A Quick List . . . .

Hello Dear reader: once again your faithful blogging monkey, kicky sack, has fallen ill.
I don't know what my deal is here but I'm poppin' Syrian pharmaceuticals like M&Ms - they seem to help until I fall ill again.

Anyway, here's a run down of some thoughts in no particular order. Believe it or not, I'm actually working on a real 'post' on my Mac laptop back at my place, however I'm not happy with what I have written and I've been blowing my nose all over my keyboard. In short, excuse my ramble - I wrote this on the run.

1. Beverly Hills Cop Theme Song, remixed and all over Syria:
If I have to hear this song one more time - I'm going to take a hostage. I hear this song in cars that thump (yes, they have that here as well) and bars that bump house-music. For some reason, the song makes me want to roll across the hoods of cars and sneak around buildings, gun drawn. It does not, however, make me want to dance, dance dance. Yes, I went to a club the other night. I hate clubs but I felt obligated to go to this Halloween thing; so I went. For some reason I always think that THIS time it will be different, that this time I might be able to have a conversation with someone or enjoy the music. HA. Never going to happen. Actually, I enjoyed dancing and going out in La Crosse, WI with my friends from my Arabic Program this summer; however, they don't play Prince and Sultana does not dance on the stairs in Damascus.

2. If Karl Rove gets some grand jury love - I'm going to have a 'Karl Rove got indicted Party' and have everyone dress-up as different symbolic counts against him: obstruction of justice, perjury, etc. YAY!

3. I had an exam today. Not hard. I'm not crazy about the program here - in terms of Arabic instruction - but have been lucky enough to find a great tutor. It looks like my official Arabic course will be secondary in importance and value as my private sessions.

4. Rave I: Please read Philip Roth's Plot Against America - Don't even get me started on how weird it is to be in a cafe in Damascus (during my first couple weeks here) and find myself in this fictional American Nightmare and the poke my head up and find myself in Damascus.

5. Rave II: Documentary Film entitled "War in Lebanon" . . . I managed to see the beginning of this recently and have nothing but great things to say about it. In depth, well written and directed with excellent guest commentators. And, hey Americans . . . if you watch it and then look at the DVD cover you might be shocked that it is Al Jazeera - because it has the tonality of PBS. (Somewhere, members of the GOP are taking this comparison the wrong way). Check out Arab Film Distribution - they sell copies of it. Well worth the price.

6. It rained today. I got super wet and had thoughts of wonderful Seattle. When it rains here, however, the city becomes a bit of an oil slick and traffic turns into a larger mess than usual.

Faux Pas - Round 1

Please excuse, dear reader, the delirium of this post for I have recently suffered two days of my first illness in the Middle East. As much as I’m tempted to disclose the lewd details of my illness, I’ll skip over such unpleasant facts and report on some events, thoughts, and experiences that occurred prior to my two days living off of 7-UP and ‘Kack’ (the Middle East equivalent to soda crackers, albeit a much less pleasant name). Due to my illness, I’m going to try to keep everything digestible on this post. Thus, enjoy the light offering and I’ll be back with some more ‘heavy’ social and cultural probing in the near future.

Cultural faux pas 101 –

As opposed to most travel-blogs, I’m willing to engage in a full 1/16ths total disclosure of the world around me including social blunders committed by yours truly. Sadly, I don’t have a chain of recent mistakes but rather one ‘Westerner’ mistake that I want to pair with a faux pas made by one of my Arabic teachers who dared to extend her fashion choices into the annals of American history.

Faux Pas I: I hadn’t bought bread yet. Sure, I’ve had a few croissants and maybe some Arabic food that featured bread, but I hadn’t bought bread AS such. So I swing by a bakery right outside Bab Touma (the Christian quarter of the old city, Christian being an important part here) and see ONLY three plastic wrapped packages of bread that seemingly call my name. I went to the register and was met with less than an enthusiastic look from the nice girl with a crucifix around her neck. She says several words indicating something clearly negative. At the time I couldn’t make out the words . . . but after a bit of a back-and-forth I get the idea that, for reasons beyond my comprehension, this bread isn’t for me. I then move back to croissants, hear the familiar word for cheese croissant, buy three and call it a day . . .
Here’s what I find out later: I was trying to buy the BODY OF CHRIST pre-transfiguration. As a former alter boy with at least some background in this issue, I had thought the Catholic Church had set some guidelines on shape and color, or at the very least some parameters on authorized dealers of the Eucharist. The same thing happened to a British friend of mine – although he somehow was able to purchase the stuff anyway.

Faux Pas II A few days ago my Arabic teacher – a nice young woman who runs a pretty good Arabic class – walked into the room with a unique head wrap. She doesn’t ‘veil’ in the traditional Muslim sense, but generally lets her hair flow freely. This day, however, she went with a ‘maid’ do-rag type getup. Here’s the kicker – her fabric of choice just happened to be the Confederate Flag, fashioned in such a way that the blue stripe with stars ran from her forehead to the back of her neck: a less inclusive version of Mr. T’s Mohawk. I shot glances around the room and noticed that the other Americans and Brits also had baffled looks on their faces.
A moral question: Should I tell her that her fashion accessory is historically symbolic of the enslavement of an entire race of people? Or would it be better to just let this one slide? I seriously doubt she’s trying to rekindle her relationship with her ‘southern roots’ – more likely she is oblivious as to the flag’s meaning and selected it because it matched her shirt. Obviously, I elected NOT to tell her the back-story of her fashion choice. If and only if she’s planning a trip to the United States, will I then inform her of the deal.


Final thought (ala Jerry Springer):
About a week ago some friends and I went to the British Council in hopes of finding a suitable place to study. We found one for a spell, until we were kicked out of one of the classrooms. Whatever. While in the classroom I noticed the following questions written on the board, leftovers from an earlier English class:

1. What do you think will happen in the world after 10 years?
2. What are the three wishes you hope to become real?
3. What’s your opinion about your teacher?
4. In England there are “transvestites” – men who wear women’s clothes. What are some of the possible problems with this?
5. If you could travel any where in the world, where would you go and why?


Included are some unrelated photos from various roof tops in Bab Touma.

Also - some potential bad news for this American wanting a warmer relationship between his home country and his new adpoted country.

Pictures for now . . . talk soon.

Sorry for the lack of comment on this picture. I walked around and acted like a tourist yesterday. I figure that I better get that in now rather than turn into a full-on student and forget to do these things. Actually, this blog thing is nice for that reason. Anyway, I have an extended narrative that goes along with a larger group of pictures . . . hopefully i'll post that within a day or two. But for now, all you have to know is that I took this pictures around the Omayyad Mosque today. I'm running out of power on my laptop . . . so i'll have to save the other pictures for later.

Modern Ruins

Welcome back, avid reader.

1. I took these pictures of a huge, unfinished, and/or shelved mosque the other today (see what consumed most of my day and brought me to central Damascus below). Sadly, these pictures fail to capture the size and ambition of this project. In terms of downtown Damascus, nothing else takes up an entire city block, not even fancy-pants-5-star hotels or the big domestic banks. On my first trip to the University my sarcastic and bright German flatmate pointed it out to me. According to what he’s been told, the mosque was an Iranian sponsored project, construction starting shortly after Khomeini came to power; however, due to structural deficiencies (it was going to fall down) it was abandoned. Furthermore, he said that tearing it down would be too expensive and or dangerous. This section is in bold because I’m trying to get some information and perhaps you, avid reader, can contribute some knowledge to my post. If you know anything, feel free to post a comment or e-mail me a link or some information. I’m curious to know more about the mini-history of this building.

I asked a taxi driver a few questions about the building today. He said it was either started or abandoned or something 15 years ago: clearly a few glitches still remain in my spoken Arabic. He also said something about water being underneath the building: a problem for sure.

It is strange. Surrounded by stunning Islamic architecture, some of the most ancient and studied in the world, I’m drawn to this unfinished shell of a building. Sometimes ambition and failure produce more interesting stories than that of ho-hum success. My German flatmate told me of his plans to e-mail Christo and have him do some insane instillation on the unfinished mosque: say cover the whole of it with tin foil or the dark green cloth of Islam. However, in terms of symbolic politics, I highly doubt a Western artist will be able to transform, recast, veil, or ‘improve upon’ a somewhat disappointing spiritual icon of Damascus. The broad metaphorical meaning of such an act would be a bit dicey. I hope this shell stays around for a few hundred years. Syria is not short on ancient ruins that mark the coming and going of different epochs; so perhaps it isn’t at all inappropriate for us moderns to add to the rubble.


2. What was I doing downtown? Well, two nights ago I went to go withdraw some money from the ATM. I had been told (by other students) that I ought to use ONLY one specific ATM: the Saudi/French bank right outside the gates of Bab Touma. Give me a ‘Check Minus’ on listening skills and staying on task, because I saw an ATM and thought why not? Well, the ATM swallowed my one and only means to money and didn’t give it back. So I went to three different branches of the same Syrian Bank, slowly making my way through and around various layers of bureaucracy. After lots of walking and a cab ride, I found myself on the VISA floor of the Main Bank. They promised me that they would fish my card out and told me it would be an hour. After being sitting in a juice bar and finding myself totally engrossed in a Sesame Street styled kids show for an hour, I returned to the bank and was delighted to wrap grubby American hands around my plastic. Everyone I dealt with was very nice – and person-by-person – increasingly helpful. In terms of ‘freaking out’ - I surprised myself with how calmly I dealt with all of this. Of course, having made good new friends who offered me loans right away was central. I guess being a new arrival in a place allows one to chalk everything up to an adventure. Had the same thing occurred in the United States, I’m sure I would have just been annoyed. All things considered, it was bordering on but not quite rolling-in . . . the fun zone.


NEWS FLASH: Cue up the Jefferson's theme Song - I'm movin' on up - to another house. Sadly, it isn't a dee-luxe apartment in the sky, nor is it on the east side, but it is far better than my other place: better lit and much larger room along with a Western toliet as well as a quiet place to study. I'm pretty happy about it.

The Basics

An update on Fulla: (see below)
My host family’s 8 year-old girl gets pretty happy every time a commercial for Fulla is on the TV or some Fulla related product enters her field of vision. Here’s the kicker – the family is Christian so I’m fairly sure her parents aren’t pushing her towards an ‘Islamic Barbie’; however, she has equal enthusiasm for Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. So I think the best one can say is: if you market it, they will come.

The Basics:

(for those stumbling upon this blog and don’t know the author)

1.0: I’m an American Graduate student (specializing in International Relations: Middle East) studying Arabic in Damascus for the year. And no, I’m not German so if you are in Damascus and you see me: please don’t start with the crazy German talk.

1.1: As opposed to Professor Josh Landis – author of a Syria blog that drops daily knowledge and insight, backed up with 20 plus years of study – I’m just getting my feet wet and don’t presume to know enough to really dig into Syrian politics in any meaningful way. And even, inshallah, if I did have something worthwhile to say, I don’t think I’m ready for Blog-Politics. So . . . . . . . . . . . if you want the meat, head to Professor Landis’ page, you want a lite-salad and maybe a side of humus; I’m your man.

And hence my blog –‘And some time take the time’ (see the inspiration for this title) – will serve as a random, rambling travel-blog with occasional political insights, mostly observational thoughts on my experiences in Syria; sometimes I might throw in some music opinions, odd stories, amateur photography, and occasional gaaarabge talking.

1.2 And no, I don’t know your cousin who used to live in Syria and now lives in New Jersey.

1.3 And no, I don’t feel that I’ve made my way to some unsafe country in the heart of the ‘war torn Middle East’ wherein beheadings and ass-kickings are supposedly par for the course. Rather, Damascus is very mellow – at least in terms of my survey of daily life. I don’t doubt that some things may or may not be shifting underneath and I don’t have the linguistic skills or the cultural wherewithal to decode them; however, in terms of pure safety, the most life-threatening thing I deal with is crossing the street. (Not to be taken lightly) Traffic is a nightmare but often entertaining, especially when nice cars nearly knock down houses while trying to navigate themselves through the narrow, crowded streets of the old city.


Here are some more jumbled thoughts for those of you still interested:

2.0 File Under Travel Suggestion:

Dear Tourists, if you are a non-Muslim traveling to the Middle East during Ramadan . . . PLEASE reframe from eating or smoking in public during the daylight hours. I don’t know if Zogby has polled Muslims on their attitudes on this or not but whatever. I just find it tacky and lame. So pick a restaurant that is open during daylight hours, sit down, eat, drink, smoke, become annoyed with the 9th Fairuz song in a row, and I promise that you won’t offend the guy with a crucifix tattoo on his hand. Unless you do or say something unbelievably stupid. Then shame on you.

PS
code name: kicky sack
I hate hacky sack however i bust out laughing everytime i say kicky sack to myself outloud - hence, kicky sack.

To friends and family:

Here are some pictures and basics – lacking my punchy and sardonic commentary – about my life here:

I live with a nice family in the Old City of Damascus. They are wonderful and sweet.

Tomorrow I’m going to go fight what I’ve been told to be the infinitely complex red-tape of the Syrian education system. I’m fairly certain some vaguely interesting narrative will come out of this . . .

My Arabic sometimes works and sometimes falls and fails completely. Mostly fails but sometimes I have actual exchanges with people.

I’m eating very well and enjoying myself a great deal. It already feels like home.

Look for more news/updates/pictures in the near future . . .