The Blog and the Shower

As the green striped bus pulled away from the curb, all but four of its riders leapt off of the metal and plastic benches to congregate in the center aisle. A drum was quickly produced and pounded on energetically to provide a rhythmic backbone for what became a knot of several dozen Syrians who began to sing at the top of their lungs, clap in time with the music, and dance as the bus roared away from Jeramana towards the Occupied Golan. It was 6:45 a.m on Independence Day in Syria.

When I once asked a Syrian about the meaning of the word jela’, the word used to denote Syria’s independence day, he reminded me of the term’s similarity to the words mejla (sink) and jeli (washing) in colloquial Arabic: jela’, he told me, was the withdrawal French troops from Syrian soil, as if Syria was cleansing itself of their presence when on April 17^th, 1946, the last French soldier exited (the word’s root in MSA also has to do with clarity and purity). Foreign soldiers haven’t left all of Syrian land, however, as the Golan remains under Israeli occupation, and Independence Day is the only day on which ordinary citizens can visit the border with their occupied territory without a special permit.

Syria in the foreground & occupied Golani hills in the background

Our rented bus was filled to the brim with Syrians eager to mark the day with a visit to the Golan—which some had visited every year since childhood and others would see for the first time—and an extended picnic afterwards, as well three Americans and one South Korean who must all have seemed quite dour to our companions when we displayed rather less enthusiasm for the full-blown early morning party under swing that entailed singing and clapping along to songs sometimes patriotic and sometimes silly in a group sing-along that lasted the hour and a half bus ride to the border. Although not everyone could follow every song perfectly, a majority of riders knew a majority of the songs in a show of shared cultural context that astounded me. The Syrians tried to include us in their party by asking us to sing something for them in English, but it quickly appeared that there was no decent song we all knew the words to. We agreed that we all had memorized Mary had a little lamb, Happy Birthday, The wheels on the bus go round and round, and This is the song that never ends… but subjecting our friends to the staples of an American childhood seemed cruel and unusual. They weren’t singing campfire classics or children’s ballads, but real songs that I recognized from the radio. I know the words to a few Arabic songs and the choruses of yet another handful, but they didn’t come up often enough for me to really participate in the singing, and my foreign companions never sang at all.

Singing to the Golan

We walked the last two hundred meters to the border after a winding drive through a region as verdant as the rest of Syria’s western edge, and found ourselves at a small building and concrete platform with a white railing, separated by barbed wire from a U.N.-staffed watch tower. Since we’d arrived just after eight a.m. it wasn’t yet crowded, and there was room enough for all of us to take a front-row spot gazing at the gently rising hills of the Golan that disappeared into low-hanging fog not far from the thin white break in the foliage that was a road and fence marking the furthest point of Israeli occupation, and a small town of plain, sharply rectangular buildings just above it. My companions sang a song proclaiming the Golan as both Arab and Syrian, and then switched: Saamiduun, saamiduun, they sang…Persevering, persevering. Someone produced a bag of balloons that we blew up and adorned with messages, intending to float them across the border, but there was a strong wind blowing from the south that chilled us to the bone in our light spring jackets and prevented us from sending the balloons anywhere except back into Syria. “This is why we gave the Golan to the Israelis,” one young man joked, “to freeze them out!” The cold, however, did not dampen anyone’s spirits too deeply, and more patriotic songs accompanied an impromptu debke circle—a folk dance found in Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, and Jordan that doubles at the Syrian national dance, which lasted until a freezing rain pummeled the region and forced us back onto the bus.

We drove back through the now-soaking greenery, and the rain

Two of our companions drumming an oud-ing at the picnic grounds

stopped before we arrived at our intended picnic ground in Beit Jinn, where we shared sandwiches and salad before setting out on another several hours of the activities that had begun on the bus—namely, more singing and debke-ing interspersed with organized games. At one point the entire group divided into two teams to play charades, although the idea of teams quickly became obsolete since no one was keeping score, anyone could chime in, and each team was equally and phenomenally successful in guessing the pantomimed song, play, movie, or television show in under ten seconds, tops. The charad-er would perform the agreed upon action signaling that they were acting out a movie, then add the mime for singer, and someone would call out, “Fairuz!” Upon confirmation that she was indeed the singer in the movie, someone else would guess one of her movies: “Safar Barlek!” or “Bayaa’a al-Khawatim!” and quite quickly get it right. The sign for song and a flapping of arms was all that was needed to prompt a correct guess of a song whose title referred to a flying bird. When charades had exhausted the energy of its participants, we pulled chairs into a circle to listen to a member of the group play the ‘oud while another drummed gently. Later, another picnic group set up speakers several feet tall and blasted debke music across the grounds, but no one seemed to mind this monopolization of the area’s sound space; instead, every group of picnickers relaxed into chairs to listen or formed their own debke line, and danced until it was time to reboard the bus. It was early evening when we arrived back in Jeramana, and despite having been up since five o’clock that morning no one appeared visibly tired or irritable as they broke into a final song to thank the organizer of the trip—If not for your eyes, we wouldn’t have come—and dispersed into the cool spring night