Notes on the Syrian Arab Republic: Part I, the Airport

So I arrive in Damascus International Airport where there are queues for "Arabs" and "others" and I think to myself "this is how things should work". Most people I come across are quite cynical about the overt Arabism of Syria, but, when one considers the numbers--for example, the fact that Kuwaiti investments in Syria have doubled since the signing of the Arab free trade agreement--you can see how inter-Arab integration can be not just a slogan, but a tangible reality. Still, the horror stories relayed to me of the Syrian military left a big mark in my mind, and I can feel myself get more anxious as my turn comes to speak to the airport police officer whose job it is to stamp my passport. (The last time I went to Syria, this process was accelerated by the taxi driver who drove me from Amman; he was a cigarette smuggler who just walked into the office where all the big-timer cops were seated and had everything taken care of.)

At the Syrian Consulate in Kuwait, where I had hoped to obtain a letter to help me visit the Cinema Institute in Damascus so I could see their archive of films, things turned sour when the Consul said she could not give me a letter because I might be--wait for it--an Israeli spy. "How can I know?" she stupidly said. "How stupid can you be?" I thought then. This memory did not make it easier to hand my passport over. The Consul was rotund and oval-like, with a blouse buttoned up to the top so hard it must have been suffocating her, and a dress sense picked up in the worst days of the Soviet Empire, probaly studying in Bulgaria or something like that, nothing like the policeman sitting before me. The cop is more friendly than intimidating, and I feel bad for taking on board so much of a Western stereotype: I mean, what the hell were they going to do? Turn away a tourist, an Arab one at that? Torture me at the airport's backroom cells for wanting to see a few Syrian films?

After customs, the state security people might as well walk around with tattoos on their foreheads. It's dry and 22 degrees Celsius outside, but a 2 m-tall man, who looks very much like Husam Zumlot of the Palestinian Embassy in London, is in a trench coat staring at everybody sitting in the cafe. All I can think is "wow, if he had a hat and a clean-shaven face, he'd be just like Inspector Gadget". Sadly, he did not hover off from a propellor attached to his head, but otherwise he was the epitome of a great spy. I sat down and tried to think what to order at the coffee shop.

A long time ago, I might have come to Damascus to enjoy the splendour of the mosques and Sufi corners, so I feel a strange sense of guilt when I ask what the local brew is. Disappointed by the fact that there is none of the Syrian stuff, nor even Lebanese Almaza, I settle for a Carlsberg, from the brewery which sponsored the scientific work of Niels Bohr and brought the orbital model of the atom to the world. There is here some small consolation; not a bad lager, if that's your kind of thing.

In the city of Ibn Taymia, I sip a Danish beer and look around at people toing and froing. The women serving at the cafe in the airport--waitresses are a rather alien concept in the Middle East--could have been models and I feel bad for even noticing. I mean, coming off a plane from Kuwait, ordering a beer and then oggling the ladies at the cafe? Probably the kind of behaviour which would make the Syrians wish they'd never put up the signs for "Arabs" at their airport. Shame, shame.

There's a sort of cosmopolitanism to the place: Damascus is the former Umayyad capital, and you feel that it is some kind of dream destination for people coming from Yemen, the Gulf, Iraq and North Africa. Somehow I feel bad for the Americanised existence of Kuwait, where there was a Godiva before a Ghroui (a Syrian chocolatier dating back to the 1920s); I can see no signs for a McDonald's, KFC, Starbucks, or Caribou. Even the cola drinks are the local variety, Mandarin, which I think is state-owned; the local equivalent of Seven Up is called Cheer Up, which makes more sense as a name anyway. All this brings back memories of Iraq's Kufa Cola, which was so sweet you could use it as an antiseptic, and then I notice how the nicer bits of the airport are like the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad. The same influence of Stalin-like architecture planted in the desert is unmistakable; is it a coincidence that the world's first air-conditioned bus was intended for the Baghdad-Damascus route? There are either Iraqi voices somewhere around or I am imagining them, but strongly enough to make me want to cry. Back in the day, the Mongols sacked Baghdad but could not make it past Hatteen to destroy the Arab World's earlier capital in Damascus, but since George Bush is more stupid, zealous and irrefutably more dangerous than the earlier sackers there is no telling where he will stop.

Never mind, I am just a bit jittery from getting an early morning plane and so I order another beer...6,7 or maybe 8 Carlsbergs later and the plane I am waiting for, from London, is just coming in. Not sure whether the people at the cafe are relieved that I could stand, happy to get me out of the place, or if I'm just paranoid, but I go and wait for Kay to show up.

Slightly drunk, and a little tired, I begin to think of how weird it is to look at the people coming off, and waiting for, the planes. The old man, with a ram-rod straight back and nice linen jacket, is waiting for his brother's family from London. Half of a village from the mountainside, wearing sharaweel and moustaches that the Turks left behind, is standing waiting for the plane from Saudi Arabia to land. The Syrians waiting for, and coming off of, the plane from Milan are definitely the most stylish. Then a rather darker Syrian, unshaven--no Arab gets onto a plane unshaven--wearing a brown suit comes off sobbing and is held at both sides and consoled by two men, probably his brother and cousin. A funeral visit. Definitely a trip made in haste for the burial. Great. I came to Syria to watch the jems of Raymond Boutros and instead I get scenes of Egyptian cinema. DJ Firas, the London rapper who does his lyrics in classical Arabic, comes off and I act like I'm a big fan--actually, he's a cool guy, and we had some mutual friends but his music, clever as it was, never really did it for me. Well, at least I know the London plane has landed. The dignified old man finds his brother's family, they kiss hollowly and drive off with arms around each other; sweet, but also the Arab version of a Ralph Lauren commercial. I wonder if the brother from London is thinking about getting out a bigger share of the family's olive groves; perhaps the brother who stayed behind in Syria thinks he could've done better had he been able to leave. Maybe they just really missed each other and wanted to have a good time. Who knows?


Kay finally arrives, and I have my own ambiguous moment. You're an item with someone; you're attached at the hip for 2 years and then you don't see each other for 6 months. What do you do at the airport? Smoke a cigarette outside, negotiate with a cab driver and drive into Damascus, obviously.