The Blog and the Shower

I don’t quite know how to begin. I’ve never written a blog before, although I’ve certainly spent enough time reading them. In fact, the copious amounts of time I’ve expended on blogs is reflected in the title of this one, a pun that proves the first friend I made at Barnard still knows me too well: my dear friend Natalie suggested the title “The Blog and the Shower” as a spin-off from the title of my senior thesis, “The Blog and the Ba’ath” (get it? get it?). My thesis examined the phenomenon of Syrian blogging; “Ba’ath” [بعث] is the name of Syria’s well-entrenched ruling political party (and the word may be familiar from news reports of “de-Ba’athification” efforts after the invasion of Iraq, since it was also the name of Saddam Hussein’s party). It is also an Arabic word meaning “resurrection” or “awakening,” since the party’s roots are in Arab nationalist thought. To an ear uninitiated into the vagaries of the more guttural Arabic letters, ba’ath does sound quite a bit like bath. At any rate, I’m open to other blog title suggestions that have more to do with Syria and/or traveling and studying Arabic, but for now this one was too clever to pass up.

I’m off on Wednesday to spend a year in Damascus, Syria, studying under the auspices of the Center for Arabic Study Abroad—the only Arabic program I know that goes by a Spanish-sounding acronym: CASA (just to jive well with the Middle Eastern Studies Association, or MESA). It’s administered by the University of Texas at Austin and its Syrian branch is located at one of the colleges of Damascus University. It’s one of the best-known Arabic programs in Middle Eastern studies, and studying in CASA is something I’ve wanted for what seems like a long time (does it show how young I am that two years seems like a long time?), ever since I arrived as a completely befuddled foreigner in Cairo in the summer of 2006. I spoke only a little Modern Standard Arabic then, badly, knew nothing of any spoken Arabic dialect, had no permanent place to stay in the country or real plan as to what I might be doing there after my internship with the Embassy fell through, while the beleaguered almost-stranger who took me in and showed me how to find an apartment after teaching me my first words of the dialect was in CASA, and he and his friends seemed like everything I wanted to be: at ease in Egypt, culturally competent, deeply knowledgeable about the Middle East, and very good at Arabic.

That I’m now one of the CASA kids myself is somewhat frightening; I don’t know nearly as much as I thought these people knew at the time. In fact, it was hard for me to accept that I was graduating from college because I don’t think that I really know enough yet to have left Barnard. So in reading this blog, please bear in mind that while I may know more about the Middle East that the average person, I’m certainly not an expert. I’m not qualified to interpret the Middle East for anyone, and my experience is not representative of anything except itself. The Middle East as a region is as varied as any other expanse as large, so as always, generalizations are useful but empty as often as not.

After several flights, I’ll be in Cairo very early on Friday morning! I don’t know how often I expect to update the blog, but hopefully it will be soon after that. In the meantime, you can always check out the other blogs and sites I’ve posted links for.

Hope you all are well!