Maysaloon - ميسلون

On Hiatus

2019-12-07T12:38:00.000+00:00

That’s right, this blog is on hiatus at the moment. There is a bank of emotional and intellectual ammunition that has been spent and I don’t know if it will ever come back. What I do know is that I had the opportunity to write and comment upon what is likely to have been the formative political and social event of my life - the Syrian Revolution.

What the future will decide upon the events of early 2012 is yet to be known, and whilst the vicious battles on the streets and cities of that country have slowly quietened, the online ones between those who are fighting to preserve the memory of this revolution, and the blancmange apologists who fight the corner of tyranny, are only just beginning. That is a battle I will have to bow out of. I’m writing a lot of fiction these days, and it’s terrible stuff, yet immensely satisfying.

You can continue to follow me on Twitter where I will be rabble rousing and causing mischief. Or you might, by happy chance, find one of my books in a bargain bin or charity shop one day. If you do, I hope you enjoy it 😊

"Beautiful Syria": Thoughts and Prayers

2018-04-14T00:02:00.002+01:00

I'm so angry with the lies, with the confusion and deceit that surrounds everything about Syria. People who have no business talking about it, about my home city, Damascus, about the country of my parents and grandparents, Syria, pontificating and deciding that they know best. I'm tired of other Syrians, too, the ones who sit back and suddenly pray to Allah to "protect Syria", but only when it seems like the American bombs will come. Nobody I know of in Damascus cared one iota when the Ghouta gas attacks happened, nobody sent pictures on their Whatsapp, and their Viber, and their Tango, or talked about the dead children lying in the arms of their dead parents. They just sent each other smug texts saying that "it's over" in Douma. Like someone had just taken a can of Piff-Paff and killed a roach infestation. But now, suddenly, we're expected to "Pray for Damascus"

There's someone I know, or maybe that I thought I knew. She's never posted a thing about Syria in years. At least nothing that I can recall. But yesterday, of all days, she decided that beautiful Damascus was on her mind. I'm shocked and angry, but I've learned over the last seven years not to get into discussions about Syria because there is no point in trying to change the mind of someone who is pathologically incapable of moral outrage unless it's in acceptable, clearly delimited channels. Palestine. Iraq. These are nice and easy causes for the children of the old Arab bourgeoisie. A polite clap and salute for the athlete that refuses to wrestle an Israeli athlete, a quick boycott of Marks & Spencer or Wonderwoman, a status change on their Facebook for Land Day, and maybe the odd picture of Jerusalem are enough to fulfill the quota of daring political activism for these bright-eyed scions of the great Arab families abroad. Mention Iraq and a well-rehearsed litany of the many crimes of Bush and Blair can be reeled off, an honourable mention of Abu Ghreib, and of course the rise of ISIS. All of these tragedies that have befallen the Arab world, we are assured knowingly, can be traced back to shadowy basements in government buildings in Tel Aviv and Washington. And I don't doubt that some are. Yet mention the names of Saddam Hussein or Assad and you hear crickets and a polite silence.

When it comes to talking about Syria, people like me are told we are "too emotional", that we're not seeing some kind of big picture. Of course Assad is bad, they'd argue, but apparently, it would be far worse if he was removed. So the discussion moves comfortably back to how terrible the Americans are, how awful their invasion of Iraq is, and how morally outrageous the occupation of Palestine is. Gotta remember to buy that Palestinian olive oil. Very important. Never mind about nerve agents and barrel bombs, about Russian jets and Iranian martyr squads, about Shiite militias recruited from as far afield as Afghanistan and dragged all the way to Syria to fight and die for some guy they don't even know. Seven years. Seven years and not a peep out of these people. Well, that's not entirely true. Back when ISIS was the only thing being mentioned in the news there were prayers for Syria then, and tears for the old dead cities in the desert and the empty temples that ISIS decided to tear down. There were tears for civilization, for coexistence, but today there's no mention of coexistence. There's no mention of the green buses that are taking entire Syrian families and dumping them up north in Idlib, in a place they probably had never been to in their entire lives, uprooting them from the land that had nurtured them, from the places where their ancestors are buried, to live as strangers and refugees in somewhere that might as well be another planet for them.

Good luck getting a visa or finding a job or renting a decent place for you and your family to live. Good luck. Get on that green bus, and leave your home under the watchful gaze of a scruffy looking grunt in a uniform who flicks you the bird as you're bused away from your entire life because you happened to live in an area that the Syrian government decided was enemy territory. Good luck and fuck you very much. You're not the kind of Syrian that elicits sympathy from these Arab patriots, sitting smugly in their living rooms praying for Syria. No prayers and tears for you. Unless you get killed by an American bomb accidentally. Then we'd get the sighs, and these condescending patriots would lament the state of the Arab world, and the unjustness of American tyranny and they'd say their prayers for "beautiful Syria" and remember the lovely summer holidays they spent there once.

Memories of Home...

2017-09-06T14:06:00.001+01:00

Dusk...
Red earth...
The sound of a water pump in the distance...
A dog barking...
A melodious call to prayer echoes across the valley...
The pool is still...
The last traces of the golden sun vanish behind a purple mountain...

Vanished Worlds

2017-06-19T11:47:00.000+01:00

I had a vivid memory come to mind the other day. It was of a winter night, with a stove in a house in Damascus covered in chestnuts and orange skin peels. It is winter, there are people visiting. The smell of coffee is in the air. The house is long gone, and so are the people in the memory. Some dead, while the others are scattered around the globe.

I sometimes wish I'd spent more time taking pictures of the street we lived in, of the neighbours, of the people we lived with and shared happy times with. It's all different now, all changed, and I accept in my heart that it can never come back. The thing about those times was that they felt so mundane, and so boring. A bit like the present moment as I sit typing this in an office and pretend to look busy with work. I heard a quote by an unattributed Russian writer once, "we fear the future, which quickly becomes the present that we hate, and then the past that we miss". That's so true, and it sums up the human condition so well.

When the revolution started I used to feel sad for that vanished world, and I do miss it, but there are other worlds for me, and different futures to create. We're not meant to live in the past. The future isn't written yet, and there is still so much more to live for.

My Thoughts on the US Airstrike against Assad

2017-04-08T09:28:00.000+01:00

There is something that is happening right now, something that most people aren't talking about, either because they haven't noticed it yet or, like the Syrian regime, they are ignoring and at the same time trying to kill it. Emerging from the cinders of a country, Syrians are developing a common sense of identity and a new way of looking at the world. They are, in effect, becoming a new country. Whether it is a new Syria is a different question. The old country, with its corrupt Baathist-socialist legacy and the politicisation of all aspects of life and the corresponding ideological baggage, is now giving way to a country where being an exile underpins your sense of national identity, and necessitates pragmatism.

These Syrians don't need expensive post-grad diplomas and degrees in journalism and international relations to understand that the US strike was in their interest, even if the motives behind it were not. These are the same Syrians who celebrated the election victories of the AKP and President Erdogan in Turkey, and who breathed a collective sigh of relief when the coup attempt against President Erdogan failed, or who cheer on when the Israeli Airforce attacks the Assad regime and its Hezbullah allies.

When Syrians take these positions, they are not interested in domestic Turkish or American entanglements and they are not interested in tying the Syrian revolution with the Palestinian struggle against Israeli occupation. They are interested solely in dealing with the dictator whose family has had its boot on their necks for the past forty years. They are, in effect, expressing as Syrians a nascent national interest, their national interest. We should probably listen to what these people have to say, instead of ignoring them or trying to change their point of view.

Mr "Fake News"

2017-02-11T17:42:00.001+00:00

There are a lot of things that rile me about Bashar al Assad, but none more than his manner when speaking to members of the press. In a recent interview with Michael Isikoff, from Yahoo News, he sat like a well behaved school boy, ready to respond to all the questions he was given. In what could have been a curveball, Isikoff called Assad's bluff when he was asked, "Do you have a picture?" Isikoff did. When he saw the picture, he asked Isikoff if he knew who those people in the picture were, if he knew where it was taken, and whether it had been photoshopped. He had the temerity to chide the interviewer for not "verifying" a picture before presenting it in front of an audience, and that kind of sums up Assad's approach to all interviews. It's clear that he's coached, that he's been drilled endlessly on how to answer all the difficult questions, that he's done his 'homework'. And he does so with all the clinical precision of his supposed training as an ophthalmologist. He uses the latest buzzword, "fake news" in one of his answers, and sidesteps completely the fact that there, in his hand, he was holding a picture showing the handiwork of the regime his father bequeathed to him. In his hand he saw his own countrymen, other Syrians, innocent people, who had been rounded up and processed in the industrial torture and murder machine that works in the shadows, away from mobile footage and, unlike ISIS, doesn't need flashy production values. There is no audience for the handiwork done in Assad's prisons. There are only numbers and quotas, as we saw in the recent Amnesty report stating that over thirteen thousand Syrians had been murdered in the regime's prisons since 2011.

This is the 'new' type of politics that is being unleashed on the world. It's the same old politics we saw in the dirtiest days and nights of the Cold War, but with an additional twist. It is packaged slickly for a consumerist society that can have everything it wants except freedom. This is the technocratic, dictatorial nightmare world of the Putins, of the "Chinese Way" that Assad once admired, the tech-savvy world of the Iranian Ayatollah's who can ruthlessly crush a protest movement and match it point for point on internet savvy and tech know-how. In this cowardly new world, politics is theatre, even more so than anything the most corrupt and inept Western democracy could ever come up with. There are play-actors for every role, from President to opposition figure or intellectual. Everybody can act their role perfectly. The only thing wrong with all of this is that none of it is real. Assad is not a real president. Syria does not have real elections. There is no real army, no real police, not even a real education system. It is a country of cardboard cut-outs that set the background scenery for an even bigger national myth of greatness and resistance to anti-imperialism. In this backwards, clumsy and childish impersonation of a functioning country, a tall lanky man sits atop a pyramid of violence, murder and lies, and tells the world that everything is fine, and that the problem isn't with him, but with it.

Just want to "Be"

2017-01-29T21:30:00.000+00:00

The world is so big, and yet these days it seems so small. Everywhere you go you need papers. Little bits of information that say where you have to be, who you are, what you do. We're supposed to be defined into little easy boxes that can be checked off. Some of the boxes are OK, acceptable. Others, not so much. But the worst thing to be, I think, is nothing. To not have a box that can be checked. Then the man behind the counter at the airport, or the checkpoint, or the harbour office, or whatever else kind of barrier is out there, scratches his chin and hums and haws. He makes some calls, asks some questions. A superior is needed. Someone to think for him. Someone who will take the responsibility because the uniform he wears isn't supposed to represent competence, only authority. You're an irregular, an abnormality, an undesirable, and so you're a problem. Not the stinking world, not the man in the uniform, not the clueless person typing up your life into a form on a computer and then telling you that you're not good enough, no, none of that. You are the problem.

Papers, papers, everywhere. Today they're electronic. We just fill out little forms, wait for the hour glass to stop spinning, and then we get a decision that's going to shape our lives forever. You can't click back, you can't undo anything. That's it. Your name has gotten on the wrong list. No explanation, no answers, no reason. You're done for, Mister. I'm sick, sick, sick of it. It's dehumanising. It's impersonal. It screams against every instinct inside of me. I feel like a gorilla rattling the bars of a prison he can't understand.

All my life, growing up as someone who doesn't "fit" any of the boxes, who doesn't have an easy answer to simple questions like "where are you from?", I've felt like I need to worry about what people will think about me, about how they see me. Every action I do feels like something I need to think about and be able to explain. Would it give off the wrong meaning? Would the fact that the one time I decide to grow a beard again, simply for the hell of it, mark me in the wrong circles as an Islamist? Or would the fact that I want to go out with my friends and have a good time, that I kiss a woman I'm not married to passionately mean I'm not Muslim enough? Or maybe that I'm an acceptable type of Muslim?

I don't want to go to a mosque on Friday and listen to a shit sermon. I don't want to go to prayers with anyone. I don't want to stand with anyone. I'll read the Quran when I want, if I want. If I pray, I'll pray alone. If I drink alcohol or don't eat halal meat, then I'm not interested in your raised eyebrows. I don't want your judgments or approval. I don't want your questions. I'm not here to satisfy anybody's curiosity. Fuck you. It's my business. Can I not just exist without being judged and having my every move watched? Is it too much to ask to just be left alone? To be able to get on a plane without a worry and be with the people I care about? Or travel and see the world when I want to? To be part of humanity? To be able to say what I want without fear of - something? To think what I want to think? Feel how I want to feel? Make my own mistakes? Is that too much to ask? Do I have to constantly be expected to pick sides? Do I need people to constantly be speaking for me? Deciding what's best for me? Deciding how it is that things will be? Can I not just be a human being? Is it too much to ask to just Be?

Somewhere, Sometime...

2016-12-20T08:44:00.001+00:00

When the tragedies keep piling up it's easy to think that they are all a series of disconnected events, happening in a void and without any connection. But the misfortunes, the horrors, the calamities, stretch into the past like beads on a string. Hindsight is treated like a dirty word, but I find myself wondering whether all these people who had been walking about their daily lives six years ago wouldn't still be here if things had turned out differently. If, instead of shooting people, Assad said he was going to reform the country, if he said there would be elections at some level, if he stopped the brutality, the torture, maybe even the corruption, that so many had rose up against, then many of these people would be with us today.

This morning I find myself thinking about Hamza al Khatib, about a man I saw in a video clip with his jaw blown off by a sniper, about Marie Colvin, about the Russian and Turkish pilots who had been shot down, about Anthony Shadid, about Father Paulo, about Mustafa Shadoud and Ghiath Mater, and even about the Russian ambassador, and about countless others. All of them would be alive today, all of them would be with their families and loved ones instead of under the ground. And all for what? For power? For money? For history? It's so ugly and futile, so exhausting to try and grasp for reasons blindly. Everything's just a big nothingness, and it swallows us all in the end.

When this is over, and it will be, I fear for those who are left. For the bitterness and anger and the broken lives that are going to be left behind. Maybe some of us can hold on to an idea of what it meant like to be Syrian and live a normal life. To remind others of the simple pleasures of friendship over a meal and a drink. Of an afternoon coffee. Of a late night spent talking, and smoking a nargeeleh while playing card games. Of concerts in a park. Of busy and crowded markets. Of love at first sight from a fleeting glimpse through the crowd. Of the worry of exams and the joy of a summer free from school. All these things we had once, and I hope we find again. Somewhere and sometime when this is over.

Enjoy the Show

2016-12-14T08:47:00.001+00:00

There's something voyeuristic about the way people are talking about Aleppo. All of a sudden the city has become a hot topic, and people want to hear about the suffering and anguish that "normal" people are going through. They want every sigh, and every tear, to be recorded and shared, and reshared, and retweeted. They want the sad emoticons on Facebook to pile up. They want real emotion, real drama. In short, they want to be entertained and the people of Aleppo are stars in their own terrifying movie.

Nobody cared for Aleppo for three years. Nobody was interested in something so depressing and horrid, but all of a sudden it's hot news. All of a sudden the news people want to interview the victims, and want to hear the explosions and gunfire. Now, after three years, they want moving images and pictures of the same ruins that were there last year, and the year before that. It's the same place, and the same people, but overnight, now that we know that this tragedy could be ending soon, we realise just how much we're going to miss it.

The point about Aleppo seems not to be that there are real people suffering at the hands of a dictatorship that is backed by one of the most deadly airforces in the world. It's not that we care about genuine reform in Syria, or about the children of Aleppo. It's that people will miss the show. Aleppo is a long running drama series that is now coming to a close. You might not have watched all the episodes, but you kept tabs on what was happening and could safely drop in and out of the story whenever it was convenient for you. Now that the network is about to axe the show, and the finale is finally upon us, everybody is pulling up their chairs, heating up the popcorn and watching the drama unfold live. So, World, get your popcorn ready, take your phone off the hook, and enjoy the show.

One Day In Damascus Airport

2016-10-17T22:13:00.002+01:00

I remember arriving with my mother and brothers at Damascus airport sometime in the early nineties. It was a horribly depressing place. My mother was dealing with some paper work so I sat on our luggage, staring at people as they went by. There was a boy who spoke English with an American accent. I think his parents were dealing with paperwork too. We love paperwork in Syria. Without it, things would simply work, and that wouldn't do. No, paperwork kept the illusion of order, and discipline.

The boy was running around behind the columns playing some sort of game. Then he turned and yelled to his parents. They looked back to see what the matter was, and he was pointing at the floor and laughing. "There's kaka. There's kaka on the floor" he said. "Well leave it alone and come here" they replied.

He was right. Earlier, I'd noticed as we passed that there was a piece of shit behind one of the pillars. I suppose it's something strange when I think about it today, but that's one of the things you got used to seeing in Syria back then.

There was also an Indian woman with her two children who was trying to find her way through the bureaucracy. She asked a porter for directions but he continually ignored her and walked on. "Excuse me," she insisted, "Hello? Could you tell me..."

"Sorry!" he finally bellowed at her in his Syrian accented English. People turned to look for a fraction of a second and then everybody went about their business. The woman stood there with a stunned look on her face. He said it like it was the only word he knew, and it probably was. I couldn't help but feel sorry for the poor woman, for how embarrassed, shocked, and sad she must have felt to be yelled at like that in front of her two children. This was supposed to be an international airport. I was half tempted to get up and apologise to her, but when you're a kid you just stare dumbly at things that are happening because you're not sure about what you've just seen.

We got the paperwork sorted and left, and that was our first day in Syria for the summer holidays. There was "kaka" behind a pillar and a poor Indian woman being yelled at by a porter who couldn't speak English.

The Most Beautiful City I'll Never See

2016-10-02T21:40:00.000+01:00

Once, before the bad days, I had the chance to visit Aleppo and I never took it, something that I now bitterly regret. Perhaps one day, when this is all past us, and by some miraculous coincidence, I may walk through its narrow streets and think back to these days. But it wouldn't be the same city. The stones might get put back together again in a bastardised version of what it once was, but I'll always know this isn't the same place. There'll be a spiritual scar that will take a long time to heal. One day there will be a generation of people who will have forgotten about all this, about us, and about what we saw and felt, and the suffering of this time will simply be a paragraph in a book. Something that happened a long time ago, but faded from the collective memory because the present pushes with it a thousand little problems that are more important than the memory of a time from before their grandparents - from our present.

I know that what's in the past will stay in the past, but as I sat on a train today thousands of miles away I thought of this city, of the space it occupies in my mind, and of chances not taken. I felt myself taken back to that internal world where people who are long gone still live. That place I can only visit unexpectedly. When I sit with a group of people my mind sometimes drifts far away. It doesn't take much. A word, a smell, a phrase, and I'm transported there, to that place nobody can reach. I call it the Dream Place. And while everyone carries on talking, I nod and politely pretend to listen to them, while my feet wander through the streets of a far away city. I'm on the train, and now I'm in the Dream Place. Things were easier back then, before the bad times, when I could get on a big bus, not like the "microbuses" in Damascus, and put my headphones on to listen to music as the driver hurtles dangerously through the traffic. I close my eyes and try to ignore the uncomfortable seats and the dryness of my throat from the air conditioning. Every now and then, I would look out of the window and see the landscape slowly change from city to suburb and then to the odd village or town. They flash by in a series of images as we move from the familiar to the unfamiliar. I close my eyes again. The journey goes by mercifully fast. I'm in Aleppo now and my cousin greets me. I know that I am still in Syria but it is both familiar and alien to me. The delicate Aleppine accent, so strange to me and yet so exotic, fills my ears. It is as if the people of this city want to make a statement. We are here, they say, and this is our city and it has always been here and always will be.

I'm tired but I hunger for more and the city beckons. The sun is setting and I lose myself in the narrow streets of the old town. I enter the covered bazaar and the lights are on for all the shops now. Their owners welcome me, spreading their arms over a thousand and one containers of brightly coloured spices and herbs and grains. In other stores, roll upon roll of delicate fabrics fit for a princess are spread out for all to see. Copper pots, pans and plates hang from the walls as a man taps delicate words of magic into yet another addition to his stock. The smell of cardamom and freshly ground coffee fills my nostrils. I breathe in the air of the market, drinking it into my soul. It is the scent of life, of a city that has seen a thousand generations wander through these same streets. Near an overflowing green bin the bored street cats yawn and stretch idly, hoping to catch scraps from the food hawkers and passers-by.

Other shops have sweets on display, baklawa and mabroomeh and countless pistachioed delights that I can't even begin to name, all arranged in rows and circles and spirals. Packaged and ready for all occasions in gold and silver ribboned boxes. Sacks of purple skinned Aleppo pistachios are laid out before me as I walk on. I love all this, the city's wonder, it's confidence, the warmth of the people. My long gone relative insists we go to the citadel, and I stare at the narrow path leading to its gate. From the ramparts, I feel the gentle breeze of the land and I know what it is as I did when it sighed in my face once in Antakia, in another life and another place, and it's the smell of home and love and gentle long nights pining for someone who will never know. Of the ache of love for the sake of love. And it's where I want to be and where I am right now, in this dream place, real even though I know it's not because it's in my heart.

The city lights twinkle amber and green all around me from the dark, and a call to prayer echoes across the night. I think of all the people who have stood on these walls over the centuries, right at this spot, and I feel a connection with them. Did their heart flutter in their chests in the same way? We wander through the winding streets again, leaving the citadel behind. The city sleeps now and I walk alone. Even the street cats have disappeared. Then, out of the corner of my eye, there is a movement. An Aleppine princess, combing her long red hair in front of a mirror, sits delicately by an open window. She doesn't know that I'm watching, and I don't know how, but I know it's a beautiful ivory comb she holds in her delicate white hands, with mother of pearl on the handle. I stand in the gloom, afraid to breathe for fear it would startle her, afraid, perhaps, to wake up from my Dream Place and leave this wonderful daydream. My eyes burn with anguish and longing. Wishing I could be part of this picture, part of this world. To not be a stranger anymore, always looking in from the outside, cursed to forever watch from afar. The princess gets up and walks away from the window and the lights go out. I stand alone again, bathed in the orange street light, and the moment has passed, forever a secret known only to me.

The sound of loud thuds hurts my ears and the ground shakes beneath my feet, but there's nowhere for me to hide. I see images of the same market I'd passed through earlier, but it is a ruin, smouldering, burnt by some unseen calamity. The citadel's lights are off and it's walls stare down menacingly over us all. I look around but there is nobody about, and in the sky thunder claps loudly though there are no clouds. The street cats hiss at me from a corner, driven mad by fear, and a stench of dust and decay fills the once fragrant air. There is no breeze here, no happiness or welcome, only a dead, stale nothing. Terrified, I look up to the window again, looking for my Aleppine princess, but the window frame is hanging loosely by one flimsy hinge, its glass broken, and I can tell, again without knowing why, that the house is now empty.

Balance

2016-08-01T18:59:00.004+01:00

Sometimes I feel ragged and used up, like yesterday's newspaper. It's Monday. The time is 18:43. I'm sitting in a cafe because I can't sit at home and listen to the quiet. I can't watch a movie like I do every night and escape from it all. I can't sit and listen to the crushing silence. I look at the last five years, the last seven years, the last ten years, and think to myself, "My God, has it been that long? Where did all that time go?" It didn't go anywhere. It sticks with me, time. It's right here. I can feel the clock hands ticking, and I might think things are moving, but really it's always been just me and the thoughts in my head.

This weekend I took the Yorkshire Three Peak challenge. It's a twenty four mile march across three mountain peaks that has to be done in under twelve hours. I did it, and it was hard. When I finished I was shaking all over, and my body felt broken, but inside I felt good. For a day I was able to switch off the thoughts in my head and to move on. To let things go and focus on the moment I am in. There was no mobile signal, no news for me to follow. It is as if there was no revolution or war or suffering anywhere in the world, and in the moments where I paused to catch my breath, I looked around me and there was nobody for as far as my eyes could see.

For the first time in years I was surrounded by total silence. There was no bird song, no wind blowing, and it was as if I was all alone in the universe. Such a simple act, a simple journey, that took me farther away from myself, and yet closer to who I am, than anything I'd felt before. I was so happy, I hunger for it still, as I type this. I sit and think about that real world, about that place where it is just you, stripped of everything that isn't important, and the path ahead, and I look forward to walking it again.

Luggage

2016-07-12T23:39:00.005+01:00

I've had this blog for ten years. TEN years. People have lived and died in this time, and whole countries born or erased forever. I suppose I should use this time to reflect over who I've become, and how I've changed. I know I have, I need only leaf through the pages of the early years, when I would vent and attack and rant for causes that are long dead, people that were never that important, and problems that existed only in my head.

It's funny, now that I think about it, how much this blog shaped my life. It went from something I doodled amateurish scribbles on into my sanctuary from the world. Hidden between its pages are countless loves, disappointments, and heartbreaks. I wanted it to be some kind of online political hotspot, to be a place where my analysis of the world could finally be appreciated. I think it did the opposite. With every word I typed, it seeped a little of my confidence in what I was saying until the certainty drained out of it. But perhaps the biggest change was the terrible blow of losing a home. I still can't accept that, or grasp the enormity of the past five years.

Inside me, there is a part that has never moved on, that still expects everything to go back exactly as it was before. I think it will never leave me, and I will carry it with me always. I might have children one day, and they'll ask me things, but how can I tell them about people that have long vanished, and a life that is so alien to them? It is as if one person was with me in a room, and then they walked out, and someone else walks in and asks me what happened and who had been in the room before them.

They both inhabit the same space, but are destined never to meet. This strikes me as something sad. My mind is filled with sights and sounds and colours and experiences. Countless memories and thoughts swim through it of this first time, the "before". And yet, for those who will walk into this room later, I have only words. I can try to explain to them, to paint a picture as best as I can, but the dead and absent cannot speak through me, they stay silent.

It's a little bit like love. The faces change over the years, and sometimes they ask me about who came before. I lie and say no one, and my lips brush her's. My hand runs a stray lock of hair behind her ear, and we laugh because she doesn't believe me and I know that. And I look at her face and I marvel, memorizing the lines and each birthmark, and the way her hair is brushed, and what her eyes are like up close. Then the room is empty again, but a little bit of them remains in your head, and it's not something you can ever share or bring out again. You just carry it around with you like so much extra luggage.

Baby Steps

2016-07-11T22:53:00.001+01:00

I've forgotten what it's like to blog. The clue should have come to me from the name, a blog is a "weblog", and it's supposed to be a place where I ponder my thoughts about what's going on. At some point I lost sight of that, and the resulting paralysis has gone from weeks to months to years. I'll have to take baby steps again, to relearn things that I once knew and start applying them again. In a way, that's a bit like Syria. Sure, we like to pretend we have a five thousand or ten thousand year old civilization and culture, but really we're infants on the global stage. None of us has a clue what we're doing so we just stumble about and feel our way through the darkness, looking for a light switch.

Uncomfortably Numb...

2016-05-07T17:36:00.002+01:00

Last week a Russian orchestra was playing a concert in Palmyra. In a grotesque pantomime, Putin sent his forces into Syria to prop up a clown against the enemy he helped to create. Celebrating a victory against a foe they didn't even fight, the Russians celebrated with pomp and fanfare. There, amidst the ancient ruins, notes of classical music rang out triumphantly. It was meant to symbolize the victory of civilization over barbarism, of light over darkness, and yet across large parts of Syria, especially in those that the Russian planes dropped their bombs, darkness reigns.

Men in white helmets are obliterated as they desperately try to save the people the Russians are "saving" from barbarism. The helmet doesn't mean anything, really. It's a symbol, like a uniform. It's a comforting illusion in times of stability, to think that the person represents something. But in Syria it becomes tragic in its futility. There is no infrastructure behind the men wearing white helmets, no vengeful government that can protect them from abuse. They're like ancient tribesmen who enter a battle against modern armies wearing only magical amulets, thinking they will be protected. It's all very depressing when you think about it.

Being Syrian is like being an unwilling actor in a play that repeats forever. You think you are going somewhere for a quiet coffee, and as soon as people realize where you are from, a reaction is inevitable. "Oh, I'm so sorry" they'd say. Or there is always the, "I can't imagine how you feel". And I just want to reply, "Actually I feel perfectly fine". But that won't do.

Instead I nod my head in a move that's been rehearsed a thousand times. Sometimes I shrug my shoulder for variety. I give out a sigh and say stoically, "What can you do?", but inside, I'm just screaming for the conversation to move on. I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to keep saying the same things over and over. I've said everything I have to say, I don't have anything more to give you. There is no inside story, no more tragedy that can be spoken about. My bank of emotion is spent and it's not giving out any overdrafts.

Ghosts

2016-04-20T21:56:00.001+01:00

As my plane flew to Syria, I remember that I was looking out of the window and saw the sky turning from blue to a reddish haze, before melding into the purple of early night. The plane's wings glinted golden from the sun behind us. I was reading the autobiography of Carl Gustav Jung. I remember that I enjoyed it, and was glad to have it distract me from thinking about the reason for this trip.

Three years later, I am on a microbus in no-man's land. This is the first time I am going to set foot in the country since it all started. For some reason I start to cough continually. My throat feels like a sandpit and I have trouble swallowing. I look out the window and I see the dusty red earth of Turkey and northern Syria melding, black stones scattered across. There is a deserted farm house in the land between the borders. Its roof is long gone, the stone walls bare and falling apart. I try hard to suppress the cough but it's no use. My friend pats me on the back, hoping it'd help. It doesn't. I feel better when we get out and walk to the checkpoint.

There are several men with machine guns at the checkpoint, and a man in a black mask checks my friend's rucksack. The man in the mask is very polite, explaining calmly that they need to make sure nobody smuggles weapons across the border. They find nothing and wave us through, thanking us for our cooperation. There is a boy sitting on the back of a pick-up truck with a bored expression on his face. He's smoking and on his lap lies a machine gun.

Decades before, I am on the balcony of my grandfather's villa. The sun is setting and I see the golden orb start dipping below the horizon. For the first time in my life I see an enormous flock of birds in the sky. I'd never seen so many before. They move as if animated by one will, like the bee swarms I saw in cartoons. They fly as if into the sunset.

I remember having a crush on a girl in Damascus. It is one of those hopeless infatuations you have when you are still thirteen. It was the first time of many more to come that I would stay up all night thinking of somebody, wondering if she thought of me, reading into every gesture, every look, every word her lips pronounced. My mind's eye would replay our brief encounter, and think of all the things I could have or should have said. The days and months are measured by the number of mentions I'd hear of her name. When I left Syria, I was still young enough to dream of coming back to Damascus one day, of opening a computer shop, marrying her, and living happily ever after.

There is a smell to Damascus that I would recognise anywhere. It is a smell of old stone, earth, and humidity, with undertones of garbage. Even human bodies smell different there: a muskier scent mixed with the sourness of sweat. These are strange things to remember. The city has a lot of cats. I remember a yellow cat with one eye. A pigeon with a gnarled, stubby foot.

In another memory, I am in a taxi. I look out of the window, and I see an old woman in traditional garb hobbling towards the street, looking towards the oncoming traffic. She's just lifted her face veil to get a good look at something, and I'm shocked at what I see. Her jaw hangs like a bag of skin, an elongated gaping mouth dangles. In an instant we have moved on and she vanishes in the distance.

Strange, silly memories flash in my mind from a vanished life. Hovering around me like friendly ghosts.

The Little Prince

2016-02-26T20:11:00.001+00:00

There's a picture of a little boy on my Facebook timeline, he looks about thirteen. His mother has written her goodbye to him. How did he die? A car accident in Saudi. He was with friends and somebody accidentally rear-ended them and they ended up colliding in a palm tree - yes, a palm tree- and it crashed down on them, crushing them. He died in intensive care a few days ago. I never met the boy, but his mum was a cousin of my mum and she looked after us when we were kids like an aunt or an older sister. I'm reading the goodbye she writes for her son and I think that nobody should ever have to write that for their child. It kills me that she's going through all of that and I remember how kind and gentle she always was. The boy looks so familiar and so handsome, and I just can't believe I never met him. It breaks my heart, because we're all over the world and we're scattered and we can't be there for each other. Even for something like this. Something so simple. We're a family, but we need tickets and visas and permission from some asshole sitting behind a desk to tell us when and where we can meet, and if we can meet.

I know this looks like it has nothing to do with what's happening in Syria, but it has everything to do with it. It's like this is the story of all Syrians. I wish I could tell her that I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry because I didn't realise how cruel this world could be, I didn't know things would get this bad, that there could be so much evil in the world. I thought it was enough to be on the side of right and that things would work out eventually. I really thought that when this all started we were going to make a difference, that things could change. I'm so sorry I can't be with you in this time, and I'm sorry that it's all horribly complicated. Maybe change doesn't come for little people like us, who don't fit the categories and check all the boxes. We're not on boats or running for our lives, but life is just as complicated and it's all because of what's happening. It's so tiring. It wears you down, and you think you've learned to keep the feelings at bay, and then one night you see just one picture with a few lines from an anguished mother, and it brings the tears falling again. I'm crying for the boy and his family, and for all of us, and for what's become of us and for what we've seen and what's still happening.

Being Syrian

2016-02-06T11:48:00.001+00:00

A few days ago I was having coffee with a Syrian friend and we were talking about how someone can like Syria but not like to spend too much time with Syrians. It's a serious question, because it does raise questions like what on earth are we writing for? What is the Syria that we're dreaming about and trying to create, and who are we? I don't know anymore. I live miles away from anything, and as a matter of principle I try not to get too involved in the byzantine politics of Syrian activism in London. We all know, or at least some of us do, that we're against the Syrian government, that we hate Assad, and that his regime and its Baath party are probably the greatest calamity to befall the region since 1918 - no, I'm not exaggerating. But, what else is there that we have in common? The Kurds in the North are doing their own thing, the Islamists now own the revolution, Syria's upper classes want to keep their head stuck in the sand, and the poor are too busy drowning or starving while getting shot at and bombed to think about tomorrow.

Who do I really identify with? And with most, if not all, family now outside the country or thinking of leaving, what is there left for me there? I know I'm not crazy, that I'm not alone in thinking this. It's one thing being an exile who has never lived in Syria, to pine over something you've never seen because of the stories your parents tell you, but for someone who lived it and breathed it, and who knows that it's now all gone - truly gone - what is there? Whoever wins in this, be it Assad or the rebels, I know that me and my "kind" will not be accepted. It doesn't matter what any of us said and wrote and did during this awful period, when the rebuilding begins, we will be strangers. People might smile at us politely, but that's about it. We are going to become relics of the same past we tried to bury.

I don't know what it means to be Syrian anymore, and when I think about it, I doubt that I ever did. Syria was never *my* country. I lived there for a while, I visited during the summer vacations, I had a life there once, a long time ago, but what does that all mean? Does that make me Syrian? Or is it that my parents are Syrian? When the Syrian revolution started I had no idea so many people existed there, that there were so many towns and villages and places that I'd never even heard of. This disconnect that I feel cuts me to the core, making me doubt everything I thought I knew about myself, about the world around me, and about life in general. Some Syrians say that they only have Allah because the world has deserted them. If He's all we have left, then after five years I can safely say that he's as indifferent as the world we condemn.

I don't know where I'm going with all of this, and that pretty much sums up the whole damn situation in Syria as well. It's all so goddamn awful and ugly right now. I don't recognize the place from the pictures and videos that I see, and even the people I thought I knew are not what they seemed. I don't know anything, so I think right now the best thing for me to do would be to go out for a walk and get myself another hot cup of coffee.

Why Not?

2016-01-15T18:58:00.000+00:00

Switzerland joins Denmark in confiscating the assets of refugees. Why not? Go ahead, take everything. From Damascus to Berlin, the journey of a Syrian refugee, or any refugee, is to be exploited thoroughly. The road to sanctuary, dignity and self respect as a human being lies through a gauntlet of lies, abuse and degradation. Syrians have to debase themselves utterly before they are worthy of pity. Why not? It starts from home. It starts from a country where you are fleeced as soon as you start trying to make a living. As early as you can remember you are taught in Syria that to get by you have to bribe somebody. Nothing is impossible, and when something isn't working properly, be it a university exam that you just can't seem to pass, to a job or work transaction that seems to never progress, it's all about finding the man at the choke point, the man who wants a favour.

In the days when Syrians could, only just, travel the world and return back, they were greeted by the fat security officials at the airport who would single a suitable "victim", someone with a Syrian passport, of course. It wouldn't do to show somebody with a real passport, a human being's passport, how barbaric we are. No, that wouldn't do at all. But a Syrian or Arab is OK, because he could be exploited.

"Have you any presents for us?" the official would ask, rubbing his hands. If you don't understand what he means, he'll make you understand. He'll um and ah, at the things in your suitcase. "Oh this wouldn't do at all. Oh this might need to be taxed. Oh this might be banned under the new security regulations", he'd say. Then, out of sheer frustration, you would pay him. Something, anything. Cigarettes would do, anything. Just pay so you can be on your way.

You leave the stable called Syria behind, and you get people smugglers, you get corrupt soldiers on the border. If you aren't driving an expensive car and look average, border police make you wait in the sun and keep you "in line" while beating you with rubber hoses - that's what they did on the border crossings to Lebanon by the way. You make it somewhere else, like Turkey, and you pay somebody to find you a flat, you pay them extra, just a place, any place. They raise the prices. If somebody else pays them more, you get turfed out. Then you have to pay money for visas, for transport, for "arrangements". It might pay off, it might not. You might end up as fish food in the sea, or your body turns into a leaky bag of skin and fluids after you suffocate in a refrigerator in wheels somewhere on a motorway in Austria.

Why not? Let's exploit Syrians, everybody else has. These refugees are "rich", "they have money". They are all "coming to rape European women" after all. Besides, they have diseases, they "hide terrorists" amongst each other. Why not? Fleece them. Maybe next Europe can start putting refugees in specially walled off compounds, and force them to wear special badges - no, badges won't do, it'll be special identity cards or papers. To mark them as special, to watch, to keep an eye on. Why not? A people with no home, no sanctuary, no respect or dignity even from their own, why should anybody else respect them? Why not also force Syrians - because that's what the word 'refugee' has become synonymous with - to walk barefoot across Europe, wearing sack cloth and with ash on their heads? That way everyone can be sure that they really are desperate and worthy of assistance.

Dreams of a Silly Boy...

2016-01-12T19:52:00.001+00:00

I want to think of a future with you. I wish there was no silence between us. That we could just sit and talk like we did before all this. I wish we could be foolish again, to dream our silly dreams and plan for the future and imagine what it will be like. There, a beautiful table, the one you liked. Here, a lovely picture to hang. We would have a balcony, or maybe a garden. We would have plants and flowers everywhere, and their scents would fill the cool evening air. We'd eat fruit, and drink coffee, and have guests come to visit us. You'd play that bad music you like and I would lie to you and say it's 'fab'. We'd listen to the water trickle down from a fountain - did I tell you I wanted a fountain? I'm sorry, my love, I was going to tell you. Just like I was going to tell you a lot of things. Maybe I would have made it a surprise. Maybe you would have surprised me? Oh, it's been so long since I've had a nice surprise, since somebody has done that for me.

We knew life wasn't going to be easy, and we'd nod our heads when the old people told us how things would be hard. Did they think we're fools? We'd laugh at them, of course, and at all the silly people who didn't understand us. We'd work hard, and get tired, but we'd be happy. Like that David Bowie song, we'd be heroes, you and me, baby. Then, at the end of the day, when we lay on our bed and the gentle breeze cooled hot skin as it danced lazily through the sheer curtains, we'd tell each other how much we loved each other, and how we wouldn't have it any other way. Nothing in the world would have mattered in that future. Before everything changed and the dark clouds covered everything. Stay where you are. Don't come here, where it's unpleasant and horrid. Stay in my dreams and in the future we wanted. I'll come and find you, no matter where we end up or who we become...

Solitary Confinement

2016-01-05T17:20:00.000+00:00

I sometimes wonder if any of it was real. When was it? A lifetime ago? A hundred lifetimes ago? What difference does it make. All I have is this now, far from you, stretching in front of me for as far as my eyes could see. The past is just a clotted lump that forms in my chest, only to disappear a short while later, leaving me empty and hollow. The future, just a narcotic that makes me think things will work out, that they have to work out. I know they won't, but I make myself believe that, "maybe, maybe around the next corner it will be different". But there is only this now, a prison with bars of silence. I'm guilty, serving a life sentence for a crime I was born to commit.

The clock ticks away on the wall, the days of the year fall past me, one after the other, and I'm still here, waiting for life to begin, waiting for that voice to reach out to me across time and space. I meet friends who feel the same, we talk a while, discuss things. We feel the same way, that life is on hold. We're away from harm, but we're condemned to exist, like lifeless hulks floating aimlessly over the ocean. Nobody takes pity on us enough to sink us along with our delusions. That seems so cruel and perverse.

I sit and wait for that divine spark that I was sure guided all things, but He's not there. He's not taking calls right now. Prayers are a mechanical motion, empty, without meaning. It's like sending emails to a mailbox that nobody will ever check. You know that, but you keep sending them anyway. How could I have been so certain about things when I was younger? That I knew certain things absolutely and felt as much with every fibre of my being. Now I'm just exhausted, too indifferent to be angry, too jaded to think that life can mean anything, that there is somehow some purpose that animates us all and draws us to it. There is only this pile of dirt, and millions upon millions of ants fighting and dying over it every day. Still the now surrounds me, clinging like the scent of cheap perfume and the guilt from a dirty tryst.

You leave home for so long that when you come back nobody knows you. We're strangers from each other, we speak different tongues, and when we see each other in the street we cross to the other side, as if yesterday never happened, and we had never met, and never spoken together or laughed. We just pop our collars up as protection from the wind and the rain, and carry on walking, wrestling our demons.

Passing

2015-11-23T11:16:00.003+00:00

In my mind, 2011 will always be the year that my grandmother died, not the year of the revolution. After that, everything changed, and change hurts. We lose so much when it happens. Things that I couldn't imagine living without were lost forever. How could somebody I'd only spoken to a few days ago not be there when I call anymore? How could they have been breathing in the same room I stand in a day later and now be no more? The first night is always the hardest because you know that one of your own is not in the house, not in bed, sleeping, warm, where they should be. It hurts because you know that they are out there, in the cold earth. It's not natural. It's not supposed to happen, not to somebody you love. The senses scream outrage at this transgression even though you know that it is the "way of the world" and we are told that "God wills it". After she died everything came apart so quickly, like prayer beads scattering when the string breaks.

Yesterday another relative of the older generation passed away and Damascus feels cold and empty. On hearing the news last night, my mother said, "Everybody I know is going away. I feel alone". That word, alone, sums up all our lives right now. If and when we go back home, us exiles, who will still be there? Who will we tell our stories to? Who will tell us of what it was like? The safety net of having elders is being pulled away and our own mortality stares us in the face. It brings with it the chilling realization that it will be our time next, that it will be our turn to listen to the stories of the younger generation, to watch patiently as they make their own mistakes, and then to quietly fade away. It's such a terrible thing to feel lonely.

Talking Descartes with Syrian Refugee Children

2015-11-18T21:13:00.004+00:00

There are a lot of things people might go and teach to Syrian refugee children in Turkey, but philosophy isn't usually one of them. In spite of doing an MA in Philosophy at Birkbeck years ago, I felt hopelessly unqualified for the task at hand. In fact, I wasn't even sure what I was planning to accomplish. Tightly holding my copy of Peter Worley's, "The If Machine: Philosophical Enquiry in the Classroom" I travelled to Reyhanli, near the border with Syria, to meet the seven hundred and fifty children of the Ruwwad school as part of a volunteer program with the Karam Foundation. Housed in a commercial part of the town, the school was really a converted office that took over a whole floor, with a massive indoor hallway that the children could dash around in during their break. The classrooms were small and cramped, windows were optional, and going to the toilets was a horrifying experience. Sure, I thought, we could talk philosophy here, I mean how hard would it be once we got the discussion going? Harder than I thought, I would later discover.

Owing to the ongoing war in Syria, Reyhanli is full of Syrians, and as they don't speak any Turkish, Arabic language schools have sprouted up to provide some form of education for the community. The children themselves come from a variety of backgrounds, but the fact that they are even in a school meant they were some of the lucky ones. For a lot of Syrian refugee families, life is too wretched and hard right now for them to worry about sending the children to school.

I started off my first sessions by hurriedly introducing myself to the classroom and, while apologising for my child-like Arabic handwriting, deliberately mis-spelling philosophy. Turning around, I could see some of the children already chuckling. I'd wanted to get the children to relax and so instead of "falsafa" I wrote down "fasfasa", which literally means farting about. I'd do a mock cringe and apologise when one of the students laughingly pointed out the error, and then correct the word. In explaining philosophy, I used the duck-rabbit picture Wittgenstein liked, and they sort of got my point about being able to see things differently in philosophy.

Right, I'd ask as I turned around, who has heard of philosophy? I'm greeted with total silence, but only a few of the children would raise their hands. In the Middle East, parents usually scold their children when they try to get clever or give cheeky answers, telling them to "stop philosophising". It's basically an insult for someone who is being pedantic. None of them ventured to explain what they knew, but they all nodded and grinned when I explained how I thought they'd heard the term. So far we seemed to be on to a good start. Prior to the class, I'd written a few study cards for the topic of the day, and I thought it would be a brilliant idea to start the children on one of the exercises mentioned in Worley's book, the story of the "Chair". I started off by asking the children what they thought the chair was, they looked at me like I was crazy. "It's a chair" one of them would say, and I'd say OK, we'll see by the end of the session. As it turned out, this lesson was much tougher to get across to the children than I expected. I tried to ask open questions and trigger a bit of controversy but they would only smile back at me nervously, unsure of what I was expecting. They just didn't seem to "get" where we were going with this, and their answers were cautious and flat. If the more outspoken children used a particular answer, the next dozen children would all raise their hands and then say the same thing.

In Worley's book, he recommends that the children all sit in a circle in order to promote discussion. As soon as I saw the state of the classrooms I knew that this would be impossible. There were forty children crammed into the room, all facing one direction, and all used to only one type of teaching and to rote learning. Furthermore, the teacher, a kindly older man, stayed on, ostensibly to help "control" the classrooms. I was too polite to ask him to leave and that turned out to be a mistake. As I tried to get the children to respond to the story before each "discussion", he would helpfully repeat what I said, sternly asking the children to sit up straight and "think carefully, then answer the Teacher's question!". I cringed inwardly. This was not going to work, and I was conscious of Worley's recommendation to avoid "leading" the children to the answers they might think I want to hear. The same kind of problems occurred in the other grades, and by the end of the first day, my head was reeling and my confidence was in tatters. I began to have serious doubts about whether this was going to work. After all, my previous three volunteering trips with Karam were about running a "writing" workshop that I'd slowly built up through experience. This was totally outside my comfort zone, and I'd even picked the exercises to match all the ages for the classes. The book had made it seem so easy, and yet when it came to trying to have a philosophical discussion about our perception of objects, my mind seemed to draw a blank. There just didn't seem to be any feedback.

Steeling my nerves, I decided to follow through the next day, as planned, with the next subject. This time, I threw politeness out of the window and point blank asked the teachers to leave me with the children. "No", I'd reply, "I'll manage to control them fine. Sit this one out, go have a coffee and I'll see you in forty minutes. Thank you." I closed the door and put on my "theatrical" hat. Building up the story with suspense and dramatic pauses, I finally managed to get the children's attention and told them the story of the Ring of Gyges, transliterating his name in Arabic on the whiteboard. I stopped and stared at the classroom. "What would you do if you were walking home tonight, after school, and found this ring in the street? What would you do?" I asked them.

At first, they all answered uniformly that they would do good and "help people". Very nice, I thought, but this isn't what we're here for. I could tell some of the boys were grinning mischievously. I walked up to one of them and asked him what he was really thinking. After seeing my enthusiastic acting, and enactment of the story, I felt like I'd broken the teacher/student barrier, and earned their cautious trust. "Well, sir, are you saying that nobody would know if I did something? Or catch me?"

I nodded and waited. "Well, I'd be in paradise. I'd go and smack the people I don't like and get myself a fast car and all the things I'd want!"

From here, we got the ball rolling. The story "clicked" in the student's minds far better than my "chair" story, and I felt like this was something they could relate with. A lot of the children in all four grades said they would use the ring to go and "kill Bashar al Assad" and I chuckled at that. I hadn't wanted to bring Syria up in the workshops, but, as I would later find out, this was not only inevitable, but extremely useful. The girls were not so ready to accept the idea of actions without consequences. Within minutes, the first girl brought up the A-word, Allah.

"Even if no body sees you, Allah sees everything, and He will punish us for any wrong we do", she explained. OK, this was getting interesting, and I was aware the whole class was listening intently. Here, I used Worley's "If" machine, and it turned out invaluable. In Arabic, "If" translated directly doesn't quite carry the same meaning, in my opinion, so I used the word "Iftirad" - which can be loosely translated as "Assume". I'm not an expert on this stuff, but I know enough Arabic to know when a word works and it doesn't. I also quite liked the idea of being the first to introduce Worley's "If Machine" to Syrian students as the "If-tirad Machine". So I asked her, "If Allah said that anybody who wears this ring can do whatever they want, what would you do with it?". She thought for a minute, and then replied that "yes but I would still know I did those things, and I'd be punishing myself". A tough, but evasive answer. We ran out of time sooner than I expected, but we did get to ponder briefly Socrates' question of why somebody should do good even if they suffer. Not many had heard of him, so telling them a bit about ancient Greece and how he'd been put to death for basically being "annoying" was the first time many of them had heard about the classical world. Still, I felt that the discussion rolled a lot easier from here, and though the children were still talking mainly to me rather than each other, I felt a lot more confident by the end of the second day that things were going to work out.

The third workshop I carried out with them proved to be much more successful. The children, even the older ones in grades six and seven, all remembered the story of Gyges and the magical ring and were now interested to hear my next "story". I introduced them to the old fable of the frog and the scorpion, and now the children were starting to get active. Differences of opinion were starting to emerge, and even the bashful children were feeling more confident in voicing their opinion. Even the 'rebels', sitting in the back wanted to have a say in the matter. I was now rolling with it, so I complicated the story by substituting it with people, again with appropriate theatrical flair. From here, the classes started to take a life of their own, but the discussion still wasn't as active as I'd have liked. We talked about human nature and whether it was fixed, and asked for a show of hands to see what the children thought, then I told them what Schopenhauer, Sartre, and Aristotle thought. Surprisingly, most of the children changed their mind when they heard of Aristotle's idea (which I mentioned last) that "habit" was what shaped our character. They nodded their little heads sensibly and asked to be moved to "his" side. Schopenhauer had a few die hard supporters who remained adamant that people can never change.

During my discussion with one of the grades, and through no prompting from me, the subject of "good" and "bad" people came up. I asked the children whether they thought people were inherently good or bad, and they all, unanimously, said that people are bad, and that given half a chance everybody would take advantage of you. After seeing war, exile and a hard life in a border town in the middle of nowhere, these children all had a firm idea of what human nature was essentially like. I took the chance to talk about Thomas Hobbes and his view that the life of man was "nasty, brutish and short". The children shrugged indifferently. I felt at the time that maybe I hadn't explained properly, and that that's why they weren't that interested in discussing this idea further. It's only now, as I recall that class and sit writing about my experience, that I realise why that was the case. To them, this Hobbes chap wasn't saying anything profound or controversial, it was just life. That this is the world they live in (at this very moment), that it's all they know, is unsettling to me. It might as well be a million miles away from the brightly lit lecture halls in London where I read my masters.

On our final day, all the stops were pulled. My final "story" was the "Identity Parade" question: A criminal takes a pill to wipe his memory and gains a new identity, but the police arrest this new person who is law abiding and nice, and want him to go to prison for the crimes of the previous personality. The discussions were getting surprisingly sophisticated, and the children were starting to disagree with each other openly. Here, a fundamental problem with the size of the classes got the better of me, they were too big, and I went hoarse trying to make myself heard and to get the children to speak in turn. I watched with some amusement as one of the formerly disruptive boys turned around to a mate of his who was chattering in the background and told him to shut up because he wanted to listen to the discussion.

The discussion was flowing so smoothly that I had just enough time to broach the topic of identity, and that moved us nicely to Descartes and his famous thought experiment, "I think therefore I am". I doodled a stick man with arms and legs outstretched, closed eyes and closed mouth, and wrote the phrase in Arabic after I'd acted out the thought experiment to them. At this stage, one really needs to have been in the room to see the light come up in their eyes. For some of the children, I could see them staring at me thoughtfully as they pondered the implications of what I was trying to explain. Then I gave them the counter argument from Locke, at the risk of being slightly more controversial. At this stage, the teachers were asking to sit in the classes, and seemed very interested in the topics we were covering.

On the final two days, an unexpected challenge came up. I was asked to do a workshop with the ninth grade, older boys and girls. So far, my style was geared more towards children. How would the Identity Parade go down? My "Frog and Scorpion" workshop went down quietly, unlike with the younger grades, and again I had to overcome the uncomfortable silences and uncertainty about what we were trying to do. I felt like they hadn't been impressed with our earlier encounter. Sweating nervously, I walked into their class for the last workshop of the week. It was showtime.

To my surprise, they were now fascinated with what I had to say. It turns out my little whirlwind tour of philosophy in the Arabic and Islamic world, and its Greek origins, had fascinated them. The discussion kicked off in ernest, and the students started vigorously debating their ideas about whether the man should go to prison or not. What did it mean to be one person and then another? When was it right to ascribe the blame for something? In what conditions? What would they do if they were that person? The points flowed effortlessly and with little guidance from me. As I started to wind down the class, I noticed that many of the students were of the opinion that the "new" person in the Identity Parade story should not be punished for the previous personality's actions.

"OK", I asked them "now imagine that the person who did those crimes was Bashar al Assad, and that he'd taken a pill and was now a completely different person with no recollection of his previous crimes". The class literally erupted as most of the students said no, several making cutting gestures across their necks saying that they would still execute him. "Why not?" I asked them. I hadn't planned on this little twist, but it just came to mind, and it seemed so right. Many sat back silently and didn't have an answer, but I could tell they were pondering the question extremely seriously now. Some of the students started arguing bitterly with each other about whether the thought experiment still applied. With this small question, I concluded the class and explained to the students that philosophy was about asking the hard questions, the unsettling ones, that challenged our view of what was right and wrong, and that this is why it was as important today as it was two thousand years ago. I think I was talking mainly to myself at that point, because I walked out of that class with unexpectedly new insights about what philosophy meant.

What Once Was

2015-09-06T19:58:00.003+01:00

I think of the kind of upbringing I had, one that I doubt my children will ever know. There was always a confidence in knowing that you come from a country, that you have your own home and community and people who know you. Even when you travelled abroad, you knew that you were living a story that was being told by your friends and family back home, and you listened to their stories and together we all weaved that wondrous tapestry of life. My relationship to Syria has three phases. During my childhood, it was that magical, mysterious place where I would go to spend my summer holidays. The second phase had its difficulties, but being a teenager in Syria had a charm that I'm still nostalgic for. It was that quiet place I wanted to escape, where nothing ever happened, and the days were long and balmy and sunny. We would wait for the sun to go down and then watch the people flitting between the brightly lit shops of the Shaalan market area. We knew the shopkeepers, they knew us. We also knew all our neighbours, and we would constantly be saying hello to different people as we walked the five minutes to the grocer. I remember being annoyed with that, and sometimes taking a longer route to avoid having to keep saying hello. If only I could walk that same route and say hello to those same people. I'd rush up to them and give them a hug and a kiss and smile brightly as I greet them. If only.

There was the other phase, the one where I waited nine years before I came back again. I'd been away for so long that I'd given up hope of ever coming back. Memories flooded in with the sights, sounds and smells of my old neighbourhood. The home that had seen three of my family's generations grow up in opened its arms and embraced me with no questions asked and no rebuke. I was home, and I experienced a security and love that I had been without for so long that I'd forgotten how much I miss it. On the other side of that neighbourhood was my other grandparents' house. They've both passed now, but I still remember them waving to me from far off, on their second floor balcony. Their balcony had a green awning that would shelter them from the sun and also give them privacy. When I would sit on their balcony in the evening, it felt like a safe little hideout from where we could watch the world below, surrounded by dozens of plants in their little containers. In between both grandparents houses there were friends and families that we knew and visited, of all religions and backgrounds.

That was the world I inhabited. It was a little cocoon of safety, surrounded by friends and family who lived in concentric circles around Damascus which, I was later to discover when I went out into the world, is really a very small city; a small city for little people with small problems but big hearts. Yes, there was a dictator, but the bad things in the world seemed so far away, and somehow we all managed to live and get by and have a good time. Maybe I'm being naive, and maybe things weren't that rosy and it's only because I was young that I saw things that way, but I still believe that's what happened, that's what life was like. If only we'd known what was to come, we would have seen more of each other and spent more time together. All those people and places are gone now, and I know things can never be the same again, but I'm glad we all lived those moments together.

Can the last person out of Syria please turn off the lights?

2015-09-03T19:43:00.001+01:00

It took a dead baby for the world to notice. Wait, I thought it took seventy refugees suffocating in a refrigerator with wheels for the world to notice? Or was it the pictures of babies floating face down in the water that did it? I thought we were at the tipping point when chemical weapons were dropped on the Damascus Ghouta in 2013, and politicians in the Western world wobbled their lower lips as they made their speeches denouncing Assad and calling for accountability. I don't buy it, and I'm not getting swept away with the optimism and emotion. A few thousand refugees let in through the net aren't going to fix this problem or make it go away. The refugee problem is mainly a Syrian refugee problem, and it stems from a dictator who continues to use barrel bomb attacks to depopulate towns and villages. Syrians aren't fleeing because of Jabhat al Nusra or even ISIS. They're fleeing because they can't live safely in their towns and villages when there is a constant fear of airstrikes and barrel bombs - the most barbaric of indiscriminate weapons.

I've spoken to people in Syria, and they've told me they could put up with the odd mortar shell, sniper or tank fire. They could even put up with living in IS areas or living with Jabhat al Nusra, just about, but not a weapon that can flatten an entire building, turning it into a tomb for those unlucky enough to be trapped alive beneath it. Those who come to rescue any survivors become themselves victims with the regime's "double tap" method, where a second barrel bomb is thrown down to get rid of the survivors. It's diabolical, it's perverse, and it is contrary to all morality and logic. This is what's driving people to risk their lives and everything they have for a better one abroad.

The West lacks the political will to do anything while Assad's allies back him to the hilt. Yes, foreign fighters have done a lot to undermine the Syrian revolution, but that pales in comparison to the material support given to Assad by Iran and Russia. It took two years for the Assad regime to realise that President Obama is actually doing everything he could *not* to touch Syria, and after that the Russians threw him a lifeline, a way out, from the corner of red lines that he'd talked himself into. The disarmament deal that was supposed to "punish" the Assad regime really just gave him a green light to use all other weapons to brutalise the Syrian people, including his airforce, which is nowhere to be seen whenever Israel conducts its airstrikes inside Syria.

Today Prime Minister Cameron might grudgingly agree to allow a few thousand more Syrian refugees into the United Kingdom, as will Europe, but what will the world do in six months? In a year? How long will these band-aid fixes continue to be applied while everybody shirks their international obligations and does nothing to stop the slaughter in Syria? By doing something, I'm not talking about the meaningless term "political solution", but taking hard action to stop a dictator's regime from tearing the entire Mediterranean apart so that he can stay on his throne. Sorry, the picture of a dead baby, however heart breaking, is not enough to sway the world's conscience into action. People will keep risking their lives in the hope of safety and a better life, it's human nature.

Made up of bloated corpses, blood, guts, stale semen, decayed food, sweat and petrol fumes, there is a stink rising from our Arab countries, and the world just wants to pinch its nose. The only thing this poor baby might have done is to awaken the fetid consciences of the Arab bourgeoisies, as they tweet their heartbreak over social media from across the Arab world's glittering capitals. To them, I say shukran for your condolences and your Arabian hospitality. Oh, and can the last person out of Syria please turn off the lights?