Evening Street Children of Al-Hassake

Before I went to bed I strolled around the streets by night. Until about eleven pm Syrian shops are open and vital, bursting with colour and sound. The evening is an opportunity to get out and socialise, to leave the home. I saw as many people ambling around as intent on buying anything. After the shops close, until they open in the morning, however, all the streets are completely deserted. In the afternoons between one and four most shops are closed and most people inside. So, a rigidly defined sequencing of the day into unambiguously distinct phases. Different, then, from the increasingly twenty four hour, the-race-is-always-on culture found in much of the west -where the rise in sovereignty of distinct individual or microcosmic units over the universal patterns and rhythms of traditional society has contributed to the deconstruction of the feeling of a homogenous order to life- for good and ill.

So far, very few people (or should I say men) have spoken enough English to be able to converse with me much, though it's been apparent from their warmth and friendliness that they wanted to. Whereas Turks are more likely to ask immediately 'where are you from?', Syrians' first greeting is often 'welcome'. Yes, I would say Syrians are even warmer than the Turks on first meeting. Though by this I mean no slur to Sir Ottoman. Turks, even in the East, are more accustomed to seeing foreigners so will grow jaded with us more quickly. Also Turks, I suspect, have a stronger sense of not needing to impress foreigners, given their robust self-confidence and secure sense of standing in the world. They are also far more familiar with the rest of the world. Syrians, although sharing the universal Arabic self-esteem and pugnacity, are conscious that much of the world views them with considerable suspicion. They must feel the need and desire to reach out and make contacts with the foreigners that they see. Additionally, much of the world is isolated from them, so curiosity is the greater. Acquiring visas to travel, to the west at least, is very difficult. Even if possible, such travel is often far too expensive for people whose average salary is about 150 dollars a month.

So the people are great. But not, alas, or so far in my experience anyway, the children. On two separate occasions in Al-Hassake I was pursued by 'shoe polishers', boys with portable boxes they wanted to shine my shoes on. My pointing out I was wearing trainers, and pretty shabby ones at that, didn't dissuade them at all. Alas, it wasn't enough to say no politely as they continued to follow me, shout and laugh at me, walk in front of and into me, one boy even hitting my bag. Attempts to walk briskly away just encouraged them further, as did, even more so, my unwise transformation into someone visibly irritated and then cross. I imagined that they thought that because they were children and that I was not their parent or relative, and indeed foreign, that they could do anything to me and that I wouldn't challenge or control them. Of course they were right. Although the men in the streets tried to reprove them and sympathised with me, it was obvious ultimately that they were on their side in that if I treated the children as I was being treated by them their sympathy would vanish. I'd be execrated as an adult bully or worse. Not that I wanted to hound them of course. I just wanted them to stop.

Perhaps the situation might be even worse in Britain where children are often encouraged by the sometimes fanatically non-judgmental ambience of the adult world to conclude that aggression and general nastiness are fine. In saying this, however, I am not trying to occupy a 'Conservative' ground in the endlessly sterile debates on the question of the treatment of children. If I echo some of what the cultural conservatives say, so be it, I don't care. I do not blame children for imitating, in terms of disorderliness and irresponsibility, what is shown first to them by adults. Or for then wrongly concluding from adult indifference that behaving in riotously ungracious ways is all well and dandy. I don't blame them, but that doesn't mean they should be allowed to behave in this way or that they shouldn't be shown, preferably by love-centred reason and explanation, the consequences of their unpleasantness. If necessary, a controlled dose of imitative reaction might regrettably be required if it is clear that the light of reason, or the willingness to be illuminated by it, is not on or active in their heads. The point is for them to know that they can't get away with behaving in barbaric ways, that the external world has rights of its own that will be imposed against them if they recklessly flout it. In my understanding this is not punishment, which I dislike in all spheres of life for its sclerotic, self-righteous pomposity and basic hypocrisy, it is instant karma, the world of calm and gentle people standing up against chaotic and thoughtless narcissism.

Ok, enough of that tangent and rapidly increasing tangle. Perhaps some will think I exaggerated the threat posed by these wee nippers. Ok, ok, for sure. But it was like being harassed by monster flies and it was a pain, ok.