The Blog and the Shower

My family is visiting me in Syria (yay!), so I’ll be on a hiatus for about a week and a half more.

I don’t have anything new to add to what is already being said about Gaza, but there are a number of good commentaries reprinted here on Syria Comment.

Happy new year, everyone.

In Qasaa’, one of Damascus’s mainly-Christian neighborhoods, Christmas was in full swing, with gaudy Christmas lights and at least one Santa with a fake white beard every block.

These four Santas were dancing with the young children in the crowd to brass trumpets and drums…

I guess Syrians don’t worry about kids who ask,”But Momma, which one is the real Santa?”

Most of the New York Times’ coverage of the Middle East is politicized and slanted, but here’s a rare high-quality article from that paper on the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamism in Jordan.  Merry Christmas

Dear man on the microbus in Damascus,

Please do not spread your legs as widely as possible when sitting on a two-person bench. The seat is not just for you. There is no reason to make the person sharing the bench next to you huddle against the window or hang off into the aisle to avoid touching your leg, even though you may think that keeping your equipment well-ventilated is of greater importance. I disagree. Sometimes women don’t feel like sitting with their knees clamped together, but thanks to your excessive liberties with personal space, this is usually the only possible configuration. The microbus is cramped for everyone. Let’s not make it into a compression chamber for the rest of us.

Thank you,

Sarah

…then you can click here.

Very few apartments in Syria have central heating (if any do), and most aren’t insulated, either, which means that often the temperature inside is approximately the same as the temperature outside.

My appartment is heated by a sobiya, a diesel furnace, which seems to be the most common indoor heat source:

You pour the diesel into the chamber on the top right, and then it drips into the main furnace, into which one tosses matches or burning kleenex until the liquid lights on fire, and the fumes go out the pipe at back.  Diesel flames don’t look like any fire I’m used to; they kind of look like vivid cotton candy, with the same illusory quality as clouds that makes you want to bury your hand in the softness.  Of course, I’ve successfully resisted the impulse so far.

There’s a well-known story about the Syrian poet and satirist Mohammad al-Maghout: he was jailed as a young man for having joined the wrong political party, but he explained later that he hadn’t been politically conscious, he just joined the political party that had a sobiya in their headquarters, providing a nice warm place for him to hang out in the rural winter.

I found sobiyas a little strange at the beginning of winter, but they’re nothing compared to the space-alien contraption that is the only indoor heat source at my friend’s apartment in the suburb known as “86″:

Now, I have no idea how this thing works.

In this BBC article on the cultural scene in Syria, journalist Martin Asser interviews Syrian novelist Khalid Khalifa, whose lastest novel In Praise of Hatred is officially banned but, as Asser discovers, not very difficult to get a hold of.

Khalid seems like a nice guy; I’ve seen him many times at a cafe near my apartment and he always says hi.  I haven’t read his novel yet, although I’m hoping to do during my break, but I’ve heard from a more well-read Syrian friend that the novel’s account of prison conditions is an important contribution to literature on the subject.  But I rather suspect that the main reason Asser thought of interviewing Khalid is that there was a New York Times article about him, with much of the same content, six months ago. After all, Asser doesn’t seem interested Khalid’s novel itself as much as in the fact that it’s banned: since it hasn’t been translated into English yet, it would be difficult for him to read it.  There are also many other books that are banned in Syria, from some erotica to Sayyid Qutb’s writings, but apparently those weren’t much of a draw for the journalist.

What Khalid has to say is thoughtful; he doesn’t parrot the us-against-the-authorities line that flies well in a surface journalistic account, but describes a more complicated process of negotiation and give-and-take.  Asser doesn’t seem terribly interested in this story, however: “Happily,” he writes when the bookstore owner prooves reluctant to give an official record of the book’s sale, “or perhaps unhappily, my faith in Syrian totalitarianism was restored as soon as I asked for a receipt for my purchase.”  It doesn’t make as good of a news article, or fit the narrative about Syrian “totalitarianism,” when you can buy a banned book and chat easily with its author.  That might mean that a journalist should look deeper, to the logic of a system that restricts some forms of expression in a rather lazy way, banning books that one can still buy, blocking websites that are still accessible to those who know how to look, sponsoring theater productions with at least somewhat critical content, while simultaneously ensuring that the majority of Syrians don’t have the time, or else the energy, or else the money, or else the inclination to seek them out.

And today I’d like to send out a word of congratulations to my younger brother, who was just accepted into NYU and is also turning 18 today!  Happy birthday and congratulations, Duncan, I’m so very happy for you and proud of you.

Analyst Joshua Landis’s post highlighting recent reports on the Syrian economy is characteristically detailed, but I think his own analysis does a good job of summarizing the situation:

“The following economic and political reports suggest that Syria is fairly well isolated from the world recession. For once, Damascus’ habitual reform footdragging paid off handsomely. The fact that the long promised stock market has yet to be launched has saved Syrian businessmen money and headache.”

Also, from the same source, it looks like Americans in Syria won’t be enjoying a more favorable exchange rate any time soon.  When I first visited in December 2006, the exchange rate was something 48 or 49 pounds to the dollar.  When I arrived in the summer, it was closer to 45, and the Economist says: “we do not expect any substantive change over the outlook period, with the exchange rate forecast to average SP46.4:US$1 in 2009-10.”

Of course, it’s still a favorable exchange rate on the whole.  But it means that the CASA stipend will continue to cover much less in Syria than it does in Egypt, compounded by the fact that CASA Cairo fellows receive their stipend in cash, while we have to pay high bank fees to withdraw it from ATMs.  This might sound unnecessarily whiny, but I know people who chose to enroll in better-funded programs like Flagship rather than CASA because of well-justified monetary concerns, so it seems that CASA might have to be a bit more generous if it wants to keep its respected place among options for advanced Arabic study.

Here’s an interesting article from the New York Times magazine about a social networking website that will allow Arabic and English speakers to use it simultaneously through instant translation.

The article accurately relates some of the difficulties of Arabic-English translation and explains how the software gets around a few of them, provoking a slight sense of foreboding: those are my skills you’re computerizing now!

I found the website, called Meedan, easily through google, only to learn that I had to add my name to a list of people waiting to be invited before I could use the site.  Of course, I don’t need a website to chat with Arabic speakers, but I’m curious to see for myself how well it works and what topics people are talking about.

The article concludes: “But when the subject is Middle East politics, even a minor misunderstanding can tip polite debate into angry argument. As with any dispute, language matters. Terrorist or freedom fighter? Martyr or murderer? Human editors and translators often wrestle with such terminology, so it is not hard to imagine a clumsy computer translation sparking an ugly — and unnecessary — row. Meedan’s software will have to be good enough to avoid that, or users might decide they were better off living with the language barrier.”

And those terms are only the beginning.  I wonder how long it will take the software to find an understood translation for “nakba,” because simply giving the meaning as “catastrophe” won’t make it clear to most English-speakers that the word often refers to the establishment of Israel.  Even more problematic, the average American doesn’t have the historical or political sense of what went on during the establishment of Israel or afterwards that would justify such a term, making it sound like blind anti-Semitism in the context of the blather that the American media usually conveys about those horrible, Jew-hating Arabs.

Although I do think that more communication is generally positive, the New York Times article reminded me of my linguistics professor in college, an adorable little old Russian who used to teach at Berkeley and who giggled when he told us about a starry-eyed young activist he met there who was thrilled when she learned how many languages he spoke; “If only we could all talk to each other,” she sighed, “don’t you think we could solve the world’s problems?”

“Actually,” he replied, I imagine with the same mischievousness that appeared on his face as he recounted the anecdote, “I think the more we talk to each other the more problems we discover.”