syriati

I was recently talking to a few friends about the movie “Syriana,” which none of us has seen. “Syriana” means “Our Syria” in Arabic, and we were joking about what “Syriati,” or ”My Syria,” means to each of us. Because my Syria is not desert or bombs or hatred towards Americans or daily danger. My Syria doesn't have camels.

My Syria is living a block away from a KFC, and only a few houses down from a store called “Paris Hilton Fashion.” My Syria is getting sunburned while I study vocab on my balcony amongst the branches of the orange tree rooted our yard. It is passing 50 leera through seven different people on a bus, which I got onto with a running leap (because why would it come to a complete stop?), and knowing that my bus ticket will be passed back to me as well as all of my change. You will ALWAYS get your change back. My Syria is vegetables being sold on every street for basically nothing, and souks full of fresh fruit and clothes and roaming cats. It is playing backgammon in smoky cafes next to crazy men singing and chanting verses from the Koran, and argileh, and the strongest gin and tonics you could imagine. It is children on the street, their faces smeared with dust, who will simultaneously break your heart and infuriate you. After being followed for a block by a little boy begging for money, I offered to buy him food instead; he refused and told me to “fuck off.” My Syria is the turquoise tint of mosques at sunset, and pushing my way through crowded alleyways in the Old City. It is banana & milk smoothies, and crouching on micro-buses, and the constant presence of sweetened tea. It the long discussions about Arabic grammar that I kind of hate but actually get really into. My Syria is going out every weekend and stumbling home at 5am as you hear the call-to-prayer. It is my first manicure, for only $10. My Syria is bantering with cab drivers about the creation of a Kurdish homeland and why I'm not married. It is the sound of cats in heat, and Akon blasting from slow-moving cars, and the hisses and propositions of men on the street. It is the sound of my ipod so that I don't have to hear the hisses and propositions of men on the street. My Syria is water from the tap, because it hasn't made me sick yet, and sometimes ignorance is bliss. It is meeting field organizers from the Obama campaign, archaeologists, linguists, musicians, UN staff, students who are specializing in everything and have been everywhere. It is friends who are not only Syrian or American, but from all over Europe and Turkey, from Iraq, from Venezuela, from Japan, China, Korea, from Africa.

Good-byes don't really exist here, though it feels like they happen all too often. Who knows where any of us foreigners will be next week, next month, never mind next year? Permanence is a skewed idea here... at some level, I think everyone knows that we may be just crossing paths. My Syria is coffee and Arabic and music in the crowded streets and smoking and laughing and amazing people and just trying to figure myself out a little bit more.