and Raghad knew about me. So she was delightfully friendly; “Oh, we’ve been hearing about you, Anna! Amina and Rania have been saying such great things about you and you’re even prettier than they said.” And so on.
We stay in Damascus in my room; I’m so excited to actually have the woman I love here with me … and the first night, Raghad has insisted that we go and have dinner with her and Muhannad at this wonderful new restaurant …

I prepped Anna thoroughly; Raghad is a bit older than me and is Rania’s older sister and probably the most publicly liberal of the women in the family. Like me, she came by it by accident. She’d also moved back to the US (though a first time for her) when I did but her household was much more Arab and Islamic; her father was working endless hours to provide for them and starting up a mosque in the Atlanta suburbs and her mother was also always busy …

So, she’d had to grow up fast on her own in a totally alien environment, taking care of her younger brothers and sisters … trying to steer through crazy environments. And, along the way, she’d met a guy … an ajnabi, an American, a blond, a Christian, a redneck cracker, take your pick … and they’d secretly started dating. And she’d lost her virginity to him; they planned to get married and have a normal life (he even learned Arabic and converted!) but her mom found out and landed on her like a ton of bricks … the day we were leaving for Damascus. So, they’d married her off quickly enough. 18 years old, married to a guy who wasn’t the one she was madly in love with, stuck in Syria forever … but she made the best of it and really lucked out with Muhannad (he was a distant cousin with his own disgrace but, as she had told me, he was the only person that summer who didn’t treat her like filth). And life gets better; they have an easy companionship and wonderful children. She eventually got her university degree and a career and so on … but, anyhow, all this I’d told Anna by way of explanation for how Raghad came to be so ‘progressive’ …

But over dinner – which was as fabulous as promised – Raghad had started talking about how she worried that the Zionists were keeping track of her movements; she was certain that they listened in on her phonecalls and opened her mail. And the Israelis had spies all over the place here, so we should remember to be very careful, she’d warned.

Anna asked her why. Raghad explained that after what they’d done in Gaza and Sabra and Shatila, no one should be surprised. Of course they were always watching. They probably thought her father was tied in to the resistance in Gaza. And better safe than sorry.

Anna pushed a little; I could tell at dinner she was concerned.

Muhannad jumped in and said that he was fairly certain that the next table was a group of Germans, so maybe we’d better leave this subject and talk about something else. Anna, Amina says that you’re a painter. Have you thought about doing some paintings here?

And the conversation went elsewhere though I could see what was bothering Anna. When we got home and we were in our bedroom, she’d told me.

And I had laughed.

“Silly! She wasn’t talking about Israel!” I said.

“But she was going on and on and on about them watching her. I mean, I know you said her dad was involved with the Muslim … that group … but why would the Israelis care? And why would Gaza matter?”

“That wasn’t what she meant. She was talking about here. Codewords. Understood messages …”
I could see comprehension entering Anna’s face.

“Oh, I see.”

“Yes, she’s not crazy and I don’t know if the real Mossad would know her from a hole in the ground.”

“OK … so why was her husband so worried about foreign tourists? I didn’t even see any. I’m pretty sure we were the only table not speaking in Arabic.”

“We were,” I laughed. “Germans … alemanni … alawi …”

“Wow, I’m confused,” Anna shrugged. “And here I was thinking your cousin was some kind of bigot …”

And that’s how life was not so long ago. Now, a just a few years later, it’s different. People are no longer using euphemisms … and indirection. At least less than ever before. No more significant silences or things left to infer.

“The People want the overthrow of the Regime.”

It doesn’t get less clear than that.

I have no camera skills but …

I once had an idea for a movie to make here. It would be about a brutal military who oppressed the ordinary villagers and, one day, they rise up … and it would end with a long exhortation to, no matter what, rise up … we are many, they are few. They can only imprison our bodies; our minds are already free. They can kill our bodies but they will never kill our dreams. That sort of thing.

And I would set it in the Zionist entity … and it would be watched and understood here by everyone except the government who would see it as a celebration of Arab resistance …

And MEMRI would translate it and I’d be condemned for being an anti-Semite even when the film had really nothing to do with Israel. It would be for Syrians, about Syria, watched in Syria … and just maybe make Syrians think about Syria.

“The People want the overthrow of the Regime.”