Syria - a very different place from Yemen
Trip Start
Feb 22, 2007
1
10
38
Trip End
Jul 19, 2008
Damasus,
Syria
Friday, March 2, 2007
After waiting around at Yassar's house for while, he himself finally arrived and informed me he'd already found a place for me to live. I had actually visited a couple of places the previous day after being randomly invited to do so by helpful people in the street (this, apparently, is how house hunting works in Damascus). I had been particularly taken with one of the rooms in a traditional, Damascene style house in the Old City, but had been put off by the expensive rent. As Yassar and I approached the house he had found for me, I recognised it instantly as the same nice house from yesterday. Informing Yassar of this and telling him about the high rent, he assured me he would get a better price for me as the landlord was the brother of his best friend. This he duly did and I accepted without further ado, putting it down to fate that I had happened upon the same apartment twice through entirely different means. I returned shortly after with my bags and began unpacking my belongings with purpose for the first time since I'd packed them away one week earlier. It was a great feeling and a relief to finally feel in some way settled and able to stamp my own impression on a room.
That night I went around to Yassar's house where a big party was being thrown. Having now moved in to a house of my own, the party was a welcome chance to unwind. I met many fellow Arabic students from all manner of countries as well as a load of Syrians, many of whom I recognised simply from walking around the Old City the previous day. It is my early impression that Damascus - at least the Old City - is an intimate place where everybody seems to know everybody else and, thus, making friends is a matter of inevitability rather than concerted effort.
At around 1am we all headed off to one of the discotheques in Bab Touma, the vibrant Christian Quarter. Amid its attractive, cave-like surroundings, the club played some of the worst europop that I have had the misfortune of hearing since my Greek/Spanish holidays of years gone by. In fact some of the same cheesy anthems (Mambo No. 5 springs nostalgically to mind) blared out some eight years on, and I couldn't help but have an ironic dance to them.
As I stood around with a reasonably-priced beer in hand, trying not to ogle the scantily clad (Western) women on the dance floor, I was left to contemplate just how different my experience will be in Syria than in Yemen, and how different their two cultures are; each of them liberal and conservative in their own way. Here in Syria I hope to be able to converse with the women, not to mention see their faces! Apparently one can even date them (though I've also been told it's an ultimately fruitless endeavour!). I will be able to have a beer in public if I so choose, or simply pop to the shop and get some beers in for the house. Yet, I have to be vigilant about what I say in public and to whom I say it, and finding a Syrian willing to talk openly about politics is as futile an exercise as searching for an Israel-loving Muslim.
Yet for nine months in Yemen, if ever I was so bold as to steal the most fleeting glimpse of a Yemeni woman, only her reticent eyes, through the impenetrable solitude of her blackened burqa, would return questioningly my glance. Beer there was too expensive and elusive to bother with except on the occasion of a birthday, or departure of a friend. Yet, I talked politics ad nauseam with the locals and with my teachers without a second thought and they were only too happy to converse. In class, I even tailored my vocabulary to enhance my ability to speak on such matters; and later, as an international election observer, I poured scorn freely on Yemen's so-called democracy in my report on the local parliamentary elections.
Syria's cultural (and religious) freedoms come at the price of political restriction; Yemen's political freedoms - extending to open criticism of the government, but not to the genuine electoral powers to remove it - come parallel to cultural restrictions. Yet, in the Muslim world, cultural restrictions are inherently self-prescribed predominantly through the varying interpretations of Islam by a country's people; and, despite the malcontents, the people are thus generally accepting of them. Political restrictions, however, are prescribed by the political elite, and are as such an imposition on the general will of a people. I sense, after just a few days, rumblings of discontent among young people in Syria, which, with no means of ventilation, is far more dangerous and insidious than the open disgruntlement of educated Yemenis.
Yup, it will be a different experience in Syria alright. Different, however, does not mean better or worse, it just means different, and I look forward to this new challenge ahead of me and the new experiences it will bring.
