Hope

A Kabul licence plate and an Obama/Biden campaign sticker along the infamous Salang Pass, Afghanistan. In this country, there is a story wrapped in the folds of every stone.

Lesson Learned: Don't Whistle in Damascus

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...

A day in Konya

It's hard to describe an encounter with a man who has brought so much to my life. Standing before Mowlana Rumi shattered any pretensions I harbored about having recovered from the romanticism that afflicts so many from my country. A twelve hour night bus took me from Istanbul to Konya.  I stepped off the bus, made my way in broken Turkish towards the tram station, and watched the streets of Konya pass me by as I fell deeper and deeper into thought. All the while every line I had ever learned made itself available to my tired thoughts...

beshno az ney, chon hekāyat mikonad...az jodā-ee-hā shekāyat mikonad...
Listen to the reed as it speaks, complaining of separation...

Chanting and stumbling, I walked from the tram station to the nearest restaurant. I hadn't eaten a square meal in what seemed like forever. Only after I entered I realized I was in a MacDonald's. The garish yellow-red interior snapped me out of my romantic daze.  I ordered a MacDonald's hamburger for what would be the first time in my life. Underwhelmed by the reaching of yet another momentous benchmark, I finished my meal down to the last perfectly manicured fry and made my way to the shrine. 

I walked past the city garden, past mosque after ancient mosque, castles and forts and history that was so common in Turkey I had gotten used to seeing it all sort of lying around. I walked past the Mowlana restaurant, the Mowlana hotel, the Mowlana bank and coffee shop selling Mowlana coffee at prices Mowlana would never be able to afford, past ten thousand little figurines of whirling darvishes, and clock faces of whirling darvishes and signs for two for one deals on whirling darvishes....

At long last, I saw the turquoise dome of the shrine emerging from behind the trees. And then, I did what every self respecting Persian gentleman does in the face of the numinous; I sat myself down and cried big, hot tears, unfazed by the stares of passers by.  I walked on, past the jinazah prayer at the masjid to my left, past the ticket booth swarming with pilgrims turned tourists and past the rubble of "renovation" work.  Two liras later I was inside the "Mevlana Museum", determined to at least try containing myself. The museum was packed like a bazaar with all of Mowlana's purported stuff, but my watery eyes were fixed on a few simple lines, written in nasta'liq on the far wall...

bāzā, bāzā, harānche hasti, bāzā
gar kāfar-o bot parasti, bāzā
in dargah,dargah-e nā-omeedee neest
sad bār agar towbe shekasti, bāzā

Return, return, whatever you are
if you are kafer or idolater, return
for this house is not the house of hopelessness
If you broke your towbas a hundred times, return...

More tears, more wandering, more encounters with beautiful, warm, friendly Konyans inviting me into their lives without reservation, more tea and shopping later, I was on another bus, heading back to Syria.

Good Morning

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."