Sean McAllister » Page 7

Author: Sean McAllister

Documentary Filmmaker from Hull, England, specialises in giving the voiceless a voice

The dentists chair and the veil

Whilst dentist Rima was checking my teeth I was quizzing her about the recent news that the Syrian government had banned the veil at Damascus University. “Is it an attempt to appeal to the west?” I ask her provocatively; knowing she is religious and partly veiled herself, “If it is to appeal to the West” she says, “It is wrong, Obama is as bad as Bush as far as we are concerned. What has he ever said or done about Gaza?”

I watch nervously and wince bravely as dentist Rima roughly plucks out a temporary filling from my problem tooth and then pokes a large needle deep into the empty canal.

For a moment it amuses me that this British boy had decided to have this necessary (and painful) dental work done in a country labelled by his own government as ‘Beyond the Axis of Evil’, a rogue state and a state sponsor of terrorism.

But before I know it Rima is coming at me again, this time with a needle for my gum, she jabs hard directly into the abscess itself, straight through my gum, as the syringe forces the medicine into the abscess a crippling pain freezes the side of my face, I cannot (however much I try) hide the tears in my eyes – I’d heard that dentists were good and cheap here but dear God I’m now wondering if this was the right move.

I try to distract myself by looking at the pictures of the Koran on her wall, and then the other religious items on her desk. Out of the corner of my eye I see more veiled women enter the room – they sit and turn to face me, entertained by my childlike performance, they murmur in Arabic to each other… I imagine them asking each other if my crying is for real or not. I realise I am surrounded, this is now a woman’s world, a veiled world, and I feel very out of place.

This grown man from the north of England, England the warrior nation, empire creator, freedom bringer, is now squirming like a child in the dentist’s chair to the obvious amusement of a gaggle of women hidden behind their veils. “It really hurts” I say pathetically, “Don’t worry Sean, it will pass soon” dentist Rima says with a smile.

“The veil is the woman’s right, in the Koran we can choose to show our face or not, it is up to us”. “Will this patient remove her veil for treatment?” I ask looking at a woman in black, “Of course” dentist Rima says laughing, “Just as soon as you leave the room”.

As the pain subsides and the tears dry I push my luck by suggesting that in this male dominated society it must be the man who decides what the woman does and what she wears… “Not in Syria” dentist Rima insists, “Here it up to the women, our personal choice, in the West you are misled by your understanding of the veil, we are not at all like Saudi Arabia. Syria is a far more tolerant society and we are not an Islamic state, here it is secular. A lot of what you read in the west is wrong, here women are respected, we don’t need shelters for beaten women like you do in England and America”.

“We are like Iraqi’s” dentist Rima continues, “We are a well educated nation with culture and history. Saddam provided all this to his nation but the Americans don’t like educated Arabs so they got rid of him. But they will never remove our president he has the complete backing of his people and after the war in Iraq he is stronger than ever”.

As I sit in this dentists chair in Syria I think to myself how funny it is, the strange, muddled, ideas we have of each other’s societies, how we misunderstand each other, sometimes deliberately, but often at our peril, whilst firmly, and without fuss, dentist Rima seals the root canal with yet another temporary filling.

Sandstorms and Julie Burchill on my mind

The crippling heat saps my energy as we rumble and judder on and on packed like sardines inside this tin-can on wheels. The sweat drips like blood out of a wound from my brow and slides down my soaked back, outside the Syrian desert heat soars to 47c whilst inside the air conditioning repeatedly refuses to work.

Fearing that I may pass-out from the insane heat I decide to sleep.

I wake in a hot sweat with Julie Burchill on my mind. What happened to the idyllic desert landscape? We are now driving through a sand storm. Visibility is nil yet still the driver hammers on as the whirling sand batters the bus.

Julie Burchill is like a bad dream in a sandstorm, I’d accidentally seen her ‘talk’ promoting a book at the Latitude festival last month in the UK. “How do you operate in a middle class world as a working class woman?” “How do you find your way?” “Are you ever truly accepted?” Burchill is asked.

At first I felt for her. I sometimes wonder if the working classes are ever really accepted into the private club of the middle class world or whether they just allow a few of us in because they know we’ll drink too much and keep them entertained with our common ways for a while. Do they laugh with us, or at us?

Oh dear, am I being too classist? Well to be honest if it wasn’t for the interviewer focussing on the class issue I wouldn’t have raised it, but I guess I’m also sensitive to the fact that I often find myself being asked how a mere pea factory worker ended up in TV rubbing shoulders with the bespectacled Oxbridge brigade?

Don’t get me wrong, I like my middle class friends because they are usually intelligent and in their own way they amuse me, although I still keep a tight bunch of working class mates who are my closest friends for their endless ability to mock themselves and life itself in a funny and intelligent way.

But I sometimes wonder if when the token working class ‘icon’ is paraded in some middle class setting like the ‘writers tent’ at the Latitude festival (or myself at film festival Q&A’s) whether it forces them into becoming a parody of the person these people want us to be like, so instead of being articulate and interesting we start shouting and swearing. Is this a result of our own insecurity?

It wasn’t long before Burchill was swearing ‘fuck fuck fuck’ to shock the middle class audience; like a tiger cornered in her cage. I was on her side at first but when she made some reactionary ignorant remark defending the war on Iraq and attacking those who opposed it I reckon she had gone too far.

15 years of hanging out in the Groucho club was the reason she left London, apparently she’d realised that the only people she knew were media types – it certainly explains her ignorance when it comes to her opinions on the Iraq war. Maybe she should restrict herself to the jade goody shagging gutter gossip stuff that got her rich and famous in the first place.

By the end of her ‘talk’ she’d completely lost the sympathy of the audience, and, more importantly for me, she had become an embarrassment to her ‘own’ class, doing nothing but re-enforcing the most negative stereotypes of us as ignorant foul-mouthed inarticulate fools.

Fortunately the Syrian sand storm woke me from this nightmare and still, with zero visibility outside of this tin-can, my attention swiftly turned away from Julie Burchill and back to my own personal safety as we rock and rolled our way through the stormy sandy desert. There are no Julie Burchill’s in Arabia thank god.

Moving on

Fresh figs in crisp fresh flat bread make the perfect breakfast as I relax on my balcony overlooking the gorgeous valley in Safita. Afterwards I head out and sit with Adnan enjoying the thick Arabic coffee watching the small town life pass by, speaking very few words strangers sitting comfortably together, “You’re welcome anytime Mr. Sean” he says.

But today is my last time here and I cannot bring myself to tell him. Adnan was the first person to befriend me in Safita and looks after me as if was the Arabic son he never had. I had so hoped to be here for the opening of his hummus cafe but it wasn’t ready on Saturday and now he says it will be open later in the week. I tell him I have to leave for a dental appointment in Damascus. “You will be back for the opening Mr. Sean?”

In the back of my mind I hope I will but in my heart I know I must move on. I cannot see the film I want to make in sleepy Safita no matter how amazing the place and incredibly accepting the people.

Last night as I walked home I met a shop owner in a cafe “Sean come join us” he shouted. Soon I was surrounded by bottles of Arak and a wonderful array of mezza salads, 5 or 6 of his friends arrived and they all struggled with broken English discussing the usual topics of English football and Syrian girls, “Really you are an Arab man” the shop owner said as we joked. Around us a very modern Arab setting, Christian and Alawite, religious and social cohesion, it is impossible for me to tell who is what from how they look or from what they are drinking.

Johnnie Walker Black Label whiskey bottles sit proudly on tables as families arrive into the early hours, I enjoy the ambiance and the sweet smell of apple tobacco in the air from the shisa pipes, it is very easy to feel at home with such wonderful unforced hospitality.

It was Michael whom I’d returned to see in Safita and who had been my English speaking guide for the last few days. He is a wonderful eccentric character; an Anglophile and a poet, his poem ‘I’m Fed Up’ laments of life in this Syrian town. He and his brother were the best students in the English department, “We are Europeans in our minds, our family is descended from Richard the Lion Heart”, he tells me proudly, “We were here fighting with the crusaders”.

Michael and his brother both dream of a life in the west and own much property and land in Safita, but Syrian law does not allow them to take money out of the country. So they stay here looking after their elderly mother, and dreaming of European brides.

As we talk in the street some taxi drivers stop to say something to Michael and his brother, “They are telling us to leave you alone, they think we are trying to get money from you.” We can talk in my hotel I tell them, “No” they say, “Here it is dangerous for us to go inside your place, people get suspicious and make reports to the secret police”. They both decide to leave.

Adnan is painting his new counter when I arrive for the last time, “Go inside Mr. Sean, it is too hot today”. He looks at me and asks if I had a rough night’s sleep, I feel paranoid, maybe he can smell the Arak on me, I feel distracted, torn, a mix of sadness and the usual apprehension I get when striding forward.

Moving on is never easy and one can never be sure it is the right thing to do. Looking for a story always involves learning about a place, a people, and making good friends, but saying goodbye never gets easier and I’m never sure if I will be back. Adnan makes the coffee, a man pops his head through the door asking for a job, Adnan tells him to come back in a couple of days, Adnan turns to me and says “Soon the shop will be finished Mr. Sean and we can eat hummus together”, I nod in agreement and smile sadly to myself.

Bus to Safita

The tightly packed mini-bus swerved more erratically than normal through the dusty dry Damascus streets, the driver seemed irate or ‘nervous’ as they say here, maybe it was his Ramadan thirst I thought.

I’d stopped at a Christian place for breakfast fearing a complete closure of food and drink stalls, my last Ramadan was 2 long years ago when ‘McAllister of Arabia’ set out on his mission to find a film in the hell hole that is Dubai. My arrival there was during Ramadan and the place was dry and foodless during the daylight hours, I’d expected the same here but as we pulled into the central bus garage I could see an array of food stalls with plenty of locals eating and drinking tea out in the open, business as usual in secular Syria it seems, what a relief.

I join a boy selling a wonderful berry drink that he fills with fresh shavings of ice, around him are a bunch of guys drinking, I quench my thirst before surveying the food stalls where I find kebabs pizzas and falafel. A man smiles, sipping on his tea, “From Holland?” “No, England”, I reply, “What happened to Ramadan” I ask? He starts to laugh and says “No Ramadan here!”

I was still in the garage toilets having a piss when my bus set off. I’d heard it sound its horn as the sign that it was about to leave… but one advantage of being the only westerner on the bus is that they never forget you, a man came running to the toilets to get me with such great timing that I was able to catch the bus and avoid paying the annoying toilet keeper the 10 cent fee for a pee.

Back on the dingy bus, we stop from time-to-time to pick up army recruits, the isle down the middle of the bus is slowly disappearing as fold-down seats are used to seat the new passengers.

I recall my first bus journey in Syria; a wonderful VIP bus with flat bed seats plenty of space and air conditioning. Then I would look out of the window at the ‘locals’ buses and wondered what it must be like to be packed into a creaky metal box on wheels in the soaring sun. Now I am here, the journey starts out ok but the more passengers we pick-up the more squeezed it becomes, it is like travelling for hours in a tightly packed Japanese metro train – except they’re mostly standing all the way! Come to think of it maybe this bus is not too bad after all, yes I may be squeezed-in but at least I have a seat. A fan blows warm air on me and an awful Arabic singer wails in the background.

I am on my way to visit Michael in Safita, he told me to always take a seat at the back of the bus. “Why?” I asked him, slightly puzzled. “What difference does it make?” “It is always safer in the back when it crashes” he says casually.

Shiny but dark

I watch agog as Rami, a 30 year old Syrian, helps his friend change his baby’s nappy, it is so impressive at how well they work in unison, an accurate operation well practised. Is this the image westerners expect of modern men in male dominated Syria?

Later I am sat alone reading a daily paper, there is an article about sexual harassment.

Gaith is a 25 bachelor who regularly harasses girls by following them on the street and praising their beauty. He knows that his behaviour is religiously and socially unacceptable, but justifies it because “Girls like to hear romantic phrases from us” he said, “and some of them laugh and respond.”

However he would never tolerate such talk against his young sisters, “My sisters are respectable girls, not like the available girls on the street. If somebody dare look at my sisters, I would smash his bones.”

The penalties for having sex out of wedlock are high here; despite Syria being a modern secular society it is still filled with dark traditions. “I would be killed if my family found out” she tells me, “By your father?” I ask “No not my father” she says, then, thinking for a minute, “My brother would do it”.

Now she feels she can never trust another Arabic man. The treasured twins she’d been carrying had to be aborted in secret, when she asked him for help he didn’t want to know, “If you’ve been with me you could have been with anyone” he told her. The operation cost her 25000 Syrian pounds and was performed in utmost secrecy.

This is a modern-looking woman in a modern-looking society but the modernity seems like a facade that hides a much darker side. Single-handed and undeterred she has made it her mission not to abandon her country but to attempt to change it from within.

Later whilst scanning the papers for big stories, I read of ‘modern’ forward-looking secular Syria ‘banning the veil’ followed by a story about an honour killing just outside of Aleppo.

A 28 year old girl was raped. Distressed, she didn’t want to go home so went to confess to her uncle who told her father, they got together and had her own brother kill her. All 4 have been arrested, and under Syrian law all men will face the maximum prison sentence of 3 years for the honour killing.

It wasn’t so long ago that Syria, like Saudi and other Arab countries, had no sentence at all for such killings. That honour killers can now be sent to jail for 3 years is seen as progress in this complex and difficult land.