Different Voices

Speaking of names (see last post) I met two people in Aleppo who asked me not to be referred to by their real names. In both cases this is because of what they told me, either because they reasonably fear or are overly paranoid of the Syrian internet police.

In Aleppo, after seven days in Syria, I came across the first voices of outright political dissent, which made for extremely interesting listening. The second of these men I'll write about later. The first I met as I walked around the streets of Aleppo, visibly disorientated after having my head plugged into cyberspace for two hours. This can happen and often does, to me anyway.

Let's call him Peter. Rather like Stephen in Qamishle he came up to me and did all the running, taking me by the arm, enthusiastic to find a genuine Englishman. I agreed to go for tea with him and said I wanted a nargila pipe. I had in mind another of those classicly Arabic teahouses I'd enjoyed in Deir-Ez-Zur with Ahmed. This seemed to confuse him awhile but he responded anyway and led me to a bar that kept on being two minutes away for the next twenty. Pretty soon I guessed from his camp manner that he might be gay. Then when he suggested we go to a Hammam (a public Turkish bathhouse) I discreetly feared the worst. Later in an amiable way he clarified unambiguously both that he was gay and that he wouldn't mind trying to seduce me, which I tried, successfully as it happens, to not let worry me. Not perhaps having been in this situation as much as my vanity would like, I have nevertheless learnt how to deal with these situations.

He told me a number of very interesting things, moreover, which more than made up for my anxiety. When I said I wanted to go to Hama, a city directly to the south, he told me about the Government's February 1982 siege and massacre. As I would later find out, something between ten and thirty thousand people were killed. Luckily for the regime, the world's attention on this event was soon distracted into denouncing Israel for its role in the Sabra and Shatila massacres of the following September, in which something between one and three thousand Palestinian refugees died at the hands of Christian militiamen. What happened at Hama is not an official part of Syrian discourse. If Syrians talk about it they do so in private. Since this clampdown, the Muslim brotherhood, the ringleaders of the revolt that sparked the Governmental reprisals (but who were by no means the only victims of it) have come to understand the severity of what they're up against. The same can be said of others who want to oppose the regime.

After we finally sat down at a classy alfresco restaurant in an upmarket area of town, I found it difficult for awhile to know what we should be talking about. Blithely ignorant at this time that undercover Syrian policemen are found throughout the country, to get things going I asked him what it was like to be gay in Syria. Shiftily looking around to see if anyone was listening, which he did whenever he said anything of substance, he said, somewhat shocked by my naivety, that obviously homosexuals have to be secretive. The parks and the Hammams are the prime meeting grounds. But homosexuality is strictly a crime and men seen kissing one another will be arrested.

That last comment may intrigue anyone who knows how in Arabic lands men will often walk hand-in-hand unashamedly and exchange 'air' kisses on each others cheeks when they meet. In fact I'd been kissed in this way by a waiter in Palmyra when I arrived at Muhammad's restaurant. Obviously, it was a more serious kind of kissing that Peter was talking about. To a Westerner there may seem to be a fine line, easily blurred, between holding hands and more explicit homosexual behaviour. I suppose this is because in the west, alas, heterosexual men are very sensitive about not exchanging more physical intimacy with other men than they need to, lest they be thought gay. But in the Middle East it's very different. One side of the line is ok and totally normal for heterosexual men (as everyone is considered to be), while the other is unambiguously sinful and wrong, if not horrific and criminal.

But Peter didn't only speak about homosexuality. In whispered, furtive tones he told me to tell Amnesty International that there are 3,000 political prisoners locked up outside Damascus. I presumed and hoped Amnesty International would know this already but I let that one lie. I asked if they were Islamic militants, or members of Al-Qaeda. Just intellectuals he said, liberal types, people like him. He then told me that the President had been illegally installed by his father in defiance of the Syrian consitution on 4 points. He was under forty when he became President and wasn't married, he is not a Sunni Muslim but an Alawite, and he hadn't studied for an engineering degree. Today, so he said, the first two conditions have now been met, but not the other two. How much is true about these remaining conditions, or indeed the rest of what he told me, I'm not that sure.

Then I was really surprised when I asked him what he thought about Israel. Thinking on the basis of what I'd heard from all Syrians so far that he too would hate Israel, that his homosexuality and dissident mind wouldn't get in the way of his Arabic solidarity, he actually said he was glad that Israel exists. If it didn't, the Government would not be distracted and would have more time and resources to oppress the people. Certainly a different take, anyway, on what I've speculated about earlier - that some Arab regimes might look to the evil, zionist enemy to help them control their people, by using it as a scapegoat around which to whip up a necessary subservience to the Government.

He still wanted to go to a Hammam with me and I still politely declined. He said he was interested in foreign coins and asked if I had any. As it happened I did and give him two Turkish Lira and two Slovak 10sk coins. He'd ordered some ice cream and chips for himself, while I'd had a beer and coffee. Expecting we'd go dutch at a venue plusher than I'd hoped to visit - me in one of my budgeting frenzies again - he nonetheless arranged with the waiter that I should pay for everything.

Feeling slightly irked by his presumptiouness for awhile I didnt let it bother me really. He'd only taken me for a three pound ride, after all, and I reminded myself how much poorer Syrians were than even British language teachers living in Slovakia. So I contented myself with feeling very satisfied and grateful at the frankness that he'd shown me.