What Revolution???

            If I didn’t have access to the news and someone asked me if there was anti government sentiment in Syria I would laugh at them.  Since Friday Aleppo has seen only mass support for Bashar Assad, the president of Syria. The roads are clogged with people driving their cars, plastered with pictures of the president, around playing loud patriotic music, honking their horns and shouting chants in support of Bashar. It’s actually rather annoying since they tend to continue well past my bed time. Luckily, I do have access to the news, so I have seen, heard and read about what is happening in many parts of Syria. People are demanding justice and large government reforms, and as of yesterday it seems they may be getting what they want.

            The whole situation is very confusing to me. I see and read about mass protests in other parts of Syria, and then see hundreds maybe thousands of people in Aleppo loudly showing their support for the president. Also while watching a report on Aljazeera the other day I noticed they made a point of saying that even in Daraa while people were protesting for reforms they WERE NOT calling for Bashar to step down. It seems he really is quite popular, and from what I have read it seems like he does actually want to make reforms, but there is some question as to how much control he really has.

Another interesting thing is that while I have seen mass showings of support for the president. The media, even beloved Aljazeera, as been slow to publish anything about support for the president, and even when they do it is at the bottom of an article about people being killed in a protest against the government. On Friday night while watching Aljazeera on TV there was a protest against Aljazeera in Damascus for not showing the whole story, and hundreds of people threatened to storm the offices of Aljazeera if they didn’t start to report on both sides of the story. I can’t pretend that I have and real idea of on what’s going on here, but it does look an awful lot like the media wanted Syria to be like Egypt so they made it look like that as much as possible and ignored everything else. Which is not very responsible journalism if you ask me.

The last thing that has confused me are the stories coming out of Latakia. This is a port town that is rather heterogeneous compared to most other small towns in Syria. There were large protests there for reforms in government, but the state run news claimed there were also unknown people shooting randomly at protesters and security forces alike, and this is why the security forces had to open fire. It is also why the army was called up to intervene in Latakia. The director of my school told me his sister lives in Latakia and she said a lot of this was true. He told me bashar’s uncle who was sent to Paris while ago has been trying to cause problems, and sectarian strife in the hopes claiming power in Syria later on.

            I cannot verify the truth of anything I have written here except for the support I have seen with my own eyes in Aleppo, and even then I have no way of knowing what the true motivation behind that show of support is. If I have learned anything from the last few days its that all major news agencies are also businesses and as unbiased as they claim to be everything must be taken with a grain of salt, because you never really know whose truth they are reporting, and why.

            For all the worriers I am completely safe and sound, I actually spent all of Saturday in Turkey, which was fun and weird. The idea of driving over a border and suddenly not understanding anything I read or hear is very bizarre. We went to Ghazziantep, which is a very nice little city, and I had a lovely day with my Arabic teacher eating the best Baklawa (baklava) I’ve ever had, and wandering around the city. I think we are going to Antakia (another city in Turkey) next Friday, so we shall see how it compares. Also last Friday I went on a field trip to Kassab a small town in the mountains, and had an awesome day playing in the woods, speaking Arabic and making new friends. So besides political strife things are definitely looking up for me in Syria.

People Can Surprise You... For Better and For Worse

            So I want to make a clarification. I don’ t think the average person in Syria would have a problem with the fact that I am Jewish. I don’t even think they would have a problem with all my time in Israel/Palestine once I explained my uber lefty leanings. The reason I can’t tell any one here who I am or where I have spent most of my time the last few years is because of the security forces in the government. From what I have read it seems they are not as bad as they used to be, but there is still a sense here that there is always someone listening, and while I would like to trust every new person I meet, there is really no way for me to know who they really are. I know I’m making this sound like a spy movie, and its really not. I just wanted to make it clear that the average Syrian does not hate Jews and it’s only for fear of being over heard by the wrong person that I stay quiet.

            Along those same lines I wanted to share two stories to give a small picture in to the minds of an average Syrian. Keep in mind though that my sampling is very small so maybe average is not the right word. The first story made me a bit sad but I think was positive in the end.

            I was teaching my second level English class, which consists of two teenage boys who are cousins, and two University students one woman and one man. I was teaching the words most and least, after teaching any vocabulary I try to get the students to use the vocabulary as much as possible in sentences, or by answering questions, so when I asked them which was the least popular football (soccer) team and the first answer was “the Jewish one” I was not prepared. This was not the first time I had heard someone fail to make the distinction between Jewish and Israeli, but it never gets easier. I decided, especially since the student who said this is about 16, that I needed to educate, at least, my four students on the difference between Israelis and Jews, and why it is important to make the distinction. In the end the instigator apologized, and I felt a little better.

            Story number two is a little more positive. I mentioned my wonderful Arabic teacher here before. Some times I think if it wasn’t for her I would have just given up and gone home early. She is truly above and beyond any teacher I have had. She has taken me all over Aleppo, brought me to her house, and to the school she works at. She has become a close friend as well as my Arabic teacher. She is Muslim, wears Hijab (head scarf) and doesn’t drink eat pork etc…, but she is very open about other peoples life styles, and she is now the fourth person who knows I am Jewish, although I haven’t mentioned my time in Israel/Palestine yet I probably will before I leave. She has a master’s degree in Semitic languages, so she actually knows Hebrew, only biblical Hebrew but still impressive. I’ve had a feeling they she knew something for awhile, because since she knows Hebrew she probably notices that most of my grammatical and even some vocabulary mistakes in Arabic are because I am thinking in Hebrew. I still didn’t want to say anything though until one day after she took me to the school she works at.

            The school is a Muslim elementary school on the out skirts of Aleppo. It is called Al Quds School or Jerusalem School.  It was strange for me to walk in to a school in Syria with a giant picture of the Dome of the Rock on the front gates, but I didn’t think too much about it until a few hours later during the third class. I don’t even remember how it came up, but some how the topic of Jews and Israel was raised, and I heard my Arabic teacher say almost the same thing to her students as I had to my small English class just a few days before. For me it was uplifting to hear a Arab teacher explain to her Arab students that there was a difference between Jews and Israelis and that is was important to make the distinction. Also at one point one of the students asked her if I was Jewish because of my name, which is also an Arabic name, but as I am obviously not Arab they were curious. Her response was that she didn’t know, but that maybe I was and it shouldn’t matter any ways, people are people no matter what. I wish I could have video taped this and shown it to all those people in America who think all children learn in school in the Middle East is how to hate Americans. Those people should really meet my Arabic Teacher.

It is so sad to think there used to be sizeable Jewish populations in Damascus, Aleppo, and a few other cities, and now they are all gone except for about 40 left in Damascus.  There is no example of a Jew who is not an Israeli for Syrians to see in the streets. Most of my students have never left the Middle East or even Syria, so it is more than likely they have never met a Jew, or if they did they didn’t know, for example me.   I would love to tear off my mask and tell them that I am sad I wont be celebrating Purim or Pesach this year, but its really not a good idea, so I will have to do what I can in the confines of my public identity, and hope that there are enough other teachers like my Arabic teacher to stop this generation from growing up thinking Jew and Israeli are synonymous, and that a person’s religion or nationality matters more than their humanity.

Actually the way things are going right now I think we could use a few more teachers like that in America as well.