Syrian Border Blues

Lebanon is small—about four hour's drive from bottom to top, maybe two or three across. Briefly, in the early nineties, people were allowed to walk up to the fence at the southern border and look across at Israeli occupied lands. Our mother took us one day and we talked through the metal links to an Arab couple on the other side. But then there was a commotion, as some orthodox Jews came up behind them and some men standing behind us got angry, threw things.

That was the day we visited the old Israeli prison, which had recently become a tourist attraction. The place is hazy in my memory and as we were driving towards what seemed to be nothing but more brownish fields and forgotten trees, the gray buildings materialized from nothing. And we got out of our car and walked into them, from cell to cell and office to field. There was nothing there and no one, but us. That place is not open to the public any more, either. (And might have even been bombed by Israel last summer, according to bits and pieces of information on the 'net.)

Lebanon's western border is the Mediterranean, much of the coastline devastatingly polluted by sewage and by oil spills that occurred during last summer's war.

North and east, Lebanon is surrounded by Syria. There are a few roads that can take you into that much larger country. But, because of various tensions, highlighted recently by fighting going on at the northern Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr al-Bared, only one road into Syria is open, the Beirut-Damascus highway.

Just a few days ago, my father, my cousin, my sister, and I--all U.S. passport holders--were flying across it, in a decrepitly beautiful 70's Chrysler, navigated by a driver we hired in Beirut. We didn't have visas to get into Syria yet and were not sure whether we would make it to our intended destination.

The visas—for our intended purpose of 48 hours of tourism—would have cost us $100 a piece in America. I had gone on my own two years ago and it had taken 10 minutes and $12 to get me across the border. We were hoping for a similar scenario, but we had heard since arriving in Lebanon a few days prior that it wasn't that easy any more. We were told that the border officers would have to send a request to Damascus and wait for a response as to whether we were allowed in their country—and this could take two hours…five hours…seven hours. No way of knowing. We tried to get at why this was only true of U.S. passport holders. Most people said they didn't know, but it seemed that the situation had changed after last summer's war with Israel. Syria ultimately blamed America for that event, and, as repudiation, Syria would treat Americans trying to get into their country with some small degree of the bureaucracy that Americans treat Syrians in the opposite situation.

We exited Lebanon with no difficulty and breezed through the no-man's-land before Syria's border with hopes of being in Syria in time for an early lunch. At the Syrian side, the driver asked me to head into the office with him to talk to the Syrian officers. I answered a few questions:

"We are tourists."

"We are Americans, born Americans."

"My mother is Lebanese."

"I am a student."

"My father is retired. He was a diplomat."

They smiled at me, tapped at the keyboards of their dusty computers and told us to wait. I went back outside to the car and reported what little happened. We sat, reading, talking, and then a couple of hours had gone by. I willed away the thought that we might not get through, that we'd go back to Beirut and my mom and her sisters would titter over us:

"Oh, my gosh! They didn't let you in. Oh, you didn't want to go to dusty, dirty, old Damascus anyway…"

And then we got restless. My sister led me out of the car and across a bulldozer's path into a tiny concrete building to a fly-infested key-hole toilet. I can't tell you much about the stink because I only breathed through my nose for a split second and it was too harrowing to describe. Then we wandered back in the direction of Lebanon,towards a duty free complex that I'd made fun of on the drive in, and certainly not expected to visit. Two Syrian guards whistled at us, called out to us as we walked towards them:

"Where are you going?" "Where are your passports?" All gruff and official.

I grinned, flirtatious: "Our passports are in the border office. We are waiting. We want to eat."

"Oh, you are students, oh, Americans, oh, yes." Easing.

"Yes."

The duty-free had a spotless bathroom and walls of cheap imported liquor and cigarettes. In the restaurant a woman made up to the Elvira-point-of-looking-scary served me an expertly grilled sandwich. As I bit into the cheese and tomato, I hoped that at that moment our visa request was being approved. We got back to the car and they were still waiting.

After three and a half hours, the car got pretty hot, and we stood outside in the shade. A man in fatigues and black shiny boots struck up a conversation with my father. I stayed away, not interested in interacting with a soldier, but when my dad hit his spoken language barrier, he called me over. The man was handsome and affable. He was Lebanese. He asked me why we wanted to go to Damascus.

To see it, I said.

He didn't quite get it, but offered: I wish we had some pull here and could help you out, but...

Don't worry, I said.

And he told me he was getting his service years out of the way, that it kind of sucked, but...

And then a similarly dressed man came up to him and dragged him away and back into the dark gray armored truck they had come in. He came back out of it with a gun--a big black thing that somehow looked like a toy on him, though of course it wasn't. He was followed by eight dour-looking men, handcuffed in pairs. He led them into the visa office with the help of his friend. Illegal Syrian workers, my dad and I guessed. They all came back out a few minutes later and got back into the truck. Our soldier glanced at us and wished us luck.

My dad and I went inside and sat on an uncomfortable wooden bench for a few minutes. We talked and decided to give up. I went to tell our driver and he flat-out refused. I agreed we'd wait another hour.

Five hours after we parked, our request went through, Lebanon became smaller and smaller behind us and we were finally on our way to Damascus.

books on the middle east

So I'm going on this trip very soon and I'm very excited about it. It'll be my first time out of America since I got back from all that time I spent in Egypt and Lebanon and I'm heading to Lebanon, Syria and Turkey with my family for two and a half weeks. Great! Yay!

I will hang out with my family and go to the beach and eat amazing home-cooked meals in Lebanon. I will smell the jasmines and walk up and down Hamra and look out the window at the Mediterranean as we zip here and there. In Aleppo, I will go the Turkish baths and have all the dirt scrubbed off of me, I will let my father lead me to sites of historical significance, and I'll stock up on olive oil soap at the old market. In Istanbul, I will wander the markets and mosques, and I will read books in cafes. Ok, so carefree Middle East vacation, right? Well, yes...but I think it might be nice to know some more before I go, especially since the Middle East is a hotbed and such. So I asked a bunch of people I know--or wrote an email and bcc'ed a bunch of people I know who I thought might be of help--what books they might recommend. The subject of the email was "the quintessential middle east book?", a query that prompted one friend to respond:

"One book? To explain the past few years? In the whole ME? You craaaazy, man. You might want to narrow your scope a li'l..."

That made me send out an addendum, which said:

"it doesn't have to be one book about the whole thing...but one book
that captures something big about part of it...it could even be a
novel..."

And that initial crazy-calling friend has yet to respond.

Other replies I've received so far include:

"Per your request, I'd recommend Tom Segev's ONE PALESTINE, COMPLETE which is
about Jews and Arabs under the British Mandate. Though it's not about
recent events per se, the book, which is quite engagingly written (put out
by Metropolitan about seven years ago) takes a complex and sweeping look at
some of the roots of what's going on today in the region. Hell, it's so
sweeping I haven't even finished yet--but I'm planning to, soon."

"K and i suggest lonely planet. rough guide is probably the better
one to find though."

"hi, both are mainly about iraq. you should recall Ajami is a master stylist but can get tedious. he is also considered an apologist for the US, but i think he represents one pole of historical thought among shia (he is one). shia across history are the more imaginative, flexible among major islamic communtities. he's trying to tell the US audeince to get used to them and accept their potential for democracy in iraq, they are not part nor will they become, unless p[erhaps the US messes up, an adjunct of iran, but rather will put their imprint implacably on iraq which the others (kurds and sunnis) can and of necessity will have to accept the space made for them as second bananas. nasr on the other hand argues a more expansive shia revival, which ajami would strongly contest (i dont know how well nasr writes). i havent read either, so i could be missing the mark. you as a reader of nyrb should already be aware of more reflective personal writings in lebanese settings and elsewhere, im just trying to point out political stuff that largely tends away from the polemic.
1)The Foreigner's Gift: The Americans, the Arabs, and the Iraqis in Iraq, by Fouad Ajami
2)The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future, by Vali Nasr"

"well a good book is
no god but god , i swear by that book
it talks about current events in the last 2 chapters i guess."

"i dont think i can think of the quintessential book. i dont read
many of these "sweep across the region" books i am afraid.

two i can recommend on palestine though:

ali abunimah's "one country" where he beautifully outlines his
argument for a one-state solution.

joseph massad's "the persistence of the palestinian question" which
is a collection of essays that trace the intellectual history of
zionism and its effects on both jews and palestinians.

i dont know if this helps. i know that neither of these are about
your destination spots. but still they are good. ali's book is a
short and readable. joseph's book is much denser but super smart in
both the arguments it makes and the range of material it draws on."

If anyone has additional thoughts, I'd love to hear them. I plan to get started just as soon as I can pull myself out from under this semester.

Pending post: the downfall of Grey's Anatomy (that doctor show on ABC), but before you have to pay for it, I urge you to check out this article in the NYT, which really hits the nail on the head about all that.