Bizarro World - Syria

Culture(s) Shock!
***Sorry, if this is a scattered post – however, as you will see the content and subject somehow correspond to the style*** (a cop-out)

Has anyone seen these ‘Culture Shock’ books on the Middle East? The book cover features an ominous, slasher-type writing on a black background. In reality, I haven’t experienced all that much culture shock during my first month in Syria. I don’t walk around wondering “who are the crazy, foreign people with their wacky customs” . . . . . rather I’ve often been struck with a dizzying juxtaposition of cultures, a disorienting whiff of globalization that leaves me confused and placeless. I’ve experienced this before, actually, when I was an undergrad and traveling in Belfast, Northern Ireland. I vividly remember walking around the Catholic areas and then the Protestant areas and then somehow turning up in an American style mall. In both the Catholic and Protestant areas a specific sense of ‘place’ is constantly re-enforced – wherein murals are crafted with nationalist iconography, colors are worn that correspond to tribal allegiance, curbs are painted, and flags displayed. Then, I walked into a “MALL” and felt that I was simultaneously everywhere and no-where.
I get a similar feeling when walking around in Syria. The daily Islamic calls to prayer, broadcasted from speakers surrounding Bab Touma, don’t phase me nor do the veiled women or any other event typical of the ‘oriental experience’; however, what rattles me the most, what after a month still catches me off-guard is hearing Bon Jovi “It’s My Life” playing on the streets, then walking into an internet café and half-watching ‘8-Mile’ (staring Eminem) while I’m surrounded by Arab-Roman-Catholic style iconography, then leaving and seeing graffiti concerning ‘Slayer!’ (the band) and 50 cent (fiffiy cent – the rapper). I just don’t expect terrible American culture to follow me everywhere!

America – Exporting Crappy Pop Culture since 1776!

More Evidence: (from today alone)
ONE: I walked into inhouse coffee – the Syrian Starbucks rip-off – ordered a decent latte in a sadly familiar green aesthetic, watched R. Kelly on the TV and then stepped back out into the Middle East. (Note my terrible photographs of ‘inhouse coffee’)
TWO: I’m speaking Arabic with some Syrian guys about Macintosh verses PCs, and one of the guy’s cell phones goes off . . . and of course his ring tone is super loud, insufferable Celine Dion song.

So . . . welcome, dear reader, to the Damascus experience; wherein one can walk to the very old Omayyad Mosque, pray in a place built in the year 709 AD, then walk 100 yards to a shop and pick up a pirated version of Angels in America with Arabic subtitles - a 6 hour mini-series on AIDS, homosexuality, and Regan Politics of the 1980s – and finally return home to catch reruns of Friends or maybe listen to a speech from a major leader in Hezbollah.

AND . . . it is this bizzarro world Syria, dear reader, where I lay the blame for obliterating my sense of place and bulldozing carefully constructed categories of understanding. Of course, it should go without saying that I’m actually delighted by this development.

ps: 'just a perfect day' - the slogan for inhousecoffee (as featured above). Lou Reed might be responsible for the minds behind this slogan, although I'm sure that they didn't hear it until they saw the film Trainspotting - used ironically in an overdose scene. Perhaps this isn't the warm fuzzy assoication the marketing gang at Inhouse Coffee were aimming for?