FROM MY DUNGEON IN DAMASCUS

For about an hour, around noontime on Friday, a beautiful rhythmic recitation of the Qur’an flows through the mosque loudspeaker and echoes over the surrounding apartment buildings and narrow alleyways of a well off area in Damascus. A soothing reminder that today there is congregational prayer at the mosque. The streets are empty and businesses are closed. The sun’s rays stretch over and around the tall, historic, dingy buildings.

I had occupied a flat in the basement of such a building. Every so often the sun’s rays would grace my living room window with ten minutes of longed for natural light. My tiny overpriced flat came furnished, including an old stand up rotating fan that was jimmy-rigged in front of the kitchen window above the cook stove. With the flick of a switch, the fan would suck all the air out of the house while sucking fresh air from one of the many alleys of Damascus through my bedroom window. This constant air movement prevented mold from forming on the walls and high ceilings due to moisture generated from cooking and showers.

In my bedroom, curtain drawn, I stood in the 18 inch pathway between my bed and the crumbling plaster wall, hurriedly drying my hair with a towel. The chilly spring air whisked through my room. I suddenly realized the loudspeaker recitation had finished when a familiar yet unexpected song caught my attention. Squinting I turned my ear toward the window. ‘I’m a Barbie girl, in a Barbie woorrrrld. Laughing plastic, it’s fantastic…” What the heck, I thought?

Filled with curiosity, I just had to see where this was coming from. I opened the curtain just a sliver, and peeked across the deserted alley into a small family owned barbershop. A 16 year old Syrian kid, who was probably tending the shop for his father just in case someone wanted to get their hair cut, was singing along with an Arabic accent. This was the song I used to listen to as a 16 year old girl and he knew the words better than I did. I laughed as I watched him dancing to the music. I felt a little guilty as this kid, who thought no one was watching, danced totally uninhibited. Doubtless, he probably would have been mortified if he knew I was watching his every move. I kept watching. “Come on Barbie lets go Barbie, oh oh oh yeeeaah,” he continued raising the pitch of his voice with the songs feminine tone.

Shaking my head with a grin, I returned to drying my hair, pondering over the strangeness of the incident that was occurring outside my bedroom window. If Americans only knew, I thought. We think ‘the terrorists’ from the ‘Axis of Evil’ hate us and our way of life but here is this young kid, in Syria of all places, dancing in a barber shop to the tackiest of American songs and loving every minute of it. I felt fortunate that I just happened to be there to witness it from the window of my dungeon in Damascus.