(posted from Beirut, Lebanon)

30 January 2009

Aleppo, Syria

A few things to mention before I forget. I can now count camel as one of the many animals I have eaten. It's not bad, much better than goat. I also ate something in Alexandria that I have no idea what animal it came from, but it wasn't good. So my list of eaten animals is very long, and at the end there is one entry with a question mark. I've never been a tea drinker, but everybody drinks it here and I've come to like it. Many times when I check into a hotel I'm given tea as a "welcome drink." In Egypt everybody drank Lipton, which I liked. In Jordan, however, the tea was sickly sweet and horrible. But in Syria they drink good tea, I'm just not sure what brand it is. If you want coffee in this part of the world, you usually have two choices: Nescafe or Turkish Coffee. If you want Nescafe you have to specify, because just ordering coffee usually gets you Turkish coffee, which I hate to say but I don't really like. It's really bizarre. The power goes out in Syria a lot, and some businesses have backup generators for when it does. I ran out of deodorant, so I went searching for some. It seems like stick deodorant is non-existant here. The only thing I could find was spray deodorant, and even this was hard to find. So now I am destroying the ozone layer. Sorry Rory. Out of all countries I've ever been to, Syria is the (self-imposed) least influenced by Western commercialism. Of course it's there, just to the least extent of anywhere I've ever been. One guy told me how much he likes American movies, especially his all time favorite, Malibu's Most Wanted. His favorite part in "Malibu's Most Wanted" is when "those black try to scare him from the geeto." But besides this, American products are hardly ever seen. There are virtually no Western style grocery stores, and in the markets hardly any Western or imitation products are sold. No Frito Lay Sheebs here. I did manage to find one store which had a rack of sheebs, all imitations of Western brands. In the Hama bus station, one guy pegged me as a tourist and gave me a Borat-esque "what's up?" Upon learning that I was from California, he asked me if I spoke Spanish. He was Syrian, but had worked as a translator at the Jordanian embassy in Chile and Argentina. We talked for a while in Spanish, and then discussed the hot Syrian chick that was sitting right next to us. Using English or French may have been dangerous, but I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that you can be 99% sure most people in Syria don't understand your conversation in Spanish. I am now in Aleppo, which is a very conservative city (Damascus was pretty liberal). Very few women go topless. From now on, if I refer to topless women, I mean that they don't wear the headscarf. In the market they had loudspeakers set up broadcasting some angry message in Arabic. Although I don't understand anything, I did unmistakeably hear the words "yehud" (Jew) and "yehudi" (Jewish) over and over again. I'm sure they were talking about how wonderful the Jewish people are, but you never know. The guys at the desk in charge of this operation had an official looking collections box with the United Nations logo on it. At one of the most famous mosques here, there was a hard core collection of pictures of wounded Palestinians. One of them had the word "Gaza" written in English with blood dripping from it. Many buildings here fly the Palestinian flag alongside the Syrian flag. Most hotels I've been in have had TVs in the room, but usually they don't work. When they do, however, it is interesting to see what is available. The place in Hama actually got Al Jazeera English! I've seen a lot of Al Jazeera English's material on Youtube, and I've always found it very interesting. The report I saw in Hama was discussing the banking crisis, but then cut out to discuss the effects on Islamic banks in Europe and mentioned that "meanwhile, banks which adhere to Sharia law are celebrating." This wouldn't have even been mentioned by a Western news network because, admittedly, who cares? Then they had a representative of the EU on to discuss how the war in Gaza will affect relations between Israel and the EU. The anchor mentioned that the representative himself had in the past criticized Israel for its violations of international law, then posed the question why the EU would strengthen its relations with a nation who flagrantly violates international law. He started beating around the bush, so she firmly repeated the question. Amusing. Then on Rotana (Arab MTV) I saw a music video that appeared to be from the Saudi government, expressing how much they support the Palestinians. It showed King Abdullah (the Saudi one, not the Jordanian one) hugging Palestinian children. If Saudi Arabia has ever done anything for the Palestinians, I was unaware. Another Palestinian music video, like all of them, had lots of crying and depicting nothing but dead children. I don't doubt that many children have been wounded or killed in the Arab-Israeli conflict, but it's all they focus on. It's just so stupid. I can't really explain, but if you were to see one of these things you would understand why people of intelligence just don't get this propaganda. I'm all for the Palestinian cause, I just wish they had better propaganda. Right now in Aleppo it's very cold and rainy.