Procrastinet

Amman, Jordan - 9/21/05: Evil Empires, Part III - But Is It Art?

filed under: Despatches

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

I’m sitting in the Cham Palace Garden restaurant in Hama, Syria, chatting with a couple fellow tourists, drinking watery local beer and looking out across the river. On a small promontory next to us, one of the city’s famous giant waterwheels creaks away, filling the restaurant with an ominous creaking and rumbling. The wind picks up and I pull my collar tighter. After the oven that was Damascus, the north of Syria is pleasantly cool.

All the way across the river we can see the ruins of the old town. The vine-wrapped remains of a mosque peep out through the thick jungle greenery like the lost city from some science fiction film. Overhead, the bats and the swallows are waging an aerial battle for control of the long abandoned buildings, and the croaking of frogs in the canal blends with the groaning of the waterwheel.

All in all, Hama is a beautiful little river town; filled with parks and public squares. The streets here always seem to be full of people walking with their children, eating, or just hanging out. In one of the parks there’s even a tiny, unsafe looking little funfair, made up of ancient, rusting kiddie rides and a ferris wheel that spins altogether too fast for comfort. Street life is one of the things that stands out in my mind, separating Jordan from Syria.

There are a few place in Amman where people can be seen outside of their houses, doing things, but for the most part, the streets roll up before anyone ever rolls them out. I’m shocked, in Syria, to see Muslim couples holding hands; in Jordan, men and women rarely if ever touch each other in public.

Almost since the day I arrived in Amman, I have been hearing from my ex-pat friends how much cooler Syria is than Jordan – specifically, about how much there is going on in Damascus – an art scene, a music scene, a huge national theater that people actually go to.

I don’t know if those claims are literally true – as I’ve said, there is a lot going on in Amman, the problem seems to be that people don’t know about it; a combination of lethargy and poor PR – but true or not, Damascus makes them feel true.

I didn’t actually get to see much of this fabled Art. The heavy metal guitarist I was supposed to ask about concerts never called me back. I came back from the north early, to try to get tickets to a show at the national theater, but everything was sold out for weeks.

But it’s not just what’s going on, it’s how you feel about it.

In one music shop in Old Damascus, run by two young guys who burn cd’s of progressive and death metal they’ve downloaded off the internet, we are told to go to a bar called Kassafji 32, which is where we can find out about everything that’s going on in town.

We take a cab there, through sections of town that stir odd memories of New York; past rows of townhouses and hardware shops that look like they could be in Astoria or Bay Ridge, or some small town in Ohio. Kassafji is the only thing open on an otherwise residential street. But inside, it feels like one of the trendy little dives in Park Slope or Fort Greene: orange, mock-70’s décor, with fishtanks and Japanese paper lamps hanging from the ceiling, and a table stacked with flyers for shows and bands and art exhibits.

There are girls inside with tattoos, another rare sight in Amman. We hang out for a while, and have a beer, and find flyers for a show at the national theater – an adaptation of Antigone called Antigon Emigration, by what appears to be a local writer. I’m surprised again.

The last time my play reading group was talking about doing a show in Amman, the name Antigone came up – as a play we would definitely not be allowed to do, if anyone found out about it. One thing you can’t be, in Jordan, is anti-monarchy. Not even in general. The ironies hit home again – is Syria more free than Jordan? Certainly not. But, then, in certain areas, maybe it is – as I mentioned in my Secrets and Lies column.

One of the reasons for the restrictions on speech in Amman, of course, is that the government here does walk a fine line with the hard-core Islamists in the country, and can’t risk people saying things that would spark anti-government sentiment in the Umma. That way lies Egypt.

Of course, Syria doesn’t have that problem. And it’s mostly because of Hama. In 1982, when Hafez Assad decided to ban political parties from Syria, the one group that opposed him was the Muslim Brotherhood. Their strongest following, and according to some sources, most of their leaders, were in the town of Hama.

So Assad shelled it – less to inflict damage, it is said, than to destroy the roads and bridges, and make it impossible to get out. Then he sent in the army to kill every living thing in Hama; finally shelling the ruins with poison gas. Between 20,000 and 40,000 people were killed in one day, in a town that today has a population of less than 250,000.

After that, Syria didn’t have an Islamic insurgency problem any more. The old town was more or less abandoned, the craters and graves were bulldozed, and a hotel was built on top of them, where tourists can sit looking out over the Orontes river, drinking watery local beer.

I’m not a superstitious guy, but there’s not enough money in all of Syria to get me to spend a night in that hotel.

We leave Hama after two nights, to go back to Damascus in time to see Antigone – the show that was sold out, so I’ll never know if it was any good. The late bus back is crowded and hot, and there’s some kind of massive accident on the road that keeps us sitting for almost two hours, until well after dark.

I’m sitting near the back; behind me is just one more family. I notice them because they don’t look local – A man with two women in brightly colored headscarfs, and two daughters in heavy makeup and Britney shirts that show a lot more cleavage than one is used to seeing in the Middle East. Best guess, they’re probably Lebanese; Lebanese girls have a rep for wearing whatever they want. Unfortunately, I’m right under the television, which makes trying to sleep futile, because there’s some crazy Egyptian movie playing full of singing and dancing. It’s after midnight when we finally pull into the Damascus bus depot, and, as always happens, the bus turns into a writhing, shoving mass of people, trying to get their luggage and get out.

Arabs and their lack of a sense of personal space. I hunker down in my seat in the far back, trying to keep out of the fray.

Then a man in a brown uniform gets on the bus, and says, quietly, “take your seats.”

Everyone does, immediately. We all sit in total silence as the bus slowly fills up with soldiers. There is a group around each entrance, and perhaps six in the main aisle. Beginning in the front, they start taking checking the passports of everyone on the bus. The soldiers scan the faces of each passenger in turn; they seem to be looking for someone.

One by one, the people in the front of the bus are allowed to leave; they walk off the bus with slow, forced calm. My heart is beating faster and faster as the soldiers move to the back. The bus empties out, slowly, until there is no one left but myself and my companions, and the Lebanese family behind us, and the soldiers.

They take a look at me – I don’t recall if they even asked for my papers or not. All I remember is one of them waving to me to go. I pull my bag from the overhead rack with all the calm I can muster, and get off, with my friends. The last thing I see as I’m going down the back stairs, is the six soldiers standing in a circle around the family in the back of the bus.

And that’s all.

- Nicholas Seeley, 9/21/2005

Posted by rjt at September 22, 2005 12:10 PM