abu wilyam ~ أبو وليام

Around 6:45 pm today I left an internet cafe near Shahbandar Square and called my friend N.  While we were gchatting while she was still at work, she’d said that she might be in the area later.  Now she told me that she was near a demonstration that was happening by the Egyptian embassy over the events in Gaza, and she invited me to join her.

The horrific and ongoing attacks in Gaza have been very much on my mind and in conversations here in Damascus.  I know that this is big news anywhere in the world, but it feels very close here.  I’m not sure how that is exactly, since what happens across borders to the southwest of here usually feels worlds apart - and probably is worlds apart - but the current outrage in Gaza feels close.  (Check this Robert Fisk piece to put some perspective on the news-cycle coverage.)

So far, we’ve had the typical justifications, the typical response from the US, the typical talk from various world leaders.  I find myself wondering whether we’ll be back to the status quo when the current bloodbath ends, or will this time something really change.  I fear that the war will widen, God forbid.

There have been demonstrations all over the world in response, including here in Damascus.  I wanted to go to the one that happened two days ago in a main square, but despite its proximity to where I’m living, I was busy and couldn’t make it.

So today I went to join N who was waiting with our friend O by the Noura bus stop on Abu Rummane St. - just across the street from the Egyptian embassy.  I walked from Shahbandar to Abu Rummane, about a 20 minute walk, past Arnous Square, Sebki park, and Sha’lan St.  This is a very nice part of town - nice in the sense of both “upscale” (though certainly not the most upscale) and “really a pleasure to spend time in” - it is centrally located, there are lots of nifty classic buildings dating to the first half of the 20th century or before, and it is filled with lively (and stylishly dressed) pedestrians late into the night.

The Noura bus stop in Abu Rummane was just about on the edge of the demonstration.  The protesters were gathered on the main street - the crowd filled the street in the direction of Mount Qassiun to the northwest, and dissapated in the opposite direction towards Jisr al-Ra’is (The President’s Bridge).  Although I couldn’t see the whole crowd, we’re talking in the hundreds rather than the thousands.

Along the opposite sidewalk of Abu Rummane street from where we were standing was a long row of riot police, complete with helmets and shields - behind them, further than I could see, was the Egyptian embassy.  The large crows was riled up, chanting slogans but not in conflict with the police.

There were many different kinds of flags… there were Palestinian flags of course, but also communist flags and others.  While we watched, a crowd of guys carrying “Islamic Jihad” banners joined the crowd from the direction of Jisr al-Ra’is.  The diversity of flags can certainly be interpreted as a sign of how widely shared the shock and anger is here in response to the attacks.  Oh, and let’s not forget the Israeli flags which had been drawn on pieces of cardboard: they were burned, first held aloft and then stomped underfoot as they disintegrated.

Now, the popular image of the “angry Arab street” may be making some readers wonder: wasn’t he worried for his safety?  In fact, not at all.  The three of us (a blond American guy with two young women, one veiled and the other not) were just as calm as the people around us: a traffic cop relaxing by his motorcycle, relieved of his duties thanks to the demonstration; two security guards for another nearby embassy chatting with each other about some unrelated topic.  A few feet away from us, a teenager struggled to climb on top of the bus shelter to join the chanting and wave his sign.

We watched for a while, and not much happened.  An adult friend of N’s came by on his way from the center of the protest - he greeted us and was headed home.  Somewhere between 7:30 and 7:45 we decided to go get something to eat - I was hungry and there didn’t seem to be much to see.

We walked back to Sha’lan to go to a place called Boz Jidi.  The name is actually a general term for any little restaurant that sells msabbaha (hummus), foul (fava beans), fatte (delicious bready porridgy stuff), and other traditional foods, but this boz jidi has expanded both in terms of menu (now also serving pizza, fried chicken, etc.) and space: the enlarged back section of the restaurant has been redubbed “Crunchy,” with a downstairs for guys only and the upstairs for mixed company, with the requisite flat screen TVs on every wall.  Despite the expansion, the front of the restaurant that faces the main street of Sha’lan still has its same traditional look, feel and service.

While we ate our fatte and sipped our tea, we kept an eye out for Al-Jazeera on the TV screen behind our table.  N, a Syrian, has been deeply affected by the attacks, and is especially infuriated by the preposterous comments of the US government spokespeople and others: that Hamas is responsible for the deaths.  She complained about her coworkers who were all talking about where they will be spending New Year’s Eve: at which party, what they will wear, drink, etc.  I also find that sort of thing in extremely bad taste at times like these, but N meant something more than just that.  She thought that as Syrians, as people who are members of the same Arab people as those in Gaza, they should not behave like this at such a time.

O, on the other hand, didn’t really care.  She was sad and upset about the attacks, but her Palestinian identity (daughter of a refugee) did not move her or make her feel any particular outrage.  Her reaction was along the lines of: “We can’t do anything about it here, and nothing will change, so why should we get all upset about it?”  She was blase about it to the point that I, the American, was offended.  I mention our nationalities here to make a point: that these identity labels are obviously not the primary factor determining our reactions … so much more than that is going into what shapes people’s response to these events.

We were interrupted from our discussions when N noticed something on the TV screen, whose sound was supplanted by Arab pop music:  “Demonstrators in Damascus try to breach the Egyptian embassy but are stopped by Syrian security forces.”  We had left the demonstration not 45 minutes earlier and we’d missed the action!  Not only that, but it had already made it onto the news.

N said that her friend who’d greeted us on his way home had warned her of this earlier, that there would be a confrontation with the police - and not a spontaneous one.  He predicted that someone important might encourage someone not-so-important to pick a fight or try to break through the police line, starting a scuffle, making a story.  Judging from the news report (I can’t find a confirming link, but I saw it with my own eyes on the screen) that seems to be more or less what happened.

We left the restaurant and walked back towards the place of the protest.  Again, you may be imagining some kind of chaos or panic on the streets, but no.  The waiters at the restaurant were as calm and polite as ever as they bid us farewell.  The main street in Sha’lan - not a three minute walk from the site of the protest - is the place where all the cool kids go, and tonight was no exception.  They were all out there, hanging about as usual, checking out the exceedingly expensive clothes shops and playing with their fancy mobile phones.  Absolutely nothing about the scene would indicate that there had just been a political protest a few blocks away.  Classic Damascus right there, just classic.

We were back at the site of the protest by around 8:45: the street was clear and cars and servees microbusses were zipping up and down.  The only trace of the demonstration were three big busses parked on the other side of the street, preparing to carry off the riot police to wherever they go back to.  That was that; it was over.  A protest that was at once an expression of the real and widespread fury over the slaughter in Gaza, yet also, to some degree, a controlled and managed affair.  N and O walked me down to Jisr al-Ra’is, where I caught a bus to meet some other friends in the old city.

If you’ve made it this far, all I ask of you is that you never again believe articles like this one in the NYTimes about a protest in Damascus earlier this year.  This article is a disgrace to the newspaper it appears in.  Lacking a reporter who was witness to the event, the article relies on nothing but assumptions and buying into tired old narratives about Syria, never imagining that this is a living, breathing place where people have families, emotions, pride, personal inconsistencies and everything else that people generally have.

If you can manage to imagine that here, then try to imagine it in Gaza.  Imagine those real people amid the lack of choices, the lack of food, the lack of medicine, the lack of knowledge of where the next bomb will fall - in other words, imagine the terror.  No, Gazans do not have a monopoly on these feelings in the world, but it is they who most need our imaginitive empathy with them now.  As we greet the new year, let us keep Gazans in our hearts and do whatever we can to stop this pointless slaughter.