Month: April 2011

Being evacuated did not involve helicopter drops and lifts or rushing out of the house leaving a half eaten piece of toast and being held low by some rescuer with a walky-talky behind the boot of a car until the bullets needed changing. Being evacuated involved a full day’s notice to pack, drinks to say goodbye to friends, a quiet walk with my noisy wheelie suitcase at 6am past the park and down sunlit, shuttered streets to be met by a bus and a goodbye party from employers, a nostalgic drive through the city to the airport and a somewhat jovial flight. We were in high spirits generally and some of our party higher by drinking them. Mostly there was laughing and joking and taking about what we were all planning to do while we are waiting to hear what will happen.

Of course, we talked again of some of the awful things that have been happening; one girl’s friend was travelling on a bus which was stopped where he was beaten and called an animal for allegedly no reason. When he protested that he was not an animal, the broke his teeth and shaved his head, thus ‘marking’ him. He is now afraid to go out in public for fear of what authorities could do. A Syrian friend who had drinks with us the night before was up late on facebook asking about the gunfire she could hear. She only lives a few streets away from us. Someone else had a theory that the reason we have been evacuated now is because of the ‘sanctions’ Britain and the USA want to impose. Such things make me fearful for my friends.

At Heathrow we were met by London colleagues who gave us information sheets and paid for onward tickets. They told us they had been almost entirely preoccupied with evacuations since January: Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Japan, Bahrain. We are lucky. We weren’t traumatised like some of them.

We are staying in Cornwall for the time being, the time being spent waiting and wondering what will happen. Our employers hope we will be back very soon.

Tanks rolled on Douma, a suburb of Damascus, yesterday.

Though it was a holiday today, we had a meeting at the director’s house to (once again) discuss the possibility of evacuation and the possible plans for doing so. I and others were frustrated as it took valuable planning/holiday time and if we are not being evacuated then we are teaching tomorrow. Food was laid on, though, and it was a treat to see her house, which is a traditional Damascene house built around a central courtyard with fruit trees and water. We sat under a covered area of the courtyard in the shade on long cushioned benches where I could admire the afternoon sun warming the yellows, greens and oranges of stained glass from rooms around the courtyard. We have seen a few traditional houses before but none have been in such good condition. Usually, they are dilapidated and jaded somehow: a kind of nostalgic memory of the grand times before the world lost interest. Or something.

After the meeting, I cycled in to see my Arabic tutor in Bab Touma in the Old Town to catch up and tell her we might be leaving. She looked completely done in. Looking in to the dark bookshop where she works, I could tell before I even got off my bike how upset she was: it was in her whole body. Her shoulders were slumped and her face was paler than usual. Her family are in Douma, she told me. Their phones have been cut off. I already knew that they have not had food in the suburb for three weeks and that noone can go in or out of the suburb. I felt helpless.

Yesterday evening we had drinks we friends in the suburbs. We had the news on while we were there and talked about the disparity between the Syrian news and Aljazeera. It seems implausible that the government expects people to swallow the things they are feeding them, and even more implausible what people seem to be swallowing. When there was some ‘trouble’ at the university Generic Cialis last week, for example; the party channel showed the main news of the issues but then said it was all a lie as part of the conspiracy. They then showed supposedly live footage of the university campus looking peaceful. One never knows which media to believe but there had been phone calls from university students to my workplace warning us. We were advised not to leave the building (about 10 mins walk from the university) until things had settled down.

Friends from minority groups have surprised us by attending pro government marches and putting comments on facebook criticising the foreign media. It is true that the western media are distorting the reality to increase the sense of drama as we discovered when phonecalls from home expected us to be dodging bullets on a day to day basis. Like I said in my last post, though, the streets are quiet. A little too quiet, possibly.

There are things that we hear of, things which don’t affect us directly but which affect people we know. While we were at our friends’ house a friend of theirs, also present, had a phonecall to tell him he is now a wanted man for attending a demonstration last Friday and that his friends had been arrested. How do they know who he is? I wanted to know. Because they film every demonstration and then arrest someone and do what they do until they get names.

Even amongst our very limited social circle there is such disparity between people’s opinions. Some people are very cynical and frustrated about the regime while others (and these are all intelligent, thinking people) are quick to point out what Assad has done for this country, how much safer it feels here now. There was so much crime, I am told, and now people feel safe to walk the streets. It’s true, it does feel safe here generally. Even as a woman walking home alone in the small hours of the morning through the middle of the city I feel relatively safe. Glowered at no doubt, but safe.

Today we cycled to the park in the Centre of Damascus and got the usual reaction to me being on a bike. I am not exaggerating to say I may as well be Lady Godiva for the mixture of horror, shock, appreciation and confusion it seems to cause in people.

At the park we cut a large, sweet pomelo on the grass with my rusty penknife. We laughed at the way I kept repeating ‘pomelo’ in between mouthfuls because I liked the way the sound rolled in my mouth.

I lay back feeling too hot and too covered up in my oversized white blouse and jeans and watched the light breeze blown poplar leaves dance and dapple. D and W discussed the situation, the rumours etc. D drank his Turkish coffee bought from man peddling it from a flask and in the background children played football and speakers Generic Cialis from around the park blared nationalistic songs. Without enough Arabic, of course, we are immune to the music’s influence.

Like the music in the park today, the politics here wash over us and sing an impenetrable song which themes our days. We are not really affected. We can leave. We will most probably. Evacuation plans are being discussed as I type and outside and in, life goes on. It’s possible that the streets are quieter. It’s possible that people are looking at one another suspiciously. Who knows what people are feeling?

What to pack? Will we be coming back to this place we had hoped might be home for a while?

I should point out we are safe. I’m really just trying to let you know the disparity between what it feels like to be here and what is going on around us, even though we cannot feel it.

We argue over who does the washing up
I wonder if we’ll see the eggs in the nest on our balcony hatch into chicks. In between plans for what to cook for dinner we discuss the relative merits of planting the herbs we bought from the market. They will die if we leave them in this sun.
On the news; explosions, gunfire, dead-
More and more dead
but here
Strawberries, truffles, new fruits in the market place, birds tinkling passed the edges of car horns hooting in their usual impatient way, men with horses and carts with petrol tanks or vegetables or gas, narghilla in cafes and parks, backgammon, shutters on the street closed in the morning, sugar cane juice, dinner parties, reading on the balcony, yoga on the roof in the mornings, marking to do, lessons to plan, the characters we meet.

Fed up now and getting to want to go home. A girl at work was in tears today about the whole thing because she lives in an area of the city close to the place where demonstrations have been held. She heard gun fire echoing round the streets yesterday afternoon. Probably while I was writing the previous post. News depressing though we still see nothing and experience nothing.

The blood of strawberries thread across the cold marble
And drip onto the kitchen floor
writing a poem called Arab Spring – will publish later

Sat in the lounge slightly hung over from our dinner party last night, cutting out a large Easter bunny I have stuck on card for my prepositions-pin-the-tail-on-the-bunny Easter special tomorrow for my junior group and listening to BBC Middle East Arab Spring discussion.

Demonstrations outside apparently. I say apparently because we haven’t seen or heard anything first hand (hamdulliah). Death toll today 25 according to BBC according to human rights groups here apparently. Had a call from boss today staying stay home / get stocked up etc.

‘will it be okay to walk to work tomorrow?’ I asked. Annoyed I am told don’t go out. Don’t want to go out but don’t like to be restricted.

Last night was the first dinner party I have ever attended where the topic of conversation was almost entirely dominated by politics.

Life has been great since Dan got back. We’ve really enjoyed being here together and making plans. It has been so much more enjoyable having a job that is not hellish and living in the city in an apartment which is perfect for us. Went out on the roof. Looked at the mountains surrounding the city. Looked at the sun setting over the tree tops of the nearby park and reflecting on the dark glass of the four season hotel nearby and Blue tower hotel. Looked at the birds swirling overhead. Looked at the ivy tumbling over the wooden shutters of the balconies opposite and the soft ripple of the Syrian flag. All so at odds from the news back here in the apartment. But the men hanging around on the street, people going into usually closed doorway, white, mirrored window cars zooming around the empty streets leave me wondering what it is we cannot see.

Our speakers have broken and it seemed pointless to buy anymore even though we were having a dinner party last night because we could get evacuated on Saturday. They have been saying that every week of course, ‘be prepared to be evacuated on Saturday’, ‘pack a grab bag’. Finally today we have done that but it has felt unnecessary here otherwise. It’s very frustrating to finally have life to return to some kind of normality and find that we are living in the threat of imminent drastic change. Last week we pulled up all the weeds from the plant pots and tidied up the balcony. We bought strawberries and herbs to plant. Should we bother? Should we bother to frame the photographs we’ve had printed to hang in the apartment. How long do people wait in such situations before deciding to carry on as if everything will always carry on?

Every week the bosses at my work place interrupt my daily life to have a meeting where they ‘update’ us and tell us to carry on with our daily life. On Wednesday the ambassador visited the meeting and spent over an hour commending us on not losing our heads. I kept thinking about the lunch that I was missing and how I had to teach in 20 minutes. ‘Just carry on as normal’ they say. We try but they keep calling meetings.

There is a gap here because my father died and I went back to England to be with my family and attend the funeral. It was difficult to get back because I was really ill and my work place kept telling me to delay flying until they could be sure the political situation made it safe enough. When I got out my phone to turn it off on the plane back to Jordan (a cheaper option than flying direct) I noticed I had a missed call from my employers in Damascus. Too late to postpone now. When I  got to Amman there was an email telling me not to cross the border -drama drama. I was really sick and just needed to get home to my own bed. I got a taxi after midnight across the border and was home by 3am.
Worse was that because of suspicion of foreign influence the laws changed during this time meaning that Dan could no longer fly back from Bulgaria as planned. He had to go back to londo to apply for another visa meaning he got home a week later and a few hundred quid worse off.

Is it the case where sexuality and its expression are repressed that there is an atmosphere of highly sexualised tension /contradiction around interactions in public? Here, some young covered Muslim women wear headscarves but unnervingly skin-tight (and sometimes semi transparent) clothes, fancy, visible underwear and highheeled shoes or boots. In the souk leading to the central Umayyad Mosque underwear shops sell titillating, nipple accentuating gear which women in Burkahs buy. As a foreign woman it seems to be assumed that I am so sexually liberal that I would get into a car with strange men. The fact that men commonly stare inappropriately and comment or call, I am told, is not because I am a foreigner though. Our nicab-wearing tutor for example, tells me that men often make lewd referrals to what she is hiding.

I am told that taxi drivers take any kind of eye contact as a form of sexual availability and would any girl be so publicly brazen as to sit in the front alone she should expect to be molested (I have only done this twice, both for logistical reasons and both times this was confirmed though I am determined to believe this would not always be the case)

After our holiday in Jordan Dan, has gone to do a CELTA in Bulgaria.
Apart from that and the stress of moving house alone and getting ready for a new job, life is pretty good again.

Jordan seemed to us more conservative than Syria with more English speaking folk.

We had the privilege of spending time drinking glasses of sugar and tea in the company of a Bedouin police sergeant, which was interesting, one of the hitchhikers we picked up in our hired car – a common practice and one which we’d no doubt have benefitted more from if we had better Arabic.

Did a bit more thinking about the complex situation for women in the middle east. It’s a complicated and I have half forgotten to think about it sometimes. I get frustrated about the way I am looked at or talked to (or not talked to as the case may be) sometimes but forget how free I am in comparison to other women. I was reminded by a woman we shared a taxi with from Amman to Damascus: 38 yrs old and leaving her husband who was according to her limited English, ‘an angry man’, and four young children. She was on her way back to Lattakia in the north of Syria to get her brother’s permission to fight for her children as her husband had said she couldn’t stay with them. Was a very upsetting conversation especially as there was little I could do other than touch her arm in solidarity and hope not to offend. I want to explore these issues further. After all, it was part of what I’d said I’d try to learn about here.

Dead sea more than lived up to all my long held expectations. Could see Israel (or whatever name is better to call it – I am unsure how to stay out of the politics) just a short swim away. Got off the track to find a place where I could swim bikinied without too much hassle way better than the ‘public’ beach area we saw further down the road later.

Petra blew our minds -simply.

Our second day in we walked and walked for over 12 hours. Awesome and not in a cliched sense.

Really an amazing place. We got away from some of the main trails to where some of the Bedouin still live illegally (they were all kicked out in the 1980s to make way for tourism). There’s a story for another time.