Today I was waiting for an Iranian girl who one of my friends informed me was to arrive in Damascus shortly and needed help finding a hotel in town. It was her first time in Damascus and she spoke no Arabic. Eager as ever to help a fellow traveler (regardless of nationality!), I told her to meet me at the Bab Touma steps at 9:30pm. I waited on the steps for about half an hour with my German housemate to no avail. The traveler, whose name we did not even know, had yet to arrive. Suddenly, a rather splendid thought popped into my Persian head. I would whistle our national song, Ey Iran, in the hopes that, hearing the familiar sound, she would be able to identify us. So I whistled for about one minute before I realized what an immensely stupid idea this was. But before I could unwhistle what I had whistled, a Syrian security guard grabbed me by the sleeve and dragged me to the nearest police station over my terrified protestations, saying all the while the Arabic equivalent of "We are going to beat the shit out of you.". Up stairs we went, my German friend following as loyal as ever. Before long, we were standing in front a group of officers, me fumbling through a desperate explanation. The man in charge smiled, slightly embarrassed, said he was sorry, and bid us leave the station. The entire episode could not have taken more than thirty seconds.
My friend never arrived, though she called later on telling me that she had found a place with another helpful Iranian near the Zaynabiyya shrine. I sat on the steps of Bab Touma for a good half hour after that, dizzy with adrenaline, my hands shaking and my forehead dotted with beads of cold sweat. For a moment I was overcome by a desire to leave this country immediately and forever. Then I thought about all those delicious pomegranates...
Showing posts with label Syria. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Syria. Show all posts
Tuesday, 10 November 2009
Thursday, 8 October 2009
Thursday, 1 October 2009
Grammar is not a game!
Professor Yusuf wrote a sentence on the board. Zaid stands accused of killing the driver...and his son. (زيد متهم بقتل سايق و إبنه). "Grammar is not a game," he said, calling on a student to close the door, barring all late comers from the lecture hall. The place was packed to the gills with mesmerized Syrians. "This sentence, depending on how we place the diacritical marks on ibn (son) can mean either that Zaid and his son were accused of killing the driver or that one culprit, Zaid, stands accused of killing the driver and the drivers' son. Grammar is not, I repeat, a game. Grammar is life!!"
I was far too captivated by the professor's rapid fire fus'ha to notice the melodramatic aside. He whisked us through the next two hours, I and nearly three hundred freshmen on the edge of our Ottoman era benches. Professor Yusuf threw us stanza after classical stanza, manipulated verses like a magician, an inveritable Gandalf of Grammar, "Is the poet al-Jareer telling us that every heart seeks its beloved, or is he telling us something more, about his own heart in particular. thi'qalbin, is it what it seems, or is thi really short of hathihi?!"
Some, unable to contain themselves, would shout out answers, flail their arms and rise from their seats. All of this went against the almost nineteenth century rules governing teacher student etiquette at Damascus University. "We are an in an adab department after all, let us conduct ourselves with adab," he said, playing on the dual meaning of adab as both grammar and manners. Smiling, Professor Yusuf assured students there would be ample time in the coming classes for outbursts of morphological enthusiasm. Hijabs glittered under the auditorium lights, pens scratched furiously trying to keep up, and the professor soldiered on.
Clearly in over my head, I nevertheless knew I had come to the right place. Language institutes for foreigners? Not I! Hanif al-Batuta, fresh from Bengal, will sit in a Syrian class with Syrian students. And before I realized how desperately behind I was falling, my mind was already dancing with thoughts of those early Persian linguists, to Sibawayh, who composed an elaborate and precise Arabic grammar as early as the 8th century...
I walked out of class, my mind awash with classical Arabic. As for the bemused expression on the face of the roadside fruit vendor, I only realized after the fact that I had asked him something that roughly approximated to, "When, pray, shall yonder bus arrive at this here spot where we are currently standing."
I was far too captivated by the professor's rapid fire fus'ha to notice the melodramatic aside. He whisked us through the next two hours, I and nearly three hundred freshmen on the edge of our Ottoman era benches. Professor Yusuf threw us stanza after classical stanza, manipulated verses like a magician, an inveritable Gandalf of Grammar, "Is the poet al-Jareer telling us that every heart seeks its beloved, or is he telling us something more, about his own heart in particular. thi'qalbin, is it what it seems, or is thi really short of hathihi?!"
Some, unable to contain themselves, would shout out answers, flail their arms and rise from their seats. All of this went against the almost nineteenth century rules governing teacher student etiquette at Damascus University. "We are an in an adab department after all, let us conduct ourselves with adab," he said, playing on the dual meaning of adab as both grammar and manners. Smiling, Professor Yusuf assured students there would be ample time in the coming classes for outbursts of morphological enthusiasm. Hijabs glittered under the auditorium lights, pens scratched furiously trying to keep up, and the professor soldiered on.
Clearly in over my head, I nevertheless knew I had come to the right place. Language institutes for foreigners? Not I! Hanif al-Batuta, fresh from Bengal, will sit in a Syrian class with Syrian students. And before I realized how desperately behind I was falling, my mind was already dancing with thoughts of those early Persian linguists, to Sibawayh, who composed an elaborate and precise Arabic grammar as early as the 8th century...
I walked out of class, my mind awash with classical Arabic. As for the bemused expression on the face of the roadside fruit vendor, I only realized after the fact that I had asked him something that roughly approximated to, "When, pray, shall yonder bus arrive at this here spot where we are currently standing."
Sunday, 20 September 2009
Damascus
Last night I was sitting on the balcony with Madame Raifeh, waiting to hear the sound of cannon fire. The explosion would mark the end of another lackadaisical day of Damascus fasting. Somewhere along the line, I had simply given up on daytime productivity. One day sort of melted into the next as I slept or read or procrastinated the minutes until iftaar. Iftaar, would mean Turkish coffee, and another round of Madame Raifeh's favorite, if slightly underwhelming, Ramadan talkshow. Mischeiviously, she often prods me to call in, feeding me elaborate back stories I should recite in the unlikely event my call goes through.
Raifeh has been living and renting out apartments to foreigners like me in Bab Touma since long before I was born. The years haven't been particularly kind to her. At about sixty, she walks with a visible hunch, the product of a difficult life in rural Sueda. Somehow, though, when she smiles through her sun baked wrinkles, fires up another cigarette, or helps her unimaginably old mother to bed, it becomes easier to picture a vibrant Raifeh's better days.
Last night, after the show, over another round of coffee, in a thick as soup Syrian dialect, Madame Raifeh decided to tell me a story.
"In Sueda, there were no cars, no electricity, no doctors." Drought, she said, had hit the mostly Christian and Druze village for nearly ten years to the dismay of her farmer father. Each day, her mother would walk about two hours to a river, collect enough drinking water for the family, and walk back. I tried to picture Madame Raifeh's mother, quietly sleeping on the sofa, with an urn full of water on her tired shoulders. Schools had just become a part of Suedan life, and a six year old Raifeh was eager to attend. She would, of course, have to bring along her younger sister, with whom she'd share the single pen her father had bought them. Raifeh and her sister would take turns using the pen to finish their assignments.
"And so one day, my sister told me she was sick and didn't want to come to school. This made me happy because I would have the pen all to myself. I was little, I couldn't understand what sickness was. I returned home and asked my sister if she wanted to finish her assignment. Again, she said no, that she was feeling sick, complaining about a pain in her stomach. Without giving it a second thought, I ran off and played with my friends. A few hours later, my sister had died from an infected appendix. Well of course she died, there was no doctor, no medicine or anything! I was bit happy after that, too. All I could understand in my six year old mind was that I would get all of my little sister's old things. That's so sad, right?"
Madame Raifeh said all this with a bubbly, storytelling kind of cheer. And so it was. I finished my coffee, bid Raifeh good night, and took another long walk through old Damascus.
Raifeh has been living and renting out apartments to foreigners like me in Bab Touma since long before I was born. The years haven't been particularly kind to her. At about sixty, she walks with a visible hunch, the product of a difficult life in rural Sueda. Somehow, though, when she smiles through her sun baked wrinkles, fires up another cigarette, or helps her unimaginably old mother to bed, it becomes easier to picture a vibrant Raifeh's better days.
Last night, after the show, over another round of coffee, in a thick as soup Syrian dialect, Madame Raifeh decided to tell me a story.
"In Sueda, there were no cars, no electricity, no doctors." Drought, she said, had hit the mostly Christian and Druze village for nearly ten years to the dismay of her farmer father. Each day, her mother would walk about two hours to a river, collect enough drinking water for the family, and walk back. I tried to picture Madame Raifeh's mother, quietly sleeping on the sofa, with an urn full of water on her tired shoulders. Schools had just become a part of Suedan life, and a six year old Raifeh was eager to attend. She would, of course, have to bring along her younger sister, with whom she'd share the single pen her father had bought them. Raifeh and her sister would take turns using the pen to finish their assignments.
"And so one day, my sister told me she was sick and didn't want to come to school. This made me happy because I would have the pen all to myself. I was little, I couldn't understand what sickness was. I returned home and asked my sister if she wanted to finish her assignment. Again, she said no, that she was feeling sick, complaining about a pain in her stomach. Without giving it a second thought, I ran off and played with my friends. A few hours later, my sister had died from an infected appendix. Well of course she died, there was no doctor, no medicine or anything! I was bit happy after that, too. All I could understand in my six year old mind was that I would get all of my little sister's old things. That's so sad, right?"
Madame Raifeh said all this with a bubbly, storytelling kind of cheer. And so it was. I finished my coffee, bid Raifeh good night, and took another long walk through old Damascus.
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