Pray for Damascus!

05 Sunday May 2013

Posted by Tea-mahm in Damascus, Syria, Travel, Uncategorized, Updates

≈ 9 Comments

From Syrian Poet exiled in France – Adonis:

Trans. From Arabic: Bassam Frangieh

Tomorrow when my country sings

With love flowing from me,

I erase the blackness with my face

And become a nation for every nation

So no darkness remains in our land

And no evil remains

Thus, say, I am free

And say, you are free.

Today I saw a name on my facebook request, someone I’ve thought about from time to time over the last decade. He is in management at the hotel where we stayed in Damascus, the Al-Majed (Spelled this way on the card, Maged on the building…). It will be 10 years this November, that Shabda and I landed in Damascus as part of a peace delegation headed by Elias Amidon and his wife, Rabia.

The fact that Damascus is caught in terrible civil war breaks my heart. Damascus may be the oldest continuously occupied city in the world. World Heritage states it was founded 3400 BCE. In 2003 it felt very safe to walk around there, and I did, often alone, feeling the heady ancient qualities, as if in the protection of a wise elder.

Our hotel was near a very high-end international hotel, and I had a daily routine of buying the International Herald Tribune there then stopping for a bag of fresh greens at the open market on another street. I’d ask the kitchen to lightly boil the greens for me. My friend, who worked at Al-Majed, needs to be mentioned here. When I returned from the north earlier than our peace-group, this man, whom I will call “B,” watched out for me. One morning he took me to the Al-Assad National Library, when he learned about my interest in writing about Prophet Muhammad’s wives.

Al-Assad National Library
Damascus

What a place! Built in the 1980’s this fancy new building houses all kinds of literature connected to the “ancestral cultural lineage,” 9 floors (two underground) and 40000 titles. B talked to the guard and convinced him that even though I was an American, he would vouch for me, that I needed entry, and here was my passport. (That was the era of Syria named as part of “The Axis of Evil” by President Bush.) I recall the place as vast and new, with a fountain and at least one cuneiform tablet on the wall. Wait. A Cuneiform Tablet just hanging on the wall? The first historical reference in the world was languaged in that writing on a tablet. Here is a good quote: “The tablets give a background into the world in which the Old Testament grew up.” [Researcher Ted Lewis June 1996, Biblical Archeologist.]

This library containes rare books in many languages and precious manuscripts – the pride of Syria. There is a map room. (Sadly, I never made it back to see detailed maps of 7th century Arabia…) After B left me there to pick his child up from school, I looked for someone with English. I asked how to obtain a stack of books on my subject, to sit and look through. She pointed to a long hallway with a fifties-style office of the chief official who approved and issued passes for the reading room. As-salamu ‘alaykum, I said, English? Wa-lakum as-salam, he replied, Française? And that was it. Me speaking my terrible un-conjugated French, my dismal Française, begging for a three-day card, as if my literary life depended on it. I think he smiled. I know he signed the card which I have framed and include here. It hangs over my desk.

Al-Assad Library Card with my name on it!

I spent the next two hours blissfully reading stories like that of the eclipse that happened right after Muhammad’s son Ishmael died, writing down sequences (they are before me on this pad: s27 614, outline of bio…. S14 809, Khadija, Mother of the Orphans….). I left as the great library closed its doors early, since it was Ramadan. I remember the chair I sat in, the look of the director’s desk, the cuneiform tablet. All thanks to B.

The night before I got a call from someone who said he was calling from the American Embassy and they were evacuating Americans from Damascus — within the hour. He said there would be a helicopter on the roof. I’d seen that roof. B, is this you??? Great peals of laughter. It was – a joke. At that moment I felt at home in Syria –– and I made a friend. Ten years have passed.

Al-Majed Hotel in the snow, and my friend’s son

So here is the conversation I had on facebook.

Me: B, is this really you from the Al-Maged in 2003? Good to be in touch.

B. oh yes, Thank God , you talked to me. The hotel is only for Syrians now fleeing from the war since we are still a bit safe area.

Me: My prayers are for you to be safe! I have such a good memory of the telephone joke you played when I was there. Also how good it was of you to take me to the library!

B. God bless you Thanks You don’t know our needs of some nice words like this…

Tonight there was a video of an explosion and bombings that were happening in Damascus. One way we can connect with these terrible things in a healthy way is to see the face of a friend living there. To have him or her in our prayers, to walk that tightrope between obsessing rage-fully about injustice and putting the whole thing out of our mind and heart –– because it is too painful. I invite you, my friends and readers to send a prayer to Damascus, to B and his son, his mother, and his wife, to the spirit of protection and PEACE.

<> B and his mother, may they be safe and well . <>

(for more on Damascus Peace Journey 2003, see Damascus Journal part I and Damascus Journal part II here on Completeword.)

<> <> <>

Damascus, and wishes for peace in Syria

24 Tuesday May 2011

Posted by Tea-mahm in Damascus, peace pilgrimage, Sufi, Syria

≈ 2 Comments

It’s sad to consider Syria and how it is thrown into the news these days. The country comes across as a place of oppression and cruel dictatorship, a place where the USA has “invoked sanctions.” Along with many other countries in the region, the young people are burning with a desire to be a modern democracy – a painful process. To me, Syria is like a venerable great-grandparent, a country containing one of the oldest continually occupied cities in the world. I want to honor this place and the people who were friendly and kind to me.

I fell in love with Damascus in 2003. I was alone in that city, alone in my hotel, as my

with Shabda at Ibn Arabi's shrine

husband and the group stayed at Dar Meir Musa a couple hours north in the mountains. But I felt at home here. My husband, Shabda, was on a TV show like 20/20. One man with a mop stopped me in the hall. “Salaams. I see your wife on TV!” He meant “husband.” English is a rare language here. I felt safe. It’s like this: if I set my handbag down on the busy sidewalk and walked away, someone would grab it and run after me, calling in French and Arabic, eager to say that they are returning this to me! But that was before the city was flooded with Iraqi refugees in the last 5 years. Still, you could NEVER do that in New York or Rome. In any Western city. My favorite memories are strolling the streets after the Ramadan fast-breaking meal among the families and baby strollers. At about 10 pm it felt like a festival. One evening I bought a warm nightgown with the word “dream” set in small crystals on the practical grey fabric. I still wear it – 8 years later – and dream of Damascus.

Prayer for Syria 2003

Let there always be sky

choreography;

pigeon flocks in formation

Brown, cream and pinto,

wings sunlit, dull,

then colored again –

wings above Damascus, lifting my eyes

higher than the minarets.

The flock comes apart – bird by bird

onto the coop below my window

while the world of Ramadan breaks fast and

clusters of girls and women

pressed into gray winter coats,

scarf-headed, more modest than pigeons, stroll souk

and sidewalk.

Syrian Times tucked under my arm,

I pass through groups of Saudi oilmen, slow and easy on the sidewalk, clicking

beads in the morning sun.

Brown cloth falls from their wide shoulders,

lifts in the breeze of the revolving door

of the Cham Palace Hotel,

where the concierge sits at her desk, flipping

her dark hair absently with a gold pen.

III

In the bird market, pigeon buyers

assemble an all white

or black collection; match feathers to a herd of goats. Chickens

have learned to stay put,

tethered by kitchen string above

a box filled with rabbits whose soft

feet never touch the floor.

What am I tethered to, and with whom do I weep,

soar and turn? Muslim women here correct me

in the saint’s shrine; they are trying to

squeeze me into the only flock they know.

I say: let Syrian women be safe from harm.

May they find themselves on sidewalks

decked in winter coats vivid as tumeric, coats

colored lemon rind or pomegranate juice.

Parting from this city with its ancient trees, sweet

with songbirds, we arc above the earth

rising 37000 feet over the pole.

Let there be connectedness and peace – a wish held by

all who fly – between the ground we rise from,

and the place we land. <>

With regard to the “Arab World,” Chris Hedges https://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/05/02?print writes: …So I was in the Middle East in the days after 9/11. “We had garnered the empathy of not only most of the world, but the Muslim world who were appalled at what had been done in the name of their religion… And the tragedy was that if we had the courage to be vulnerable, if we had built on that empathy, we would be far safer and more secure today than we are.”

If you want to read more about MY ADVENTURES IN SYRIA, go to SEARCH under Tamam’s links on screen right and type in: “Syria.”

Thoughts and a poem on the Middle East

27 Sunday Mar 2011

Posted by Tea-mahm in Poetry, Sally Magdy Zahran, Syria

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Coptic Christians protect Muslims as they pray in Cairo

This photo was originally posted on January 25 by Nevine Zaki, and went viral. Here it has been cropped and the circle of protection is photoshopped. It is a moment to dwell on. Cairo, where the factions joined with the intention of a pro-Democracy outcome. Coptic Christians and Muslims have been part of the same family since Mariya-the-Copt gave birth to a son, Ibrahim on January 24, 632. His father was Prophet Muhammad. Ibrahim lived for almost 2 years, joining the two families.

It is moments like this that give hope as the old order in the Middle East feels increasing pressure from the youth and unemployed.

The Cork ~ by Tamam Kahn

The Arab world is

a fist on the cork

of the bottle.

The young twist, yank at the cork

make small popping sounds

anticipating the foamy spillage

– like Egypt and Tunisia –

dangerous and heady,

street blood and libation

mixed,

pro-government crowd in Syria

while each regime

grips

the neck,

towel

over cork

hold-

ing

on for dear life,

looking

with dread

at TV mobs

as each country’s unemployed

shake the bottle. Shake and shake.

Youth on facebook, in the square;

they press thumbs against

the small cylinder

as voices rise.

Everyone knows – God knows –

drinking bubbly is forbidden

in Arab countries. <> <>

<> May the people of Syria, Yemen, Bahrain, Jordan, and other places of unrest be safe! <>

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Category Archives: Syria

Pray for Damascus!

Damascus, and wishes for peace in Syria

Thoughts and a poem on the Middle East