Procrastinet

Amman, Jordan - 8/13/2005: Evil Empires

filed under: Despatches

A continuing series of periodic Procrastinet Despatches from Amman, Jordan. By Nicholas Seeley.

Coming from Amman, the first thing you’re likely to see of Syria – assuming they let you in at all – is yet more trackless desert. Damascus is only a few hours drive from Amman, but the scorching wind blowing in the windows of your rented taxi just gets hotter and hotter; somehow it seems to drain the energy right out of you.

Maybe it was imagination, but I felt, during that first drive, as if I could clearly see the post-soviet influences in the countryside, in the huge, machine tilled farms and the rows of ancient harvesters squatting like ugly old women in blocky, concrete sheds. My understanding is that Syria has a much higher proportion of arable land than Jordan, and the advantage that all of it isn’t on the steep hillsides of the Jordan river valley. The farms in Syria are bigger, more productive and more mechanized – but by the same token, bleaker and more menacing.

Or maybe it’s the giant, technicolor picture of Hafez and Bashar Assad hanging over every shed and garage that makes the image of Stalinism so inescapable. There was actually a second Assad brother, Basil, but he got hisself kilt in a car crash. He’s still on a lot of the posters, tho’. Some Syrians, under their breath, refer to them as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Fuck, you think that’s strange? Jordan’s main airport is named after someone who died in a plane crash. Go figure.

The outskirts of Damascus are as bleak and ominous as the farms, made up of row after row of huge gray, identical apartment complexes. Its exactly how you would expect East Berlin to have looked in the 60’s, except for the palm trees. But approaching the center of the city, the atmosphere changes. There are parks and fountains – containing actual grass and water – and wide streets with sculptures in the roundabouts, and little, incongruous apartment buildings in a profusion of styles more European than Middle-Eastern, with double-hung windows and ironwork balconies and painted facades. The air actually seems to get a little lighter.

Up close, many bits of Damascus look like someone was trying to build Paris, but lacked adequate materials. There are houses with that very western-European overhanging second story, but it’s held in place by what looks like driftwood and scrap iron. Some buildings appear to be made of Styrofoam, others have walls of corrugated tin or aluminum. But seen from the distance, the effect is of a city. Compared to blocky, gulf-y architecture of Jordan, which looks like piled cardboard boxes, this is rich profusion. If Amman is the L.A. of the Middle East, Damascus is the Chicago (making Jerusalem the East St. Louis?).

I’m on vacation here with some friends, and the first evening in town, our little party decides to buy some beer and venture up Jabal Qassioun, the big mountain that divides this city of seven million people into two halves, to watch the sun set.

Halfway up the mountain, we pass something that looks like an art-deco spacecraft from a 60’s space opera. We ask the cab driver what it is, and he says it’s the tomb of the unknown soldier. Some confusion ensues when I ask which particular war this unknown met his maker in, and the driver appears to reply that they put a new one in every year. Eventually we decide he probably means they have a ceremony re-dedicating the thing every year. But I have my doubts – I mean, a lot of people go missing in Syria; they’ve gotta be putting them somewhere, right?

There’s an entire mini-tourist industry that’s grown up on top of Jabal Qassioun, and the road that rounds the peak is packed tight with tacky little restaurants, with garish awnings and blaring pop music, serving argileh to people at little plastic tables. Unlike most of Amman, it’s also packed with people. Families sit clustered along the edge of the road, drinking cokes and eating ice cream, looking out at the view.

My friends and I find a strip of hillside that breaks off from the road and sit down on a rock, sipping cheap local beer from brown bottles. A few families are picnicking on blankets not too far off, but we’ve chosen a spot that’s a bit out of the way – we do have beer, after all, and while Syria is secular we don’t want to offend anyone’s sensibilities too much.

After a few minutes, a group of local kids run past, in the middle of some complicated game, but stop upon seeing us. They ask where we’re from, and I tell them, and they stand, staring at us. So after a moment, I stare back, and ask, in Arabic, what they want. They push off to the next rock over.

This time it’s not me being paranoid, but one of the American girls in our party keeps casting glances over their way. “They’re saying nasty things about us,” she says – she understands Arabic better than I do.

“Let them,” I say. But she’s worried, she can’t shake it.

“Well, where are their families,” I say, looking around. “If they come bother us again, we’ll march them back to their fathers and say they’re being rude.”

“We can’t do that,” she says, “we’re the ones out of place here. This is their country, we can’t tell them to be quiet.” She’s getting hysterical, and the kids giggle, loudly, as they watch. Kids can always tell when they’re getting to you – it’s one of the lessons I remember well from my own childhood. “For chrissakes,” she says, “we’re drinking beer,”

“Yeah,” I reply, “One beer. Which we bought at a Syrian convenience store. If the kids bug you, let’s go tell their parents they asked us to give them some,” I suggest, “that’ll fix them, but good.”

It’s the same argument that always comes up, when someone treats you badly in a foreign country. One person will blame themselves: “It’s because we’re not culturally sensitive enough, we deserve to be treated badly, we’re the Evil Empire.” One of their companions will then take the opposite stance: “there are jerks everywhere, and if we treat people decently, we shouldn’t be judged on our culture any more than they should.”

Before it can get too heated, however, it is cut off, a man with a sheikh’s beard and a long dishdasha gets up from his blanket, and starts shouting at the kids. “Get out of here,” he says, “can’t you see these people are students? Stop bothering them, you know better.” Then he offers us slices of watermelon, and has a brief conversation with us.

There are jerks everywhere; there are also pleasant, generous people.

Below us, the city spreads out like a fairy tale, long flat avenues lined with trees, and rows of white buildings, gradually getting taller towards the center of town, where the big hotels and government buildings stand out like ships in a sea of white. Off to the left, a huge swath of dark green disappears into the horizon. I had never expected Syria to have to many colors to it.

But the argument about cultural communication has put us all in a reflective mood, and we stare out at the vista in silence – as if realizing afresh what a knife edge this part of the world is walking. All it would take is one bomb in the wrong place at the wrong time – one demonstration too many in one of a dozen countries – one leader dying before his time – and this whole world we inhabit, where cultures more or less, grudgingly coexist, could vanish. The clubs in Amman where we dance and shoot pool, the big hotels, the bars where expats go for a beer in the shadow of the huge Ummayyad mosque, where families go to pray, and children run and play on the slick, glassy tiles of the courtyard; even the little restaurants balanced on the hill next to us could vanish in a moment, if someone makes the wrong decision.

For a minute, in my minds eye, I see the streets packed with cars, plumes of smoke rising from the windows of charred buildings and tiny shapes picking their way on cut feet through the flattened suburbs. Then it’s gone again.

“What a shame it would be if someone were to destroy this,” someone says, finally giving the idea voice. If someone came with bombs, and leveled this crazy, beautiful, thriving, confused city, and made another Kosovo, or Baghdad or St. Petersburg. Dresden. Troy.

In the city below us, people are having fun, living their lives as best they can under the gaze of their own Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Their government is far from perfect, as are they, but they’re just people; people who follow whoever leads them. They’re not the evil empire.

And what if there is no Evil Empire? What if there isn’t really anyone who’s the cause of all the trouble; be they neocon or islamist or zionist? Then there’s just another city, waiting for someone to come along and level it. Funny how someone always does.

- Nicholas Seeley, 8/13/2005

Posted by rjt at August 15, 2005 01:22 PM