Culture shock in Syria for Chestnut Hill teacher

by BETSY O’NEIL

(Chestnut Hill resident Betsy O’Neil, 36, is a 1985 graduate of Springside School and a 1989 graduate of Barnard College with a degree in political science. A math teacher at Penn Charter Middle School, she was granted a leave of absence until December so that she could move to Damascus, Syria, where she is currently teaching English and studying Arabic. Following is an e-mail report she sent to the Local.)

I can get fixated on one or two ideas before I leave for a trip. I’m embarrassed to admit it, but this time it was about joining a gym. My reasons were as follows:

The more obvious: To avoid gaining 30 pounds. There is too much fresh bread here in Damascus, plus flaky nut-filled pastries dripping with honey. No good Syrian will let you go without eating the food offered, things like sweet tea, cakes and biscuits.

I am used to walking every day in the Wissahickon and doing yoga. I just plain need some oxygen pumped more aggressively into my body so that I am less cranky to all those people who come across me in Syria.

And the less obvious: The gym is one place in Damascus where women are free to move as they please. In many Middle Eastern cities, women (and men for that matter) seldom jog in the streets. There is no Valley Green here in Damascus where people rack up the mileage any way they fancy. There is a lid on physical expressions of emotion.

For example, Katherine, my roommate, and I are often coming up against what we have coined “the wall of shame.” Sometimes I get too loud on the bus. It does not seem loud to me, but the Syrian women just don’t reach high volumes in public places. Maybe our below-the-knee skirts are too short. Some girls in more affluent parts of town wear sleeveless tops, but even these are conservative, leaving no cleavage or tummy exposed.

However, after the kind of careful inspection that only comes into focus after days or weeks, I notice that legs are taboo. No matter how tight the tank-top, the legs are fully covered. Pants may be tight, but no exposed calves can be seen on the streets of Damascus. I imagine that the people here are generous enough to excuse foreigners, but it is natural to want to fit in. Many gyms here are women-only, where we can express ourselves, safe havens where no man can enter. Here, the genders often exist in parallel worlds. I wanted in to the women’s world, a world invisible to many foreign women. Only gyms and beauty salons can supply this opportunity.

So I asked everyone I met where there was a ladies gym they could recommend. I asked in the Internet café, on the street and my teacher, Walah. On my first weekend day, Thursday, I searched in earnest. (Syrian weekends are Thursday and Friday. Friday is the Muslim holy day, and there is a sermon at the mosque. The call to prayer is a highlight of living in a Muslim country. Five times a day the muezzin calls out to the neighborhood over loudspeakers. )

Syrians often ask me, “Why do you study Arabic?” I wanted to be honest yet brief. Something along the lines of, “The world really is a crazy place right now. Our cultures are clashing. We think you hate us, and you think we think you are backward. I want to know that this is all not true.” Yet in casual conversation, that would not fly — too complicated for my grasp of Arabic and too pompous.

One of the reasons Arabic is so prized and precious to Arabs is because it is the language of the Koran, the Muslim holy book. They believe that Allah gave Mohammed every single word exactly, for humankind. It is beautiful and terse. Not a sound wasted, yet it stirs up beautiful imagery. The perfect how-to-manual and better than Shakespeare. The first word of the Koran is iqra, which means “read.”

The female teachers at our school wear hijabs — headscarves that cover their hair — and they wear jilbabs, which look like long raincoats made of khaki cotton, usually in tan or green. Underneath they have on long skirts with panty hose. These women have chosen to cover all but their face and their hands. It is not a daily choice. Once the decision to wear the hijab is made they cannot take it off without serious repercussions.

Some women in Syria are covered head to toe in black capes, abaya. Some even have their eyes covered, which make for awkward moments like passing in small places. While a fair number of women are dressed in tight pants, many others are more conservatively outfitted. I know that the choice to wear a veil is not merely from your mother. There are families where some sisters do and some don’t. A daughter may wear hijab and her mother not.

Still on my search, I approach the young woman who works at Benetton, of which there are quite a few in Damascus. The Benetton salesgirl wrote down four gym addresses in Arabic for me. I set off intent to find each one and choose my oasis. It was mid-day, mid-summer and that means temperatures soaring up and over 110 degrees. With the sun beating down on my head, I wanted some protection. Perhaps that is part of the reason for the head scarf. My skull baked under the sun for the next five hours.

I was lost, but I was going somewhere. It was my chance to get to know the city. I ended up walking around an army complex that was also a sports complex. It was big and green within the fence, and, I, on the outside with cars whizzing by, felt like I had decided to walk from Mt. Airy to the Spectrum. Mesbaq – mesbaq, I kept saying. It was written on my piece of paper from the Benetton girl. I tried to ask any woman that I could because it is more proper than talking to men.

Finally I was in some facility after a few hours. I was thirsty … mesbaq … I figured it out! A pool, mesbaq was a pool. I could smell it. This was a world of women without their hijabs and jilbabs and their veils. I could see the variety, flesh, age, awkwardness and silliness. The bathing suits ranged from bikini to a full body suit, which looks like a black leotard and tights with the feet cut out. There was a little store in the corner selling this array of costumes.

A Syrian woman became my translator. Someone often takes me under her wing, adopts me for a moment or an event. She explained the fees and the hours and offered for me to join her and her children. I declined and set off because I still had three more gyms (at this point one more would have been a victory) to find before bed. I was still unfathomably parched, and my feet were so hot and sore. So, back to my search, the non-pedestrian road and the sun. Luckily it was cooling down now for it was almost 6 p.m. Point, point, walk, walk.

I spoke to the man selling prickly pears and watched as his son or his apprentice shooed a cat into a courtyard with a dust broom. There are many street cats here which eat garbage and sleep under the shade of parked cars. The man with pears had a wooden cart, and he would peel the pears and put them into plastic bags for his customers. This was all that he sold. Stores here are highly specialized. The falafel guys just sell falafel (10 Syrian lira, 20 cents) and three kinds of soda. The chicken shwarma guy just sells chicken shwarma.

The gym was called the Youth Club. I had literally passed it four hours earlier but did not think it pertained to me. I am surely no youth! A woman with a track suit and veil greeted me in perfect English. I was pleased by her appearance. The track suit comforted me. People I know wear track suits. She seemed sporty. I could relate to that. Her English was excellent. Here people always sound slightly proper in English, they say things like, “If you please,” and “You are most welcome.”

In the front was a gym with women’s hours, plenty of them, but she led me back to the belly dancing class. There were two studios — one where an aerobics class was starting and the belly dancing class. The music was blaring, Habbeeebthi (my love), ghelbi (my heart), hayathi (my life) echoed through the room. Girls giggled. Some stood holding their friends. A woman waiting for her aerobics class drifted in and started to dance. She was graceful, happy and we all stood around clapping to the rhythm of the music. Individual dancers will sort of take the floor in this kind of dancing. It is like getting in the circle. The teacher was wearing high heels and a scarf tied low around her waist. I remembered this accessory from Kuwait.

I knew I’d be back. I found what I didn’t know I was looking for: music, dancing, laughs and sexy moves. Who wouldn’t come back for this? I left the Youth Club excited even though I physically had walked through the desert for six hours with a mere sip of water. I pulled out Katherine’s map near shred now from overuse. Satanae, the woman in the track suit, came out and offered me a ride home. Turns out she and her family live near me. By dinner time I was ready for bed. And all was well in Damascus!

TO BE CONTINUED