Ok wrote this one in a rush; too much stuff to fit into grammatically appropriate sentences. I’m here in Damascus now, sitting in my room in my classic Damascene style house on the ground floor hearing the sounds of one of my Syrian neighbors dance around puddles in my alley left over from what seems like the thousandth rain storm since I got here. The walls are very thin so I can hear pretty much everything going on outside, including the (5-times daily) call to prayer from the loud speaker phones of the Shi'a mosque just 40 feet down the alley. The 5am call to prayer wakes me up maybe one-day a week, but my prodigious sleeping abilities keep me under most of the time.
Thin walls notwithstanding, my house is pretty neat. Architecturally its got two floors with rooms and bathrooms and then a small rooftop landing arranged around a courtyard that doubles as our living room under a leaky removable roof that we'll take off in April or so when the weather gets nice. I live with two Germans, one Swiss, one Dutch, one Syrian, and soon to be one Swede and maybe one other American. They are all at least as good, or much better than me at Arabic, and living with them has already been impossibly interesting. They're all very culturally interested, and like going to Damascus' many art showings and concerts (a field in which Damascus has definitely got Cai-town beat). Swiss Philip (as opposed to the other, German Philip in our house) teaches Kapawerra (sp?). German Philip is taking drum (I am too ignorant to know what it is actually called, but it's basically like the Middle Eastern equivalent of the bongo or jembe). We all pitch an equal amount of money for certain shared foods, like the bread, hummos, mutabl, and baba ganoush we eat most mornings for breakfast, and we have really enjoyably intellectual conversations. Wednesdays are house nights where we try and do something together. Basically, I really really like my house. Even the fact that we don't have internet is kind of nice (except for blogging purposes), because it gives me more time to just focus on Arabic. This is really my first extended interaction with Europeans where I am in the minority as the only American, and I really quite like it actually, although I find I my tolerance for “America-controls-the-world jokes” which I already got quite a lot from Arabs. It has also been really fascinating getting to know my housemates' other European friends even though they all speak one or two other languages besides English and Arabic.
Speaking of me not understanding languages, Farhan, our Syrian housemate has some hilarious language quirks. He speaks rather good English, but he is largely self-taught, so he is consistently comical when he speaks English. To this day there is still an unexplained interaction that he had with me in my first week here where he kept on insistently telling me about “throwing the sandwich.” Also, because the other house owned by my landlord/tutor that Farhan gets paid to clean (Farhan has about four different jobs it seems [which is not to say he is poor by any definition of the word, in fact it is quite the contrary I think) is populated by mostly Brits, Farhan also humorously declared upon my first meeting him “oh my god I just got used to the British accent, but I cannot understand American now.”
Coincidentally, I suffered from the reverse problem with Arabic accents. I had just gotten used to—even a little confident in my—Egyptian Arabic, and now I was plopped in the middle of the Levant only to find I could not understand a thing. So began what has been sort of a depressing month in terms of my Arabic. The setbacks mostly involved tests in Fusha not going as well as I feel they should have while at the same time I was finding that all the skill I had acquired in speaking Egyptian ammeyya was now apparently only useful for getting myself laughed at—even more so than speaking fusha in fact. (For those of you, like my parents, who can't remember, fusha is Modern Standard Arabic that is in school, media, and government, while ammeya is the term for the various spoken dialects.)
And so as I have suddenly found my Egyptian ammeya useless it seemed to be an existentially important parallel the helplessness and regret I was feeling as I watched the history-making events—and we all know how I feel about history-making events—happening in Egypt.
As I described in the last post, there are quite a lot of things and people that I miss from Egypt, not the least of which are Koshary and my best friends. I even miss the as yet unmatched craziness of the streets and markets in Cairo. I missed the underlying method to the madness, and what it was like being a part of that order rising from the anarchy of every second. And of course, I think it was the same energy and fire and spirit in the streets and markets that animated Egyptians to rise up so phenomenally. I frequently found myself asking why I had left. If I hadn't bombed the placement test for the University of Maryland Graduate Masters Program just earlier in the week, I was strongly considering going back to Egypt to celebrate and see what it was like after Mubarak stepped down. The more I think of it, the more I regret not going back. And Syria, frankly, will not be going down the same path as Egypt anytime soon, because, well, Cairo and Damascus are just different.
For one thing, besides the MUCH higher number of non-American foreigners here, there is just a different feel to the interactions here. Syrians are not as open and forward as Egyptians are, and even though that means going to buy things is hugely less of a hassle, I think I don't like it. I’m going to wait to reserve judgment though, because I have three more months to really get a feel for this country. As I looked back on that last post I wrote, I feel quite confident in my observations about Egypt, so I am going to give myself time to develop a fuller opinion o f Syria. Especially because I have also met some really wonderful Syrians so far, including perhaps my most peculiar friend, who, for reasons I won't mention now, I will just call J. I'll save my stories (so far) about J for the next post, because, well, I’m going to his brother's likely-to-be lavish wedding...tonight.
And so the reason for sitting down and finally getting around to writing for the blog is because I finally understood a fair amount of Syrian Arabic. German Philip, one of the best non-Arab Arabic speakers I have ever met, has a girl, Hana, visiting him from Egypt who cooked a dinner for Philip, me, some of their other mutual friends from Egypt who happen to be here, and a Syrian poet. The pasta Hana made was good, but what was so great was the truly fascinating conversation ranging from various poems to the similarities and differences between the Syrian and Egyptian political systems she and the Poet had. Not only were the topics interesting, I was pleasantly (to say the least) surprised to find myself understanding probably 80% of their conversation. It helped that she was speaking Egyptian ammeya (it was almost a relief to hear all that vocabulary my brain had gotten used to using on a regular basis), and that he was definitely making an effort to elucidate the normally kind of slurred, almost lazy-sounding Syrian dialect that I am still having a hard time parsing through, but still, it was one of those moments that teachers and experienced Arabic students often talk about when you find yourself listening to a language being spoken and somehow find yourself understanding nearly all of it.
And so I am taking this all as a good omen that things will keep on getting better. As this post (and the long empty silence before it) probably indicates, it's been kind of a rough transition to Damascus at times for me. It's been a little lonely at times—even as I get to have all these intriguing cultural experiences with not only Syrians but also a plethora of Europeans, it's been hard not to dwell on what I left behind in Egypt, among other things.
Sarah, my American friend who coincidentally had also studied at AUC (two years before I did), and I had just talked about how we felt like the only ones who hadn't fallen madly in love with Damascus. It seems no coincidence that most every other one of the foreigners we've met here who is really enamored with Damascus had come here first before going anywhere else in the Middle East. Many of the ones who haven't, interestingly, had all gone to Cairo first. Perhaps the real change-inducing factor is that we all fall in love with the first place we go in the Middle East. I’m sure a lot of the appeal Cairo held for me had to do with how I've attached the experience the nuances of Middle Eastern life to that city, so Damascus didn't really have that much that shocked or wowed me, besides its quite wonderful Old City. But more than that, Damascus feels....quaint. And small. Indeed, the charm of the Old City, while enchanting at first, is sort of easily tired-of as it is not actually all that big.
The challenge then, should be for me to find new ways to enjoy myself while appreciating the good things that I may be overlooking here. It also means I have all the more reason to take advantage of all the amazing places in close proximity to Damascus. That should mean some blog posts about travels around Syria and/or Jordan and Turkey. I'll try to keep you all posted, of course.
Thin walls notwithstanding, my house is pretty neat. Architecturally its got two floors with rooms and bathrooms and then a small rooftop landing arranged around a courtyard that doubles as our living room under a leaky removable roof that we'll take off in April or so when the weather gets nice. I live with two Germans, one Swiss, one Dutch, one Syrian, and soon to be one Swede and maybe one other American. They are all at least as good, or much better than me at Arabic, and living with them has already been impossibly interesting. They're all very culturally interested, and like going to Damascus' many art showings and concerts (a field in which Damascus has definitely got Cai-town beat). Swiss Philip (as opposed to the other, German Philip in our house) teaches Kapawerra (sp?). German Philip is taking drum (I am too ignorant to know what it is actually called, but it's basically like the Middle Eastern equivalent of the bongo or jembe). We all pitch an equal amount of money for certain shared foods, like the bread, hummos, mutabl, and baba ganoush we eat most mornings for breakfast, and we have really enjoyably intellectual conversations. Wednesdays are house nights where we try and do something together. Basically, I really really like my house. Even the fact that we don't have internet is kind of nice (except for blogging purposes), because it gives me more time to just focus on Arabic. This is really my first extended interaction with Europeans where I am in the minority as the only American, and I really quite like it actually, although I find I my tolerance for “America-controls-the-world jokes” which I already got quite a lot from Arabs. It has also been really fascinating getting to know my housemates' other European friends even though they all speak one or two other languages besides English and Arabic.
Speaking of me not understanding languages, Farhan, our Syrian housemate has some hilarious language quirks. He speaks rather good English, but he is largely self-taught, so he is consistently comical when he speaks English. To this day there is still an unexplained interaction that he had with me in my first week here where he kept on insistently telling me about “throwing the sandwich.” Also, because the other house owned by my landlord/tutor that Farhan gets paid to clean (Farhan has about four different jobs it seems [which is not to say he is poor by any definition of the word, in fact it is quite the contrary I think) is populated by mostly Brits, Farhan also humorously declared upon my first meeting him “oh my god I just got used to the British accent, but I cannot understand American now.”
Coincidentally, I suffered from the reverse problem with Arabic accents. I had just gotten used to—even a little confident in my—Egyptian Arabic, and now I was plopped in the middle of the Levant only to find I could not understand a thing. So began what has been sort of a depressing month in terms of my Arabic. The setbacks mostly involved tests in Fusha not going as well as I feel they should have while at the same time I was finding that all the skill I had acquired in speaking Egyptian ammeyya was now apparently only useful for getting myself laughed at—even more so than speaking fusha in fact. (For those of you, like my parents, who can't remember, fusha is Modern Standard Arabic that is in school, media, and government, while ammeya is the term for the various spoken dialects.)
And so as I have suddenly found my Egyptian ammeya useless it seemed to be an existentially important parallel the helplessness and regret I was feeling as I watched the history-making events—and we all know how I feel about history-making events—happening in Egypt.
As I described in the last post, there are quite a lot of things and people that I miss from Egypt, not the least of which are Koshary and my best friends. I even miss the as yet unmatched craziness of the streets and markets in Cairo. I missed the underlying method to the madness, and what it was like being a part of that order rising from the anarchy of every second. And of course, I think it was the same energy and fire and spirit in the streets and markets that animated Egyptians to rise up so phenomenally. I frequently found myself asking why I had left. If I hadn't bombed the placement test for the University of Maryland Graduate Masters Program just earlier in the week, I was strongly considering going back to Egypt to celebrate and see what it was like after Mubarak stepped down. The more I think of it, the more I regret not going back. And Syria, frankly, will not be going down the same path as Egypt anytime soon, because, well, Cairo and Damascus are just different.
For one thing, besides the MUCH higher number of non-American foreigners here, there is just a different feel to the interactions here. Syrians are not as open and forward as Egyptians are, and even though that means going to buy things is hugely less of a hassle, I think I don't like it. I’m going to wait to reserve judgment though, because I have three more months to really get a feel for this country. As I looked back on that last post I wrote, I feel quite confident in my observations about Egypt, so I am going to give myself time to develop a fuller opinion o f Syria. Especially because I have also met some really wonderful Syrians so far, including perhaps my most peculiar friend, who, for reasons I won't mention now, I will just call J. I'll save my stories (so far) about J for the next post, because, well, I’m going to his brother's likely-to-be lavish wedding...tonight.
And so the reason for sitting down and finally getting around to writing for the blog is because I finally understood a fair amount of Syrian Arabic. German Philip, one of the best non-Arab Arabic speakers I have ever met, has a girl, Hana, visiting him from Egypt who cooked a dinner for Philip, me, some of their other mutual friends from Egypt who happen to be here, and a Syrian poet. The pasta Hana made was good, but what was so great was the truly fascinating conversation ranging from various poems to the similarities and differences between the Syrian and Egyptian political systems she and the Poet had. Not only were the topics interesting, I was pleasantly (to say the least) surprised to find myself understanding probably 80% of their conversation. It helped that she was speaking Egyptian ammeya (it was almost a relief to hear all that vocabulary my brain had gotten used to using on a regular basis), and that he was definitely making an effort to elucidate the normally kind of slurred, almost lazy-sounding Syrian dialect that I am still having a hard time parsing through, but still, it was one of those moments that teachers and experienced Arabic students often talk about when you find yourself listening to a language being spoken and somehow find yourself understanding nearly all of it.
And so I am taking this all as a good omen that things will keep on getting better. As this post (and the long empty silence before it) probably indicates, it's been kind of a rough transition to Damascus at times for me. It's been a little lonely at times—even as I get to have all these intriguing cultural experiences with not only Syrians but also a plethora of Europeans, it's been hard not to dwell on what I left behind in Egypt, among other things.
Sarah, my American friend who coincidentally had also studied at AUC (two years before I did), and I had just talked about how we felt like the only ones who hadn't fallen madly in love with Damascus. It seems no coincidence that most every other one of the foreigners we've met here who is really enamored with Damascus had come here first before going anywhere else in the Middle East. Many of the ones who haven't, interestingly, had all gone to Cairo first. Perhaps the real change-inducing factor is that we all fall in love with the first place we go in the Middle East. I’m sure a lot of the appeal Cairo held for me had to do with how I've attached the experience the nuances of Middle Eastern life to that city, so Damascus didn't really have that much that shocked or wowed me, besides its quite wonderful Old City. But more than that, Damascus feels....quaint. And small. Indeed, the charm of the Old City, while enchanting at first, is sort of easily tired-of as it is not actually all that big.
The challenge then, should be for me to find new ways to enjoy myself while appreciating the good things that I may be overlooking here. It also means I have all the more reason to take advantage of all the amazing places in close proximity to Damascus. That should mean some blog posts about travels around Syria and/or Jordan and Turkey. I'll try to keep you all posted, of course.
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