Between fairy tale and media sensation

2007-07-08T05:00:00.002-07:00

Leaving Syria is leaving an impossible love story. I have sold out to the fastness and gotten addicted to the slowness of being and to realize, how less I know. What a relief! And, there I stand somewhere in between, all part of it and still a stranger, well aware of how my part of the theater has been settled for centuries.

2007-07-08T04:55:00.001-07:00

2007-07-08T04:47:00.000-07:00

But Syria * Stay Cool * - one of its own, who has everything it takes to do so - in your spirit, in your music. Thanks to your people – Syrians – the people containing all sides of being ------. Thank you, for providing a place for us, who still wonder about it all. You, Syrian people have a strength you might not even know your own power off.
I’m looking forward to go back to all the untold stories.

2007-06-30T07:01:00.000-07:00

2007-06-29T06:21:00.000-07:00

2007-06-28T22:02:00.000-07:00

The Syrians about the inhabitants from Homs

Why do a person from Homs always bring a spoon in the shower?

To be able to mix the hot and cold water.

What do a person from Homs always bring a car door to the dessert?

To be able to roll down the window, if it gets to hot

2007-06-27T07:33:00.001-07:00

2007-06-27T07:26:00.001-07:00

2007-06-27T07:24:00.000-07:00

When many (western) tourists are asked why they stay in the old part of the city and don’t go to the new part, they will look at bit suspicious at you and answer: “But no, that’s not the real Middle East. It’s not what we are looking for."
In the hunt for the authentic, the ‘real’ is the old. The ‘new’ does not fit into, what the tourist wants and become labeled as 'not real'.

2007-06-27T07:20:00.000-07:00

2007-06-27T05:58:00.000-07:00

On the other hand the Middle East has very often been accused of either not wanting to or being able to renew.

2007-06-18T02:38:00.001-07:00

2007-06-18T02:33:00.000-07:00

Not even the Danish victory in the European Football Championship back in the 90’ties comes close to the celebration of the presidential referendum some weeks ago. In the days up to and beyond the streets were dancing and cruised thin by flag and banner covered vehicles. Not one square meter wall or fence was without a poster of holder of the leading role. The result of the referendum was to the advantage of the president. Though, the size of the advantage depended on the location of the newspapers, which brought the result. The president got another seven years and the people got a party.

2007-05-18T04:35:00.000-07:00

2007-05-18T04:28:00.000-07:00

I have always found the Dutch people’s capability to use their bike to transport goods very amusing and quit admirable. With some good will, a Dutch person can transport a couch or half a wooden floor on a bike. The ability in Denmark ends by two shopping bags in the front and a child on the back.
But the Syrians are without comparison. The bike is used as everything from a mobile coffee, bakery, snack bar all-in to pasta wholesale delivery. With the balance of a tightrope dance, the biker maneuvers his bike in and out between the mass of people in the narrow souq or the aggressive yellow cabs in the chaotic traffic crossing.
The Syrians have a special relationship with their transportation means. Horses and bull dozers are decorated with feathers worthy for the circus ring, small Datsun trucks can be traced back to their respective regions of the country by the way they are decorated - Homs has one style, Aleppo another, the fringed red patterned rug saddles used on the backs of camels and horses have gotten their revival on the seats of bikes with or without motor. The Syrians are true artists of the street.

2007-05-10T22:52:00.000-07:00

2007-05-09T08:50:00.000-07:00

2007-05-09T08:14:00.000-07:00

They found it very amusing, that my Arabic vocabulary is limited to ‘shukran’, ‘afwan’, ‘salaam’ and ‘ma’salaam’. Further passport’ and ‘hotel’ were the only words, which were commonly understood between us. It did not limit the questioning. They would ask me in Arabic and look at me as if it would make me understand. I would answer as the wind blows in English. They did not seem to care. The head did not speak English either. His English was limited to ‘passport’. Sitting in a huge coach in his office with light orange curtains keeping out the sun, which had not shown its face since yesterday and photographs of the president on the wall, the whole Arabic-English interrogation was repeated. While I was wondering about the efficiency of it all, they went through the photographs on the LCD screen again and again, laughing about a photo of a very close up smiling face of a man, who earlier in the day happened to pass by in a second I was pushing the trigger. Maybe they really did suspect to find photographs of their ‘forbidden’ locations before or after the smiling face, maybe it was too weird for them with a blond foreigner all the way away from tourist ground or maybe they were just dead bored with 5 of them guarding the same entrance.
Still placed in the coach I was a little thrilled about my ‘chance’ to be inside the ‘forbidden’ building and scared they would take my camera away. I somehow knew I in my situation was lucky to be a foreigner. They did not take my camera. With polite smiles and apologies I was shown out of the 'forbidden' building again.
I never found out, what made the building one of the ‘forbidden’ ones.
Further down the road I came to think about the last time I was stop by the police in my own country for driving with two on one bike. Being a treat to the system or not.

2007-04-30T23:32:00.000-07:00

2007-04-29T08:54:00.000-07:00

It’s weird suddenly to stand here ‘live’ on one side of no-man’s-land looking onto the other side. Depending on which side, one is looking from the flag of the enemy is blue and white or black, white, red and green. In the middle of it all sits UN. The only thing allowed to pass through this zone on a regular base is apples.
Today the sun is shinning and there is a fresh breeze coming from ‘the white haired old man’ mountain behind us having its name from its age and the permanent snow on top. The swallows hunt for insects and flowers bloom everywhere. The soldiers sit giggling and relaxed with cigarettes in front of 3 flags neatly arranged on a thin bar barricading any further movement. They were not even born, when everything exploded at this tiny spot. The village of the family of our driver lays only 25 km away on the other side of the bar. He has never been there and only if God will, as he says, will he ever be allowed to go. Though, today this seems like the most peaceful place on earth and that he could just walk ahead.
Once a week the soldiers get a visit from an 90 year old woman, who will take a rest at the bar and remember, when he dad would lead her down the road, now disappearing behind fences and barbed wire, to go to church – every Sunday until circumstances changed her Sundays and every other day of her life to come. She is as thousand of others just tiny invisible bricks in a political power struggle about a small piece of land.
On our way back we again passes through what was once a town with 120.000 inhabitants, now concrete pile after concrete pile with once carefully planted trees still growing around each pile. House after house systematically and completely destroyed by the blue-and-whites from the other side of no-mans-land, at the time they had to give up part of their newly conquered tiny piece of land.
On the edge of all the rubble the fields are covered with apple trees and yellow flowers. What a paradise this once was.

2007-04-29T08:48:00.000-07:00

2007-04-29T08:47:00.000-07:00

“Why should I go to vote” the hospitable shop keeper almost angrily replied, when I asked him about the election. “Why should I go and vote, when, as everyone knows, nothing will change. Nothing has changed during the last 30 years, so why now? Most of these people just want as place in parliament, so they can secure their own business interests. None of them are that naive or that idealistic to believe, they can actually make a difference for the people. That’s how it works here. But one thing I will like to make clear. I respect my president very much. He is a good man; it’s circumstances, which prevent him from changing much. He used to go shopping at the marked with the rest of us, but after 9/11 it is not safe for him anymore.”
I’m thinking about the posters of the melancholy looking ophthalmologist with the soft eyes. Maybe he is a good man, who is caught between the hard core of the past and the present pressure from the capitalistic West. Most of the people here seem to believe so. And ‘being a good man’ is definitely more, than I will ever say about the democratic elected prime Minster of my own country. So, who am I to judge?

2007-04-29T01:04:00.000-07:00

2007-04-29T00:56:00.000-07:00

Taxi driver’s observation:
- Arabic drivers can manage to create a traffic yam in the dessert.
My observations:
- When wise people say the Arabic countries are lacking individualism, they should through a quick glance at the traffic.

- The American Embassy is always the most barricaded building in any capital city.

2007-04-27T01:58:00.000-07:00

2007-04-20T07:57:00.000-07:00

2007-04-20T07:55:00.000-07:00

Floating humming absorbing crowds of tall princesses and small sheiks, money men with an eagles view and blind men with the sense of coins, believers in money-makes-the-day- go-around and believes sold in book form, faces covered behind designer sunglasses and hair covered under viscose or bleached strips, tourists with eternal viewfinders and survival kits followed by tourist pleasers and teasers, dreams of long time gone disguised in shiny black fabrics with green and gold, Barbie bags for dreamy girls and Hizbollah posters for unbeatable hope, soap in kilos and gold in grams. Shop till you drop and may the zouq be with you.

2007-04-20T07:48:00.000-07:00

2007-04-20T07:47:00.000-07:00

There are 31 steps to my room, divided over 3 levels in granite, marble and wood.
The small brown pigeons on the balcony match their surrounding. They are not to be lured into eating the bread from my hand. Their soft cooing blends with the deep chant of the muezzin calling to praise Allah from the green-for-Islam-and peace neon lighted mosque, mobile phone ring tones and cars, when put in reverse sending out an electronic version of “Lam Barda” – the eighty pop song with Latino rhythms. The city’s orchestra has manifested itself in yet another overture.

2007-04-20T07:19:00.000-07:00

2007-04-18T06:03:00.001-07:00

Between articles about Israeli-Arab leaders’ peace talks or lack of, Syria Times offers a full page on the nature of reality and asks if we can speak of ‘nothingness’, when one can’t imagining eternity or a free will, when one don’t know, what “one” is. On the following page my daily horoscope tells me to be aware of nostalgia.
Under “insights” on the last page it’s proclaimed, that no one can separate between pottery-making as a craft and pottery-making as an art, as the pottery clearly shows the internal and external visions of their makers and the philosophy of those old peoples whose skills and aesthetic values continue to be a typical example followed by Syrian craftsmen today.
Discussions on ‘when is something art and when is something not” seems to be rather irrelevant as long as one can see, feel, remember and express.

2007-04-17T08:15:00.000-07:00

2007-04-14T10:31:00.000-07:00

2007-04-14T10:27:00.000-07:00

I immediately recognize the sweet, aromatic smell of cardamom mixed with a dose of car fumes. The first smell containing each European’s fantasy about the orient, the other a modern world, where flying carpet and spirits in bottles are imaginations exported long time ago with Burton’s translation of The 1001 Nights.

Damascus International Airport

2007-04-07T11:12:00.000-07:00

Damascus International Airport