Nothing new in Damascus today and yesterday, except for a horrifying traffic jam on the way home from the university. It's the first weekday so it took me more than an hour for the road that usually takes fifteen minutes.
I have been asked through some personal channels to talk about girls (and, courting them, I suppose). In short, marry them or let them be. The ones that are older than 23 are all married of course and the rest are, children or studying, so please. Last year in Aleppo (actually in Haleb, since I'm here for my Arabic), they wanted to marry me to two sisters. Saying no was hard, I can hardly decide whether I was more enchanted by the eighteen or the twelve-years old – the latter looked very enthusiastic... and... the way she looked at me with her seductive brown eyes... but I decided to pursue my single life nevertheless. The temptations here are quite big, but I’m starting to think my blond schoolmate Alexander from Norway has better chances than me – he looks more worldly than my brownish-tanned-southerner self. There’s loads of my kind here. Plus the horns on their cars with chrome bumpers, exhaust pipes and runners are much better than mine, not to even mention the lightshow in front, in the back, left, right and inside.
I see all kinds of girls here: from the ones that only have their eyes peeping out of the dark sack to girls like the one that sat to the table beside ours in the university cafeteria, while Alexander and me were munching on our sandwiches with chips: long, wavy hair, tied into a pony tail, a tight white leather jacket, tight jeans with spangles and pointy white boots with hiiiigh heels. Like taking the city bus in Ljubljana. We thought it was wise to concentrate on our sandwiches and considered buying blinkers.
We're not allowed to bring visitors of the opposite sex to our apartments or rooms: when a woman and a man are alone, they're not really alone. There's somebody else present: a devil that poisons their minds. And that's also why an old friend of mine, whom I didn't end up in bed with during my study years nor did I do so later and who's visiting in the beginning of next year, isn't allowed to sleep in the empty bed beside mine. Apparently that's how they avoid having to make more HIV tests. But then again... does that mean I can bring a boy!?
You can see many Saudi and Kuwaiti cars. In summer they seek refuge here from the heat and in winter they come to warm themselves in the brothels. Brothels move from one quarter to another, they're illegal of course and all neighbourhoods are rejecting them (if my friend came here, my apartment would probably be called one as well), which is why they move. And currently, you won't believe it, apparently they’re in my neighbourhood. Yuck, since I found that out I'll have my boiler on at all times so I can wash the dirt from the air that surrounds me of my skin three times a day. Anyway, the subject isn't looked at much more conservatively than in some parts of Slovenia.
It’s a matter of personal conviction whether or not a girl or a woman is covered or uncovered. I have been invited many times for lunch to a friend that took a major in tourism, speaks perfect English, his brother studies Koran law and engineering, his second brother dropped out, and his sister is a teacher. Five minutes before we come home he always informs his family that we are coming, he rings the phone one more time when we enter the building and when they invite me to the guest room, I can only hear his mother and sister, who are cooking lunch. They only knock on the door of the guest room and one of the brothers walks through them, takes the trays and serves the guest. I have never ever seen a woman in their home. I experienced something similar in other Arab countries, only the level of conservativeness, if you want to call it that, varied: sometimes women served the food on the table and men just distributed it, sometimes they brought it inside the room and then passed it on, sometimes they waited around the corner and one of the men came for it. And as far as forcing women to uncover themselves is concerned, you have to understand that the standards here are different. How would Slovenian women react if you were forcing them to start going to work and for shopping wearing nothing but their thong? Why not? Would they feel uncomfortable? Well, African women don't! Maybe an Algerian woman with her hair uncovered in the street would feel as uncomfortable as a Slovenian would wearing her thong in the centre of Ljubljana. Slovenians, why are you so strange and conservative??!! Don’t you know that you're not free because somebody put the idea in your head that it's not nice to show your breasts on the street?
Why should our level of tolerance be the measure to everybody else?
Once upon a time there were many wars, men were dying and a woman was vulnerable without a man, that's what caused polygamy (up to four women, if a man can support them). When the wars ended, the number of men and women was balanced, which – with the existence of polygamy – meant a lack of women, so you had to watch out for the ones you had. The tradition was kept until nowadays, when polygamy is much rarer, in younger generations it's practically extinct. In Syria, Egypt, Morocco, and especially Tunisia, Jordan and Lebanon (unfortunately I don't know other countries) the younger generation of women have a similar view of the world and the interpersonal relationships as the European. While talking about whether beauty is a more important quality in a wife than intelligence, one of our women professors, Manal, said today that she didn't want a handsome husband. She wants him for herself only.
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