Shami Wedding

I've finally been to a Shami wedding, and it did not disappoint. From what I had heard, there would be the women, dressed in abayas, who would throw them off to reveal miles of skin covered in patches by sparkly dress. This did indeed happen. I even threw on an abaya over my shoulders, at the bidding of Um Tareq, to hide my by-comparison rather conservative dress. There was a bit of cleavage, it was the first time I've worn this dress without an undershirt, but within a few seconds of entering the wedding hall I was greated by such copious amounts of cleavage all reservations were put at ease.



I sat with the extended family of the groom, who was off partying with the dudes elsewhere. Most of the woman were stripped down, especially the younger ones, but a few of the grandmothers sat stone-faced without removing manteaus or hijabs. A group started dancing in the center, and I joined, but with frequent breaks. I don't understand how these ladies can dance for this long without breaking a sweat. I needed to take breaks and fan myself to avoid looking like I just slipped into this dress after a track meet. Foods and non-alcoholic cocktails came around in rounds.



I got Um Tareq to dance, which had been my goal. I even got her niece to dance, who was introduced to me as able to put my dancing to shame. But she said, no, I'm not going to dance, there's this cleric who said it's haram. How can dancing with a bunch of ladies be haram? But the videographer might accidently catch me on the camera and that would be haram. But she loosened up and did, as predicted, put me to shame.



The bride came out, and walked slowly up the front of the room, and her friends ran up to the throne at the front of the hall where she was seated, screaming and cooing. The girl did look good. Then those of us who don't actually know her went up at randomly to wish her congratuations. The bride came off the throne and did two dances for the camera by herself, mostly just seductive swaying as the dress was huge. Then her girlfriends (and me) ran onto the floor to dance.



The groom came later. The guy's party pulled up outside, and we watched what was happening with the videographer's live feed to a screen inside. Dudes in traditional outfits played music and played with swords around the groom. I was a bit jealous, I mean, the ice cream was good but not as good as swords. There was a rush to redress before the groom and his father could come in. They walked slowly up the aisle, while the girlfriends shouted out "Our bride is the prettiest! ye ah!" and of course, the trilling. My attempts were laughed at, so I repeated them to great amusement.

The party died after the groom and bride has danced their dance. They looked happy and nervous, both pretty young. She's 20, he's was about 25, and a car mechanic. Everyone started leaving, except for some girlfriends and the family.

I was invited to another wedding in July.

Old and Unfashionable

Thanks to Youtube, I can share my love of Arab pop stars with anyone foolish enough to humor me. "Wait! Just one more! This Nancy Ajram video is awesome! The guy's deaf! Where are you going?"

I roped my 12 year old L.A. born and raised cousin into sitting through one of these sessions. In return, she got to show me the music her generation likes these days. It's not Hannah Montana, to my surprise, but some other Disney with a name that escapes me but reminded me of a latte. (Levi Mochiato?) And vampires.

I was showing her the latest Dana video (ana alasl) when my aunt joined. She mentioned that Dana would be considered somewhat chunky in American media.

Are you fucking kidding me?

At least Syria and America are decided on one thing: tight jeans. Pants that are tight to the ankle are not a Syrian thing, as I supposed, but were everywhere in America. Especially LA. Leggings, often in lieu of pants, are popular in both places as well. Actually, the styles in Syria and America were pretty much the same. My cousin laughed at my flare jeans, as much as my boyfriend does in Syria. The windbreaker I wore to go out on the town was considered as uncool in the States as it in Syria (I don't care! It's freaking cold!) .

Is this what globalization portends? A world in which I can go nowhere without being confronted with stupid skinny jeans? Where the fashion is the same across 11 time zones and supposedly huge cultural gaps? Last summer an American friend went to visit the States and came back with this report: fat and naked. Perhaps it was too early for the expanses of American flesh to emerge, but I still think it's going to be the same basic fashion in NY and Damascus come summer as well.

Whatever. I am now of an age where I can refuse to care about fashion. I liked the pants we were wearing in the late 90s/early 00s and that's what I'm sticking with, and that's what I'm going to stick with for the next 20 years.

This is exactly why I'm going to grad school: sweats for the next 5-6 years. I am officially old and it is damn comfortable!

Damn!

I'm back in the States. It is somewhat strange. More on that later.

In writing an article on women and sports in Syria, I used the football team I played with/limped alongside of last spring. I also met the younger girls' team and interviewed a bunch of players, the administrator, and the coach. They are awesome, but unfortunately the article I was doing was short and focused mostly in another direction so I couldn't go into them.

I thought hmmm, I should propose this later. The girls' team started 3 years ago when the administrator and the coach went around to recruit girls. They had a lot of girls who wanted to play but parents wouldn't let them. The coach and admin went to homes to try to convince the parents that playing wouldn't damage their girls' bodies or things of that nature. While a lot of sports, volleyball are basketball included, are normal and widespread for girls, football is still mostly considered a boys' sport and too rough for the ladies.

Every summer teams from 8 governorates meet in Aleppo to have their tournament and the Damascus ladies have won it all three years of its existance.

I thought it would be awesome to go to this tournament and chat with the girls and coaches from other places in Syria and see if they had similar experiences, writing a piece about the tenative expansion of girls' sports to football. I imagined this would be a happy, positive piece with a lot of plucky sporty girls who worship Michael Ballack. I thought it would be interesting to pitch to a foriegn publication as it 1) shows a different face of Syria than what most Amerricans see and 2) would both dispel some myths that exist about Syrian (read: Muslim/Arab cause it's all the same really, right?) with the fact that many Syrian girls do sports, but also have that "happy social change/confronting gender stereotypes" angle with the fact that football specifically is a rather new sport for girls (versus your karate or swimming).

So yeah, fuck you New York Times: In Turkey, Women Playing Soccer Vie for Acceptance.

Okay, so it's about the professionals. But funny how there's establish women's pro basketball and volleyball leagues but football? New and not for the ladies but look these ladies are doing it and kicking ass and changing minds! Oh Turkey, you steal my time with your soaps that I can't watch now from the States, and my ideas for rah rah lady sports pieces. Poo.

Polygyny

While there are some who think that most Muslims are marrying tons of Muslimas or that polygyny is the norm in the Middle East, I might be the opposite - I was expecting practically none and was actually shocked by the little I saw in Syria.

From when I began studying "the Middle East," or took some courses on Islam, it was repeated almost ad nasuem while though polygyny is allowed, and on the books in most Muslim countries (notible exceptions: Tunisia and Turkey), it is and has been throughout history not the norm. It's hard enough to afford one family, let alone two or four. When I studied in Egypt for six months, I can't say I exactly immersed myself in Egyptian society (I went to AUC) but I never met or heard a hint of these kinds of marriages. Oh sure, it happens, but rarely. Ok, it happens more than rarely in the Gulf, cause they have all that money.

Oh sure there are the jokes: I remember in Dubai once meeting an Emirati, family friend of a friend, who was gorgeous. My girlfriend and I stared. I failed to notice the wedding ring, but my friend (his friend) told me to cheer up: there's room for more. He's already got his respectable Emirati wife, you could be the scandelous foreign one. But this was all on the same level of serious as a teenagers catcalling a group of girls, "why don't you all mary me! C'mon, the religion says it's okay!"

In Syria, I have been amazed how many families with more than one wife I have met. Granted, if your stereotype of Arabs is oppressive men hauling around truckloads of wives, the few families I've met would contradict that. And it's important to note that they are a few among the many, many families I've met.

The first woman contradicted all of my stereotypes: she's a businesswoman, living alone with her children, making money, doing well. Married three times before, she divorced them all because each was an asshat in his own right. Her current husband lives in Lebanon with his other wife, and visits every other weekend or so. Sometimes she visits him. After some shitty, abusing, controlling husbands, this one suits her just fine.

The situation, though, does not suit the other woman fine. I've only heard about her, so this is all hearsay, but she's a foriegner who fell in love, got married, gave birth to seven children, and then was informed by her husband one day that there's another woman. Her son, my friend, told me the first wife stopped all relations and is still pissed. Husband can't believe it. He gave her seven children, a house, a good life. I mean, he remarried four years ago, get over it. I said that probably to her, her husband has been cheating on her twice a month for four years. She doesn't get over it, its a reopened wound every time he goes to Damascus. When they got married, I bet it never crossed her mind that a few decades later he'd be all, thanks for the babies and years, I'm gonna go get my swerve on in a religously-sanctioned fashion.

Most of the women I know who are in polygynous marriages are the first wives, which is obviously different than being the second wife. Their husbands, for the most part, seem like asshats, using weak-ass excuses to marry exclusively younger women. A friend was trying to tell me that some women don't mind - which I'm sure there are some who don't - but used the example of one of Um Tareq's friends. When her husband wanted to remarry, she went out and vetted the girls. I said this doesn't mean necessarily that she loves the idea, but thinks there's no getting around it and being involved in the process is a way to have some control over it. Months later, she comes to Um Tareq, crying that her husband ignores her and spends all his time with the other wife, who is now pregnant (and 20 years old - first wife and hubby are in their late 40s).

Another woman I know divorced her husband because he wanted to marry another woman. It adversely affected her living situation. This is a huge problem - if the woman doens't have any idependent wealth and her husband gets all asshaty and wants to marry again, what are her choices? Divorce, and live on what?



Another friend of the Umahat (moms), who mostly live in Jeramana and love me for some reason, is essentially separated from her husband. He wanted to marry some one "in order to have a boy". Nevermind the couple already has a boy - he's actually grown and getting engaged soon. When the subject has come up before, I've been told her inability to have a boy is a legitimate reason to remarry (even though in the same conversation it's been admitted that, yeah, the sex comes from the father). And in this, there's already a boy.

It's complete bullshit, especially when the source says treatment between wives has to be equal. Of course, the responsibilies are completely set aside when dudes are grabbing the "rights" afforded to them. That condition of equality doesn't interfer with marrying a younger woman, moving in with her, and ignoring the "old" wife in many cases. Then there are the men who go behind their wives back and secretly marry. Wife may know or not. Yeah, like I'm sure that's completely halal and exactly what God meant.

When polyandry has come up in discussion, I've been told that its because a woman just couldn't handle this - women are sensitive creatures who couldn't love more than one. Ah, bullshit.

I know polygyny is a lot more nuanced than this - my first example is some one who is very happy with her shared husband. It's possible there are some very happy families where everyone is pleased with the situation and gets along fine. I haven't met them. Generally, from my experience, it makes for some very unhappy women and asshat men. Though I'm not a Muslim, I'm in favor of the train of thought that interprets Sura 4:3 as historically limited or saying: marry one, two, three, or hour, but if you can't be equal, marry only one. And who can be truly equal and fair, besides God? No one. So focus on making that one wife happy.

Neat Bread

I have watched Um Tareq every time there is bread from the government oven - at 15 lira a rabta the price can't be beat and it's also much tastier and filling than the more expensive siyahi bread - perform a ritual. She takes each flat piece of pocket bread out one by one from the government bag, makes a whole in an edge, uses her hand to seperate the sides, then folds the bread and put them by eights into bags for the freezer.

I have been told I should start helping around the house more. I occupy a weird place between daughter and renter. We can watch Turkish muselsels together and discuss the attractiveness of Asmar vs. Sameer, but I also stay out late and it's not eib. But I'm trying to help out in my gender-neutral way: going out sometimes to fetch items like a boy, and folding bread like a girl.

By first attempt did not go well. I imitated the actions, but the desired result was not acheived. I couldn't perceive a difference between my folded bread and hers, but each piece she unfolded and reopened and refolded.

I've gotten better, but the last time I finally thought to ask her why we were doing this. I assumed that seperating the sides meant the bread would freeze better and come out fresh once dethawed, not crumbly and crap.
"So it looks neat (muratab)," she said.
"Really? Neat?"
"Bread comes from the bakery and they've got these wrinkles. Like with clothes I've got to make them look nice."

I laughed really long, and Um Tareq laughed with me, asking why I thought we folded the bread. I said you know, the freezing process. She laughed and said no, so it looks nice.
"I open it and flatten it and get all of the wrinkles out." She then saw a wrinkle-less piece, told me it didn't need anything since it was already neat and pretty.

"But we're going to eat the bread," I said.
"yes, so it should look nice."
"Do they not do that in America?" No, in my experience, American don't care whether our pitas are wrinkled. Um Tareq laughed. Ajanab are weird.

Iraqi Wedding

With shame, I admit that last night was the first time I have been to a wedding in Syria. While since moving to Syria I have been to a wedding in Pakistan and an engagement party here, no wedding. Early last summer my friend Saleh teased me by inviting me to an upcoming wedding, promising a good time as it would be an Allawi wedding, meaning mixed and drinks (Shami weddings are traditionally gender segregated). But the day rolled around and he was in the village and forgot about me and went and I got to hear about it later.

Last night Um Tareq suddenly announced that she and Um Qassam were going to a wedding and I should come too. This despite a day of traveling that began at 5am- my pleas of exhaustian were ignored. As were the fact that I would have to go in sneakers and less-than-formal wear, everything being packed. And that I was dirty.

"It's fine! Yalla!"

So I went. I asked who's getting married. She told me, oh, I don't know, somebody's relative, which doesn't exactly narrow it done.

The salle was a place called قصر الأميرة, Castle of the Princess, which at least to me sounds less cheesy in Arabic. It was mixed, though mostly ladies. The bride and groom were seated on a raised dance platform, her dress fanned about her. They both looked young and nervous, and for not the first time I couldn't help but think of a wedding as a vulgar affair, announcing to the world the couple's (assumed) sexual initiation. The bride wore the popular style: elaborately detailed bodice, large sweeping skirt, intricate hair, layers of makeup. Um Tareq leaned over, telling me that the bride was fat, but the groom looked neat and na'im. I told her she was a little mean and she said, what, she is fat! Look at her arms, they're full.

The bride turned out to be a relative of Um Rad, a jovial friend of Um Tareq I've met before several times. She was very interested in my joining the party, and anytime a song coaxed the seated to the floor she would grab me by the arm and drag me out there. I got a quick lesson in dancing the "Iraqi way", which involves a lot of head movements. Luckily I'm an ace at the snake so I embressed. But the star of the show was an approximately 8 year old girl, who had tricked herself out for the party: full blue dress, teased up hair with sparkles that flew and glittered in the air every time she flung her hair around. Girl got down, and enjoyed being the center of the dancing ring. The bride joined the dancing occaisonally, but the dress limited substantial movement. There was some debke, but it was nothing like the non-stop debke frenzy I experienced at a Palestinian engagement party this summer.

During dancing breaks, I chatted with some ladies, some of whom I'd met before and most I hadn't. Luckily Um Rad was there to introduce me:
"She's American but she doesn't like Bush," a sentence repeated verbatim with every introduction.
Really? American? The introducee would reply. Then would come questions about America vs. Syria and such. Sadly, Um Rad had some cake-related matters to attend to, and I was briefly left alone dancing with some ladies and their fiances and an eight-year-old without introduction. One woman said she liked how I danced and I returned the compliment.
"Oh! Are you not Syrian?" she said at my accent.
No, no, American.

I left somewhat early, due to aforementioned fatigue, but I might have to honor three engagements to really learn some Iraqi dance.

Telteesh

I happened to catch a program "Red Line" (الخط الاحمر) on the Syrian channel yesterday, when the topic under discussion was catcalling and harrassment التلطيش والتحرش. There was a group of young people and three experts all discussing the problem and if it was a problem and its reasons. I missed the beginning, but did manage to catch a young person asking if girls hold any of the responsibility for catcalling, with their dress and cause, you know, a lot of them like it anyway. Or if it's all the dude's fault. The psych expert rattled off a list of reasons why dudes might be hassling, including economic pressures, family pressures, and sexual repression. But despite all this, he is still a human not an animal and responsible for his actions. The girl is not.

I'm glad the expert said the girl is not responsible, but he still didn't refute that girls like telteesh. I am so sick of this. Everytime this topic comes up with my (male) friends, I'm told that Syrian girls like telteesh, it makes them feel good. Why else would they dress up like that, wear makeup like that? When I tell them, actually some girls don't, like me, I'm told I'm just a weird American. Syrian girls are different. That's strange, as actually I've chilled with Syrians who've told me telteesh annoys the hell out of them too.

The end of the show had some interviews with men, shot outside of the literature college in Mezzeh. "If you a pretty girl, do you catcall her?"
"Well if she's really pretty.."
"Of course"
One said that it's obvious she wants people to comment on her looks by the way she walks, or what she wears, or puts makeup on.

Because of course, if a woman takes the time to look nice she's doing it for the men on the street. She's not wearing makeup because in the workforce looking nice is required for women. She didn't put herself together for a husband or a boyfriend. She's not trying to look nice to show up other women because of the insane competition women are supposed to have with one another over looks. She's not dressing up cause, hell, she wants to. She's doing it for you, man standing near the SANA building.

The last guy interviewed said he never catcalls as it's disrepectful. That's some one's sister or niece, and he wouldn't want people saying that to his sister. While it's nice that he actually thinks of respect, it's strange that it's not disrepecting her he's worried about, but the nearest attached male. But even he agreed that girls dress up looking for comments.

While I don't doubt there exist some girls who live for the thrill of a random man sucking his teeth in appreciation, it doesn't apply to all of us. So shut the fuck up.

Turkish Baths

I have avoided the Turkish baths. I just don't really feel the need to get all naked and chill with people. I can be naked at home (now that I live alone) for free.

But a recent visitor wanted to experience it, so off we went to al-Bakri in the old city. It was 200 to use the baths and 50 for a massage. Another 50 buys a lady to scrub you, but I thought I could manage scrubbing on my own.

I wasn't sure how naked to get. At the Medinat ash-Shabab swimming pool, the locker room attendent asks naked ladies to kindly not be so naked and step into the small changing rooms during periods of nudity. This during ladies' hours. I wondered if I should use this as a guide or not. I asked the bath attendant and she said as you like. In the bath itself, most ladies were wearing panties but a few were without so I figured either way worked.

We steamed for a while, and chatted with some other women who wondered why I spoke Arabic, why my friend didn't, why she was in such good shape. Two of the women there told me of their plan to lose their bellies by steaming every day and I told them they might want to throw in some exercise as well. That's how she's in shape, I said.
"You're fatter than her," the older woman said.
"Yeah, I don't exercise as much." But thanks for the news.

Then we washed and had a massage in a seperate little room. I'm glad I didn't opt for the scrub, which entailed lying on the floor and just seemed to require a lower bar for intimacy than mine.

I went out to escape the heat and ran into a group of American college girls trying to understand the pricing system. I translated, dressed, and felt like not moving again for the rest of the day. I was super clean but from the steam and the massage all I felt like doing was taking a nap.

There's a hamman in Jeramana that I think I might be using in the future when I don't have water for 6 days or so. It seems more respectable than begging friends to let me use their showers.

Update and Consequences

Manar ran away the first week of September. For almost a month after she returned home I didn't hear from her. Her phone was off, her family refused to talk to me. Then, last week I ran into her near Rowda in Jeramana. We was alone. We both screamed and hugged excitedly. We talked briefly. She laughed when I told her about her family's insistence she was in Sweida.

"How are you alone?"
She said it had taken some time - the first two weeks she had only left the house if accompanied. But her father had at some point sat down and had a talk with her. He finally told her how he had passed out at the police station, how he had a heart attack. She promised not to run away again.

She also has a new job. She's working security at a foreign embassy in Mezzeh (turns out "security" means carrying a walkie-talkie and checking bags, which is good because the woman must be less than 5'2"). She's making 10,000 lira a month and has a two-day weekend, which is a massive improvement over her old job, where she only had friday off and made 4,000. The new job wanted some one who spoke English as well, but luckily in the interview the only question on this was "Do you speak English?" (in Arabic, naturally)
"Sure"
I met her Thursday after work and we sat at a cafe in Jeramana. We only had two hours because her new curfew is very early. She usually goes home straight from work but is now allowed to stay out until 8pm two or three nights a week.
Her parents are not pressuring her to marry anymore. At first, she said, they tried to get her to reconsider the same one from before. They arranged for him to come over. She told them that she would not get married and if they brought him over she would run away again. The matter was dropped and her mother later came to her and said they would stop pressuring her.

So Manar's life isn't ruined. There's even some good: her parents have stopped pressuring her to marry. She has a better job, with more money. She's thinking about using the money to take some English courses. More time at home means more time to study English with Friends DVDs. Her family hates me, so we have to meet outside of her home secret, but at least I don't have to worry I will never see her again. Her other friends have been able to visit her at her home, even back when she was under house arrest.



But she did tell me that her extended family has turned against her parents. Her father's family, all her uncles and aunts except for one, have informed the family that they will no longer be visiting or speaking with them because of the shame of Manar's having run away. She's back at home, but it doesn't matter. It's too shameful that she did run away for them to have relations with their brother.


It's easy to think of Manar's family as villains. She wanted things that in her words, are completely natural and normal, right? She wants to be able to go out to parties and cultural events, to have some freedom, to study, to travel, to date. To live on her own. To buy a book without being questioned about it and being told she's wasting money. To not feel pressured to hurry the fuck up and get married already at 22. These seem like completely normal things to me, since they were all natural parts of growing up where I'm from.

When Manar's brother was trying to talk her into coming out of the cupboard, he told her to imagine how life would be for him if she didn't come back home. People would laugh when he walked down the street and talk about him behind his back "his sister ran away!" When Manar's mother cradled her, she cried "binti! sharafi!" my daughter, my honor.

The consequences are great, not just for Manar, but for her whole family. Her family has lost their support system. There is no social security in Syria - your family supports you. Family is very important. And now her family has lost that network because of what Manar did - it's understandable why they acted like they did. It's also true that things could have been a lot worse - her uncle wasn't kidding when he told me if they were a different family, Manar would have been killed. They couldn't even consider the suggestion that Manar live with me.

What kind of burden is that to bear? I have been able to live my life knowing that the decisions and mistakes I make will reflect upon me, not have disastrous effects for my family. Though her extended family may come around, especially if Manar gets married someday, I have no doubt her family is blaming her for the estrangement. Her brothers naturally don't have to worry about this, they can move out of the house (one is considering it), stay out all night, travel, fuck and drink without ruining familial ties.

There's a lot of things I would have done differently if I could repeat the episode. It's useless to list these now, and I still would have chosen to help Manar. Despite how many times I got the speech "there is Arab society and Western society" from her family, and told I couldn't understand the implications of her actions as a foreigner, I still would choose to help her. She is a friend, she was in potential danger and she asked for my help. That's universal. However I know that part of the reason I was able to help was because of my situation: being a foreigner. I wasn't scared to accompany Manar with her family because while Syrian law protects a family killing their daughter, it punishes for killing the naive American with her. I'm no hero: when at her uncle's house, I mostly nodded and agreed with what her family said. When they threatened my boyfriend I apologized for helping.


I still don't know what exactly to make of the whole situation. But at the very least, Manar is well and safe and somewhat happy.

Born in the U.S.A.

How to broach a topic like this, littered with landmines? Especially when a woman from the supposedly-enlightened bastion of freedom and equality that is the United States deigns to bestow her help and knowledge upon the poor oppressed masses of the other, chained by their religion and backwards culture and, perhaps, hummus. The portrayal of all Arab women or all Muslim women, or all non-Western women as pitiable creatures draws some of my more exasperated sighs. The falsehoods that are perpetuated, the generalization of the restriction of one country to all, the thought that the hijab might as well be a stamp marked "Please Liberate Me!". The undertone (though not always so under) accompanying much of this hand wringing that "we" are so much better. That we have achieved gender equality. That much of this is insincere is unsurprising: there's a long history of using "Save the brown woman from the brown man" to justify occupying and controlling both. Lord Cromer, the British colonial head in Egypt (1883-1907), decried the treatment of Egytian women and thundered against the veil, then went home and co-founded an anti-women's suffrage group. The sudden sympathy of American government officials for the poor Afghani woman coincidentally arising with the desire to invade brings to mind certain parallels.

And at the same time, I'm glad I was born a woman in America.

Most of the time I can't even comprehend how much privilege I have, and not just from my nationality. I am a white woman born into a middle-class educated family in America. Despite the relative strictness of my upbringing, at 18 there was never a question of my shipping off to college a thousand miles away, in New York City, no less. No sense that the honor of the entire family rested between my legs. And it doesn't in every family - but it does in some.

Just the fact that I'm here in Syria, a woman living by herself, is something. Most weekends I hang out with my guy friends more than girls because a lot of the girls have to be home at 8 or 9, or if lucky, 10.

A lot of my freedom comes from money. I could afford to travel here, can afford to get a place on my own and have no responsibilities other than myself. And sure enough, among the more well-off, daughters go off to college in Beirut or England and stay out late. And there is a contingent of girls who come from other areas of Syria to go to college in Damascus, and live alone or in groups, especially from the Jolan (whose seperation from their families is quite understandable). But I'd say from my Western woman perch that more typical is going back to Jeramana from Capoeira class with a 28-year-old woman, her cell phone ringing every 5 minutes with parents telling her to hurry up and get home, as if she can will the traffic away or the servees faster. It is 8:30 pm.

Even as pharmacists refuse to give out contraceptives, even as rape victims are blamed, even as the worth of a woman is measured in fuckability, even as lifting your t-shirt for a free hat are being trumpeted as "expressing yourself", I thank fucking God that I am woman from America.

Men Don't Wanna Take Care of No Babies

As I envoke the "liberation of men" to do childcare or other activities not considered traditionally masculine, in the back of my head I hear a conversation from several months ago, back when I was living with a Syrian family on Sharia Baghdad.

Back during the now-unimaginable February cold, I got into a 2-day, well, discussion with them.

It began innocently enough when I came home Friday at around 5pm, planning to eat and then retreat to my room with the Ghassan Kanafani play I had to write an analysis on and the Andalusian poetry I had to lead the class in the following Sunday. As per usual in the biting cold I took my meal in the sobia room, joining Iyad, the unemployed law school graduate midget (literally) and two of his friends. I ate my meal in silence, listening to their conversation. I was soon incorporated into that conversation, which began with the usual "So, how do you like Syria?" (one of the boys I had not met before) and somehow ended up on The Gays and my strange lack of revulsion to their Ways and complete willingness to let them live and marry. "But what is the point of marriage? Children!" Iyad claimed. I told him I know some gay couples with children. But how? That is impossible!

"They adopt. I know people who have done this, and they have beautiful families." That someone could love a child that did not squirm out of her vagina or result from his penile squirt some months previous was denied:"Blood is blood."

That my aunt, with two adopted children, loved them as much as "real" children was as well.

Then we landed on the women. The conversation kept me up until late into the night, preventing me from getting any work done, and spilled over well into Saturday night. One of the highlights was when Iyad denied that men have estrogen and women have testosterone. "Why would women have testosterone? It's obvious they don't. Their voices aren't low, they don't have hair." But his insistance that men do not have estrogen was even stronger. "Of course they don't! What, is it for their period?" The next day, when I returned from Sitt Zeinab and teaching English to Iraqi kids, Iyad was in the sitting room, triumphantly looking over his highschool biology textbook. He pointed me to the short passage, where it said that testosterone was the male hormone, and listed its effects on the male during puberty. Estrogen is the female hormone, with its effects. And progesterone is also a female hormone, with its effects. The complete passage was three small paragraphs - hardly what I would call comprehensive review of the complicated subject of hormones. I considered letting him believe what he wants, but instead printed out some more complete information from the internet, which identified the existance of all three hormones in both sexes and even included the gem about how while most men have more testosterone than most women, the ranges for both sexes are very wide and overlap, thus some women have more testosterone than some men.

The hormones came up because wehad been talking about the babies.

Iyad insisted that full equality was impossible, and sarcastically asked me if we should make men pregnant, because it isn't equal that women have to go though that. "That must be hard." I told him not to act like I am an idiot - naturally women have a womb, but the moment after birth why can't the man take care of the baby?
"Because they don't have attifiya (kindness and feelings) like a woman!"

Abu Mazen joined in to ask me why I was mad about this if it is what God wants. Being a mother and taking care of children is an honored and respected role. I was accused of thinking of childbearing and taking care of the home as an "insult". No, I insisted, it's not an insult, which I why I want men to be free to do childcare as well. Why should that be denied to them?
"What, you want all men to stay home and take care of children?" Iyad asked.
"No, but both parties should be free to choose what they want to do. In some families, the woman may want to take care of the children, and the man may want to work. In some families, the man may want to stay at home, and the woman may want to work. In other families, both want to or have to work so they share raising the children 50-50. What's wrong with that?"
"If the man stays home he is lazy."

This allowed me to appeal to Um Mazen, asking her if raising 6 children had been easy. She looked at me like I was crazy, saying of course not. Um Mazen was not exactly on my side during the debate, telling me several times that while girls are loved, boys are preferred. And that God loves men more than women. But at least she told her son that raising kids is not the lazy choice.

During the converstation, no one present had a problem with women working, but the problem was with men take on such a feminized role. Childcare is an honored and respected role, unless a man takes it on and then he is a lazy pussy. Of course, this is far from a Syria-specific double standard, and reflects the situation in most of the world.

But it was a fun conversation in that I was also asked several times if I hated men.

To Save Humanity: Men Take Care of Babies

There has been conservative hand-wringing for quite some time now about the "demographic crisis" of falling European birthrates, some arguing that concurrent Muslim immigration is going to cause the downfall of Western Civilization. Often these critiques blame (white) European women for their selfishness, exhorting them to pop the babies out.

But in a NYTimes article, awesomely titled "No Babies," Russell Shorto (also an awesome name) finds that gender relations, more so than selfish, decadent European women, are a reason for low fertility.

“In all of these countries [mostly southern European with emphasis on traditional gender roles]," Billari said, “it’s very difficult to combine work and family. And that is partly because, within couples, we have evidence that in these countries the gender relationships are very asymmetric.”

Counter to intuition, that working ladies have less babies, the article points to a study since the mid-1990s, lowest fertility levels in Europe are in countries with lowest female labor-force participation.

To explain, the author compares the Netherlands and Italy, the former with less traditional views about gender roles than the latter. Geert is much more likely to change some diapers than Guiseppe, so Geert's wife is more likely to want to have more babies: "It's about how much the man participates in child care."

The article finds this true across regions, not just in Europe:

By this logic, the worst sort of system is one that partly buys into the modern world— expanding educational and employment opportunities for women — but keeps its traditional mind-set. This would seem to define the demographic crisis that Italy, Spain and Greece find themselves in — and, perhaps, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan and other parts of the world. Indeed, demographers have been surprised to find rapid fertility changes in the third world, as more and more women work and modern birth-control methods become standard options. “The earlier distinct fertility regimes, ‘developed’ and ‘developing,’ are increasingly disappearing in global comparisons of fertility levels,” according to Edward Jow-Ching Tu, a sociologist at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. According to the United Nations, the birthrate in 25 developing countries — including Cuba, Costa Rica, Iran, Sri Lanka and China — now stands at or below the replacement level. In some cases — notably China — the drop is explained by a concentrated effort at containing the population. In the rest, something else is happening. The lesson of southern Europe is perhaps operative: embrace the modern only partway and you put your society — women in particular — in a vise. Something has to give, and that turns out to be the future.

Interesting to hear Iran put on this list, as Iran is held up as a "best practices" example within the UNFPA of how to be culturally sensitive and achieve major results in reducing population growth.

In Syria and many other "developing" countries, fertility rate is very highly inversely correlated to a women's education status and workforce participation (fertility goes down when education or working goes up). This "embracing the modern" (not a fan of that expression, but letting slide) is one of the best ways to reduce fertility in high-fertility countries, but this article suggests a tipping point of beneficiality. If these workforce changes are not supplemented by cultural changes with regards to gender roles, fertility rates will slip below replacement, and humanity will be doomed.

Thus addressing inequitable gender roles is a solution for both underpopulation and overpopulation. While women moving in traditional "male roles" of working outside the home is more and more acceptable in more places, often out of necessity, there is still widespread resistance to men moving into traditional "female roles" of child care or housework. Gender issues are often thought of as "women's issues" but this emphasizes, how realizing equality is not just about women's issues, but men's, and fighting the societal restraints upon men as well. This is a the companion to the liberation of women; the liberation of men.

Of course, whether negative population growth is inherently harmful is also up for debate. In an era where overpopulation is certainly a greater concern in most places than underpopulation, and in which we are just beginning to see the manifestations of our effect on the global climate, is less humans a bad thing? The article delves into this as well:

For there are those who argue that low birthrate in itself is not a problem at all. Paul Ehrlich, the Stanford scientist who warned us about the “population bomb” in the 1960s, is more certain than ever that the human race is catastrophically straining the planet. “It’s insane to consider low birthrate as a crisis,” he told me. “Basically every person I know in my section of the National Academy of Sciences thinks it’s wonderful that rich countries are starting to shrink their populations to sustainable levels. We have to do that because we’re wrecking our life-support systems.”

Muslims are Similar to American Anti-Contraception Pharmacists

In the current Pharmacists-for-Life controversy in the States, on a group of pharmacists who refuse to sell birth control, some writers like to make analogies to show just how crazy these pharmacists are and how wrong it is for them to shove their beliefs down others' throats. And guess who is a great analogy for that? Muslims! And racists, naturally.

I usually like this blog, because they write some posts on international reproductive health, but I was not a big fan of this recent post from Reproductive Health Reality Check:

If a pharmacist refused to fill out a Viagra prescription for a black man he saw walking around with his white wife, we would have no problem seeing this behavior as bigotry, even if said pharmacist claimed that Jesus told him to do it. But if a pharmacist refuses to sell birth control pills to a woman who isn't wearing a wedding band, somehow that's legitimate religious expression, even though his rights are extending well past her nose. If Muslim pharmacists started refusing to fill out prescriptions for Christians because those Christians don't share their beliefs, we would have no problem seeing that the religious freedom pinched was that of the customer's, not the pharmacists.

Because you know that's a part of Islam: refusing to give medicine to Christians. What? Sorry, where did you pull that out of?

Earlier post from the same blog:

If, however, we're going to let everyone's political beliefs or religious enthusiasms govern our important life decisions, then we must allow that any political or religious convictions can hold sway. In this case, why not permit a Muslim fundamentalist pharmacist to simply put up a sign politely explaining that his religious beliefs require him to deny a woman's prescription for any medication? No doubt Aryan pharmacists have a belief system too. Why should they be forced to violate their dearly held beliefs and serve blacks?

Because Muslims hate women? I think I remember hearing that sura, in which antibiotics and allergy medication are denied to women. It's a core religious conviction in Islam.

From Feministe:

What happens if next, pharmacists or doctors refuse to serve non-Christians? Or if it comes back to bite them in the ass when, say, a conservative male Muslim paramedic refuses to touch women? Or if religious doctors and pharmacists decide that STDs are appropriate punishments for the sexually active and refuse to fill prescriptions for treatment medicine? Or if a paramedic or doctor refuses to deliver the baby of an unmarried woman?

Cause Muslim men never touch women, and Muslim doctors don't perform thousands of procedures everyday on women. If any man did have qualms about touching women, I doubt he would become a paramedic, which I think is the point of this post: don't become a pharmacist if you can't do the freaking job.

I understand why Muslims are getting thrown into the mix, alongside Aryans (do they mean Iranians and northern Indians?) and racists. It's an attempt to expose the hypocrisy of these right-wing movements, that are all for respecting religion as long as that religion is Christianity. But claiming Muslims would deny medicine to Chrisitans or to women, is smearing Muslims based on common stereotypes:
1) that Muslims hate Christians
2) that Muslims hate women, I mean, they must since they veil them and don't let them drive and don't let them get an education and... 60 other misconceptions people have about Muslim women.

There are other analogies that could be made, such as an orthodox Jew refusing to give out condoms (according to some Talmudic interpretations, birth control is allowed for women but not for men, so pill in, condom out), but of course Jews just aren't as scary as Muslims.

Later in the Feministe post, I think they did a better job with analogy:

Wingers were all up in arms about the Somali women who wanted to wear more traditional clothing to work (even though they were still doing their jobs) and the Muslim cab drivers who wouldn’t pick up passengers who had alcohol on them, but if it’s fundamentalist Christianity that’s an excuse for not doing what you were hired to do, and if it’s women you’re refusing to help, then it’s a-ok.

This exposes the hypocrisy of the right, eager to defend the right of Christians lock-step with their views to exercise their religious views, but quick to lambast Muslims for the same. And this features actual events where Muslims felt that some aspect of their job and their beliefs were at odds, not random hypothetical that accuse Muslims of hating Christians and women. When, from personal experience, I know many who are very fond of both, especially the combination. Oohh!

Humped

Thursday night I was attacked. I was pretty tired from my week of pre-7am rising, and wanted to clear my head, so I went for a walk. While the main streets in Jerimana are bustling at almost all hours, you don't have to walk too far to hit farms and a little desolation. I needed to get away from noise and people for a bit. I walked this way before at 11pm with some friends, including guys. It wasn't yet 8:30 pm when I left home.

I was walking along a road near a field. There are small farms and the occaisonal apartment building on this road, with the lights of Jerimana not far behind me. While not busy, there were cars, bikes, and other walkers passing by in frequent intervals. I walked next to a pile of dirt and a young man, who had been crouched behind it, started walking very quickly towards me, when a car turned the corner and man's pace relaxed. I yelled at him, "What are you doing? What was that?" and kept walking, thinking maybe I had misinterpreted the situation. A second car, behind the first, passed and the man came running at me. I started yelling at him to leave me alone, and when he got near hit him with my bag and tried to aim for his face with my other hand. He tried to kiss me, and though I managed to prevent that, I got humped as he tried to grope things, when the headlights of a car came up the road. He ran, grabbing his bike that he had hidden alongside the road.

I flagged down the car, a taxi with a man sitting next to the driver. Clearly shaken and freaked out, I yelled that the guy on the bike attacked me.
"Why are you walking by yourself?"
I said I was going to a friends house, but thinking "Why does that fucking matter?" They invited me to get in the car and I thought they would try to catch up with bikeattacker, but instead they just questioned me why I was out by myself, where I lived, and what the guy had taken from me. "Did he take your wallet? your bag?"
"He didn't take anything, he attacked me."
"But he didn't take anything?"
"No, he attacked me."
The passenger muttered "harassement," as though I were silly to get so worked up over it. I got out of the car at the beginning of the road, where the streets were bustling.

I felt like maybe I shouldn't have been walking alone. It's strange that the first time I go walking by myself in a non busy area I get attacked. Everyone likes to talk about how safe Syria is, and not that my one little incident negates the true general low incidence of crime and especially violent crime, but for all the years I've lived in the horribly unsafe and crimeridden (according to popular opinion) States nothing like that has ever happened to me. Running through much more desolate areas of Michigan pre-dawn or after nightfall in sportsbra and shorts, walking home from the subway to my apartments in Brooklyn and Long Island City at 3am: nothing.

Friday afternoon I had some friends over and some one made the whole Syria is completely safe argument, to which I told what happened the night before. The guys were flabbergasted, saying that was a weird thing that hardly ever happens. They also could not believe that the men in the car had reacted like that, saying that most Syrian guys would chase the guy down. "Syrians love to be heroes." It was suggested that I return to the same spot and walk around as bait, while two of my guyfriends hide in the bushes so they can get anyone who messes with me.

The ladies present refuted the idea that this shit is rare, with examples. Not that some one full on attacking is common, but harrassment (not meaning verbal. Verbal harrassment or catcalling is talteesh, while if its physical it is taharrosh)

I was heartened though, when I pointed out that it had only been 9pm and Tariq said, "That doesn't matter. You should be able to walk around at 2am naked without being attacked."

I don't mean this post to reinforce the stereotype that Arab men are sex-starved maniacs. Obviously the vast majority of men do not attempt to hump women on the street. But there there is a lack of awareness about harrassment among guys. When one of my friends refused to believe that this kind of stuff happens more than "hardly ever" he said he'd never heard of such an incidence before tonight. Really? How often do you hang out with girls and how often would they be comfortable talking about it to you? He then cast a critical eye on several of Manar's anecdotes, because she said this had happened to her cousin, that to her friend. "Syrians exaggerate. A guy says he saw a hat with 4 colors and after a month the hat had 200 colors." He also said it was women's fault for not making a bigger scene when something like this happens.

I'm just feeling very pissed off about the incident.

Halter Top

While I ridicule those who asked the inevitable, "Are you going to have to veil?" or some variation of it, of my moving to Syria, I at times am shocked by what ladies be wearing.

Spring came in unseasonably warm, and while it has cooled down to the pleasant, temperate spring that Sham is known for, I grew quite used to the sight of tanktops. I even saw a few short skirts with no leggings underneath. I had understood the general rule of dressing for success in Syria that tight in any form is ok, but showing skin can not be. Thus muhajibbas think nothing of wearing ass-tight jeans and lycra long-sleeved shirts. Like New York, many girls have also arrived to the erroneous conclusion that leggings are pants. I still maintain they are not, and you should go home and put some damn pants on, as I can see camel toe and we're not in the desert.

And then, among the tanktops and above-the-knee skirts, I actually saw a halter top. A halter top! In Bab Toma. She looked like a highschool girl, and was giggling about boys with her tank-top befitted friend.

I don't understand how these ladies go about in this kind of dress. In my rather wide clothes, I get stared at. In terms of looks, I can kindof pass for Syrian, with clothes and accent usually giving up the game, so it's not that I'm the blond foreigner. My friends seem unperturbed by guys constantly checking them out the street, maybe they just get used to it. But in a halter top? I imagine the intensity of staring could reach the point where the object of affection explodes into flames.

Shaming my Nation With Each Missed Kick

I have joined a womens' football (soccer) team last week, and I am shaming my nation with my subpar skills twice weekly at practice. While in my youth I played quite a bit and was rather good, the last time I touched a football was 13, and in the intervening years I focused on running, which though requiring less coordination, I still managed to injure myself, necessitating 4 knee surgeries over the past four years.

The two teams of women, one of teens and one of 20-year-old practice, once a week at Tishreen, Damascus' biggest sport club, and twice at a field out in Kafer Souse. When I first heard about it from Maureen, a Chinese girl learning Arabic here, we were under the impression that it was an informal lot of women playing together. Instead, the teams represent Damascus in nation-wide tournaments and are traveling to Dubai in a month for a tournament. They are actually quite good.

The first practice the coach asked us if we had ever played before. Maureen isn't bad, a credit to China, but between my slowness and lack of skills America's already questionable football reputation has only suffered further.

While fierce on the field, fighting about calls and injuring their best goalie's ankle today, off they are really nice and have promised trips to the mountains in spring. Nobody seems to mind my shittiness, and both they and the coach even seem disappointed by my inability to join them Saturdays as well (conflicts with English teaching).

I Still Don't Think Nesreen is a Dude

Tariq has a differnt take on Nesreen and her bathroom messages. "It's probably a guy just trying to meet girls."
"What? That doesn't make any sense. The only girls who would call would be lesbians."
"Yeah, but he'd have their phone numbers."
"So? They wouldn't want him."
"He'd have their phone numbers. That's how Syrian guys think."

I'm doubtful.

Sad Gay

Being gay (officially مثلي referring to sameness but in practice more often شاذ meaning irregular)in Syria must be hard. I was at Sibke park in a chi-chi part of town studying and went to the public bathrooms. In the lady's room, on the back of a stall door, the only graffiti in the stall actually was written (in English): "For girl only Nesreen" and then her number. After several hours of reading (during which I was only accosted 3 times by strangers asking if I needed help, or if Arabic was hard, or where I came from. One gave me a day planner) I went back to the bathroom, and found on the back of a different stall the same message from the same girl, this time in Arabic.

It made me really sad. She might really be desperate to write her name and cell number on the doors. Or she really likes strangers. These type of messages in public restrooms (especially mens') are old news in American, mined for comedy in sloppily put together films. But it was the only graffiti in the entire bathroom, and the only message like that I've seen here in 5 months (though I can't claim to have done a thourough investigation of all Damascene bathrooms, and my survey has been limited to the ladies').

I tried to imagine her life. Does she live near hadiqa sibke? Or elsewhere, and came to Sibke because she didn't want anyone she knows to stumble across her messages? Has she gotten any responses? I imagine the awkward meetings that would result. Would they meet first in a cafe, or public place, or jump straight to dark fumblings? It would be easier to conceal a gay relationship than a straight one often, as most parents don't get unnerved by their daughter's spending time with her girlfriend. Will Nesreen find love? or at least sexual release? Will she be goaded into an unfortunate marriage in the future?

The Gym

In trying to avoid a blow-up like in Egypt, where koshari and ta'amiya somehow added 20 pounds to my frame, I have joined a gym. Syria is much, much more perilous, being a land of delicious food and especially the sweets. Shami sweets are famous, renowned around the world. I love them so freaking hard.

When the weather was nice, I would walk the 40-50 minutes from my house to the university, but once that temperature dropped and getting out of bed in the morning became harder than labor, I took the micro. So I joined a gym 10 minutes from home walking a month ago. For $24/month, I can go to the gym 3 times a week (it's more if I want to go everyday and I'm not ready for that level of commitment yet). The gym is two rooms: a crapload of weights, 3 treadmills, 3 elipticals, a recumbent bike (blaugh). A little pricy, but what kept me from joining at a cheaper ones is Ladies' Hours.

Ladies' Hours at almost all gyms are from 10-12, when I have class. The thinking is that most ladies would like to work out without the eyes of men on them, and many would, but unfortunately the thinking also is that they have nowhere to be during the day. I have class.

More expensive gyms mix it up. Mine has ladies' hours from 10-12, but ladies are welcome at any other time as well. There are no only-fellas hours. Usually when I go there's one or two other women working out, muhijaba and non. The only problem is that there is only one changing room, meaning men have to wait while I shower and I have to wait while they change.

There is a crazy swanky gym called Nadi Barada. It even has a freaking indoor pool. But it's $50 a month and from what I've heard, quite a "scene". I don't really want to just rub (sweaty) elbows with the elite.

My gym works well enough. I think I'll go for another month. I really would like to join a gym where I could a class in kickboxing or something fun though. Take out some of the pent-up aggression from frustrating "place of women in society" chats with the family.

Talking 'bout the Ladies

Last night I went to the Arab Cultural Center in Adawi, just a few winding alleys away from my home. Tucked back away from the major streets, it is a oddly-placed grand building.

I went for a lecture on the "Cultural Marginilization of Women" led by Lena Mabardi, a TV journalist here with a Dutch kid from my class and Iyad, the mid-to-late 20s law school graduate who is the only remaining son of the family I live with (I don't want to say host brother). The large auditorium was mostly empty, and then the power went out. We located to a more intimite side room, lit by two battery-lamps. There were about 3 old guys, who looked as though they might just go to every cultural event out of boredom, 2 other guys, the female director of the center, 2 other women, Iyad, Marios from my class, and me.

Ms. Mabardi read a piece she had written, of which I caught most. The discussion afterwards was in 'ammiya, and I understood almost everything, leaving me in the strange place where I understand 'ammiya better than fusha. I guess I do get more practice listening to 'ammiya, but still, strange. The discussion was very friendly and laid-back. A muhijaba (veiled woman) questioned Ms. Mabardi about some of the things she had said about Islam's role in this marginilization, and agreed with much of what she said, Ms. Marbadi had spoken about the relative freedom of women in some pre-Islamic Middle Eastern societies such as Egypt. A man who identified himself as an independent studier of culture cited studies in which women themselves treat their boys better than their girls. I wanted to jump in at that point citing my own research on the topic (and how it intersects with the IMF), but that shit took me 30+ pages to explain in English.

The director then called out the obviousness of Marios' and my foreigness, asking us where we were from and what we were doing. This is always when I'm worst at Arabic, when I'm put on the spot and have to speak in front of a room of people.

America? she said. Can you tell us about the situation for women in America?
Uh, in general?
Yes. Is thate equality, for example? Go ahead.

What a wide question. I struggle with this somewhat, between talking about the US as a glorious wonderland of gender equality, which it is not, and denigrating it as comodifier and exploiter of women. For example, were I to wax on how wonderful it is that young women in America live alone and date and fuck with impunity, I would be met with: that's equality? The men are using these women and not marrying them. Aren't they heartbroken? Don't you have problems with teenage pregnancy and abortion? Aren't the women all starving themselves and getting plastic surgery (like they aren't here?). But my friends are a jealous of the freedom with which I travel and live apart from my family. I want to communicate that while not perfect, there has been a lot of progress and as a woman, I prefer it to Syria. The problem isn't the laws, it's the families. My girlfriends here don't have to be home at 10pm because of the state, or Islam (certainly not the Christian and Druze ones) but because of gossiping neighbors.

So I talked about how the feminism of the 60s and 70s achieved a lot of changes in laws, and because of that women of my generation feel like we don't have to fight against anything, and we buy into the image of the perfect woman. We've changed the laws but we still need to change society, I said. This was agreed upon by all present. Yes, said another Syrian woman, like here. Most laws are equal, but it is society that marginilizes women.

After the discussion Ms. Mabardi chatted with me and gave me her contact info. I'm asking her to send me her piece so we can read it in class.