Another story I gathered in Damascus this summer over at THIS Magazine.
In one room of their tiny apartment in a suburb of Damascus, Iraqi artists Bassam and Zahra have set up their studio. It has all the necessary trappings scattered around in a colourful mess: sketches, wooden easels, tubes of pigment, paint brushes soaking in plastic buckets filled with water (…)
My article on psychosocial support just up on Toward Freedom:
In 2008, Micheal G. Wessels, professor of clinical population and family health at Columbia University, published an article on psychosocial support. “Psychosocial support,” he said, “ought to occur at the same time one applies the most immediate life-saving measures.”
While mental disorders continue to carry a fair degree of stigma in many countries, psychosocial support – as part of the battery of help humanitarian assistance organizations offer – is gaining more awareness.
In Syria, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) realized an overwhelming need for psychosocial support among refugees and founded a psychosocial support outreach counseling center (PSS center) in October 2009. The center is not part of the UNHCR’s classical approach to post-conflict rehabilitation. Previously, they referred refugees to local psychiatrists or family counseling through organizations like UNICEF.
More here.
Perhaps some keys to the ‘good life’. Mondays with ripe cherries, strawberries, nectarines, peaches and Almaza beer. Tuesdays with hummus & pita, bitter black and green olives, fresh herbs, tomatoes and creamy yoghurt, thick Turkish coffee, chai, falafel wraps, tangy lemonade and honey-caramelized figs, pears and kiwis, shisha, fatoush and white wine.
I finally succumbed to the hammam, or bath, experience this morning. Hammam Ammoonah is a womens-only bath located in Damascus’ Old City. I believe its male-version counterpart has been in use since the 12th century (and the mind wanders to the amount of sweat and soap the innards of the baths have seen).
The process is slightly confusing when communicating in sign language. Directly in the main room, near the cash register, the stripping starts. This room, like the rest of the bath, is beautifully built with black marble floors, skillfully arched and decorated roofs and ornate benches. The bath attendants, all women revealing tight shirts and hips under their niqab, sit here and drink tea and smoke. One hands over a bar of soap, shampoo, and two types of loofahs.
The first step is the steam room. A small marble room with hardly a trace of light and thick swirls of steam. After five minutes, one is led to the second room where one squats next to a small marble fountain. Self-scrubbing and soaping for twenty minutes. On a hot summer day, there is little more satisfying than pouring buckets of cold water over your head. Fantastic place for a water fight.
Finally, one is led into another room for the “massage.” A long black marble table emerges. Completely naked at this point, one lies down stomach first. If it were not for the previous procedures, one might imagine being prepped in a mortuary. The woman sprays what seems to be a liquid version of the infamous Aleppo soap and runs her hands over you from head to toe, not a nook or cranny missed. At this point, with one large bosom pressed into your face, any opportunity to be squeamish about strangers and nudity is gone. This is repeated lying face up and sitting up. One last rinse off and you are done.
While I am pretty flexible with cats on counter tops and eating street meat, hygiene at the hammam is questionable. We arrived at 10 a.m., just as it opened, so we had the place to ourselves. Whatever difficulties you may walk away with later, my sister summarized the experience well, “I would bathe more often if this was my bathroom!”
Ten hours spent in a smoky Russian prostitutes’ club shooting for a new Syrian sit-com. The “foreign tamers” lurk around hostels and hotels to recruit the blonde and the brunettes as extras. The Egyptian production director screams numbers; the director – spectacles, white hair and orange jumper – kisses the famous Egyptian-Russian lead and retreats to the computer screens. S. pours champagne for a romantic meal. The effect lost by the plastic cork. Extras include one Scottish cancer-survivor, one American truck driver turned traveler, a former USAID agent. Everyone has been warned off the bottles of local whiskey yet as we leave they have been emptied. Hasty lunch break over shawarma wraps and spiked Pepsi. Actresses are dressed in dominatrix outfits. The Russian and Ukrainian prostitutes hang out in the back of the bar, all wearing shiny silk dresses. One swings ably around the stripper pole.
I interviewed an Iraqi couple a few days ago. They are artists living as refugees in Damascus, Syria.
After being used to associating extreme poverty with refugees in Northern Uganda, the obvious student-middle class nature of their life struck me. Her father was educated at Oxford and an engineer; his mother, an accountant in Baghdad.
While their quality of life was much better than someone in an internally displaced refugee camp in Uganda, a friend highlighted the following binding thread.
Both groups are roughly in the same pyschological situation where the relationship between state and citizen is broken. Without re-building this trust, the state will not become a stable and peaceful environment. Without psychological assistance, the citizen may never take the first steps towards trust.
So, how do government and aid/development organizations address this important gap? Do they?
Throw a stone in Syria and you hit something very, very old. On Friday, I joined the local HASH group for a run outside Aleppo. These groups can be found around the world. Basically, they mark a trail that groups can either run or walk while chasing the metaphorical hare.
This week, the HASH was set in one of the 700 old cities located between Aleppo and Hama. These cities date back from the 5th century BC and tell the stories of incredible civilizations risen and ruined. To reach one of them, we drove an hour outside Aleppo through winding wheat fields sprinkled with red poppies, ghostly white and dusty limestone quarries carved into hillsides.
The run was beautiful. You can tell the landscape is used. The rocky hillsides, indented dips between valleys, the scraggly green and grey grass. Small limestone built hamlets; cheerful farmers offering us water and tea – Welcome to Syria! My country is beautiful! ; mammoth sized sheep dogs lazy in the sun.
And the churches. Or the remnants of churches. Partial frames precariously balanced in the shape of ancient doorways. Large grey rock chiseled into the beautiful feet of pillars. An ancient basin; the four walls of an old monastery on the hilltop; a sarcophagi with grey stone marked by a beautiful Christian cross.
We drove off to Aleppo with some friends this weekend to see the softer side of Syria. A four-hour drive past the brief shadows of the anti-Lebanon mountains, fields of bleached wheat, rocky hillsides patterned in soft swirls. We arrive in the city with shaky legs as the afternoon sun begins to set. I have never seen such a high concentration of awful drivers and blatant lack of shoulder checks.
Among the few Damascenes I have met, Aleppo is legendary for its beautiful buildings and slower pace. Damascus is built on the shoulders of hideous grey cement blocks, busy traffic and smog. Aleppo is decorated by beautiful limestone sourced from neighbouring quarries. Even persistent car jams and honking are softer. The buildings are bright shades of white against the evening sun.
The city – like the rest of Syria – is rich with history. It is the oldest inhabited city with known human settlement for at least 4,000 years. It was the third largest city under the Ottoman Empire and was strategically located at the end of the Silk Road. We visit the Citadel, one of the more notable features of Aleppo’s extensive history and one of the oldest and largest castles in the world. The grounds are beautiful and parts of it well preserved. We walk through the souqs after. Like in Uganda, shop keepers sell everything under the moon. Bright tights, gold embroidered shirts, famous Aleppo soaps, leather clogs, polyester shirts, Puma knock-offs, colourful flowered scarves.
For dinner we retire to a beautiful courtyard restaurant. The balconies above us expertly carved into mahogany curves. We try a variety of local dishes including cherry kebab – delicious pieces of lamb meat stewed in sweet cherry sauce – with Syrian wine and raki. The smell of apple shisha has become a fabric of every place I visit.
After posho, ugali, vegetable stew, millet, meat stew, roasted and fried chicken, fried cabbage, fried beans and so on, arriving in Damascus is brilliant. The first night, we stop for hot Za’atar flat bread folded with spinach and pork. Lemon and apple gelato. In the morning, we buy a bowl of hot fatteh - soaked bread, chickpeas and yogurt covered with pickles and nuts. Fresh strawberries and cups of fresh blood orange and orange juice. That evening, dinner on the terrace: bitter black olives, mild cow cheese, pickles, pickled beets, peppers and raw onions, fresh pita and fool, thumb sized kidney beans. For another breakfast, fool in dripping plates of hummus and chopped tomatoes. More fresh strawberries; sweet tea; Syrian whiskey, grainy espressos, Lebanese white wines.
Training for a marathon in Damascus will prove to be much more difficult than expected. As I live in the old City, the streets are too narrow and windy to constitute a good run. Gyms are expensive and it costs to enter the stadium (wherever it may be). Instead, K. and I run in the Mujahareen neighbourhood where she lives. Despite being a conservative Muslim area, our frantic sports does little to distract anyone. The mountain is steep and the cobbled streets webbed at odd angles. Interval training has become sprints up hundreds of stone steps followed by only a second of rest before another stretch. For the 65-minute run this week, we decided to conquer the top of the mountain. Unfortunately, the streets are carved in mazes and we find ourself, at one point, scrambling up the bare sand and rock face. One slip and a long painful tumble to cobbled stone. We finally climbed over a low-hanging stone wall onto smooth tarmac. To our left, a small juice cafe hanging over the city – an endless landscape of smog, minarets, beige-washed buildings in the distance. On the way back down, we cling to a sewer pipe and sit back on our heels covering 20 long meters of dust.
After landing in Beirut, S. and I drove into Damascus. Everyone drives like mad-men and hardly a lick of English or French. The money changers near the border laugh at me when I ask which organization they are soliciting donations for. Hezbollah, of course. The guards at the border are friendly – Swedish passports means we have no trouble getting into the country.
Syria is much more relaxed than Cairo where police and soldiers were everywhere. Rumour is that the new government is on a much more democratic path than the previous, opening up slivers of the Syrian market and culture. However, since S. lives near the President’s house, we regularly see plain clothed ‘secret service’ everywhere. After misguidedly taking pictures of a memorial at night, one of them walks up to us and opens his black suit jacket to reveal an army print holster and heavy gun.
I spent one night in the Muhajreen division where S. lives. It sprawls across the Kassioun Mountain. It is beige and dry and ragged. In the morning, we run along the highway snaking up to the mountain. The streets are steep enough that I get mild vertigo looking down. Corner stores and bakeries dotted between low cement apartments. Overall, Damascus is not a beautiful city: the communist feel of dark grey highrises permeates what might have been charming. The mosques are lit neon green, detracting from the potential of white washed stone.
I found a room in the Old City through one of the many small businesses catering to foreign students learning Arabic. It’s beautiful – sun streaming through in the morning, a warm white-washed terrace for my morning cup of coffee. The neighbors children roam the narrow cobbled streets in the evening, playing with soccer balls, chains and dolls. The streets are small and windy; a heart beat and I’m lost. It reminds me of the charm of Stone Town in Zanzibar.
I left Uganda with a bang – a physical one that is. Finally, after two years of being in and out of the region, I had my inevitable boda-boda (motorcycle) accident. On the last day in Entebbe, after a delicious Nile on the shores of Lake Victoria, I climbed on a scooter-boda to grab dinner in town with a friend. Dusk, a car clipped us on a curb sending us flying. While the car skid off, we kicked the bike off and fortunately were all in one piece save scrapes and a bit of blood and brusing. Now nursing an infected elbow, I can’t say I will miss boda-boda transportation anymore.
On my way to Damascus, I flew into Cairo and spent the day walking the streets. The cat-calling is quite an affront, and, while I am used to being stared at in Uganda, it’s another matter swatting off crowds of teenagers. Otherwise, the city is the typical noisy and dusty body one would imagine. The Nile is a grisly yet enchanting river with a cool breeze for hot days. I attempted to visit the Egyptian museum to only be faced with a thousand tourists. Instead, I hired a cab to see the tips of the pyramids and the Citadel.
The cab driver rattled around in one of many small old black Peugots. His dashboard covered in all kinds of colorful paraphenelia. In the back, a framed copy of the Koran. He handed me breadstick after breadstick, “Hey Lady, it’s good.” We drove by the project-housing reaching towards the pyramids: hundreds of empty apartments mixed into walkways strung with jeans and tshirts. We stopped on the highway to peer at the tips of the pyramids. The scene was more depressing than inspiring. The remnants of a kingdom – or so it seems now – relegated to shadows behind slums.
On the way to the airport, we passed the Citadel. A massive mosque perched on the hillside. Many pottery makers in the area, their blue and beige ceramics displayed across hundreds of work stations. The city is covered in this thin beige dust rendering the landscape falsely brilliant in uniformity.
