Laa Moushkila!

Well, I have now completed my first two weeks of Arabic studies. And I can hereby confirm what I’ve been told by countless Arabic students, locals and various others who claim to know; Arabic is complicated…

The first day at university, we started with simple words and sentences to introduce ourselves. The sounds were unfamiliar and I kept forgetting all the words, but still I could more or less manage the greetings and simple phrases. Within an hour we were thrown into the Arabic alphabet. Even though I had already worked on the alphabet (with the help of the language guide in my Lonely Planet book and my lovely helpers at the hotel) it’s not easy to remember 28 letters that change shape all depending whether they are written alone, first, in the middle or at the end of a word. 28 letters that in some cases sound more like someone being strangled, or someone having serious breathing problems than actual sounds.

By the end of day two we were supposed to be able to read. I was sitting at home doing my homework. Due to my rather limited vocabulary I did not understand most of the words in the reading exercise, and it took me about 5 minutes to be able to ‘decipher’ one word, but then I got to a word that I could eventually make out to be ‘Mohammed’. It might sound plain, but to manage to read the word Mohammad in Arabic gave great satisfaction. Or any word in fact. Just the realisation that it is actually possible to make sense out of something that looks more like oriental art than an actual language is amazing.

Our teacher, Haagar, is a sweet and talented woman. For the most part she only speaks in Arabic during the lessons, but if we look very confused (and most of the time I do!) she will also explain in English. She ends any explanation with: “moushkila?” (problem?), and hopefully we are then able to call out “laa mouskila” (no problem). Even though I’m in a level 1 class, most of my classmates have done some Arabic before, and there is definitely some work to do to catch up with them, but at least I manage to keep up with the lessons. I sit next to a Turkish man called Ahmet in class. His father is Syrian, so he speaks the local dialect here, but he wants to learn classical Arabic (which to my frustration greatly differs from the language the Syrians actually speak). Ahmet doesn’t speak any English, so our language of communication is Arabic. It goes without saying that out conversation are neither very long nor deep, but when I, a few days ago, managed to tell him I live with a Turkish girl from Ankara who works for the United Nations, and I understood that he said that the three of us should meet up for coffee one day, there was great joy. Ahmet and I go for coffee in the breaks, ask each other ‘how are you?” about 5 times a day (in the lack of anything more interesting to say), he helps me with my pronunciation, and I help him cover up that he never does any homework by letting him look at mine.

Last week I also started a language exchange with my flatmate’s boyfriend. I help him with his English and he helps me with my Arabic. He is rather ambitious and suggested that we meet up three times a week which suits me perfectly well. I’ve also taken some private lessons with a Syrian girl, and I even sit with flash cards on the buss to learn vocabulary, which is a great way of practicing pronunciation (and meeting people) as there are always some helpful fellow passengers who take great pleasure in correcting my terribly mispronounced words. So word by word my Arabic starts to take form. Patience is a key word in this process, there is no easy way of learning this language, at least not as I’ve discovered. There are just no common reference points, and the structure of the language is completely different from any European language, but that is also what makes it so fascinating. In some ways it’s also like a time machine back to primary school learning how to read and write. I sit at school, and as a child I fumble my way through words and sentences. But at least I can now read and understand more than just Mohammad!

The people in my Arabic class are simply fantastic. There’s always a good atmosphere in class (even though the intervals between jokes and laughter and then frustration and despair often are very short) and we all try to help each other. A few days ago we all went to a restaurant to have the Iftar (breaking the fast during Ramadan) meal together. Our teacher also came along despite the fact that she is from a rather conservative family and her parents didn’t let her go before she told them her boss had ordered her to go. We came into the restaurant and our table was set with a variety of delicious dishes; tabbouleh, fattoush, baba ghanoush, hummus and a whole lot more that I have yet to learn the name of. We waited until the time of sunset, which is marked by a cannon shot, and we could finally start eating and drinking. There are only two Muslims in my class, but even though most of us had been eating and drinking all day, it was still a meal in great gratitude. We finished the meal at the oldest ice cream shop in the world (which is kind of bizarre considering that Syria is on the whole one large desert) in the heart of the bazaar in the old city.

That was also the day of the Norwegian elections, so after the meal a Norwegian guy in my class and I went to follow the elections together with the other Norwegians in Damascus. They had managed to get NRK (the national television channel in Norway) on a big screen where we could watch the various Norwegian politicians either triumph or despair as the results were made clear. It was a rather surreal experience to sit in this old Damascene house seeing all these Norwegians drinking chai and smoking water pipe while watching Norwegian television. I don’t know if it is what we could call integration, but the Norwegians here have clearly adopted some of the Syrian customs.

The month of Ramadan is coming to an end, and all depending on the moon, the Muslims will stop fasting on either Sunday or Monday. The end of Ramadan is marked by a public holiday where, as I’ve understood, they spend time with their families and eat and eat and eat. This also means one week of holiday from the university (in reality, one week of catching up and revising). So when the holiday started on Thursday afternoon there was a sigh of relief from me and most of my classmates. We were in need of a study break! I went for dinner for some of the guys in my class and then we were ready to hit the night life in Damascus. In fact, the city has quite a lively cultural scene with concerts (there is even an annual jazz festival), poetry readings and various art exhibitions. There are also a few bars and clubs, and despite of the fact that the majority of Syrians are Muslims and it’s still Ramadan, the club we went to had a great atmosphere. It was interesting to see the very modern and young side of Damascus, it’s clearly very different from the image we often have of life in the Middle East. We were dancing away until the early hours, and when I woke up the next day, even though I had slept through most of the day and had a more than just a slight head ache, I still had a smile on my face. I’m happy to be here!

Ahlan (Welcome)!

Landing at the airport in Damascus was a surreal experience. At 3 AM I put my feet on Syrian land, all in all quite disoriented, tired after a long journey (first to London, then Istanbul to have lunch with Helen, to Cairo for some long hours at the airport and then finally Damascus) and extremely excited about what was awaiting me. I got in line for immigration, then I was sent to another line to get a visa. The visa office was a small glass room with a hand-written note on which it was written ‘Bank Visa’ in English and Arabic. Or, I can only guess what it was written in Arabic because I cannot read Arabic. Nor speak it, apart from basic words like ‘hello’ and ‘thank you’ In fact, I didn’t know much about Syria, its people or its culture, all I knew after travelling through the country a few months earlier was that I had to come back. And here I was.

So back to the ‘Bank Visa’. In broken English the man sitting behind the counter asked me where I was from, and in return of US$ 30 (which he put into a plastic cup, apparently his cash register) I got my visa papers and the greeting ‘Welcome to Syria’ I returned to the immigration line and as another man stamped my papers and passport I once again was meet with a big smile and a ‘Welcome to Syria’ Both this time and last time I was here that is probably the phrase I have heard the most times. Wherever I go I’m met with smiles and welcome greetings. Syrians are proud to see foreigners come to their country, of which they are very proud, and they do their best to make them feel at ease.

After a few hours in the airport café drinking too much coffee with some Canadian oil workers, the sun was about to rise and I was ready to make my way into central Damascus. Sitting in the taxi I saw the sunrise and the beautiful lighting that often comes with early mornings. The landscape is dry, almost desert like, and the brown, yellow and white colours blend into a beautiful greyish tone. Who said grey cannot be beautiful?

I arrived in what was to become my first home in Syria, al-Rabie Hotel. Situated in a small quarter of old Damascus, surrounded by busy highways, modern architecture and a myriad of people and cars; it really is an oasis in the middle of the city. The hotel is an old Damascene house with a beautiful courtyard with small coffee tables perfect for smoking nargileh (waterpipe) and drinking chai until the early morning. I quickly became friends with the people working at the hotel, and they proved to be extremely friendly and helpful when it came to making photocopies, helping me get a Syrian number, finding a place to stay and correcting my, at time being, rather pathetic Arabic. You really have to be patient to smile and politely correct my terribly pronounced good morning ‘ sabah al-khayr’ every single morning, but every time they were just as enthusiastic about my ‘progress’ and encouraging as the day before. I would often sit with them to drink tea in the courtyard, they would help me learning the Arabic alphabet (I have now learnt 23 out of 28 letters!) and they often shared the iftar meal (breaking the fast at sunset during Ramadan) with me.

Yes, it’s Ramadan; the month where Prophet Mohammed received the Quran from Allah, and where Muslims neither drink nor eat from sunrise till sunset. Or at least most Muslims, I do suspect some of them do cheat from time to time, but I don’t blame them. Not taking in any food or drinks for 14 hours in a country where the temperature often reaches 35 - 40 degrees at midday seems to me quite an inhuman task, even though it’s in the spirit of solidarity with the poor. I would collapse within hours… Even though I don’t fast I try not to eat or drink on the street out of respect for the people fasting and just that can be somewhat a challenge when stressing around in the busy streets of Damascus trying to get organized before I start school on Sunday.

I moved into a new house today, also in an old quarter of the city. There are five others living in the house; two Italians, one Turkish girl and two Syrians. They are really friendly and most of them speak Arabic which will be very helpful. The area is like taken out a fairytale; narrow, small streets forming what to me seems various labyrinth patterns (it’s impossible not to get lost) with charming Damascene houses, small shops, exotic restaurants and old men sitting on stairs drinking chai. So for now, I cannot say anything but what I tell the taxi drivers when I don’t understand what they say and I have run out of Arabic words: “Syria, very good!”