Quarreling over Quneitra

Excuse the hiatus, sometimes life looks you square in the eye and asks you to live it, and you are paralyzed to answer in opposition. That would have been a better excuse than indifference and laziness. Like everything, however, I think the cause is somewhere in between the two proposed situations. Anyway, before my Syrian life becomes a barely visible speck in my mind's eye have tasked myself to finish what I've started, and quickly.

The IFPO in all of it's wisdom decided that taking it's students of the Near-Orient to a fought-over territory would be a great experience. One part education, one part propaganda, what could be better for those of us willing to see and to learn and those of them willing to show and teach us? So off we filed into our comfortable air-conditioned bus, single file into the south-western corner of Syria, into land that was once occupied by six-sided star toting military personnel. Golan (جولان) is the south-western most province in Syria, not to be confused with the Golan Heights (هضبة الجولان) which is the Israeli-occupied (now settled) mountainous region further west. Naturally there is a UN-administered portion in the middle with cute little white-with-black-letter vehicles roaming around, driven by people in blue hats. (Presumably) Map below for reference.



Our first stop was in Quneitra (al-Qunaytirah on the map). Formerly the largest inhabited city in the Golan, now a ghost town of only a handful of families. The story goes that after the 1967 6 Day War the Israeli army occupied the city, but eventually withdrew. As they were withdrawing they took every salvageable item and then razed the city, leaving it a burnt out carcass. The Syrian government decided not to clean up the mess or rebuild the city, choosing to leave it as a reminder of "Zionist brutality".

Of course the other story goes that once the Israel army withdrew they did take some things with them, but after they left the Syrian army destroyed anything left standing in the name of propaganda so they could have a "smoking gun of Zionist brutality". The truth? Probably somewhere down the middle. (reoccurring theme) The following are pictures of Quneitra.


The town is little more than a collection of rubble like this one

(Someone should have told the Syrians that propaganda, regardless of it's truth, is most effective when grammatically correct)

The whole hospital is a bullet-laden carcass. The not so subtle ironic point that an institution of life should be transformed into a symbol of destruction is deafening.


Contentious Issue #1: The Golan is a member in a small community of arable lands in the south of Syria. Note the greenery.

We carried along on our trip and saw various sights, the most memorable being the border. Oh what fun with barbed wire, UN patrols, and minefields. It was simply a modern fairytale of Near Eastern origin.


Empty fields usually mean one thing: mines.


Barbed Wire party!


Contentious issue #2: Disputed territory that is settled on. The civilization before you is all brand-spanking post-1967 new. That's because it wasn't part of Israel before that year. Peace process? I don't think so.


Patriotic border.



My favourite picture (courtesy of Jeremie), note the "Welcome to Israel" sign past the UN guard stations. That sign is ready for the day that diplomatic relations between Syria and Israel normalize. Regardless, I wonder just how 'welcome' the Syrians will feel.

So we made our merry way back to Damascus after a long and tiring day of Zionist hating. Our attempt was thwarted on a deserted highway when our front tire spontaneously popped. Coincidence? I think not. This could only be the sinister work of The Zionists! Fortunately we needed only wait 45 minutes before the charter bus company came and rescued us. Thank goodness for kind, hard working Syrians to save us from the evil, maniacal Israelis. !يا الله


Pop goes the bus tire.

(this tour really was a sham)

E

Roamin' with the Romans

Daytrip #1. As life develops a daily rhythm here in Damascus I find the wanderlust stirring me in unplanned directions. With an apartment, daily classes+homework, general knowledge of a familiar city, a gym membership and (very) basic communication skills, it is easy to sink into an apathetic splendor, scarcely wandering into the vast unknown. No thanks. So a week ago I was asked on friday night if I had any desire to visit the city of Bosra. Basra? like the Garrison City in Iraq?? No. BOsra, in southern Syria. Whip out the guidebook; OH, there it is! What's there to see? Reading Reading. Can't focus on the lines... Bah, who cares, it's a trip...

So Early the next morning off we go to Bosra in the south of Syria. An important dot on the map of three ancient civilizations: Roman, Byzantine, and Islamic. Who knew? Alright, so maybe I actually did read every line for line in the Lonely Planet, but where knowledge comes from is irrelevant, so long as its credible, right? If my knowledge is guidebook + wiki fusion I can still rest easy knowing that anyone who tries to contest my thoughts will utilize the same tools. Right now Bosra doesn't have much in the way of sights or (contemporary) culture. So that leaves a plethora of ruins from first the Nabateans, then by the Romans (who made it their capital of the province Arabia Petraea), then the Persians took it over, finally to be recaptured by the Byzantines. The city changed hands again the 7th Century and became an Islamic posession and remained (more or less) so. (never mind that there is no Islamic Empire anymore, depsite what they would have you believe) (I think Wikipedia disregards the coming of modernity, the Ottoman Empire, the French colonization and the modern Syria state, but that's a rant for another time)

To be succint for once, Bosra has a major historical footprint. Here are 16,000 words to make up for above.


RM Jeremie + mosiac before entering the fortified Roman theatre

Nice and cool despite 40+ deg. outside

Before the PC, Tablet had a different meaning

Scale is lost, but the Romans know how to make a big theatre. I promise.

from the theatre, as a spectator.

Welcoming Uncle Hafez

Around Bosra ruins. (outside the theatre)

I think that during this photoshoot in the more or less open ruins we pissed off the Gods. I guess if I were an eternal being and kids were running around on the unprotected ruins of my ancient cilization I'd be angry too. While wandering through Bosra we decided it would be a great photo-op to take a picture of us standing on adjacent columns. So we set up our cameras to self-timed shots, and all his the "shoot" button, but in transit I jumped from a Roman fence, lost my fickle Birkenstock and managed to stub my toe on some ruins enough to peel have my (big) toe's nail back. At the same time I hear a sickening thump as japenese plasticmetal + gravity comes in full contact with roman stone. Fortunately not my camera, and after an hour of fear and sadness technology prevailed. My toe also healed, though it took a few days.


This is the photo that caused so much pain. I'm to the bottom left, pulling my toenail back into place.

Bloodied, but attached.

Crazy man. Good thing the gods weren't mad at him.

(they love these pillars, eh?)

The population has decreased over the centuries and the small local village makes use of what they can for their own homes. Good for them, bad for archeologists.

Essential camel shot.

Then we hopped in a minibus and drove to another city in the south, perched atop Jebel Druze, called Shahba. What did we see there? More ruins!


en route landscape

moodsy, rugged-individual picture with mountain + moon

Old + New.

Bottom Line: civilizations come and go, but they're hard to kill. I just hope that when our civilization falls that the rust bucket automobilies and the wooden and brick homes we've constructed can withstand 1800 years. Something tells me that our evanescent society won't hold up against the cold eternal face of stone. Way to go guys.

E

I always loved a good Rumsfeld quote...

So I was walking back to my guesthouse yesterday and there was this giant cow sitting on the sidewalk….but no seriously it was HUGE. I had to walk out into the street just to pass by. I wish I had a picture but you’ll just have to take my word for it I guess.

Anyway, it’s been awhile since I posted, which is largely the result of my busy schedule the last few weeks. My translator Swastika started on July 1, and since then we’ve been interviewing everyday at the Kathmandu and Lalitpur offices of BDS, as well as Cruise Aid, which is one of the community-based organizations under the Federation of Gender and Sexual Minorities of Nepal (founded by BDS). She’s been terrific- as a recent graduate of social work here in Kathmandu, she already has experience interviewing and translating, and is aware of some of the obstacles I’ve faced to obtaining a substantive interview (like getting people to voice their criticisms). She did her field work as a student at BDS as well, and so is familiar with the organizational structure of the offices, as well as a number of staff members. She has also become a good friend of mine since we spend most work days together now- it’s so great having someone to show you around and help you find places when you don’t know where you’re going! Between my host sister Tara and Swastika, I actually have gotten to know Kathmandu pretty well, which has made things a lot more comfortable for me here.

Since I haven’t done much tourist-ing in the last 2 weeks, I just tell you a little more about how my work is going. I’ve come up against a couple obstacles this month as I’ve gotten deeper into my case study. The most obvious is that since I don’t speak Nepali, I often miss conversations about events or programs being held at the various offices that would be helpful for my project. I typically need to ask very directly if I can go to an event because the staff I am in contact with don’t seem to think that it’s the sort of thing I’m interested in, and if I’m not even aware that anything is going on then I usually end up missing the event (this week it was the human rights training for staff members). I think that I’ve made it clear that I would like to observe the workshops, however, and so this week I think I will get the opportunity to sit in on one.

The second major obstacle I’ve been facing is the absence of a clear paper trail on a lot of the programs that they have done over the last 9 years. Whereas we tend to document everything obsessively, the reports here at BDS are scattered through various locations, and I need to give a heads up in advance if there is any report I’m interested in looking at since it takes a while to track them down. At this point I have some documents and know I’m missing a couple more, but on the whole it’s hard to know whether there are any major reports that I should have that I don’t even know exist (the unknown unknowns anybody?).

The staff at BDS, however, is very accommodating, and when I figure out that there’s something I need to that I don’t have they are happy to help me out. As my key informant Pradeep warned me at the beginning of my project, doing any kind of work in Nepal requires a high degree of personal initiative, otherwise nothing will get done. With Swastika at my side, however, it is much easier to let them know what it is I’m interested in, and so my case study has definitively sped up considerably. So far I’ve done about 30 interviews, with about 20-25 to go in the next couple weeks. Whew! Needless to say I’ll be busy, but not too busy to enjoy a few days with my supervisor Magda when she comes to do her site visit this week! I already have a few fun things planned for us, so hopefully the weather cooperates and I have some more pictures to share with you next week!

P.S. I'll add some photo's in a few days...right now it seems that the blog is suffering "technical difficulties."

Living the (literal) High Life

It's nice not being homeless in Damascus. Not that there was ever any risk of that, but to live in a wardrobe is incredibly different than living in a suitcase. When we initially got to Damascus our hostel host offered us to stay in his apartment for 2000 SYP a month (equivalent to 500 CAD) which divided by 3 would be... hella cheap. Unfortunately, he thought our French "Institute" was the French Embassy and so the relative closeness he described was fictitious. So back to the drawing board for the weary travellers, spending exorbatant amounts of money each day in a cushy hostel. The next day we went to our Institute and looked to see what they had posted. The first post seemed promising, advertising a 2 bedroom apartment very near to the French Institute. We met with the landlord who seemed willing to negotiate the 2500 SYP a month, under one condition: no boys. Our mixed household was quashed, and while my compatriots had a comfortable 2 bedroom dwelling, I was again homeless. The landlord's name was Osama (reoccuring theme, eh?) and he actually had 2 2 bedroom apartments. So we went back to the insitute and tried to figure out what to do, having not given Osama a definite answer.

While putting our heads together a boyman walked into the institute and said "hello" to us. His name was Jeremie and was from France. He arrived in Damascus two days before and was looking for an apartment. ohhh really???? He went into the institute, came our a little while later, and then I asked him, having met him 55 minutes earlier, if he needed a place and a roomate. He said, "euhh, bah, oue." (but in English) and so 20 minutes later we were scoping the APT. After a brief deliberation it was ours and that evening we moved in. Jeremie and I on floor 4, Leah and Jordan on floor 3. Their APT is nicer and had AC, but hey, we've got the balcony and the view so we winl.

SOur apartment has a tiny kitchen, 1 1/2 baths, 2 separate bedrooms, a salon that has a TV room/ attached hallway/dining room and then a wrap around balcony with access to the roof. In other words, on top of the world and big. For about $300 CAD per person a month, things could be worse. Not to mention 3 minutes walk away from classes, so the 8:10 alarm for an 8:30 class is manageable. Here are some pictures, emphasis on the view of Mount Qasioun (جبل قاسيون):


View from my bedroom window


Bookshelf: Nerd alert, 5 Arabic Text/Reference Books


Hallway/Dining Space (in the background in the TV/salon)


Our (messy) Deckspace


Down from the Roofstairs


View of the Mountain. Civilization creeps up like a fungus.


Sundown from the rooftop with da moon


Mount Qasioun again

Our neighborhood is in the embassyville of Damascus. Our apartment/institute is in the neighborhood Shaalan/Abu Romaneh whereas our hostel was in the walled Old City. In between is "central Damascus" which is essentially the "real-person" commercial district, still more vibrant than our niche, but not as impressive as the old city (from which my last blogs pictures were taken). So while it is large and relatively cheap (surprising since this neighborhood in notorious for expensive rent) the neighborhood is for the foreigners/well to-do locals. Maybe living in the old city would be more fun, at least we're near the study destination. Below is a Damascene map for orientation:



So good roomate, good place, and okay location. Not bad at all. My roomate and are are getting into cooking things, exploring things, and generally being travellers. I think we have a lot in common and that we'll be very compatible flatmates and travel companions. All in all, things are looking up. (literally) Lets just hope Osama fixes our Air Conditioning.

E

New Experiences

Patan Durbar Square

The last few days have been stocked full of bizarre experiences. It never occurred to me that during my trip I might see cremated corpses, animal sacrifices, exploding pressure cookers (no one was hurt!), or old women carrying their baskets of vegetables to the market on a public bus, but over the last four days that’s pretty much been it. Thursday evening around 6:30 I was sitting at the kitchen table with my host sister Tara when I suggested that we visit the Pashupatinath temple since we had nothing to do before dinner. Just a 5 minute walk from our house, the Pashupatinath temple is the oldest Hindu temple in Kathmandu, and one of the most important religious sites in Nepal owing to its position on the sacred Bagmati River. As we walked over Tara was explaining that the temple is enormously wealthy due to the significant level of donations given by the faithful each year, and so it spends large amounts of money on community works, the most obvious being the home for poor elderly Hindu’s located on the temple grounds.

Patan Durbar Square

It was getting a bit dark, but it was still clear that the temple had an expansive property and an impressive range of temples dedicated to several Hindu gods, the most important being the Lord Shiva. We walked toward the main section of the complex, where the Bagmati River flows through an amphitheater-style area currently being used for evening prayers. As we approached the main gates, Tara said “Oh they’re cremating the dead- look.” I cautiously looked over and saw a smallish pyre- no signs of burning bodies. So far so good. We walked through the gates as I carefully avoided looking directly at the pyre and stood to watch the evening prayers being carried out on the other side of the river. Suddenly Tara grabbed my arm and said “Oh my god there’s another body.” Ok now I’ve NEVER been a fan of horror movies and the like due to my somewhat inconvenient and exaggerated squeamishness, so as you can imagine that this was about the last thing I wanted to hear. Tara proceeded to explain that you’re not allowed to burn bodies during the evening prayers, and so the family standing to my left with the corpse was waiting until they were finished to proceed. As for the pyre to my left, once you start cremating a corpse you can’t very well extinguish the fire and start again, so exceptions were made for these cases. We stood there for about ten minutes, which was as long as either of us could handle being in such close proximity to the corpses. We were beginning to feel a little lightheaded and so decided to leave the area and walk through the terraces surrounding the upper levels of the temple. As we were passing next to the pyre I couldn’t help but glance over- at that moment the attendant whose job it is to stoke the fire (can you imagine a job like that?), began poking at the fire with a long piece of bamboo and yep sure enough there was the dark outline of a torso as it lay in the fire, slowly being incinerated. At that point we both jumped and practically sprinted out of the temple complex. We got about 15 meters before we had to sit down and take a few deep breaths. Tara mentioned that no matter how many times she’s been to the temple she never gets used to seeing the cremations, which reassured me a bit about my own slightly elevated pulse. Luckily it was dark enough that I couldn’t see much aside from the black outline of the corpse against the brightness of the fire, but suffice it to say that this image has been burned into my memory forever, pun intended.

Patan Durbar Square

Well after a few hours I got over the shock, ate dinner, and went to sleep (nightmare-free), but that night definitively qualifies as one of the strangest things I’ve seen so far. The only thing that can really compete with it is the buffalo sacrifice that we saw yesterday (Saturday) while visiting the Durbar Square in Bhaktapur. A group of 8 of us decided to spend the night in Nagarkot, a resort village in the mountains surrounding the valley from which you can see the Himalaya’s on a clear day. On the way we spent an afternoon wandering around the medieval town of Bhaktapur, which sits about 15 km from Kathmandu (translation: an hour bus ride on a traffic-choked road), and is well known for its pottery production and for having the tallest temple in the Kathmandu Valley. As it turns out, every Saturday they sacrifice a buffalo outside the temple of the Bhairabnath Temple, and lucky us we arrived just in time. Long story short, I couldn’t bring myself to watch- the mooing of the animal as it’s throat was being cut was enough to convince me to stay away. According to Anthony, it took about ten seconds for it to die and even after the head was removed, the body was still moving a bit. If I thought the cremation was bad this was about 5 times worse. Maybe in a few days I’ll have the guts to look at the pictures that the others took of the whole procedure but for now I’m just fine keeping my experience to a minimum.

Bhaktapur Durbar Square

We eventually made it to our hotel on the top of Nargakot, and spent a very pleasant night in the cool fresh air surrounded by a dense fog (distinctly Dracula-ish for the record). The trip back to Kathmandu today took 5 hours, which is best put in perspective when you consider that Nagarkot is actually only 32 Km from KTM.

View from Nargakot

After spending so much time sitting on vehicle-clogged roads, I think my lungs are ready to murder me and I may have developed a permanent cough. I’m starting to think that I should have taken up smoking before coming here just to give my lungs a chance to adjust to all the delicious carcinogens in the air. Between the trash laying all over the place and the pollution caused by all the traffic, I often find myself wondering how different Kathmandu must have been before the West arrived with its generous gifts of diesel and plastic. Nepal’s rich history is evident everywhere- in the architecture, the clothing, and the religious paraphernalia. How exotic it must have been- essentially a medieval kingdom shut off from the influence of British colonizers, only opening up to foreign interaction in the 1950s.

Anyway, it’s back to work for me now. This coming Saturday we’re going to visit the Boudha temple, which is the center of Buddhism in Nepal and home to Tibet’s expatriate community in Nepal. I’ve heard from many people that it’s their favourite place in Kathmandu, so I’m really looking forward to it.

Axis of Hospitality

Arrived in Damascus [دمشق] and it's funny. After being in 'Merica for two weeks I think American misery had started to rub off on me. American misery, and fear, and animosity. Where does American misery come from you ask? Well, I have an answer. American misery is the byproduct of what makes the United States so ambitious and arrogant. The hubris of the superpower. And like Oedipus, MacBeth and any other Tragic Hero the United State's hubris is her greatest strength and weakness. It is because of our success that we are able to have lifestyles that seem lavish, continue a constant flow of food, water, and public services. Simultaneously, it is because of this success that we are miserable. Because we have achieved so much, the hubris kicks in, and when the hubris kicks in we can't handle failing. Or even shooting shorter than we did before. Unable to live up to our own expectations we become miserable, unable to cope with 2nd, 3rd, or 4th best. To use a cliché, the bigger they are, the harder they fall. That is why, for example, things like "economic downturns" can have such dramatic social consequences. It also explains the prevalence of popular phrases like "We're number one!" and "In your face", etc. etc. (etchetera). Failure paves the way for misery, which leads to animosity. (Yoda: "Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate and hate leads to suffering") Take that, but reverse it.This could explain why (some) americans can be xenophobic, racist, or mistrustful. And it is why the damned dirty Danes are the happiest people in the world. Figures. It also explains why, in the months, weeks, days leading up to coming to Syria that I was met with all sorts of warnings and exclamations of fear and general advice telling me to "be careful" and "keep my head".

From Christmas, anonymous pseudo friend/acquaintance: "You're going to Syria?!? Do you want to get killed?"
Friend, at a bar: "You know in Syria, they're going to execute you, or at least put you in prison for a long time"
A neighbor, bearing a striking resemblance, ironically, to the late Saddam Hussein: "Well, you'd better keep an eye on the bad guys so the good guys can do what they need to do."

By the beginning of my trip I really did somewhat fear the "hostility of the Syrian people" and my "iminent death by beheading" or "angry scowls from the Mossulmen". Axis of Evil? More like axis of hospitality. Upon arriving being picked up in a car by a driver, who accepted me, even though I wasn't on his list. Hostel owners who smile, ask questions and pour you endless amounts of tea/coffee/water, not to mention help you out when you're in a bind, and my favourite anecdote of the day:

Walking in the old city in Damascus. Just finished lunch, we got somewhat lost. My companions and I, putting our physical, but mostly metaphorical heads together, conjure up a phrase to help us get directions to where we wanted to go (i.e. home sweet hostel). We approach one man on the street with a kitchen supply shop, we ask him the way to Bab Sharqi (one of the gates into the old city, near our hostel), he mumbles Arabic, walks us up the street and points+gesticulates. We don't fully understand (many crossroads in Damascus are more than four ways, more like 7 ways), but walk in the general direction, but decide to get a second opinion. For safety's sake. We approach another man and ask him where we may find this Bab Sharqi.

As he begins his explanation, gesticulations matching that of the first man, the first man walks over. I was worried he would feel insulted that we didn't trust him initially and was concerned, he and the second man have a verbal exchange, and then the second man asks us in Arabic, "do you have a car?" we replay with something like "to walk" and tilt the middle and index fingers downward, simulating one leg in front of the other. The first man says something else to the second man and he beckons us to follow. It was only after he opened his car door that I understood. He was going to drive us. Scared, uneasy, and surprised, I got into the car, the front seat.


As the journey passed a few minutes, the man tried to determine exactly where we were going. He and I tried to communicate, with mild success, my sweat in the 103 degree heat prompting him to offer me a tissue while he himself applied one. He then took out his cell phone and called "The Doctor". "The Doctor" was spoke English and could act as a impromptu cellular translator between us and our driver. The doctor was handed off to someone else and the driver asked me if we were hungry. If we had had dinner. If we wanted to go to a restaurant, and to a swimming pool. and maybe something about his family. I stupidly tried to find the words to say that we had plans and weren't hungry. He looked disappointed. I was getting nervous because it was clear to me we had left the old city, and were getting into unfamiliar territory. After some help from "The Doctor", however, our driver dropped us off at a location more convienient than the one we originally wanted.

For fear of insulting him I asked our driving for his number of telephone. He wrote it down on an old reciept and as I was getting out of the car I asked him his name. He looked at me, jotted it down next to his number, and said "Osama."


Sketchy? Perhaps. Ability to restore a little faith in the world? Worth it. I don't necessarily advocate entering strange men's cars in all times of need, but there is a calculated risk in everything, and a group of three is a bit harder to trifle with. Thanks Osama, you were our Shephard when we were astray. And, in the words of great Shokry Gohar himself

"I do not think the Syrian people are hostile."

word, Shokes.

E

(interspersed are some initial pictures from our day with Osama. mostly in Souqs [اسواق] (Markets) and near the Umayyad Mosque [الجامع الأموي])