A tank in Homs, Syria, according to the caption. Photo credit: FreedomHouse, http://www.flickr.com/photos/syriafreedom/6731497685/
On Friday, I heard back from a friend who lives in Aleppo. He and his family are safe after two bombs rocked the city that morning.
But some of my distant relatives who live in the embattled city of Homs are not so lucky. Their phone lines are down, so I cannot reach them directly. I hear their news through the grape vine when I call Damascus, where most of my immediate and extended family lives. They share tales of unspeakable violence. And they tell me stories of unending chaos.
There is the unexplained death of an elderly couple, relatives of my cousin’s in-laws. They were stabbed dozens of times in their home in Homs. There are the horrid stories of blood and a fresh corpse sprawled on the curbside, before a family of five fled Homs to Damascus. They are now searching for a furnished apartment to rent, “until things get better back home”. There is the young family that is torn: If they stay in Homs, they might jeopardize their own lives. But, they fear, if they flee their home, the armed militia might occupy it.
A few years ago, I used to hear similar stories from Iraqi refugees after they fled their war-torn country across the border to Syria. Over a million of them turned Syria into their safe haven, as did hundreds of Lebanese fleeing instability in their own country. Surrounded by all this turmoil, many Syrians sighed with relief at the “security and stability” that Syria offered, regardless of how they felt about the Assad regime.
It was during this time, in 2005, that I moved to Damascus from New York City. I was on a temporary assignment with Reuters to cover Syria. Though I was born in Damascus, and spent many school holidays there, I never lived there as a child. This would be my first time, and I was ecstatic. It was a chance to discover my country of origin, and get to know dozens of extended family members.
If I could get there before Starbucks, I figured, I would even bear witness to one of the last isolated countries, as it slowly opened up to the world.
Now that Syria might be sliding toward civil war, I am grateful for the time I spent there. The magic, the gentle heart of people, and the humorous, sometimes strange, stories I encountered stay with me.
Upon arriving in Damascus, I found a city frozen in time. Not because of a lack of modernity – a casual stroll through downtown Damascus can easily be confused with downtown Kuala Lumpur or any other bustling city in the East, air pollution and all. But this ancient metropolis, arguably the oldest continuously inhabited in the world, maintains an authenticity unique to places that have been off the grid of globalization.
Upon arriving in Damascus, I found a city frozen in time.
The Old City of Damascus, where the biblical St. Paul walked on the Street Called Straight, is still more of a regular neighborhood where families live for generations than it is a tourist attraction. The aroma of fresh pita bread at the corner bakery, with its decades-old brick oven, greets children as they walk to school, and etches in their memory a permanent reminder of all things safe and comfortable. The architecture is a snapshot from an ancient past. One of my favorite restaurants is perched high inside the Old City wall; you enter through a hidden staircase built in Roman times. When I could tolerate the smoke, I joined a handful of left-over Communist dissidents in their favorite hangout, an underground pub that centuries ago served as a dungeon.
I also found hobbies that had thrived there for millennia, like the bizarre subculture of pigeon fanciers. They keep on their rooftops the strangest looking birds, and train them to fly “Air Force-style” into someone else’s flock. The objective of this game – one anthropologist calls it “Pigeon Wars” – is to lure away an adversary’s most prized bird.
I also found hobbies that had thrived there for millennia, like the bizarre subculture of pigeon fanciers.
One amusing young fancier, Hassan, explained to me the trick of the trade, and it plays along the gender divide. You see, these birds are monogamous. So, you keep the females aground and train the males to maneuver in the air. That way, the males always come back. But, it turns out, you can train a female not to be monogamous. “You can train her to be something like a pigeon prostitute,” said Hassan. “That way, when someone else’s pigeons are above, you get your ‘prostitute’ to flutter her wings, and bam! Your rival pigeons land on your roof. They’re all yours.”
I had no way of knowing this when I was little. In the ’70s, my parents used to take me to Damascus during school break, and I would watch for hours pigeons landing and flying off our neighbor’s rooftop.
Syria held so much magic for me, even back then.
The country was at the height of its Soviet-era alliance. A local brand of socialism made luxury a rare occurrence, and deprived people from many daily necessities. Too young to understand this, I heard about it from family. Granma would complain that there were “no lemons in the souk these days”. Sometimes there were no chickens, no hosiery, no toilette paper, and I would be sent to the bathroom with a strange box of rough tissues. When we visited during wintertime, my family would huddle around the fire furnace in the living room. Central heating was unheard of, as were dryers. Granma would place me by the fire and put my wet gloves atop the furnace, while mom dried the rain from my hair with a towel. My uncle would inevitably show up with raw chestnuts, which we roasted and snacked on for hours.
Electricity, water and phone lines regularly went dead for hours, though it was seldom without warning. Each neighborhood had its “lights out” time, thanks to government rationing of electricity. Ours was usually in the late afternoon. A setting sun would send some final rays of light into our living room, before Granma lit up candles.
I loved those days, and lamented that for me they were few and far in between.
Like many Syrians of my generation, I grew up in a diaspora. For us Syrians living in exile, we have our cherished memories from short and sweet encounters with the motherland, which leaves us craving more. And now, we cherish our Skype calls and online chats with everyone back home. Like an umbilical cord, our consorting nourishes us with the same emotions and hopes, and distresses us with the same dread and fears that our courageous families in Syria endure today.
Put ten Syrians in one room these days and you get over a 100 opinions. But Sryia is always with us.
Many of us have turned into activists and journalists, fund-raisers and humanitarians. We may not agree on much. In fact, put ten Syrians in one room these days and you get over a 100 opinions. But Sryia is always with us. It is in our thoughts before we go to sleep, in our day dreams during our morning commute. We speak of it in our conversations with partners and friends, and during our gentle explanations to children.