Shia' Shrines

This past weekend I visited two Shia shrines. The first,
Sayyeda Roqayya was in the old city, and the other, for Sayyeda Zainab was about a 30 minute drive away. Both are granddaughters of Mohammad. After the traditional international breakfast at my house Friday morning, my friend took me to Friday prayers at a mosque that holds the shrine of Roqayya. At the entrance of the mosque we separated. I was handed a sort of army green colored abaya to wear and exchanged my Tevas for a token at the shoe check-in. I continued barefoot through a small hallway into an inner courtyard where I met back up with him. There were families sitting, children playing, girls reading verses from the Quran, and even some others sleeping. About 20 minutes earlier this space had been filled with hundreds of worshipers bowing down to pray. Now that the main Friday prayers were finished, there was enough room to roam around.




We continued inside to another large central room, which is the main area of the mosque. It was incredibly ornate, with kaleidoscope-like ceilings of cut mirror. In the middle of the room was the shrine and a wall that split one side of the shrine from the other. We separated again- me to the womens side of the wall, and he to the mens. I found a spot on the ground in front of the tomb and sat down to take in my surroundings. The shrine was beautifully decorated with ornate metal designs and covered in colourful cloths that the worshippers had tossed on the top. There were also shiny, tinsely decorations and flags and flowers.




Women gathered around the shrine, clinging to its cage like exterior, some of them wailing, others chanting and singing. Around me women were talking quietly to one another, some reading the Quran, and others praying. The Iraqi lady in front of me turns around to ask me if I am from Lebanon. When I say no, that I am actually American, a few other ears perk up and I have a small audience. The Iraqi women and her friend continue talking to me, telling me that Islam is peace at least four or five times. Then the little old lady beside me tells me I have noor (light) in my face, and the others around her agree. We have the usual conversation about how great it is that I am learning about Islam, and about how much they love Americans but not our foreign policy. They encourage me to continue my Arabic study and to come see them again next week.

On our way out of the mosque, the Afghani man who is guarding the door hands my friend a piece of paper that addresses (in English) a current debate in the Shia sect. The Islamic scholars of this mosque have issued a statement about the small flat stone that the Shia place their forehead on when they do the raqa which is when they bend over to pray. The story behind the use of this stone for prayer is essentially just to remind the one praying that they were formed from the earth and to humble themselves. It is not compulsory, but lately some groups have been trying to say that the stone is holy and that it must be used for prayer. So the scholars in Damascus got together to discuss the issue, and thus printed their findings that the stone was optional and not sacred. I love this tradition in Shia Islam of constantly checking and re-checking their beliefs and practices with true Islam. It feels very progressive and refreshing.




The next day we went to Sayyeda Zainab, the road to which wound us around some of the poorest places I have ever seen. There were piles and layers of trash on the street, the air was heavy with dust, and the alleys were crowded with people. At one point I looked out of the cab window to see a herd of sheep grazing in a trash-filled sandlot. I couldn’t believe that all this was leading up to what is supposed to be one of the most beautiful mosques in Damascus.
I still remember the smell as I clutched my Iranian style chador in one hand and my Target purse in the other. It was one of my favourite smells – the mixture of frankincense, myrrh, cardamom and other various spices usually found in the Persian Gulf. I waded into the women's half of the mosque amongst the sea of black chadors and was completely awestruck as I crossed the threshold. The huge square building was covered from the inside with elaborately arranged pieces of cut mirror. It was similar to the style of the Sayyeda Roqayya mosque, but on a much grander scale. The light reflecting off of the glass and mirrors magnified little spectrums of brilliant colors all over the walls.

Again I sat down on the floor, in a space just big enough for me to sit with my knees tucked under me. The room was completely packed with Iranians, Iraqis, Pakistanis and other Shias who had come to pay their respects to this great female leader and granddaughter of Mohammad. A lady trying to pass through the mass of people fell over me and onto someone praying, but neither one of them seemed to notice- the one continuing to pray and the other brushing herself off and continuing to the doorway. Yet amidst all the chaos, there was peace. It reminded me of how I always try to tell myself that to be considered a patient person, my patience has to be tested. Likewise, to be peaceful people we have to deal peacefully with chaos. And that is exactly what was happening. And it was beautiful.

* spelling and grammatical errors due to a strange Italian keyboard where I couldn't find some of the right keys.

Suraat

Pictures from an engagement party in Syria

View from my window. Beautiful sunset over the Umayyad Mosque

Syrian coin and my little host sister

Mektab Al-Hijra wa Jawazat : The Office of Immigration and Passports

Before 14 days after your arrival in Syria have passed, you must report to the Office of Immigration and Passports. My friend and I decided to go there together in hopes to team up with our Arabic and figure out what exactly we need to do since this office is known to be a bureaucratic nightmare. As we approach the building there are "Six-Flags stlyle" lines out front in the 100 degree weather. Luckily we find out that we have to go up to the third floor. We ascend the narrow stairwell, dodging kids, women fully covered in black, some scantily clad tourists and several groups of men who are congregating on the landing for a smoke break.



The third floor is complete chaos, and to be honest my stomach started churning with guilt. The room is full of Iraqi refugees who have fled to Syria trying to get the right documents and permits to stay here. The counter that extends the length of the room is really only suited for regular business, not to withstand the current refugee crisis that Syria is experiencing. To make matters worse, there is no que for the window and so everyone is sort of rushing the counter the way that a crowd pushes towards the stage at a concert. But we don't have to wade through the crowd yet. We are told to go make copies of our passports, three passport size pictures, a special stamp and come back to fill out our paperwork.



Luckily the stamp man down the street has copies of the paperwork that we can buy. We return to the office and sit on the stairs to fill out our paperwork. It's interesting and quite sad that way the colonialist period still leaves its mark on the countries of the Middle East. The papers were in Arabic on the right side and French on the left. (In Jordan and Kuwait there was always an Arabic/English option) Knowing know French and very little official Arabic, I was happy to have my Italian friend along who knew enough French to get us by.



We wade through the crowd to turn in the originial papers. Then we are given more. We fill them out and wade through again. The man behind the counter does some scribbling and stapling. Then tells us we need to take the papers upstairs. Upstairs consists of four rooms, and we have to ask an officer to direct us to where exactly we're supposed to go. He points us to the office of some important man who signs our documents and sends us back downstairs. We give the papers back to the same guy behind the counter, and somehow we're still not finished! He then points us to a room in a corner where we hand someone our passports and he tells us to wait for 5 minutes. Once we have our passports back we return yet again through the crowds to the window where we hand over our passports. The man says come back tomorrow and they will be ready.



"Are you kidding!?," I think to myself. "There must be about 200 people in this room right now and somehow they are going to find my passport again tomorrow!? Yea right!" But sure enough I return the next morning and the very same officer from the day before is there and pulls out all the American passports out of a file in a drawer and hands mine back to me. My Italian friend couldn't come with me, but she told me to see if I could get her passport back too. So I figure I'll try my luck and ask the officer if I could get hers as well. He asks for her full name, opens the drawer again, pulls hers out and hands it over to me! No questions asked! I couldn't believe it! I wasn't sure if I should be happy or horrified. I love Syria and all of it's nonsensical ways!

Da'iuf bSham - Guests in Syria

Fridays are important days at Um Zaheer's house. As if the two children, their parents, Um Zaheer and the seven foreigners aren't enough, every Friday there are at least 10 others who are invited to join us for breakfast. The family spends a good part of Thursday and all of Friday morning in the kitchen preparing a huge meal, which is usually gobbled up in about 30 minutes. This is all part of the oh so typical Arab hospitality, which never fails to amaze me.

Needless to say, after all that company, last Friday my Italian friend and I needed to escape. We pulled out a map, and knowing that we wouldn't have enough time to go far, found a city that looked within day-trip distance. It's called Ma'lula. I previously knew nothing about the city and my friend just knew that it is an old Christian village. Whipping out her Syrian guidebook (which is in French), we managed to decipher that there were monasteries there and some people still speak Aramaic. We agreed to go for it. Our host father told us where he thought we would be able to find a micro (a small public van) and warned us that the sun is very strong there and we should wear something on our heads.

We walk for about 20 minutes to a bus station (really more like a parking lot) where we hope to find a micro to Ma'lula or Sedniya, a nearby town. There are only a few buses on the lot and none of them are ours. We decide to grab some juice and ice cream while we're waiting from the shabby stand nearby. We ask the boy behind the window where we should wait for the bus to Ma'lula. "TeHt asShajarah, (under the tree)" he says. We sort of smirk at the unorganized way of doing things here, but sure enough, right under the tree awaits about 3 families, 3 huge cartons of eggs and some other odds and ends that people are taking back with them from Damascus.

About 15 minutes later we are piled onto a bus, second row from the back. Behind us are a man, his wife and their four children- packed in a space meant for three average sized adults so they only have to pay for three. We ride quietly for a while, and then I open the floodgates by asking the fully covered lady behind us what city we are passing. She responds in a very incoherent rural accent, but then continues by asking us the usual questions: Where are you from? Is this your first time in AsSham? What are you doing here? Are you with your family? The list goes on. So now we've established a connection. We talk briefly about the weather and their kids and Ma'lula.

As we were chatting I couldn't resist whipping out my new camera and snapping a picture of the scenic mountains and the trees that point straight up into the sky as if they are trying to puncture the clouds for the rain.

"Bsouurna! (take a picture of us)," she says. I very willingly accepted. I love these opportunities to try to capture the real people here without invading their privacy. They all crowd around to see the picture in the viewer, thinking it's so amazing that you can see the picture right away.

About 20 minutes into the ride, everyone starts passing up the money to pay for their seats. The family behind us tells the people in front of us not to let us pay. They pass up money for us and themselves. "Antu da'iufna (you are our guests)," they say very matter-of-factly. I can't believe what's happening. I mean, I have experienced so much Arab hospitality during my times in Kuwait and Jordan, but here I am with my huge fancy digital SLR camera casually snapping away and this family we just met is offering up what is likely a good portion of their monthly income to treat us like guests. Wow. My mouth is just sort of hanging open in disbeleif. No amount of refusal on our part will get them to take our money. And we can't talk any sense into anyone else on the bus. They're all in on it. We are guests and should be treated as such.

If that isn't enough, once we arrive in Ma'lula, everyone on the bus insists that the driver drive up the steep hill to drop us off at the monestary and then return back down to where the normal stop is.

The next hour or so we spend wondering around the church and monestary, drinking cool spring water served by a nun from a tin cup on a chain that she lovingly dips into the well and serves to everyone passing by. The monestary is full of Christian tourists from Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Jordan. Some are Catholic, others Greek Orthodox but they all have this very strong bond, as most minorities do. I overhear one conversation as two families introduce themselves: "We are Palestinian Christians from Lebanon," and "We are Palestinian Christians from Syria." The two fathers embrace each other and an immediate connection is formed between the wives, the children, the grandmothers.

We spend the rest of the day trekking through a ravine that leads to another monestary and wandering around the steep winding streets of the ancient city. I'm trying to keep my ears open for people speaking Aramaic, but to no avail. We pay the equivalent of 20 cents to use the bathroom, and I realize that between the potty and the ice cream I've only spent like 50 cents all day!

As we're heading back down the hill towards the bus, an old man with a sunburned nose wearing a kufiyah hobbles over to us and starts to play the question game.
"men wein antu? Furansi? (Where are you from? Are you French?)"
No, Italy and America.
"Antu maseHia? (Are you Christian?)"
Yes.
"Alhamdulilah!! (Praise God)"

Then he walks off. We chuckle to ourselves at such a random encounter, hop on the bus, and 50 cents and 40 minutes later we're back in Damasucs.

4th of July- International Style

When living as an expat, holidays become 10 times more important than at home. I decided that we should still have a Fourth of July BBQ in Syrian style with all of our international friends! My host father took me and a friend around the morning of the fourth to the Souq for veggies and meat. At the open air vegetable stand we got 8 green bell peppers, 12 potatos, nearly 20 onions, 8 potatos and 10 cucumbers for the equivalent of about $7 US.


A few shops down was the chicken. It's a small "hole-in-the-wall" type place that basically has a display case of the meat you can buy, and a fridge under it where they keep the meat. There are 3 options for chicken: legs, breasts with bones or breasts without bones. Being the spineless Americans that we are, we went for the breasts without bones. A chicken "breast" here is actually both halves of the breast, so it's much bigger than back home. I think we ended up getting at least 10 of those.


Next was the coal and the kharouf (sheep) meat. It's funny because there are a billion little shops here that sell exactly the same thing. Choosing between one or the other doesn't have anything to do with quality or service though, you just go to the shop of whoever you know. For example, my host dad was taking us to his friend's store that had coal, but they were closed so we went to the place next door. Then for the kharouf we went to a shop that he's gone to since he was a little kid. Again there was the display case with the hanging sheep carcus and the fridge of meat below. He cut all the meat off of the bones and pushed it through grinder that sort of gave it the shape of raw hamburger meat like we have in the states.


We slaved away all day in my friend's tiny little kitchen, save for the 5 separate trips we made to get eggs, mayo (twice), skewers for kabobs, and more olive oil. Our shopkeeper friends on the street were really nice, telling us where to go and giving us the Arabic name when needed. It was funny when I was trying to find skewers since I didn't know the name I had to describe it in Arabic like "ya know the thing that you put the meat on when you want to BBQ it?" One of the carpet shopkeepers, Ibraham, took us all the way to the Souq Al-Hamidiya to find the Siyakh Lehme (skewers).


Our party was planned for 7, but around 6:15 we realized we didn't know how to light the coals. There is no lighter fluid to be found. My host dad came to the rescue again, rigging up this contraption on the grill. The grill is basically this small little stand, and then he got a metal cylinder from somewhere and kept putting coal down it and somehow created fire. I can't possibly describe it withouht a picture, it was just too inventive!



We roasted the kabobs with onions and peppers, occupanied with my potato salad, Afghani salad and good ol' sweet tea! My American friends teased me about the obvious southern influence on the meal. There were also four Brits who celebrated the "loss of a colony" and teasingly complained of the mochary we have made of the fine British tradition of tea drinking. We were also joined by a couple Syrians and a Spaniard. There were no American flags to be found, so we settled for a Hezbollah flag and sang parts of "My Country Tis of Thee," which the Brits swore was to the tune of their national anthem.

There were no fireworks, or pledges or American flags, but the jovial spirit, good food and new friends weakened the longing for home and familiarity on Independence Day.