#MiddleEastTrip No. 26 -or- Into the Dark
In the summer of ’95 my parents and I went on vacation to San Diego, California. At just seven years old this would be my first time in California, my first excursion to the west coast and my first whiff of pacific air.
I remember we stayed in this old bed and breakfast that looked like Danny Tanner’s digs in Full House, only painted hot red. We went to the San Diego Wild Animal Park where I learned that unicorns were invented by an old conquistador’s lack of depth perception and to the San Diego Zoo where we searched for our car keys for seven hours. On the hottest day of the trip, we met with my mom’s twin sister (my aunt Nancy) and her husband Ned, who lived in upstate New York but happened to be staying in San Diego for a couple of the days we were. We marked the occasion with a trip to Sea World.
We saw Shamu the whale, or whichever whale-farm clone thereof this killer-orca was, walked by seal tanks and watched a pod of bottle-nose dolphins leap headlong through rings of fire.
The hilariously ironic thing whenever I visit an aquarium, water park or neighbor’s above ground pool however is that I can’t swim and I’m admittedly a bit aquafobic. In my head I liken it to Jim Carrey’s character in “The Truman Show” although I can’t claim recollection of any reality-altering, aquatic trauma from my childhood that will haunt me until I overcome these demons to escape the reality TV show being made out of my life 24-hours-a-day or, roughly, Survivor but running backwards.
Still, none of these places seem to activate my latent hatred for this refreshing giver of life. No, I’ll happily watch a sea ape splash in an artificial tide pool or kayak the Charles, but throw me in and that’ll evoke some rapid-response, internalized concern. On this sunny dreamscape afternoon, just like you see in the commercials for Disneyland or Home Depot, we all weaved through the throngs of visitors with wide smiles.
About halfway across the park, if my memory is correct, stands a refrigerated house of penguins and puffins. Nothing about the building is inherently threatening, it’s just a windowless, oblong structure with a big sign and manned information/ticketing booth.
As you round the corner and face the entrance, you enter a dark tunnel where the walls are painted black and ceiling-mounted speakers emit a wail. The whooshing sound was supposed to be a recording of arctic winds to set the scene for the animal habitat, through which you were carted on a conveyer belt, or more accurately, one of those moving pedestrian walkways from the airport.
But I was absolutely terrified. So terrified in fact, that I screamingly refused to enter, even as my parents escalated from reassuring me of my safety to outwardly calling me a baby and walking in without me to cement the fact.
They left me with my uncle Ned, a curly-haired but balding school guidance counselor with thin rimmed glasses and a thick brown mustache. I can vividly remember sitting on a bench just past the exit, waiting for mom, dad and aunt Nancy to emerge, the whole time listening to Uncle Ned calmly reassure me that a level of irrational paranoia was normal for a kid my age.
Over the next 14 years I grew out of my fear of the dark, woke up to see my parents putting the presents under the tree on Christmas eve, and stopped believing in ghosts,or for that matter, God.
When my Dad died just before father’s day in 2004, my focus became rationality, calculating risks and beating my need for adventure, danger and happenstance inert. Working hard in school became a priority, as was holding a job, moving east and getting on with this adulthood thing already. I grew out of feeling bad for myself, the oldest teenage enterprise, but grew excessively careful.
Last summer, my long dormant impulse for reckless uncertainty climbed from my gut and sprung out of my mouth, shaking the bedrock of my daily life and demanding a change. I stopped finding prudent reasons not to do something and started answering with an unequivocal yes. So when the opportunity to hop across the globe and tinker with media freedoms in the arab world arose, I was all in.
The night before I left for Cairo, I promised myself to keep saying yes. “If adventure means peeling away my own layers and basking in the spontaneity of the moment, so be it,” I said. My friend Cat, who spent a significant chunk of time in Latin America, had passed along this advice, and I took it to heart. This middle east excursion marked only my fourth time leaving the country, was five times as long as any trip I’d ever taken and would be my first attempt at international correspondence.
The first day off the plane, we climbed onto the backs of camels and meandered through the desert towards the pyramids in Giza. In an experience that combined the surreal with the cliché of an Egyptian vacation, the star of the show was undoubtedly our trusty steeds.
They bark back as their handlers mush them forward, tugging at their long snout with a rope and whacking their hind legs. Noses covered in flies, they seemed bothered by the entire experience, as if we interrupted their siesta. When a camel runs, they do so with a hobbled gallop that’s especially fun when you’re holding a camera in one hand and with the other gripping a “support stump” attached to its back.
The pyramids were as expected, giant geometrically unique piles of stone. It’s stupendous to stand in their shadow or, when the armed guard turns his back, climb up their sides. It’s like stepping into an eighth grade history book, only all the most exciting characters left eons ago. In their place stand vast monuments to ancient slave labor and novel engineering, towering and grand but ultimately lonely in their lack of modern function.
Visiting Giza was also the catalyst to the first reporting I did on the trip, which began, hilariously, on camelback. The resulting piece on Egyptian efforts to modernize the Giza plateau and the impact on family enterprise, was later picked up by the Globe and will be published this summer. The story illustrated for me the opportunity in being an American journalism student in a police state with trepidatious media freedoms. Our status expanded our access to government ministries and the like without burdening us with the muzzle of state control.
No where was that more evident than in our conversation with Ayman Nour, just four months after his release from prison. Nour was sentenced to five years in jail on trumped up charges, motivated by his challenge to President Hosni Mubarak and his National Democratic Party. After 24 years of emergency law, the NDP held a presidential election in 2005, in which Nour stood as an inconveniently popular challenger. The election was of course rigged, Mubarak won in a landslide and Nour was thrown in a dungeon to rot.
Kate secured the interview, a spectacular opportunity for three politically active journalists. Sitting in front of us was a soft-spoken paragon, an international icon for politically bravery and free speech in the face of stifling tyranny. He spoke frankly in arabic, sharing with us his desire to return to prison rather than have his liberation function as propaganda for Mubarak’s NDP, who work tirelessly (and effectively) to pull the wool over the west’s eyes. This revelation shocked the room and was later mentioned by the New York Times’ Michael Slackman in a column which linked directly to Dani’s blog.
It was more than just an exciting scoop, it was the kind of meeting I’d only dreamed of having. Meeting Ayman Nour will stand as one of the most exciting moments not only in my journalistic career, but in my (hopefully) life-long habit of being an angsty political loud mouth.
But most of my favorite memories from Cairo are of a simpler sort, bald instances of hilarity, humbling shifts in understanding or the happiness in poverty.
In the west we make a habit of feeling sorry for the poor; We slovenly assume that no amount of love for family or kind neighbors can make up for a lack of running water or pay-per-view cable. Any subversive sense or first-world, emotional primacy was completely shattered by our visit to al-Goma. Kate, Dani and I stuck out like a sore thumb, but were greeted by warm smiles and generosity. Even as we waded through piles of trash and between crude shanties, there was an overwhelming happiness about al-Goma. A sense of optimism perhaps, not for jaded Americans to swoop in and demonstrate the merits of consumerism, but that through hard work and compassion their children might inherit a better world.
I also remember Mustaf, holding the steering wheel with one hand and pouring cheap red wine down his gullet with the other, driving his taxi at increasingly life-threatening speeds down a Nileside highway. We basked in chaos of it all as we hurtled across the roadway, unable to explain to our arabic-speaking driver where we wanted to go. Cairo rushed by in the open window, old men smoking sheesha under the neon green glow of a mosque’s minaret. It didn’t matter where we ended up, just that we were in this adventure together.
There were plenty of chances to explore our cultural differences. We debated the Arab/Israeli conflict with university students and the nature of opposition with members of the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s largest (yet banned) non-NDP political party. Every single day made apparent the social rift between us and them. Our thoughts on sex, relationships, the social privileges of women, drugs, alcohol and even the very function of democracy were often very different.
And still, born worlds apart, we had so much to share with our Egyptian hosts. I’m always struck when traveling by how similar we all are. I might cherish different social freedoms than an Egyptian, or worship a different god, but we both want the same things: Good food, good friends and good conversation.
Our friend Karim has a more western-oriented disposition than many other young Egyptians but he’s spent his entire life in the country and possesses an intimately astute sense of his surroundings. We met Karim through his father Abdo, our guide and protector, when in a demonstration of that legendary arab hospitality he invited the lot of us over for a home-cooked meal.
While Karim was an invaluable resource in finding Cairo’s most comfortable hangouts, he was more importantly a terrific friend to us. Having friends in Cairo gives me a great reason to go back and I hope one day I can return Karim’s favor of hospitality when he visits the states.
Maybe that’s why I found it so disturbing when he wasn’t allowed to enter our hotel, by order and law of the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism, simply because he had been born on their soil. A native son, a day removed from being condemned to put his graphic design career on hold and serve a mandatory year in the army, being shoved away from the entrance by the doorman, the one man in Cairo who it seemed couldn’t be bribed, spare during his work as an informant for Mubarak’s psycho-paramilitary establishment.
How can this autocrat, his hands stained with the blood of his own countrymen, maintain this condition? Why do his subjects sit idle? Is it out of fear, professional condemnation or convenience?
I know I’m spoiled by self-righteous ideals of individual latitude and by my license to speak and act freely. Like most Americans, I find myself trouncing around the globe psychologically imposing my callow, preteen crush on lady liberty on the masses. Worse, I’m steadfast in my notion of what she looks like, unwilling to field a diverse field of retorts. Worse still, I return home to the ivory tower and resume greasing the cogs of the American capitalist machine, that depends on my ignorance and secures those kindhearted, hard-working denizens a place at the end of my nose.
Close friends have argued with me the futility of anger in this situation, some even made convincing arguments that my hatred of foreign despotism and perceived social inequality borders on intolerance. But I just can’t help myself.
I just get this lump in the back of my throat, the same heaviness you feel when you have to deliver bad news. All I could do was feel angry, but as helpless as I felt to change the situation, at least I could scream at the top of my lungs.
No one screams in Syria. That much was apparent the minute we hit the ground in Damascus and were ushered into a V.I.P. lounge decorated with monolithic paintings of President al-Assad.
His image sits perched above government ministries, in each and every shopkeeper’s window, even pasted to the rear-windshield of station wagons. Under this gaze, speaking about politics is taboo and believed to be punishable by middle-of-the-night abduction. By manipulating this indoctrinated paranoia, stoked every now and again with a political killing, the Baathists have ruled under emergency law for 46 years.
We spoke personally with many who live in fear of their government. Curiously, Syrians use the word democracy ad nauseam but with very different meaning. To Syrians, democracy represents the idealic joining of a diverse set of religious and nationalistic doctrines in the same peaceful community. Syrians see Damascus and its suburbs as a thriving democracy by that definition, despite lacking any functional capability to shape domestic policy.
Just like Egypt, Syria is ruled by a preordained autocrat with a god complex and the backing of the army. In both countries, the sole objective of the reigning party is to remain in the seat of power, whether through threats, coercion or manufactured international support. In that last method lies the difference between Syrian Baathists and Egypt’s National Democratic Party however.
Mubarak, by positioning Egypt as a viable mediator for the Middle East peace process and broadening their confines for free speech, convinced the west to support despotism. Bureaucrats from America and Europe enabled Egyptian dictatorship just as they’ve done countless times before, from Cuba to Pakistan.
Meanwhile much of the region decries Egypt’s peace with Israel as a betrayal of arab brotherhood, a diplomatic castration. Syrian Baathists on the other hand, hoping to capture lighting in a bottle, justify the suppression of information and state-sanction killings of objectors with the ominous threat of zionist aggression. The Israeli butcher stands at the front door cackling madly, banging his fists and kicking the strained hinges.
Internet censorship, the limits facing independent media, tax hikes, even the slaughter of more than 20,000 civilians in the city of Hama was justified by the Israeli threat, say the Baathists and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The Syrian Minister of Information Mushin Bilal called Israeli occupation “the mother of all problems.” It’s at the epicenter of all civil discourse, at the tip of everyone’s tongue and fuels both nationalistic rage and blind obedience.
We were relentlessly carted in front of education ministers who confounded us with Syrian educational programs, most of which are available at negligible cost for students. The deputy foreign minister expounded on Syria’s right to defend her national interests, including the liberation of Palestine. Suddenly we understood a big reason why the Syrian government had graciously invited us and paid for our visas in full. This wasn’t a exercise in investigative reporting, it was a whistle-stop propaganda tour.
Some of us tried to challenge these well disciplined officials with sharp questions on media freedoms and diplomatic reengagement, but their answers were hollow and tried. “We have our own policy, we have our own sovereignty,” was one particularly frustrating response.
The Golan Heights was intended as the climax of our tour, its rubble left to expose the atrocities of Israeli aggression, which surely would drop our jaws and allow easier access to our young, impressionable cortexes. Our bus stopped in front of shelled churches, hospitals riddled with bullet holes and fields dotted with homes lying in rubble. As we stared across the UN-guarded demilitarized zone into Israel, our guides cited internationally regarded studies that condemned Israel’s actions during the pullout following the 1973 Yom Kippur war.
It’s not that there was no truth to be found in the debris, indeed the Syrian’s have plenty of evidence to accuse Israel of war crimes. Along with many of my classmates, I’ve always sympathized with the Palestinian cause, believed in the two-state solution and denounced Israel’s aggressive expansion.
As I wandered the halls of an abandoned hospital, the walls littered with bullet holes and blackened by grenade blasts, something became very clear. We had come to Syria to immerse ourselves in their culture and politics, but for the Syrian authorities, our visit was a rare chance for exposition. A chance to impress upon a new generation of Americans, however small a sample we might be, the bravery of the Syrian people in the face of adversity and the righteous cause of Palestinian liberation, the motivating force behind every shackled protestor and banned website.
That night we were invited out by the National Union of Syrian Students, who portray themselves as the democratic instrument of arab youth. In reality their structure more closely resembled a recruitment and propagandist tool aimed at indoctrinating young talent into the Baathist party structure.
We met NUSS at a trendoid club in downtown Damascus, where a DJ spun American dance music and we were fed all the nachos, hot dogs and french fries we could eat. As we stuffed our bellies I believe the phrase “open bar” was uttered, although my memory of the moment is rather hazy.
Our hosts, who were certainly too old to be graduate students, encouraged us to eat and drink everything in sight, often refusing to take no for an answer and slamming another plate of rice pilaf in our lap with a smile. I wasn’t accustomed with being treated like royalty and reveled in their kind hospitality, dancing haphazardly while sipping my third glass of Johnnie Walker.
A few hours into the night, the president of NUSS walked in wearing a dark blazer and jeans, sat down at a table in the corner and lit a cigarette. I recognized him from a question and answer session we had attended a few days earlier at the Ministry of Higher Education. He watched as his associates scurried to refill our glasses and pull us towards the dance floor. His eyes darted from table to table as he ran a hand through his grease-slicked hair and made calls on his cell phone. Sometime before we were all ushered onto buses, thanking and shaking hands with our hosts, he disappeared. He never said a word to any of us.
Doha was one elaborately vertical ghost town. Qatar operates essentially as a socialist state that pays students to attend high school and distributes its boundless oil and natural gas profits to the population via civic programs. The streets have no sidewalks because there’re no pedestrians to walk on them. The native Qataris sit content in their homes while a flood of Indian and Philippine immigrants labor tirelessly to erect the twisted towers of steel and glass that make up the skyline.
Doha fancies itself the up-and-coming financial capital of the middle east and like nearby Dubai is in a constant state of evolution, with new convention centers, research hospitals and financial skyscrapers popping up each day. British and Austrailian businessmen relocate their families to the kingdom, with the encouragement of the ruling monarchy, to fill these monolithic structures with the same self-engrossed commerce that makes the rest of the world spin and employs countless balding pundits turned fortune tellers.
So I couldn’t tell you much about Qatari culture because they seem to be making a concerted effort to hide it away.
Most notably, Doha serves as the headquarters of Al Jazeera, the cable news network heralded as a beacon for democracy and free speech in the arab world. That is, until the Bush administration threw mud (they considered bombs but thought better of it) at their gates and convinced most Americans that Osama Bin Laden was their executive producer.
Truthfully Al Jazeera paints a remarkably clear, balanced picture of world affairs and employs a style of reporting that cherishes diversity of thought. 50 million arabic-speaking viewers turn to Al Jazeera worldwide, often to contrast their own propagandist state media. The more recently launched Al Jazeera English reaches more than 100 million homes around the world, but American cable companies like Comcast have refused to carry the network.
Visiting the Al Jazeera studios opened my eyes to a world of new media voices and illustrated the western bias inherent in CNN’s coverage. Perhaps the crown jewel of the Qatari monarchy, the project enters its 13th year with a promise to shake the foundation of western news media and give the rest of the world a voice in rebuilding it.
Our last day in Doha just happened to coincide with Obama’s historic speech from Cairo. It would seem his words were lost under an avalanche of celebrity gossip and NBA play-by-play here in the states, but the day seemed omnipresent from where we stood. From Arab League ambassadors to the guy manning the falafel stand in Damascus, everyone had the date marked, hopeful yet skeptical the speech would stray very far from America’s historically pro-Israel, autocracy-enabling policies.
Far from the bustling traffic in Cairo or the stink of Baathist oppression, I sat frozen in my hotel room, eyes locked to Al Jazeera’s live coverage from Cairo University. During the election Obama represented a departure from schoolyard diplomacy, a dramatic re-engagement in world discourse as a strong, more humbled nation. Now I had seen firsthand the damage done by eight years of hawkish oil moguls and knew the therapeutic potential of Obama’s address.
I swelled with pride as my president eloquently articulated the need for the Palestinian state. I felt reassured when his conviction for nuclear disarmament and battling extremism met with raucous applause. My jaw dropped as he used the word occupation, finally confronting Israeli’s treatment of refugees. Most of all, I shared in his hope for a world that could live together in peace, despite of and inspired by our religious differences.
I had lived in the face of our cultural differences for six weeks, marveled at the serenity of mosques and shattered my own misconceptions. Now I understood the importance of American policy, how our actions rippled through arab societies and why democracy is best when you practice what you preach. Now my president, himself a son of two worlds, had addressed all these concerns directly and alleviated my angst.
I’ve been home for a couple weeks now, had some time to soak it all in and gorge myself on all the American foods I’d missed. I returned with a better appreciation for my civil liberties, not only the ability to shout here at home but the luxuries my nationality provide me abroad. These liberties allow us to bask in ignorance, a word that almost always harbors a negative connotation. But it’s ignorance that allows me to gulp lager and watch a baseball game with good friends, laugh at the idiosyncrasies of characters in my favorite TV comedies or dance in a crowded club while making dimwitted comments to nearby women.
Ignorance means not having to live in fear of our government or invasion by our neighbors. It affords us a life of personal pursuits, without the painful memories of war or famine and far from the front lines of American conflict. We can live in willful ignorance thanks to our democratic ideals and refusal to waver in their defense. So long as we never forget how lucky we are to have that option.
This trip gave me a taste of international reporting. Going in, I figured this meant reviewing a concert or two, maybe stumbling upon a cultural piece on dating habits. Instead I interviewed jailed opposition leaders, explored the world’s most impoverished ghettos, decried the loss of family enterprise, questioned ministers of the world’s most oppressive regimes, photographed bombed villages and saw governments force friends out of house and home. All the while I wrote like a madman and like to think I have something to show for it. I even wrote a piece of fiction depicting a dictator’s raving jealously and vengeful defecation.
And I got to share the experience with some amazing new friends, the sort that stick with you through thick and thin.
Our last full night in Doha, we danced all night as a Scottish cover band satisfied our starving hunger for American music with a stream of drunken sing-alongs. After a rousing rendition of The Cranberries’ “Zombie,” we cheered and hobbled our way outside, with a vague outline of a plan to find the beach.
With the streets still suffocatingly empty, we walked towards the only spot on the horizon not filled with skyscrapers, through thick brush and around long stretches of chain link fence. Finally, the pavement ended and before us was the Persian Gulf. A rocky embankment layered with boulders was the only thing between me and the calm waters.
In the absolute darkness, we laughed triumphantly and made our awkward way down the beach, barking as the rocks nicked our heels, throwing our jeans up on the beach and conceding to the inevitable early-morning swim. “I’m not planning to garnish the trip with the kickoff of my streaking career,” I insisted in my first blog post in this series. Oops.
Finally, my feet hit the water and I waded into the darkness, surrounded by splashing confidants. The water was blissfully warm, as gallons of it rained down on our us, kicking and spinning our way out to sea. A couple of the girls leapt into the deepening tide from a friend’s shoulders, to the urging of the whooping audience below.
For a moment we were indestructible, giddy with liquid courage but conscious to savor our last look at the arabian moon. The sea tasted salty, it begged me to relax and drift away. With help from a more sea-steady friend and the beer in my belly, I lifted my feet and bobbed to the surface. With a gasp I filled my lungs with air, opened my eyes wide and stared upwards into the black.
In the middle east I grew as a writer, lauded dissent and learned we’re not all that different. I learned how to leap into the darkness and swim.
#MiddleEastTrip No. 25 -or- Electric Ladyland
As fascinating as every inch of Syria was, it left me emotionally repressed and rather homesick. I understand completely why Syrians don’t like to speak publicly about politics, not fearing the chopping block but because it’s utterly exhausting in a country so mindful of conflict to have your guttural yelps filtered and sedated. While Cairo charmed me, pulling at my heartstrings to evoke seditionous ramblings and ardent affection for every last stray cat, Damascus was a less immersive exercise. Instead, our differences were sugar coated and dressed in peculiar little hats, all tied up with ribbon and spit-shined sequins, and presented on a silver platter next to nationalistic totems reeking of bullshit. How exhausting.
In this mood Jimi Hendrix was an emancipator, injecting a patient appreciation for chaos into my bloodstream as we flew to Doha, a city that industrializes order and uniformity while mutant structures of metal and glass spring up like wildflowers. The grandsons of Indian and Philippine crop farmers dot the otherwise desolate, sidewalk-less, asphalt corridors, delivered each morning by bright yellow school buses and crowded vans to set in steel Doha’s aspirations as the financial capital of the gulf.
Up sprout these seminal beings, the opuses of far away architects, their skin and bone ripped from rock and pressed to shine and sparkle, bolted and sinewed together limb by limb, each standing at last taller than any born before him, as if god himself had demanded the sky be filled with the earth. Like a pile of blocks they contort and twist, daring gravity to heave them back to the ground, invoking the jealousy of their piteous, unsophisticated neighbors.
Then British software engineers, Russian hedge fund managers, Chinese biotech researchers and lazy American expats long bored of Thailand funnel in and invisibly scurry about their veins, heedless of dusk or dawn, darkness or light, drafting plans for their most innovative new ways to profit.
Meanwhile Qatari oil and natural gas entrepreneurs sit with their wives high above the bustle, sculpting their legacy from gold at french auction houses and crafting monuments to art and music. In one of the world’s last surviving monarchies, the royal family established a entire media empire dedicated to giving the region a global voice, raising their arms to their subjects as if to call for a yell.
But there is nothing but silence from Qataris, most of whom are contented by expansive state funding to end socioeconomic need with free education and welfare programs. While the Qatari elite may not have a care, the temporary citizens of foreign business simply don’t. The largely immigrant population lauds this populist condition of socialism, where each caste is at ease within their boundaries.
If you accused me of gross generalization I would be forced to concede, having no sense of Qatari civilian identity whatsoever. Buried there’s likely the same deep rooted history, scornful lulls and sundry artistic achievements, but visitors can’t help but be ignorant to all of this, thanks to limited timeframes and Qatar’s geographical status as a glistening little hole-in-the-wall kingdom.
And so these towering giants stand there, thanks to the endeavor of ant-like men and women who work tirelessly to ensure their reflective shine. Doha stares into the sheen, struggling to make out its expression amongst the fountains and hypermakets, frustrated when no face stares back.
//Doha photos
//Thoughts from my friends and fellow students
//As seen on Take Witness
#MiddleEastTrip No. 24 -or- Al Jazeera
The primary, and perhaps most exciting, reason for our trip to Doha was to tour Al Jazeera headquarters. Al Jazeera is media phenomenon in the region and has been widely lauded as a force for democratization and political awareness. Among American audiences however, it’s mostly recognized as the cable news network that televises Bin Laden tapes (which in itself is not wholy accurate).
Having watched Al Jazeera English exclusively while here in Qatar, I’ve been astounded by the professionalism in their reporting. The networks builds on the objective, multi-perspective angle of BBC World News yet covers the headlines with much more depth and insight.
One story about disaster preparedness drills in Israel for instance, utilized interviews with Israeli military commanders, Palestinian civilians, a Georgetown University expert and official spokesmen from both Hamas and the Israeli government.
CNN’s report on the same story consisted of a reporter touring an middle-school’s safety bunker while eighth graders gawked at the following cameraman.
It’s a shame American cable companies are refusing to carry the channel, fearing a revolt from the numb nuts in “the heartland.” For the time being we can only beg for perspective here.
//Thoughts from my friends and fellow students
//As seen on Take Witness
#MiddleEastTrip No. 23 -or- Goodbye, Megalomaniac
Well hello there, I haven’t seen you in awhile. I’m Nick Mendez, and while I’m not pillaging the Syrian countryside searching for a faster trading route to mainland China, I can be seen on programs such as “Name That Goat,” “Mosque Matters” and “Little Krak on the Prairie.”
I can speak with a measured amount of levity because we’ve arrived in Doha, Qatar and escaped the watchful eye of our Syrian handlers. The endless rain of propagandist half-truths and dodged questions is over, missed for its journalistic challenge yet now blissfully out of our purview.
Far removed from the bustle of modern Cairo, Damascus was serenely peaceful, even as we were constantly reminded of Israel’s atrocities and our as oft-accused “arian complacency.” Syrians consider the Israeli occupation the mother of all problems. Remarkably however, a society so tormented by an ethnic conflict has congregated in a city devoid of it. As much as our guide might credit this harmony to the Syrian generosity of spirit, I’d speculate it has much more to do with the secret police, their heavily-armed street presence and the pious glorification of President Bashar al-Assad.
Even in passing, everything I’ve experienced in this region, the good or the bad, has roots in religious reverence. They say to understand the middle east you have to understand Islam, but the veins of Islamic influence run far past politics and indeed fuel economic and social policy as well.
I’ve enjoyed the unassailable feeling of safety, whether I was strolling the banks of the Nile in the early morning or standing on the blackened rubble of the Golan Heights. I’ve stared awestruck in the mosque of Amr Ibn El-Aas, the sunlight reflecting off the white marble floor and warming my skin. I’m indebted to the compassion of countless strangers who, motivated by honor and selflessness, described the [mostly] true path home. Islam, along with other worldly creeds, describe these values of worship and tenderness as the pillars supporting the heavens, tenets guiding your judgement in the afterlife.
Yet separated by a breath, this conviction holds women in a sub-standard social position, often overriding love and choice in the name of tradition and humility. This conviction further divides the holy land, inspiring a perception of religious obligation in sharp contradiction of international law and human rights standards. In rare cases it even inspires savagery, violently ripping at families and challenging democracy. Power-hungry tyrants, jealous of god’s clout, in turn manipulate these acts into causation to suppress free speech and persecute peaceful dissent.
I covet the day where a warmhearted act is motivated not by dread of retribution at the hands of god or a ruling megalomaniac, but out of a different sort of faith; One in humanity and its limitless potential for altruism.
//Thoughts from my friends and fellow students
//As seen on Take Witness
#MiddleEastTrip No. 22 -or- Doha
#MiddleEastTrip No. 20 -or- Above Damascus
After a healthy hike and several run-ins with Syrian soldiers (who politely pointed us away from their mysteriously guarded hillside), Lily, Jared, Rachel and I hiked our way to an amazing view of Damascus today. Check it out below.
//Above Damascus photos
//Thoughts from my friends and fellow students
//As seen on Take Witness
#MiddleEastTrip No. 19 -or- Arrogant Idealism
I grow tired of feeling so angry. Tired of clutching to romantic, American ideals of liberty and rugged individualism, the notion that our relatively infantile union has perfected freedom. To live in fear, I had convinced myself, was akin to slavery.
Speaking yesterday to British publisher turned Syrian journalist Reem Mayhribi, I questioned how resolute I could be facing a similar transition, from an institutionalized responsibility to cry foul to a political imperative to stay silent. She insisted the latter exists in the west as well.
I believe that a society free not only to scream but to raise their fists in violent opposition is an evolution not of American idealism but an instinctual human desire for control over one’s fate.
But maybe I’m wrong.
There’s a certain nobility in unquestioning loyalty and the idolization of men who, by a combination of chance and blood, lead a people from one generation to the next. Why shouldn’t we worship their strength and perseverance, just as we’ve done for millennia? When did exchanging sovereignty for hero worship become passé?
I grow tried of defending arrogant, self-important American idealism. But if this was any more than a short reprieve in Syria, if I was tied to this place by generational pedigree, I would miss having this conversation out loud.
//al-Addas photos
//Thoughts from my friends and fellow students
//As seen on Take Witness
#MiddleEastTrip No. 18 -or- Free Education
Higher education in Syria costs next to nothing. That seems to be the major sticking point our guides [informants] wish for us to take home to mah and pah from Basher Assad’s gorgeous, pristine kingdom. After a day of touring holy sites of literally-biblical implications, crowded, culture-laden markets and the narrow tapering avenues of old Damascus, we’ve spent the past few days fielding volleys from battalions of education ministers and officials looking to prove the point and make all of us silver-spoon-fed, American private university sissies horribly jealous.
Today Ghiath Barakat, the Syrian Minister of Higher Education, even gave us all hats and t-shirts so that we could acquaint the world with Syria’s vast academic accomplishments. It’s rather ingenious really that in one fell swoop Northeastern officials get to swap notes with high ranking Syrian Education ministers (which will facilitate more trips like this one), and we are exposed to what our host government considers one of their most effective (and potentially appealing) programs.
The sick side is that this disables us from asking the tough questions on democratization, human rights issues and freedom of speech, despite repeated hypocritical declarations chiding American atrocities and zionist racism, because these aren’t the men and women making those decisions. So they simply get to dish out the rhetoric without having to respond to the concerns that any self-respecting journalist would have about this country.
Instead we have to sit quietly and be educated about Syria’s university system, stand and take pictures with high ranking Baathists and accept their gifts enthusiastically as if the repeated incrimination of human rights violations and state-sponsored terrorism against this regime was all just a misunderstanding.
I didn’t take this trip to ask ministers to elaborate on a public relations pitch. There’s this notion among some of us that we have to evoke quiet respect and adoration, as these same Syrian authorities are our host. But I call bullshit! Every bit of journalistic plasma in my now-boiling blood demands that I coerce a response to these multi-national accusations. Especially when sat in front of cabinet members whose motives and loyalty to the ruling regime likely dictate what sliver of this country we’re carted to. I take warnings that we’re being watched as reason to give them something so see! Suggestions to the contrary make my heart race with anxious worry that I may never be in the position to ask these questions again. This goes beyond my instincts as a journalist and calls upon a human compulsion to speak freely and belief in basic accountability.
Damascus is a stunning city. I hope relations between our governments improve so that more Americans can experience this ages-old beauty. It’s a modern, albeit developing, state that is wholly self-sufficient and without American enterprise, a rare prospect that I admire immensely. But no amount of love for Damascus will make me forget who runs the show, or my journalistic and human nature to be their scathing critic.
//Damascus Market photos
//Thoughts from my friends and fellow students
//As seen on Take Witness
#MiddleEastTrip No. 17 -or- First Day in Damascus
Our first day in Damascus, spent at the old souq and the Ummayad mosque, as captured by shakeycam. The activity was fascinating and the falafel brilliantly lemony.
//Thoughts from my friends and fellow students
//As seen on Take Witness
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