and then our exile

inti batteekha! ("you're a watermelon!") (Noor)

inti weirdo. (Ibrahim)

...there was some insultfest going on last night, and these were my favourite.

Random---
My experience of Syria so far is pretty much limited to Damascus. Numerous people are asking for observations and erudite commentary and all that. What i see--
that this society is drifting to destruction. That reactionary movements exist, but are limited. That Amerikkka is hated, but is swallowed with the cigarette smoke and fashion magazines--that people try to isolate its cultures from its politimilitary, which isn't really feasible.
i've tried posting twice before, to say only that the moon is full and bright o'er the cliffs surrounding this city, but it never got through.

This is my ninth day here, and i'm sitting here trying to think of how in the dunya i could throw down some syllables which might capture some aura, to throw some whiff of this air-conditioned room of computers over to the Other Side (double entendre. yar.). Not that it's any Silk-Road frankincense-and-myrrh (Zacharia in front of an o'erflow'd garbage can: "smell the odours of my country.") aureole, but just that...normalcy has twists, that i would...absorb.

Arabic. People speak Arabic. On the other side of the worlde, they don't. There are various places people might go here to study (www.ou.edu/ssa), the three main options being Abu Nour / the university / private lessons. i'm starting to understand what everyone who went to Cairo meant, about the private teacher thing being the king of the class, but khair...the pace at Abu Nour is slower, but the environment is beautifuller; the university has a decent course, except that it's bloody expensive and the environment is ironic--it's in the "Kulliatul Adab", the faculty of arts/humanities, except the word "adab" is twisted--few idealistic social norms are observed, to put it gently. This specific course is inhabited by many Swedish women and a lot of Amerikkkans, all of whom are from Kansas City or San Diego. Nice enough people, but i myself found it very...ajeeb, that i saw some beta who would look more at home in a suit in New York City, yabbering in fluent Fusha. (Fusha being classical Arabic, as opposed to the colloquial.)
Anyhow, i'm at the university for the first month, at least, with classes starting tomorrow. Sunday, 9am. i took the placement test three days ago, got 44/100, throwing me into level 4 of 7. Which is approximately right, except that i am lopsided in the language, knowing more grammar than vocabulary. But it grows, w'alhamdulillah.

The GHobbits are deathly afraid of AIDS, throwing anyone with HIV into some island village. At least, that's what Zacharia told me. And all visitors must take a blood test. i don't have to go there. tabarakAllah.

The big news of here is that Shaikh Ahmad Kuftaro died two days ago. Inna lillah... w'Allahu yarhamhu.
Kind of on the same note, yesterday at Jum'ah in the du'a after the khutbah (prayer after sermon of Friday congregational prayer), they were all going on about the GrandeHobbit, and how he is this and this and how they prae for him this and that, at which i started twinging out. "Vhat the flip"? Because they weren't exactly asking for liberation. And afterwards i asked Khaled of this, and he informed me that if they didn't do so, the imam would be in hot water which is very hot.

The society is corrupt--eg, traffic police pull beoble over for no reason whatsoever to be paid off with 700 lira. And aren't resented--they don't get paid enough by the government, i'm told, and have to feed their families somehow.

The spontaneousnosebleeds of pasttimes have return'ed thrice. Karma-type reminders.

i've got 7 GMail invites again.

Email me, people.

~

Damascus. Syria. Dimashq. Shaam.
i sit at on a red velvet office chair, the floor is dusty marble, the screen is smudged and white. Over the quiet rumbles of conversation in differing languages i can hear recitation of al-Qur'an from the Abu Nour loudspeakers. The sky is made of concrete here, a sweltering sun at midday. People living in this polis range from 1.7million to 3million, depending on what estimate you breathe. The blatant here is extremely blatant, if only because of the contrast, the walking history one is externally conscious of--that it shocks me all the more, where the same thing in Canadada wouldn't arouse any comment whatsoever. Waging cultural jihad? It reminds me of Bernard Lewis, that he *is* right about one thing, that the main thrust against Western domination (though he wouldn't posit it in such terms) would come from what Mike was quoting at one point--the Fifth Estate, the rogue column. From the window here i can see piles of cardboard boxes, broken and crumbling--papers spilling out. On the other side of the hall, the khawateen's internetroom. 35 lira for one hour.

Rukn ad-Din, Masakin Beirzeh, al-Hajar al-Aswad, Saulihiyyah--the parts of the city are disjointed in my mind. Abu Shaker and the best strawberry-banana milkshakes this side of the Rockies, KhaledSh with the wildest tales this side of 1850--sitting in a miekro talking about Tafseer and Muhammad Asad with Zacharia--cake at 3am--having Qasim talk to me for two hours about the people in his class in Canada and marriage and the 9yearold life--a big red van and the hilarity of unstoppable bargainage--the continuity of Embassy Life, pictures of PM^2 on a sterile wall--developing photographs from home, seeing Usman in beautybeauty, ownself with fascism--the forms of individuals, that there are those who are sucked in, those who are firm, those who are blind... that memories are fading in the face of this sun, while little things recall a multiverse, even while the immediate is in raw colour.

Tint-hints of a lot of Beyond.

~

With Ahmad al-T i went to the Masjid-e-Ummawi & Salahuddin's tomb, etc. Felt uncomfortable. ....but now Khaled has told me he was waiting for me to finish, all while i was typing while i saw he was busy--a smile, and some wasted time.

But nonetheless. Wasalam.