Yousef al-Azmeh, Hero

 

Some of this is a repeat of Early 20^th Century Syrian History, but I wanted to set up the Yousef al-Azmeh story as a stand alone post not contained in the history post.

Amidst the colonial turmoil of post World War I, Emir Faisal – that guy who went across the desert with Lawrence of Arabia – joined General Allenby in Damascus in October of 1918. The Emir began establishing a government. At the same time, the French, demanding that the English honor the Sykes-Picot agreement, arrived in what was becoming known as Lebanon and took over. In November of 1919 the British left Damascus to avoid conflict with the French, ending Syria’s hopes that the west would honor their sovereignty.

In March of 1920, after negotiations with the French collapsed under Arab pressure for independence, the Syrian Congress declared Faisal King of a new state: the Arab Kingdom of Syria. The Europeans responded by holding the San Remo Conference, and allocating governance of former Ottoman territories as they saw fit.

In July of 1920, according to the French, tired of King Faisal trying to convince the League of Nations that he had a better right to rule Arabs than the French and British did, the French sent King Faisal the ultimatum “surrender or fight.” According to Syrians (who have photographic evidence) the French bombed Damascus from the air, and threatened to reduce it to rubble if King Faisal did not surrender immediately. Syria had barely begun to form its military, and had no airplanes nor any anti-aircraft defenses, so King Faisal surrendered to save his people and the antiquities of his country, including the Umayyad Mosque and Straight Street, along with other sites sacred to Muslims, Christians and Jews in Syria.

The French say Yousef al-Azmeh, King Faisal’s Chief of Staff and Minister of War, willfully disregarded his King’s surrender and led his men into battle against the French ignoring the fact they had no hope of winning against superior numbers, artillery, and training.

The Syrians remember Yousef al-Azmeh very differently. The young idealist knew what a blow surrendering to the French would be to the pride and hope of the Syrian people as well as their future bids for sovereignty. If they surrendered without a fight, it would be as if the Kingdom of Syria had never existed. Azmeh decided to recruit and lead a group of men in a fight against the French so history would reflect that the Syrians had not given up without a fight. In one respect the Syrians agreed with the French: they didn’t have the weapons, numbers, or training to prevail against the French invaders. No man who followed Yousef al-Azmeh into the Battle of Maysaloun Pass on 23 July 1920 expected to live. Azmeh died, as did most of his men, and the next day, King Faisal’s forces in Damascus surrendered to the French.

 

Today, Yousef al-Azmeh is remembered in Syria as a martyr who died for the cause of Syrian Independence. A statue of him is located at the center of a circle named after him in downtown Damascus, near the Cham Palace Hotel and less than 600 metres (roughly 2000 ft.) from Marjeh Square (a.k.a. Martyrs' Square) where the execution of Arab nationalists originally prompted the start of the Arab Revolt.

You may use these links to access the bibliographies on wikipedia and track down primary source materials if you wish to learn more.

Battle of Maysalun

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Maysaloun

Arab Revolt

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Revolt

Marjeh Square

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martyrs%27_Square,_Damascus

Early 20th Century Syrian History in Brief - with heavy use of wiki!

 

Remember George Santayana? No? That’s ironic, since he reportedly coined the phrase, “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Well, apparently, the US enjoys repetition. But, as events unfold in Syria today, foreign intervention looming on the horizon, it’s hard for Arabs not to remember how things went almost a century ago, and dread that history may be repeated.

Even before World War I started, Arabs were trying to break free from the Ottoman Empire and form their own nations. In 1908, Hussein bin Ali, Sharif of Mecca declared himself King of the new Kingdom of Hejaz. Throughout WWI the Hashemite royal family continued to correspond with the British (first with Lord Kitchener in 1915, then Sir Henry McMahon 1915 – 1916). On May 6, 1916 the Arab Revolt against Ottoman rule was finally triggered when the sultan had Arab nationalists executed in Marjeh Square, Damascus. In the remaining years of World War I, Arabs helped England and France prevail against the Ottoman Empire believing it was their best chance at independence. Emir Faisal and a contingent of supporters attended western peace talks after World War I in an effort to secure a future for the Arab people as independent nations rather than colonial assets to foreign powers.

November 1917 was a particularly disappointing year for the Arabs. On November 9, a paper publicized the Balfour Declaration of November second, essentially giving Zionists official British support for establishing a home in Palestine. On November 23 the new Bolshevik government in Russia made the Sykes-Picot Agreement public, revealing the French and English had been secretly negotiating throughout WWI to rule over the Arabs while at the same time promising them self-determination.

Later an American report (King-Crane Commission 1919) showed that Syrians opposed both the Balfour declaration and the French and British mandates. The report was ignored as were Arab demands for an independent and unified Syria.

Here’s the part you might be familiar with. Emir Faisal – that guy who went across the desert with Lawrence of Arabia – son of Hussein bin Ali, Sharif of Mecca, joined British General Allenby in Damascus in October of 1918, and began establishing a local government. At the same time, the French, demanding that the English honor the Sykes-Picot agreement, arrived in what was becoming known as Lebanon and took over.

At the Paris Peace Talks of 1919 – which resulted in the Treaty of Versailles – the US Secretary of State Robert Lansing identified the mandate system as a thinly veiled division of the spoils of war. In July the newly formed Syrian Congress passed resolutions demanding a constitutional monarchy with Faisal as King, and asking the US for assistance. In November, the British left Damascus to avoid conflict with the French, ending Syria’s hopes that the west would honor their requests.

In March of 1920, after negotiations with the French collapsed under Arab pressure for independence, the Syrian Congress declared Faisal King of a new state: the Arab Kingdom of Syria. The Europeans responded by holding the San Remo Conference, and allocating governance of former Ottoman territories as they saw fit.

Syria had no trained army to speak of and no air force at all, so when the French bombed antiquities and threatened to raze Old Damascus to the ground, the Syrians eventually surrendered (see my Yousef Azmeh blog for an important footnote).

“Henri Gouraud on horseback inspecting his French troops at Maysalun” This image (or other media file) is in the public domain because its copyright has expired. It was reportedly taken on 24^th July, 1920 in Maysalun. The photographer is unknown. The file is from Wikimedia Commons.

The French ran Syria for well over the official 20 years of the mandate. The French Mandate of Syria was not formally approved by the League of Nations until 29 September 1923, when they had already been running Syria and Lebanon for three years and they did not leave Damascus until 1946. The French disdain for Arabs is exemplified by the story that after putting down a revolt in northern Syria, General Gouraud kicked Saladin’s tomb and said, “Awake, Saladin. We have returned. My presence here consecrates victory of the Cross over the Crescent.”

In 1946 when the French withdrew, they left a final mark in the memories of Syrians: they bombed parliament. One of my ancestors, a parliamentary guard, died in the attack. I don't know how many others died.  

Though remnants of French influence, good and bad, can be found throughout Syria, and French culture is respected, Syrians have not forgotten the bad taste of imperial rule. So, you see, perhaps the one thing that a Syrian fears more than a dictatorship is a foreign dictatorship. Ironically the best hope for Syria to stay intact both physically and as a government –we do have a parliament and a constitution - is the United Nations, the entity that succeeded The League of Nations, who created the mess in the Middle East in the first place.

The following links will help you find the bibliographies on wikipedia so you can get to primary sources, if you wish to learn more.

Citations:

partitioning of Ottoman Empire

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partitioning_of_the_Ottoman_Empire

French Mandate of Syria and Lebanon

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Mandate_of_Syria_and_Lebanon#Golan_Region

Battle of Maysalun

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Maysaloun

Marjeh Square

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martyrs%27_Square,_Damascus

Arab Revolt

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Revolt

Dumpsters and Death Notices

 

 While I was studying International Relations in college, one of my professors had the opportunity to spend a year in Syria. He came back brimming with enthusiasm and a new depth of understanding for Middle Eastern Politics, his passion. As it happened we went through lecture material for his class at a fast clip the term after his return, so he excitedly put together an informative slide show of his time in Syria to fill some time and spark class discussion.

He had a particular sequence of slides where he shared a dilemma he’d encountered. He showed a dumpster on an Aleppo street. In the picture, the dumpster appeared relatively empty but it was surrounded by bags of trash. The professor then showed another slide depicting postings pasted onto the entryway of a building. He told us the postings informed the public that the dumpsters were for trash collection and only worked properly if people put their trash inside the dumpsters. My professor seemed to feel the government had a very hard job making the people of Syria understand how to use a dumpster.

I did a very selfish thing that day. I kept my mouth shut. Inside, I was laughing, though I should have been crying. At the time I didn’t think of the long range indications my professor’s lack of understanding and its spread would mean for my people. I was close to graduating and wasn’t about to rain on a professor’s parade.

Here’s the information my professor, an expert in Middle Eastern Politics (not an anthropologist or sociologist) was lacking:

In Syria, whenever something momentous happens, a notice gets pasted up, EVERYWHERE. This is mostly used for death notices, since Muslims must bury their dead by sun down the day that the death takes place. A death notice is basically an obituary with a brief history of the deceased, information about the time and location of the funeral, and who will host the condolences. Death notices are plastered everywhere they might be seen. I’m not kidding when I say that if a bus stays still long enough, it will get pasted with a death notice! I saw it happen, when Damascus had buses (but that's another blog). 

The boys – yes, child labor - who were hired to do the pasting up were not educated and were paid to get the job done quickly. They were probably paid based on how many signs they posted, so our front porch could end up with between four and eight copies of the same notice, all of which might be covered over with new notices the next day, without the first notice being removed, layer after layer. Once, the government put up signs saying “no posting here” and within the day, the signs were covered in postings, prompting my father to comment that he doubted the boys doing the posting could read enough to understand the signs.

Damascenes once had kiosks where death notices were posted, but the government got rid of them because they were ragged eye sores. No one ever removed a posting, they just added layer after layer of pasty, papery mess. When that the ratty looking kiosks were gone every other surface had become fair game or not so fair game: front doors, walls, steps, banisters, trash cans, dumpsters, park benches, guard rails. Though everyone relied on the death notices, they also hated the postings being everywhere. The postings were viewed as litter. Imagine your front door being pasted all over with newspapers, a new layer almost everyday. Thankfully doors and windows seemed to be exempt, but shutters were not.

A typical front door in my neighborhood. Some are worse. Would you want your front door to look like this? Just to be clear, the notices with pictures are actually a guy running for parliament. Ya, we have a parliament in Syria!

My father once spent an afternoon using a pressure washer to get all the postings off of our front porch. He proudly hollered into the house for us to come see how beautiful the porch was. We’d never seen it without any postings littering it up before, and we’d lived in that house for six or seven years by then. We went outside and admired the clean porch with father, then returned to making dinner. A few minutes later my father entered the kitchen red faced and grumbling. He’d gone back out to dry off the porch, only to find a crew already pasting notices on the walls! The porch had been clean for less than ten minutes. So, when you say, “litter,” postings encrusting the walls of your building is one of the top five things urban Syrians will think of.

A shop in 2010 with the remnants of notices surrounding the entry. This is miraculously clean compared to some buildings.

As for dumpsters, Syrians have a heavy duty cultural imperative against them: charity. For reasons of sanitation trash is put out after dark but before ten pm. After dark, street sweepers come by. I don’t mean one of those gigantic machines, I mean men in tattered clothing, with brooms made from twigs pushing little trash cans and dust pans on a makeshift cart. These are some of the poorest men in Syrian society. There are probably beggars who are paid better. Many don’t even have proper shoes. I’m not exaggerating about this. I’ve seen them with my own eyes. These men, will slit open trash bags as they go, and scavenge for anything they can use or sell. Even if you leave useful items to one side of the trash bag (shoes), they will still open the bag to investigate for themselves. Later in the night, the trash collectors come by and scoop what is left up into the garbage truck (a real one).

The dumpsters rarely have a lot in them, so they often get skipped, especially since most of them are damaged and won’t fit on the garbage truck’s lift anyway. In fact, I seem to recall that the dumpsters and trucks were purchased from separate companies and some were not even compatible with one another. So if a home owner was so ungenerous as to skip the road side charity, placing their trash in a dumpster, their garbage might be left to stink up the neighborhood for days. Even if that were not the case, the idea of forcing a street sweeper to dumpster dive was considered repulsive.

So, my professor had been given a euphemistic version of the situation. In the minds of government officials and foreigners, the populace were being backward and uncooperative. In the minds of the populace, the government had replaced one problem with another. They had taken away kiosks and given the city trash littered walls, they had then not only added smelly dumpsters, but posted more litter on people’s walls in an effort to persuade them to use the smelly dumpsters, all while ignoring the basic needs of their poorest citizens: street sweepers.

As the events in Syria unfold, now, it is tempting for westerners to believe that the west holds answers that Syrians haven’t thought of on their own. Please keep in mind that people from the west really don’t know all about Syria or it’s people. Syrians have to find their own solutions or they won’t work.

Two Tales of One Minaret

Recent months have led me to think a lot about perspective. As I watch politicians use half-baked truths to justify their agendas, it’s hard not to remember that every tale has two sides, or more. I could go on a rant about US politics in the Middle East, but instead I’d like to offer up a couple of entries about historical perspective.

The first entry is a story about a minaret that sits on the southern edge of the courtyard of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.

I first heard about this minaret while watching the documentary series Out of Egypt. In that series, a guide [Nimrod Luz] stands in the courtyard of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and points out the minaret as it broadcasts the call to prayer over the neighborhood. He explains to the series host,

            “we’re in the middle of the most important Christian site…you can take a 

             naïve approach and say, “he’s just calling to prayer.”…[but] there’s no

             mosque that actually needs this here. This is a challenge. This is saying, 

             “we are here, we are stronger than you, our voice is heard more than 

             your voice.”” … “I’m sure they [people in the church] know what it’s all 

             about and they feel intimidated when he calls to prayer.”

It should be noted that this man was serving as a general guide and commentator, he was not a representative of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

Having grown up in a conservative Muslim neighborhood of Damascus, the vitriol of this interpretation was suspicious to me. In our neighborhood we had at least three mosques in a one-block radius and probably close to a dozen within a kilometer. My Christian mother and I particularly enjoyed the gentle tone of the early morning prayer call.

Generally, for Christians in Damascus, hearing the Muslim call to prayer was not considered a confrontation with Islam, but simply a call to prayer, which Christians were free to answer within the context of their own religion. I think it is possible some Christians in Jerusalem feel the same way.

 

A minaret on the west side of Umayyad Mosque (in Damascus, Syria), where Christians and Muslims shared the facility for roughly 50 years, and which is located in the old city where Jews, Christians, and Muslims lived together for centuries.

By contrast, the Muslim version of the story of the minaret is everything but confrontational. In fact, it’s quite romantic.

I first heard this story in the documentary series East to West, and have since found a couple of other versions. It goes something like this: In 637 C.E.(a.k.a. 637 A.D.), when the Patriarch Sophronius (a.k.a. St. Sophronius), ruler of Jerusalem, surrendered the city to Caliph Omar I, he invited the caliph to visit the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. While the caliph was there the time for prayer came. The patriarch invited the caliph to pray inside the church, but Caliph Omar I refused. He feared that future generations of Muslims would venerate the spot where he first prayed within the walls of Jerusalem. He thought there was a risk they might claim the site for Islam and create a monument for Muslim pilgrims. So, he went outside the church, and prayed there instead.

Caliph Omar I was correct. Muslims considered him very important, they still do. He was a companion to the late Prophet Muhammad, he was the second caliph ever to exist, and he was known for being a just man. So, in 1193 C.E.(a.k.a. 1193 A.D.), a Muslim Sultan (Al-Afdal ibn Salah ad-Din – one of Saladin’s sons) built the Omar Mosque on the spot where Caliph Omar I had prayed. The minaret in question is part of the Omar Mosque, which to this day is used for prayer only.

These two views of a single minaret are arguably opposites and each fueled by a specific view of Islam. Your view of Muslims or Arabs would be deeply affected by whichever version you heard, unless you had also heard the opposite version.

A couple of things that sway me in the direction of the Muslim version of the story are:

            a) Under the Muslims, Jews, who had been exiled for centuries by the 

                Christian rulers of Jerusalem, were allowed to return to their holy 

                city, and Christians were allowed to stay, confirming the Muslim 

                commitment to religious tolerance portrayed in the story.

            b) General Allenby’s official proclamation of marshal law upon taking 

               Jerusalem from the Ottomans in 1917 C.E. indicates that the story 

               of Caliph Omar I was known to him. He wrote:

                        “Guardians have been established at Bethlehem and on Rachel’s 

                            Tomb. The tomb at Hebron has been placed under exclusive 

                            Moslem control. The hereditary custodians at the gate of the 

                            Holy Sepulchre have been requested to take up their accustomed 

                            duties in remembrance of the magnanimous act of the Caliph Omar

                            who protected that church.”

Allenby’s reference even implies there is more to the story than I have found so far. I’ll have to keep looking. For now, I choose to like the idea of a church and a mosque being so close. Perhaps that is because I am Damascene!

                                     *     *     *     *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *

The second story I want to share is about a famous Syrian general, Yousef al-Azmeh. I will cover that in a separate blog entry, coming soon...

Misquoted and Misused!

 Recently, I learned a harsh lesson about being misquoted. With a B.A. in Communication and Political, Legal, & Economic Analysis, I’ve always been keenly aware of how the “telephone game” sows the seeds of misunderstanding, but this instance left me feeling USED. That feeling is appropriate to the topic: Syria. As the crisis has become international, it has also taken a turn that is alarming to Arabs: once again the West insists it not only has the moral superiority to judge the situation but also the right to interfere even though the majority of the mortal cost will be paid by Arab civilians. What used to be called imperialism, the US now insists on calling “global policing” or being “the world’s conscience,” while it consistently works to undermine the United Nations who are the agreed upon agency for those things. Never mind that civil rights barely exist in the US anymore, or all those guys still imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay who haven’t had trials. The US doesn’t participate in the world court. They just want to be the world court.

On September 2, 2013 one of my godfathers e-mailed me asking for insights about the situation in Syria for a homily he was to deliver to his Roman Catholic congregation the following Sunday. He was particularly concerned about what he called the Christian minorities.

Because I do not have his permission to share a verbatim copy of his homily, I will only include his misquotes regarding me.  He made me sound juvenile and bent on Assad’s destruction. One is wrong and the other wrong as well as dangerous to my life and my family. He also made it sound like some of my Syrian relatives were Christian and that there is currently a rift between my Christian and Muslim Mahayni relatives!

After fuming for a long time, I’ve finally decided that I must at least set the record straight regarding what I did say to him about my feelings on the US proposing to bomb Syrian military sites at the beginning of September. I also have to defend myself because he posted his homily online with my name attached, so his misquotes are there for the world to see until he or his Roman Catholic bosses take them down.

Below are excerpts from his homily, followed by excerpts from what I really e-mailed to him.

What he claimed I said:

She said that bombing would “engender a certain degree of righteous general satisfaction…as long as nobody except bad people get [taken out] and the damage is done against Assad’s military assets, with maybe surgical strikes against one or two of his palaces thrown in.” But it’s awfully hard to control the purposed “limited intervention” to Assad and his supporters and assets only.”

What I actually wrote:

The US has no more hope of success in Syria than it had in Afghanistan or Iraq. The Syrian people, my father among them, are cowering in their homes, now, waiting for US bombs to kill them, not knowing where they can go for safety. No matter what claims the US makes about accuracy, there will always be stray bombs, "collateral damage."

And what would any strike accomplish? The military has apparently abandoned military targets, leaving empty buildings. And, if the US hits any of the Syrian infra-structure, Syria will not be able to rebuild it. They aren't as oil rich as Iraq. Instead, Syrians will freeze and starve in their homes this winter because of rationing and not being able to safely harvest foods locally. Even if they could harvest foods, would [the food] be edible? Ghouta is orchard country, growing peaches, apples, plums, apricots, etc. How much of Syria's food supply is now poisoned? Whatever the US has planned, will it really make Syrians safe, feed them, shelter them?

What he claimed I said:

Lemia continues by saying that if President Obama [and the US] had earlier armed the rebels while they were still “relatively respectable secularists” and before Al Qaeda and other Islamists murderers got so involved, there might have been some hope of an “Assad-free” outcome. We in effect have blown that chance.

What I actually wrote:

… The crux of things at this moment is that while the US has promised humanitarian aid, they haven't done nearly as much as they implied they would, and yet they have also blocked a lot of UN efforts to define and address the situation. In this case, the UN is the only plausible authority that could have success…

One thing that the US could do, that they should have done from the beginning is to work with the Assad government to ferret out terrorist cells among the rebels. It would be easier to [evaluate] the rebels if the Al-Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood type elements could be defanged or at least identified. It would also be easier to evaluate the Syrian government's reactions if we knew how much terrorists were involved in stirring things up. It is clear that some fundamentalist Muslims, some of them quite extreme, are eager to oust Assad. We can only guess what they would do if they replaced him. Otherwise, the US should stop dabbling in post-colonial imperialism. That's how [the US is] seen in the Middle East: imperialists.

What he claimed I said:

As far as the use of chemical weapons on Syrian civilians, she has doubts and refers to an article by Peter Osborne of the “Telegraph” newspaper in London (August 29).

What I actually wrote:

While perfectly well-meaning people want someone, anyone, to step in and end decades of oppression, there is clearly more going on than a simple rebellion. Some things attributed to the "Assad Regime" simply don't fit the pattern of rationale or serve a strategy for keeping the regime in power. [For instance], why would Assad ask the UN to come and inspect the earlier alleged gassing sites and then launch such an obvious attack while everyone was watching? The pattern of the [Assad] regime that has been firmly established is to OPENLY retaliate against dissidents so that others [will] learn to keep quiet, know exactly whom they should fear most.

What he claimed I said:

Many of her family members are Muslim and although historically they have gotten along, lately there has been a good deal of tension because of the rise of Militant Islam thoughout the region.

What I actually wrote:

Old time Damascenes have been proud to call Christians their neighbors, but in less educated areas, there might be problems that I haven't heard of. In Sunni Islam, all "brothers and sisters of the book" are to be respected (i.e. if you believe in the basic tenets of the Old Testament, [Christians] are equal with Jews and Muslims who follow the same God). It is only the statuses of the "Prophet Jesus" and the "Prophet Muhammad" that separate the three religions. I hear that this has changed because Christians are perceived to be on Assad's side, but I think that is a double-edged propaganda tool. There are a lot of villages that have a mixed population, so the damage of such a propaganda-generated rift might be minimized by intimacy or doubled. It's hard to say how people react.

            Note:

             [This is born out by the recent rebel attack on Maaloula. Although it was

             later found that some Muslim youth from the village participated in the  

            attack, Muslim neighbors did not attack the Christians in the village,  

           “Muslim” extremists attacked in the name of the rebels. In fact, Muslims 

           in the village are reported to have been shielding their Christian 

           neighbors from rebel harassment for months.]

         I believe ALL my Syrian family members are Muslim, and none of them

         approve of extremists, so there is NO TENSION between me and my  

         family!

Well, I’ve learned my lesson about trusting someone else to represent me accurately. I pray each day that Syria remains a place safe for mixed faiths and that the Syrian people will work together to find a solution that paves a road to a brighter future for all of us. It sounds naïve, I know, but I do pray for the best case scenario, nothing less.

God’s Peace be with you.

Salam!!

Introduction

-->

Performing at school on International Day, wearing a Druze costume.

Hi!

I’m Syrian-American. If you’re geographically challenged, that’s a flavor of Arab-American. This is my blog about my father’s native country, Syria, from my own personal perspective. I was born in Eugene, Oregon, but I spent the majority of my grammar school years living in Damascus, Syria, in an old, conservative Muslim neighborhood: the real deal, not an ex-patriot enclave. 

Saad e’Din in my neighborhood, Midan (2007).

When I was growing up, whether I was in Oregon or Syria, there was always something that made me feel like an outsider. The gap could be subtle like pop-culture references and idioms or plain like wearing clothes that stood out, or mean kids at school calling me “Siberia” because they didn’t know how to find one of the oldest countries in the world on a map (thank you, Cold War). At one point in my childhood, I described myself as a citizen of “no man’s land,” but as I got older, I came to respect and enjoy my perspective between two cultures. Today, I relish my Syrian heritage as much as my American heritage for giving my life more dimension.

Videotaping the Tkiyyeh at Suleimanniyyeh Mosque (2007).

Once, I overheard a shopkeeper explaining who I was by referring to me as “the foreigner’s daughter.” True old Damascenes will place you on your family tree immediately upon meeting you. It had not occurred to me before that I was so unique among thousands of Mahaynis. At the time, apparently I was. In fact, at the time, even without giving out my last name, I was conspicuous. I was the blond girl who spoke Arabic with a Midanese accent - Midan is a borough of Damascus - and who was invariably accompanied by her red-headed American mother. Consequently, in a city of millions, I couldn’t do anything in public that wasn’t eventually reported to my grandfather. However, the name “the foreigner’s daughter” amused me, so I embraced it.

In 2007, on summer break from university, I visited Syria after an absence of nine years – the longest absence in my life. Friends old and new were excited for me to share pictures and stories of my “exotic” vacation. I didn’t have an internet connection at my father’s farmhouse where I was staying so I began writing form letters to send from internet cafés. Since form letters are usually general and impersonal, I tried to make mine detailed and entertaining, including pictures whenever possible. The seeds for this blog were sown.

The Suleimaniyyeh Mosque in Damascus, Syria (2007). 

-->If you are looking for objective political analysis, you won’t find it here. I’m not a journalist. I’m not an archeologist or a historian either. I’ll write what I know, from my perspective. As with my other blog, “Fractured Optimism,” I will endeavor to share personal experiences and insights while entertaining. If you are not Syrian, you will have fun finding out things you never thought about. If you are Syrian, you will find out a little of how a “foreigner’s daughter” views our country.

Feel free to post questions. They may inspire a future blog! But, please be respectful of others. I’d like this to be a safe space where people can bring their curiosity, not animosity.

Thanks! I hope you enjoy it.

Saha!

-Lemia

June 9, 2013

My First Feature Article!

I'm really happy to announce the publication of my first feature article in an online magazine.

It's called Contenders Magazine and my article is Filming El Hijab.

Check them both out! 

Here's the link to my article.

http://contendersmagazine.com/blog/filming-el-hijab/ 

It appears the server for this magazine no longer functions. Here is the text and photos from a copy I made:

Contenders Magazine

the journal of the perpetually up-and-coming

Filming El Hijab

August 23, 2013, Lemia Mahayni

When I flew to Damascus, Syria in the fall of 2010 to begin making my documentary film El Hijab, I     had no idea how monumental the task I had set for myself was. I believed that my primary challenges would be getting people to take a woman seriously as a filmmaker, and functioning in a language I hadn’t spoken regularly for many years. While that was certainly the case, they represented only the beginning of my logistical problems, and didn’t include the most important: myself.

The five years between my birth in Oregon and my family moving to Syria had biased me against hijab – the practice among Muslim women of wearing modest garments to show their submission to God. Yes, I said God, not men, not government. While family and peer pressures are a major factor, the whole practice of hijab in Syria is commonly viewed as an act of personal conscience and culture, not government. Among those who choose it, wearing hijab can signify that a girl has reached womanhood (menses), or that she has set aside her carefree youth and is serious about Islam. In the society where I grew up, she is then seen as mature enough to become engaged to be married. Instead of seeing hijab as a right of passage like my cousins did, I saw it as an unreasonable restriction, an archaic affectation.

One of my cousins playing in the snow with her daughters

 

Knowing my opinion was so strong, I had previously recused myself from approaching the topic of hijab in film or in writing. But upon graduating from film school, I was challenged by my friend Bérénice Reynaud, international film festival curator and lecturer, to make a documentary about hijab. She felt that no one had made a film about it from the perspective of Arab women. I agreed that most films focused on hijab worn in the West – where it stood out as alien – or approached hijab from the outside looking in. I saw a mission I could embrace: capturing Arab women speaking for themselves.

I could also see that Syria was a good place to make such a film. Historically, women in Syria have not been forced by law to wear any type of hijab. On the contrary, in July of 2010, the government banned the face veil style of hijab – called niqab – from all classrooms, public and private. With the law, Syria joined Tunisia and Turkey in the small club of Muslim states to have banned any form of hijab (a similar ban was lifted in Tunisia after 2011, and in Turkey veiling remains a contentious issue, with the constitutional court there upholding a constitutional ban against wearing hijab in public buildings in 2008, much to the chagrin of the conservative parliament). This ban caused ripples of hostility that contributed to the civil war, giving Muslim fundamentalists, Bashar Al-Assad’s most outspoken opponents, a cause to seize on. However, zealots who favored the niqab were in the minority. The most common form of hijab in Syria is a scarf covering the hair and throat along with clothing extending to the wrists and ankles. And it’s far from a universal dress code: many Muslim women in Syria choose not to wear hijab at all, and there is a significant Christian population. Even members of my conservative Muslim family were satisfied that the new law safeguarded our university students against people cheating on exams or attending under false identities. When I arrived in October the controversy seemed dead.

I believed that since I’d grown up in Damascus, my cousins and aunts would treat me like an insider, that I would have unprecedented access to their lives for my film. I underestimated the extreme privacy in Syrian society and the effect of my years of absence. Instead, I experienced frequent but polite instances of misdirection and ran up against restrictive family politics.

A view of Damascus from Quassyum Mountain

 

The centerpiece of my film was to be a personal view of a teenage girl making the transition into wearing hijab, but scheduling my trip to Syria around my father’s vacation meant that two of my top subjects were so busy with school once I arrived that I had little hope of interviewing them, much less following them through their days or filming them with their friends. Everywhere I turned, I got encouraging words, but little cooperation. I credited this deficiency to a lack of familiarity with the film process, but my father explained that single women didn’t want to ruin their chances at marriage by being so immodest as to appear on camera. To my face, women agreed to appointments that were never to be confirmed. Married women were at least frank enough to say they were camera shy.

Hauling Gear through Old Damascus

Cooperation wasn’t the only problem. I’d brought a high-definition camera and microphone with me, but for lighting equipment I was relying on local vendors, since Syrian power was 220 voltage – double North America’s 110 voltage standard. You can’t do much in Syria without connections, but usually anything involving trade is just a matter of finding the right shop and striking a deal with the owner. I was unhappy to find that Syria was infatuated with small halogen bulbs that produced harsh directional light best suited for horror films. All I needed were three lights and some colored light filters, simple items, but searching for them became a futile month long project.

Next came certification. For decades Damascus has been a primary producer of Arabic language soap operas, so there is no lack of film professionals in the city. However, I was told that in order to work in film or television in Syria every cameraman, director, or producer was required to be certified through the High Institute for Theatrical Arts. The right connections could have gotten me around this barrier but I didn’t have them. To rent lights, or engage assistance, I would have to approach production companies and beg for favors from people who did not know me and were legally not supposed to help me. To get a production permit as a foreigner through the Ministry of Tourism meant months of ingratiating myself, submitting my project proposal for approval, and having to share copies of my footage, putting all my interviewees in a precarious position. I didn’t want the Ministry of Tourism to become my de facto producer and editor, or worse: forbid my film from being circulated. I’d have to do without certification, and improvise lighting.

For some in my family, my filmmaking “hobby” was puzzling. Mostly they just declined to engage in the project, and asked me to dinner instead. To a few, the fact that I didn’t wear hijab was an affront. In one instance, I was all but openly attacked on camera by an in-law for not wearing hijab, implying my arrogance disgraced the family. I’d dreaded the possibility of such a confrontation. I didn’t know of any other Mahayni woman who didn’t wear hijab and my family took great pride in their conservative reputation. Could I gain the confidence of my interviewees if they thought I was insulting them?

A hint of wedding bling!

On another occasion, I was invited to a segregated wedding (conservative Muslim weddings hold separate receptions for the men and women). Excited to show at least the opulent fabrics women wore – think, awards show meets drag queen competition – I snuck a small still camera in with me, only to have my cousins caution me not to take any photos. I was shocked. When I was growing up, there were always some women who refused to have their picture taken at weddings and some who didn’t mind, as long as you promised not to show the photo to any men. I thought the anonymity of showing ruffles and sequins rather than faces would fly under the radar, but apparently not. In the end, a cousin took my photo alone on the bridal dais – hardly the shot I was hoping for!

That night, a cousin in-law refused to shake my hand – like I was a stranger – even after she was told who I was. Family names are important in Arab culture; the Mahaynis are well known and highly respected throughout the Middle East and I’m a granddaughter of a powerful family leader, so snubbing me at a family wedding was a big deal. My cousins were embarrassed and apologetic. Back in the days when my mother was a foreign bride, no one had ever dared do that to her, and here I was, a blood relation, dissed by an in-law! A few weeks later, the bride’s father died. Knowing how rampant superstitions and gossip were in the family, I was glad not to have made a scene with my camera. For all I know there are women in that part of the family who think I put the evil eye on the wedding. 

A few of my close relatives figured out I was Christian and I shot up several levels in their esteem. They had probably suspected all along, since my mother is a devout Christian. I was relieved. For years my father had asked me not to reveal my religion because inheritance laws in Syria used to forbid Christians from inheriting from Muslims and vice versa. He feared that, even though the laws had changed, my relatives might make trouble. But, to my family, being a “sister in the book” – what Arabs call fellow followers of the Abrahamic Religions – was far preferable to the prospect of a non-practicing Muslim. My grandmother had taken pride in being sure my mother never wore a scarf on her head in public; grandmother didn’t want the neighbors to think the family had forced hijab on my mother. A famous 18th Century Mahayni had been commended by Napoleon III for protecting Christians during a civil war, so grandmother wanted everyone to know she was proud my mother was a Christian. But, in 2010, my grandmother’s generation was gone, and I was not making very good progress with my own peers who feared the disapproval of in-laws and neighbors. The lively story I’d planned to tell was quickly pulling out of reach.

Equally challenging was that there seemed a general belief that no one woman had the authority to speak for all. I tried to convince women that if a diverse sampling of them spoke, it would reveal that their opinions were unique, each one valid. That was not reassuring to them. In a culture where the group is more important than the individual, there seemed a hope, especially among my family, that all women were alike in their thinking.

When I approached one married aunt for an interview, she responded by asking why I insisted on playing at filmmaking instead of being a dutiful daughter. Why didn’t I put my family first? She urged me not to show anything ugly about Syria. “Show [the West] something beautiful. Don’t let them think it’s all ugliness here. Give them something to respect.” But she refused to appear on camera even to tell stories of Old Damascus, when Christians, Muslims, and Jews were proud to live side by side, working and worshipping in the same ancient city. Another aunt, an outspoken widow, was willing to be filmed. She offered stories of wearing a full face veil in her youth because she believed it was theologically correct, but changing her mind over time as she studied the Qur’an. I knew she would be a fantastic interview, but my father kept delaying my return visits to her home because there was an unrelated argument between her and another aunt who lived in the same building. The feud was so schismatic that even the hope of interviewing the two together, thereby giving them equal time, was impossible.

Finally, a male friend from grammar school helped me set up an interview with a businesswoman who had gone to our alma mater. She had even worn hijab during her time there (her early teens). After a wonderful warm-up interview, it became apparent that she had not understood I was intending to videotape her. One moment she was informing me that women’s rights in Syria were legally and politically the best in the Middle East, the next, she began pulling at her scarf and her sleeves, saying she could not do Islam justice; I should speak to a scholar. She then declined to be filmed. When she promised she’d find me someone else to appear on camera, I was doubtful. But, she was as good as her word, better even. Her sister, Sabah, also a businesswoman, was a Muslim scholar and willing to be videotaped. I eventually filmed some eight interviews while I was in Syria, but the interview with Sabah was the one that gave me the most information, insight, and inspiration. As I edit the film, Sabah’s is the voice I am most passionate to bring to the public.

This project has been more of a personal journey than I was prepared to take. I thought making this film would establish me as a filmmaker; instead, it taught me about innovation and expectation, exposed my vulnerabilities, and rewarded me in ways I had not foreseen. El Hijab is still teaching me, as I sift through footage and memories of a culture and people that have an uncertain future, increasingly aware that I am the portal through which their voices will reach people in the west.

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Lemia Mahayni is a filmmaker based in Eugene, OR. In 2010, her short film Alpha and Omega: the Struggle for Survival earned an Accolade Competition Award of Merit and previous documentary work include Earl in Our Memories (2008) and Beladi: Syria (2006). She is in the midst of editing El Hijab, but in the meantime you can follow her work on her blog (foreignersdaughtersyria.blogspot.com).   This is her first article for Contenders.