Out of place: or, an American who hasn’t yet learnt the etiquette of Syrian weddings
A few weeks ago a friend invited me to her older brother’s wedding, and asked me to bring along an American friend of mine, Rachel, whom she’d also met, and although my Syrian friend and Rachel didn’t know each other well, I was very glad, in the end, that I hadn’t ventured out on my own to an evening that left me feeling as awkward and out of place as I ever have in Syria. On the night of the party we set out in a taxi from the Christian quarter of the old city and alighted at the military hospital that we’d been told was a landmark, at which point we set off walking down a fast-moving road in what verged on being rural Syria, about half an hour outside of Damascus. The walk turned out to be much further than we’d imagined, but I thought it would be a calm one until I heard Rachel, who was walking slightly behind me, yelling in shock and anger: a passing motorcyclist had swooped in close and groped her from behind! A few uneventful hundred meters later we were greeted at the event hall by some very surprised and confused looks on the part of the staff who took our tickets and dubiously poured us tiny cups of coffee before letting us into the main hall. We slipped into the bathroom so that I could remove the pants I’d been wearing under my dress, and one of the women who’d entered around the same time asked us rather baldy, “Why are you here?” I tried to explain that I was friends with the sister of the groom, but I must have appeared rather confused as I tried to remember which word in Arabic, exactly, meant groom and which meant bride—it’s an important distinction, but one I’ve always had trouble remembering. Embarrassed, I hastily moved away from the woman in the bathroom and entered the main chamber, an enormous, high-ceilinged space filled with tables that fanned out around a raised stage in the middle of one of the rectangular room’s longer sides.
It wasn’t the first wedding I’d been to in the Middle East, but it was the first I’d attended in Syria and also the first I’d been to without my host family in Jordan to guide me, and I quickly realized that I’d made some sort of mistake from the very beginning. We’d been instructed to come at 8:00, and though we arrived nearly an hour later than that, I soon came to the conclusion that the faint anxiety I’d felt that Rachel and I would miss the important events of the wedding was misplaced since there were actually very few guests in the room, and I couldn’t see the friend who had invited me anywhere. My confusion must have been evident as we stood uncertainly on the edge of the room, so I was extremely relieved when a large, vivacious woman rushed over to me and thanked me for coming—although I didn’t recognize her at first as the fun older sister of my friend Haifa who’d joined us for dinner a few weeks before, as she’d traded in her hijab and plain monteau for an intricately beaded, raucously colored low cut dress, with elaborately curled hair and heavy makeup to match. This was the all-women’s portion of the wedding party, and the rule seemed to be that the closer one was to the groom or bride, the more one dressed up; while some guests came in nice jeans and tight t-shirts, the newlyweds’ relatives tended to wear something akin to what American girls might wear to prom, but in more electric colors. Leopard print, lime green, bright fuchsia and more accentuated hair and makeup that was clearly professionally done. It was a scene I was familiar with from the engagement party for my host mother’s sister in Jordan, but the dramatic transformation in dress made it hard for me to recognize some of Haifa’s friends and relatives whom I’d only met once before (I’m bad enough with names and faces as it is). Rachel and I sat down at a table, but Haifa’s sister Mona had other ideas: as a way of making us feel welcome, I think, she asked the DJ to put on some American music and invited us up to the stage to dance before more guests arrived, when they would be obligated to play Arabic tunes. Figuring that we were already a very strange sight at the wedding and that throwing ourselves around on stage with only two other Syrian girls and Mona couldn’t make us look much stranger, we obliged, energized by a very keyed-up Mona who had taken to whirling us around the dance floor and shrieking. After several songs, we sat down and waited for the bride to appear. I’d assumed that this should happen close to the starting time, and indeed the room was filling up little by little, but in fact she didn’t come until around 10:45. Rachel and I passed the time, increasingly bemused, by intermittently watching the women who were belly-dancing on stage and joining them, attempting to imitate their slow gyrations; it would have been nice to chat with some of the other guests, but as the music was so loud that we were forced to shout in each others’ ears to communicate, it didn’t seem to be the best atmosphere for it.
My friend Haifa finally showed up shortly before the bride made her entrance on a red carpet rolled out from the entranceway to the stage, where she posed for photographs before dancing for us all by herself and then with close relatives. The women who had been dancing before eventually joined her onstage, as did Rachel and I for a few songs. After we’d sat down again Rachel, growing tense since she hadn’t done any of her homework before coming, was urging that we make a quick exit and I was inclined to agree, until she suddenly pointed out, mystified, that all but a few women in the room were donning their monteaus, abayas, and headscarves. A room that had been filled with the color carnival of a toy store suddenly appeared more somber as it started to hold instead a congregation dressed mostly in blacks, tans, and navy blues.
“The groom is coming,” I observed, and it seemed an imprudent time to leave.
He was indeed approaching; in fact, he turned out to be right outside the door, right outside the flower-garlanded car waiting to whisk the couple off to their new life once the festivities were over, standing inside a ring of perhaps two dozen men clapping and cheering to a few very loud drums and bagpipes (the presence of which at Arab weddings has always mystified me). It was a side of the celebration that only Rachel and I actually observed when Haifa and her sisters, who would not don their headscarves for the party since their brother would be the only man attending, pushed us outside to photograph from where they would not in their relatively uncovered state. Finally we withdrew into the main chamber and awaited the groom, who entered to a dramatic swell of music that I thought would have better fitted some scene in an American movie that involved a pair of handsome heroes dramatically escaping in the nick of time from a burning building. His approach to the stage and dance with the bride (to quite a different soundtrack) left both looking relaxed and happy, which certainly hasn’t been the case at every wedding I’ve been to. It became clear as soon as they stood up to dance that he was nearly a foot shorter than she was, which made me admire their gumption: I know some tall American girls who swear they’ll never date someone shorter than they are. Rachel and I waited until the pair of them had cut the white cake with an elaborately decorated sword before sneaking out: it was growing late, and not the time to endure a courtesy round of insistences that it was actually far too early to leave. We caught a taxi back to Damascus, and I listened to the recording of news about Sudan for my MSA class once more before sinking into bed. I was grateful to have been invited and glad to have witnessed the celebration, but I wished I had been able to stay longer–and I would have gladly done so if I had figured out before hand that I was actually supposed to arrive at eight o’clock.
Students without borders, in a world with
My friend Leah has made extended visits to Oaxaca several times, most recently this summer. She sent back a few emails written with a Jean Genet-like attention to visual detail and some candid reflections on a dilemma that dogs some of us guilty children of the white middle class: in trying to “make a difference” in the world, do we inadvertently make things worse? Does our work benefit anyone else as much as it benefits us? Is it right to take more of an interest in struggles that take place halfway around the world when there are struggles just as desperate within our own country?
Leah wrote:
“Earlier that day, I had gone to a meeting at UniTierra of the Guerreros sin armas – Warriors without weapons. I had considered applying to this program when I first thought about returning to Oaxaca, but did not, for fear (rightly so, I think) that my Spanish would not be good enough. Fluency in Spanish is a requirement. Anyhow, this gathering of young people included people from various parts of Oaxaca, Brazil, Guatemala, Europe, and the United States. They came to do a month long project benefiting one of Oaxaca’s communities whose problems are thought endemic throughout the state.
The young people were bright, energetic activists, all in their twenties. They were located in a neighborhood on the outskirts of Oaxaca City called Colonia Diamante. A couple leaders from the community made commentary about how their community suffered and how nice it was to have these people around.
This particular meeting was to decide what the group would do as a larger community action the next week. Anyone interested was invited to participate.
Mind you, my mood was damper than normal, but I felt unsure what to think of it.
It strikes me as a project which will deeply impact the young people but may have a more ephemeral impact on the colonia residents. How do you measure transformation over the period of a month? Routines are rarely changed without a concerted effort to be the agent of change.
I also had an unfortunate conversation with George Salzman, an old New York anarchist who lives with his compañera, Nancy Davies, here in Oaxaca (they write for NarcoNews). We spoke in Spanish (although I was struck by how fragmented his Spanish was for a Oaxaca reporter). George’s cynicism did not improve my disposition.
His summary based on a series of assumptions: the young people here are people of privilege. You [Leah], too, are a person of privilege. Access to a program like this is a product of privilege. Traveling across the world is very bad for the environment – you probably don’t think about this given your privilege – you should not be here. If we are going to work to change the system, we should not exercise rights which other people are not subject too.
Often after meetings at UniTierra (an alternative education institution) I do have my skeptical thoughts:
Where do I fit into this? I sit quietly, at the table, straining to listen, at times my attention waning. I want so badly to have a stake in these issues. I do not want to be just another tourist for whom other people’s struggles are an added entree at the table.”
WWJB?
George Orwell
I love it when I hear about a blog that uses the format in an innovative way; the versatility of blogging is one of the things that makes it so hard to study or encapsulate, but also so potent. As someone who enjoys studying history, I like Juan Cole’s Napoleon’s Egypt, which reprints letters from French troops written during Napoleon’s campaign in the Middle East (I’m not great with military history, so I found some of the letters a snore, but I still thought the idea was brilliant); just a few days ago, I learned about the intriguing The Orwell Prize, which posts an entry from Orwell’s diary each day. So next time you sit down at your computer, insert your favorite historical figure and ask: What Would [________] have Blogged?
Home tourism
I’m a believer in occasionally practicing tourism in one’s own city or even neighborhood–hoping, of course, to draw more of the positive and less of the negative from such an activity. When I’m abroad, I go out of my way to see new neighborhoods, to eat at new restaurants or street food stands, to chat with people I wouldn’t ordinarily think I’d have much to talk about with. When one lives somewhere for an extended period of time, of course, it’s easy to fall out of this mentality: why should I explore something new when I already have a nice neighborhood, a good group of friends, a selection of favorite shops? I get busy, after all, and the familiar is easiest. In this spirit, and bearing in mind that I am on vacation, I want to explore a few new things in Portland, a city I’ve lived in since I was four. A few days ago, I walked around a street in North Portland that became popular after I left for college, and a few things caught my attention:
While these may look like floor tiles, they’re actually blocks of salty minerals ostensibly mined from the Himalayas, which, I learned, one could use in a variety of novel ways: as a butter dish (to impart a salty taste to unsalted butter), as a slab to heat and cook eggs on (in order to salt them), as a way to quickly salt-cure sashimi, and so on. I’m too practical to abandon the practice of simply sprinkling particle salt on my food, but this was quite novel. The weather was rainy and humid that day, and the salt blocks inside the store seemed to have responded by becoming slick and wet to the touch.
On the same street, my mother showed me this entryway to a warehouse for used and spare housing materials–brought in as a tax-deductible donation and then re-sold for a reduced price. It’s a beautiful addition to the building.
Here’s a closer look at the flowers adorning the upper branches of the trees.
On another outing, I realized I’d forgotten how stunning the natural beauty of Oregon (and Washington, across the river) could be. I’m not a great photographer, though, so you’ll have to partially take my word for it.
Portland and Oregon may be rather quiet and a wee bit provincial sometimes (markedly fewer people in New York than in Oregon look at me as if I have two heads when I say I’m studying Arabic), but visiting has reminded me how much I love the city and state for what they are.
covered walkways
One of the things I love in Damascus is the way the sun looks behind the pedestrian walkways over busy streets. The roofs sort of look like they’re glowing.
Peaches
I was thinking several weeks ago that this would be my summer of peaches. I spent the last two summers
abroad and didn’t seize whatever opportunities presented themselves there to eat the fruit that becomes available in summer, and in New York such things tend to fall beyond my budget. But peaches are widely available at fruit stands in Damascus, and at something like $1.75 per kilo, within my means. Rather than eat the salty and limp food sold at the University of Damascus cafeteria, I sometimes bought three peaches and a quarter kilo of plums at a fruit stand in the morning and ate one or two during every class break, a sweet and dripping lunch that spilled its juice all over my fingers, chin, and desk. I bought other goods from the fruit sellers, especially when the man working at the 24-hour stand in ‘Afif plied me with his salesmanship, peppering me with a constant stream of questions about which tourists sights I had and hadn’t visited in Syria while punctuating my replies with questions about the rest of the fruit he was proffering: “Oh, you haven’t visited Palmyra yet? And wouldn’t you like some figs? What about some grapes? Or some melon?” His mere questions were persuasive, appealing to a burgeoning seed of greed nestled somewhere between my eyes and my stomach for the firm flesh and rich hues of his wares. I bought these other fruits, but the peaches were the crown of what I bought. They were almost always ripe when I purchased them, especially as the summer progressed—sometimes to the point of bursting in the bag—and covered in a thicket of fuzz that I massaged off under cold water, before biting into what never failed to be a tangy and sweet respite from the dead heat of the day or the unrelenting pressure of class.
I discovered that peaches in America are different; the respite they provide is less intense, and not just because my days in Portland are less tiring. It was only when I picked up a certain piece of fruit today that I discovered it to be a peach and not a nectarine, so thin was the fuzz covering its skin—more like the hair on an infant’s cheeks than the light swirls on the crown of its head, as on the peaches in Syria. And more disappointingly still, when I bit into even the ripest pieces of fruit I found them comparatively bland, tending toward a fainter sour or sweet without the dazzling combination of both found in Syrian peaches. I told my observations to my mother, and she remembered having to rub the fuzz off of the peaches of her childhood, growing up on a farm in New York. Being back in America is dazzling for the availability of some of my favorite foods that are harder to obtain in Syria: pesto and olive tapenade, Marcona almonds and good brie, sushi and plum wine; but these strangely evolved American peaches, whether the result of hot-housing farming or genetic engineering or both, are not among them. I’m not sure where these peaches that I eat in Oregon come from; they might have been grown here, or been shipped halfway around the world, for all I know. But given that most of the food sold at Syrian fruit stands is what’s in season, it seems that it’s grown locally, and while it at first seems unfortunate not to be able to access all the foods I like all year round, the quality of what’s offered is compensation enough. It’s a different way of eating, but one I can get used to.
Home for a visit
After 28 hours of traveling, I’ve arrived back in the U.S., so for the next three weeks, then, I’ll be spending time with family and doing other necessary activities, before flying back to Damascus to begin my fall semester. I felt a bit of advance culture shock in the Queen Alia Airport in Jordan at the efficiency of things, since the man who issued my boarding pass actually seemed familiar with a computer! And he knew how to type! It was a stark contrast to the Syrian airport employee who was responsible for handling my ticket in Damascus (many Syrians know how to type, of course, but this airport employee was particularly egregious). I’ve also quickly shifted back into my U.S. persona, I think–which includes a willingness to occasionally spend $4 for a coffee drink and a strong aversion to both Coca-Cola and French fries ( I consume both regularly in Syria, by the time I was wandering around JFK during my layover and searching for something to eat, French fries in particular had already begun to seem repulsive again). I’m more and more aware every time I return to the U.S. from abroad that I had only the faintest idea of what it meant to be an American before I lived in the Middle East—and that’s not only because identity often emerges most strongly through contrast. But that is the subject of another post, hopefully one that I’ll write in the coming weeks. I think I’ll continue to update this blog, if not as frequently, because there are some things I’ve meant to write and haven’t had time, or posts that I’ve only half-finished until now.
The Lives of…Others?
After finishing my exams yesterday, I went to a hammam with a friend from my class and then went home to relax by watching a nice, non-Arabic (and thus non-homework related) film–the German movie The Lives of Others.
I’ve seen the movie before, and I’ll never forget what the Syrian blogger Ayman Haykal wrote about it, which I read several months after viewing the film for the first time:
“While this film moves the German viewer to the distant past about which he doesn’t know much, it reminds an Arab viewer like myself and like you all of a reality that we, unfortunately, are still living.”
If you’ve seen the movie, an interesting follow up is to read this article, in which a current Swarthmore professor who spent some time in the GDR describes the experience of reading through his Stasi files after the reunification of Germany (and unfortunately, despite the parallels, I don’t expect that Arabs will get to flip through their security files any time soon). If you haven’t seen the movie, go rent it. Really.
Duly humbled
The heat these past few days has been stifling, and even on my balcony I’ve had to resort to sitting in damp clothing in order to keep cool for lack of a breeze. But at the very least, for now I’m no longer being stifled by my homework: today was our final exam for CASA’s summer semester, and it was very, very difficult–even more difficult than the CASA entrance exam, although mercifully much shorter. The listening section, in which we heard a clip from al-Jazeera describing the ruckus caused by an Iranian film describing Anwar as-Sadat as a “traitor” and his assassin as a “martryr,” as well as the essay question asking us to analyze a quote from the novel we’ve been reading, were of average difficulty. The reading section on which I spent the bulk of my time, however, consisted of a very long, very dense article on the Iranian media, which most disappointingly contained almost none of the semester’s vocabulary words that I’d spent part of my weekend reviewing, but did contain a large number of words I certainly didn’t know, along with tortuous sentence structures that ensured that I still don’t have a clear idea what it was trying to say. When the CASA students and faculty went out to lunch afterwards as a capstone to our summer, my teacher asked me how I was.
“I’m spent,” I admitted. “That was an extremely difficult article.”
“Yes,” she said good-naturedly, and appeared to consider the matter. “I think what I really wanted to show you guys with the test was how much Arabic you still have to learn. I found during the semester that there was some arrogance among the students this year in their dealings with the readings and other material.”
I admitted that there was a certain sense among my classmates and myself that, having been accepted to CASA, we were the best Arabic students around, and that some of the readings (which yes, I occasionally found idiotic) were beneath us or didn’t deserve our time.
“We can learn something from every article,” my teacher reminded me. “That was what I wanted you guys to think about after the test.”
Well, she succeeded; after an exam like that, I don’t feel I have much to boast about.
Too early
I was very saddened last night to hear about the death of the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, who was by no means past his ability to write evocatively and speak eloquently. In his memory, I suggest that anyone who is interested look at this excellent website, which includes recordings of Darwish reciting his own poems. Hearing poetry recited in English isn’t always much better than reading it to oneself, but the particular inflection of poetry recitation in Arabic always strikes me to the core, and Darwish was certainly a master of this tradition.
