Capoeira and Crazy Globalization

I've been going to Capoeira class for two weeks now, and it is amazing. I can actually touch my toes now! Class is held 4 days a week, 2 at Theatro, a theatre near suq hamadiya, and 2 in a room behind Nadi Barada (Damascus' most expensive health club).

Capoeira is a Brazilian fighting style/dance that works up a freaking sweat (though almost anything does in this heat). After the first day I was so sore I had trouble moving. It was a vision of being old and getting out of any chair required a groaned "ya rab".

The class is mostly Syrian dudes and foreign girls and NYU alums. There's a few Syrian girls and a few foreign guys, but mostly its the other way around. As for NYU, I don't know how this happened but there seems to be an NYU-Damascus shuttle: there's me, a girl names Kate, a guy named Ben, and another girl just at Capoeira, in addition to the NYU Ph.D I hear is floating around the city and another dude I graduated with.

The instructor is an Algerian guy named Mousa whose Arabic is a little weak having lived most of his life in Germany and being Berber, not Arab. I first went to class with two guy friends who were surprised that an Algerian would be bad at Arabic. "Then again, they all speak French over there," they said. I told them that he doesn't speak Arabic cause he's Berber. He speaks Berber. He told me he learned most his Arabic since moving to Syria.

My friends were shocked to learned that Berbers exist, because they said that sounds like something really ancient. And were shocked to learn that there is a Berber language (actually, several of them).
"Don't you remember that Moroccan kid in my class last fall? He lived in Belgium since he was a kid and learned Berber from his parents."

Americans are always given flack for being complete dumbasses about the outside world, and I sometimes take this flack (how many people told me how they had heard only a third of Americans can identify Iran, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Iraq on a map). The first time I went to Syria, in 2006, I remember a man on a bus asking me if I knew who the president of Syria is. When I answered correctly, he looked genuinely impressed. "Bravo!" And how many times do I get asked about "How can Americans not know what's going on in Palestine!"

But seriously, how can you not know that Berbers exist? I don't think everyone can know everything about everwhere, but this is within the Arab world and a major part of North African countries' (وهي بلدان شقيقة) history and culture and politics. I mean, damn. Perhaps this is a consequence of Syria's focus on Arab Unity, so not much is said about non-Arabs in Arab countries. But still.

But though Mousa's Arabic isn't stellar (but totally workable), he does speak Berber, German, French, English, and Portugese as well so he's no slouch in the language department (I envy him). During class he often gives instruction in Arabic, English, and sometimes French (there's a woman and her mother who come who speak French).

We end most classes with a circle, banging on instruments and trying to sing in Portugese while people spar in the middle. Since no one actually knows Portugese except Mousa, we mostly just try to keep up phonetically, and are probabling singing no words recognizable to any Brazilian. But we have fun. The last two classes I've been dragged into sparring, two weeks being apparently enough time in the womb. There's a group that's been doing this for 9 months or so, and they run circles around me while I jinga back and forth, dropping to the floor with incorrect technique as my bum knee doesn't allow me to make all the movements.

It might be a sign of the times for a bunch of Syrians, Americans, and Europeans to be learning a Brazilian dance from a Berber German Algerian. A fun sign.