Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Stupidity Con'td

2.1 The Way to Damascus, Syria....... Next Morning (Part 2)

The car's interior was a true decoration disaster. Tens of Purple and Orange bead-strings hanged from the Car's cieling contrasting greatly with the fading red and white leather seats. The seats looked huge to me when compared to my father's Toyota. I greeted the over wieght Syrian Driver who was busy hiding several boxes of Marlboros under the driver's seat. As the car moved I looked back at home and saw my mother standing on the balcony waving goodbye to me and my trip mate, my older brother Shadi . She was a petite woman; her wide hazel sad-looking eyes seemed to glaze in the early sun light. As I watched her I remembered all the sacrifices she made for me and my brother, how she left her teaching passion to raise us. She raised us to be honest, good-hearted and compassionate... had she known what laid for us in the future she would have raised us differently.

The sound of the car's engine as it roared on the empty streets of Amman mixed with the sounds of the music played on the car's cassette system created an incomprehensible symphony of noises. Shadi, my eighteen years old brother, sat next to the driver while I shared the back seat with an old lady, who was the only other passenger on this trip.

The driver started to chitchat with my brother, asking him all range of questions ranging from the reason of our visit to Syria to my brother's opinion on cars and religion. Between cursing life and the governments for not solving the Palestinian -Israeli conflict; the driver offered several naive solutions to a spectrum of economical and political problems facing the "Great Arab Nation" as he puts it. As we drove through the valley of Baka`a on the outskirts of Amman, I started to notice the differences between the life I live in the ultra clean suburbs of west Amman, and the life in the refugee camps. Despair seemed apparent on the faces of young men and women on bus and taxi stops. Smells of lemon and orange trees that filled the valley mixed with the smells of the sewage recycling plant that neighboured it forming an awfully bad scent.
An hour later, we left the Jordanian borders and entered Syria.

The 3 kms long buffer Zone between the Jordanian border city of Ramtha and the Syrian city of Daraa' seemed endless to me. As we neared the Syrian border I started to see tens of portraits of Hafez Al Asad, along with several hundreds of Syrian flags and socialism propaganda banners. Innocently, I asked the driver "What is this all for?" The driver swiftly looked around as if being watched and started at me shouting "Shut up...idiot!" Shadi, coughed several times, his trade mark signal for me to shut up!. In that instant I realised that this is a different world, much different from what I am used to. What struck me the most, is the fear I saw in the eyes of the fifty something old driver's eyes.

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