Bashar's Party

This year, American Memorial Day fell on the day of Syria's presidential election. Bashar al-Asad was elected to another 7-year presidential term, selected by a resounding 99.9% of the electorate. We arrive in Damascus the following day. Our Lebanese driver finds us a Syrian taxi on the highway. As we drive into the city and are swallowed into the traffic of tiny Eastern European cars and ramshackle micro-buses, we stat to notice pictures of Bashar everywhere. Small portraits on car windows--often two or three per car--larger ones in storefronts, and billboards hanging on the sides of buildings. We get stuck at a traffic light. It changes three times from green to red three times and our driver tells us there is a parade, for Bashar. Later we are walking near our hotel and encounter another parade. There are people dancing in the streets and playing instruments, and holding up posters of Bashar. Even away from the dreary Cold War-era architecture of modern Damascus, in the shaded, twisty, cobbled lanes of the Old City, Bashar is everywhere. He is hanging near ancient roman columns, declaring his love for his people from the sides of food carts, and smiling at us above the doorways of quaint little cafes. The man is good-looking in a shirt-and-tie-and-moustache kind of way and in these portraits he's got eyes that follow you everywhere you go. Heading back to our hotel that first night, we hear nearby explosions. They are fireworks and all of a sudden they are all around us and light up the sky. We pass a busy street corner where fireworks are being launched in a small patch of grass. The colors explode dangerously low to the ground and we can't help but turn towards them, watch the colors explode and the light reflect of the largest portrait we've seen of Bashar yet. We walk on under a concrete awning with ten uniform pillars, each pasted with a photo of Bashar. We flip to Syrian tv in our hotel the next morning and there is Bashar, walking through various crowds of various people in various places. There he is followed by his pretty wife. There he is, holding up a baby, dripping medicine into the baby's eyes. Over dinner, Dad tells us he was trained as a dentist or an eye doctor, or something. We are the only ones in the restaurant, happily feasting on the many plates of savories in front of us, and we only notice after it's been going on for nearly half an hour that we are listening to a song, which must be on repeat. It has an electric rock beat and in constant repetition, with minor variation, a chorus of male voices sings, "We love you." They love Bashar, of course. And we joke about if one of us had our face everywhere, like that. And we wonder the same then for our own president, the infamous George W. Bush. But this isn't as funny because we almost think it would somehow be a more honest reality than the one he has created for our country now.

(Or at least it would be a more straightforward dishonesty, or something...But don't get us wrong, we are happy to be American and we enjoyed getting to know Bashar.)