The Blog and the Shower

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.