[This is the sixth part of Amal Hanano`s diary of her trip back to Aleppo. You can read the previous parts here]
I knew I shouldn’t have gone. They called and said dinner was at Nadi Halab, Club d’Alep, the exclusive club where the akaber, high-class, elite “society” of Christian and secular Muslims hang out to gossip, drink, smoke, dance, model the latest fashion trends, and of course eat. It is a timeless institution, with memberships that pass from father to son. Everything could change in Aleppo but Nadi Halab would never change, from its wicker chairs to its food, which is considered the best in a city famous for its cuisine. It probably swayed my decision to go. Yes, I sold my soul for the kibbeh nayyeh.
Several months ago, at the beginning of the uprising, a political dissident who had frequented the Nadi for years (but was not a member), loudly announced that Bashar was “packing his bags.” The next day, he was banned from the club forever. The board held an emergency meeting and enforced a new rule: talking about politics was forbidden within the walls of Nadi Halab. I was intrigued by this self-imposed silence and wondered, was it possible to survive an entire dinner without talking about politics?
I should have known the answer when I saw the large table set up far from the band and dance floor (and listening ears), its round shape alien to the usual long, narrow rectangular tables that prevent (and protect) one side from talking to the other. A group of half friends, half distant acquaintances who were well-connected to the regime, people I didn’t associate with even before the uprising, were carefully assembled around the table. Some of them were not loyalists to the regime, they were the regime. I took a breath and uneasily sat down. This table was set for a special kind of discussion, and as I would soon realize, an intervention.
The Talk began, politely after the small talk. The ringleader, sitting across from me, an older man who I knew, but never had spoken to, had been invited to “brainwash” me out of my crazy “notions” before returning to the States. He also directed his analysis to the man next him, a wealthy merchant who was “undecided” and “had serious questions about the government’s recent actions.” The merchant’s wife made small gestures to me throughout the evening to show her support, but she didn’t say a word. Silent camaraderie, comforting but not that helpful.
The ladies around us, sat pretty with their blood-red nails and smiles as fake as their hair extensions, mindlessly nodding approval to every word their husbands uttered, their smooth, botoxed foreheads concealed their inner turmoil of worries about the current political unrest and economic stagnation; for how would they pay for their maid’s salary, their fall 2011 wardrobe, and a summer weekend in Beirut?
The men were busy spinning elaborate conspiracy theories to explain why the region was exploding. It was a dizzying display of convoluted logic, twisted and knotted into intertwining theories that formed, al-Mu’amara al-Kawniyyeh, The Universal Conspiracy, because in case you didn’t know, the entire universe has been plotting the destruction of Syria. The waiters (part-time mukhabarat) swarmed around the table, filling already full glasses of water, sensing fresh news. They belittled every popular movement of Arab Spring, calling Egypt a military coup, Tunisia a joke, Bahrain a disgrace, Libya a tragedy. Locally, Daraa was a mistake, Homs was unexpected, Hama was untouchable (since then we have learned that it is not), Jisr al-Shughur was the site where “armed gangs” had massacred 120 military personnel, and the thousands of Syrian refugees in Turkey were being paid $50 a day by the Turkish government to live in tents instead of returning to their homes.
Every injustice or grievance has a mu’amara behind it. If you ask about the world’s youngest prisoner of conscience, Tal al-Mallohi, seventeen when she was sentenced for five years for posting poems about Palestine, they respond that she was a convicted spy and had a mysterious liaison with a Danish UN worker from Damascus. If you ask about Hamzeh al-Khateeb, the mutilated 13-year-old from Daraa, who has become the face of the protesters’ campaign against oppression, the response is quick and shrill. He was not thirteen, he was really seventeen and was caught raping soldiers’ wives.(“Couldn’t you tell from the video that he was so tall?” “Um, no I couldn’t, I was too distracted by his swollen, bruised, burned, tortured body.”) I was more shocked by the fact that they really believed the lies they were spewing than the actual absurdity of the claims themselves.
I tried to focus on the few people on the table who shared decades of personal history with me; our steel bonds of friendship were unbreakable. But I felt an impasse forming between us. How can they ask to give hiwar, dialogue a chance when they couldn’t even practice it at a dinner table? To keep myself calm, I repeated my new mantra mundess wa la mundass, “better to be an infiltrator than to be stepped on,” over and over, but it didn’t help. Neither did the food, as wicked lies about murdered children make even Nadi Halab’s kibbeh taste like rotting deceit.
When the band began the dusty, decades-old playlist of Arabic songs, people looked uneasily at each other, not knowing the limits of appropriate display of pleasure. Would clapping be acceptable? Would a sway be disrespectful? Someone made a joke that our table was in the perfect location, far from the dance floor, and near the gate, remembering an incident of a grenade thrown over the Nadi wall during the “events” of the ‘80s when members (probably their parents) danced while others in Aleppo were being slaughtered. They laughed. I looked nervously at the entrance, mentally calculating the long path, doubting I would make it in heels.
They kept asking me, “You are going to tell them when you go back, right? Tell them that we are fine, that we love our president, that we won’t accept any foreign intervention?” I have no idea who they thought I was going to tell, or what they thought my influence would be, or why it was so important to make sure I had been convinced. But in my mind, I was saying, yes, I will absolutely tell everyone about your delusions.
Disappointed I asked a friend next to me, whom I’ve known for over 20 years, “So you’ve become a loyalist too?”
“What’s wrong with you? Are you really a mundasseh?”
I whispered, “There is blood now.”
He looked at me for a long moment as he smoked his cigarette and said, “I am not with him, I am with reform and stability. Now is not the right time for this uprising. They need to give the president more time, a chance for reform.”
Being constantly called mundesseh started as a joke, and eventually had become a badge of honor (see mantra above), but that night there was something much stronger hidden behind the word, its letters were exaggerated, its pause in the middle was harsher, its hissing at the end extended longer, it was hatred mixed with rejection. And it hurt.
Just before dessert, the ringleader leaned in close and said slowly in a voice so low I almost missed it, “You don’t get it. We have to believe in the conspiracy, it is essential that we believe in it. If we don’t, then we are traitors to our country.” That single sentence, the only shred of truth spoken that night, was all I needed to hear. The veiled confession, the fear of guilt, moved me. I did not have the heart (or the guts) to point out, it was too late, they already were traitors.
We walked out as Thursday night turned into Friday morning, while millions were getting ready for morning prayer, while thousands of young men were preparing to face death instead of humiliation. The place that never changes shared the cool night breeze with the change brewing on the street. Those few, quiet moments in the night were possibly, like the group of friends outside the Nadi, the closest they would ever be.
Al-hayat mawqif, life is about taking a stand, and I found myself questioning my own. I wanted to document my experience without getting myself or my family in trouble, to try to make sense of what is going on from the perspective of my society. I had promised myself before coming to Syria that I would not argue, fight, or try to change people’s minds; I would keep an open mind and listen to their point of view. But that night, the silence and the secrets and the small nods were becoming heavier and harder to keep up. I resolved to change strategies, I needed to find a least a glimmer of hope that my beloved Halab has not become a complete wasteland of greed, opportunism, and ignorance. My days here were numbered and my patience was wearing thin, and above all I felt an intense sadness. Disappointment and disillusion had triggered that familiar feeling, the desire to go home, which meant once again, I was no longer there.