Cune Magazine
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Cune Magazine |
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To the reader in The Road from Damascus The point of this book [The Road from Damascus] is
the humanity of ordinary men and women in a country that the US State Department has branded a “terrorist nation.” In my experience Americans know very little about the lives of Middle Eastern Arabs and Muslims. Following the September 11th attacks,
ignorance and fear are a primary dynamic behind American public opinion. As I write, six months after September 11th, the impulse of the citizenry is to give government leaders carte blanche in foreign affairs.
Sad to say, policies created in an atmosphere of public ignorance are often the wrong policies. They have unintended effects. They backfire and harm the United States. And, as well, they ruin the lives of
innocents in foreign lands. I came to Syria originally in response to terrorist acts in Europe, which were widely reported in the United States. I did not quite
believe the media stereotype that depicted Arabs and Muslims as dangerous people who wanted to kill themselves and to take us along with them. On the other hand, I really had no idea what was true. And so I
initiated a search for true information, if not a search for truth itself. My search began after the 1986 Berlin disco bombing and ended after the September 11th attacks. I took three trips to Syria, in 1987,
2001, and 2002. In between I engaged in conversations with Syrians whom I had met, read scholarly studies, pondered my travel notes. This book is observation, history, people, and ideas. It is somewhere between travelogue and scholarship. To me it is a journey of the
soul: the story of my slow and somewhat tortured discovery that men and women on the other side of the world have a human claim on me. Since Syria, I no longer quite believe the possessions that I own, the
status that I have achieved, the career that I pursue. I am less quick to judge the motives of a people by the actions of their government. Watching television news today, I am aware that the action off camera
very likely undercuts the message which subject and cameraman conspire to portray. I am conscious that revenge is a bad motive which the universe does not reward. Violence, alone, never makes peace or brings
justice. My regret as a writer is that so many delicious facts crept into my narrative. I fear that the meaning of my journey is obscured. In
Syria I was looking for that ingredient which allows people of different faiths and races to live together in harmony. This book consists of messages of hope expressed by Saleh the Shiite, the Patriarch of
Antioch, and a dozen others whom I met. To my mind, heart and desire outweigh history, culture, religion, politics, art, archaeology. In 1986 Libya and Syria stood accused. In May the United States responded by bombing Libya, killing fifteen people including Quaddafi’s
infant daughter, and commentators suggested that Syria was next. By December Syria was in the news every week, denounced for harboring the world’s worst terrorists. Still, I had trouble jiving the TV image of
Syria with the only Syrian whom I knew. In Seattle, I had built a restaurant designed by Hasan the architect. He was mild, fastidious, courteous to a fault—a Poirot, a real fuss-budget—and a family man who
indulged his daughters. Was he typical of Syrians? Or were they, on the balance, violent people bent on martyrdom? “I’ve got to go to Syria and see for myself,” I announced to family and friends. I had spent a decade building my construction
business and needed to take a break. As a destination Syria seemed more adventurous than, say, Hawaii. I wanted to meet the people I had seen in the news. One more thing. I was angry because, coming out of college, I had worked hard to put my life in order. The hatred and killing in the
Middle East, physically distant as it was, nevertheless distorted my mental world. The Middle East defined the possibilities for human behavior. Cruelty, fear, and revenge were kept alive in my life in Seattle
because they dominated the story that came out of the Middle East. “The world’s leaders have failed to solve the Middle East conflict,” I thought. “I guess I will have to do it myself.” I was
joking, I told myself. Yet as my journey progressed I found that Syrians constantly restored the mantel of responsibility that I had so quickly shed. “We must think, and pray, and yearn for the ideas that
humanity needs to survive,” Syrians seemed to say to me. “Ultimately individual men and women, not experts, not power brokers, achieve peace.” Why Syria? This country was a microcosm of the Arab Middle East. What I learned in Syria, I felt, would apply in some measure to all Arab
countries. Also, I had an advantage with Syria. The contacts which Hasan the architect would provide could help me penetrate. Even more compelling: Syria had dozens of cultures and subcultures developed over
four thousand years’ time, probably unmatched in the world for a country of its size. Syria was a cultural storehouse—the Amazon rain forest of raw cultural material. I thought that each of these cultures
and every moment of history held a message for me—if only I could decode them. In Syria I sensed that I had the best chance of finding the answer for which I was searching. I wanted to write about my journey, and I hoped that Syrians would honor this endeavor. As it turned out, I met many Syrians who
encouraged me to put my travel to literary use. In the old Crusader seaport of Tartus, for example, I took tea with a local English teacher, a short, plump man who listened to my itinerary, then interrupted. “You must have a purpose for your travel,” he said. “Something for humanity. I think that you should write a book—not a funny
book, but wise, very wise. In the Middle Ages, before a man wrote a book he traveled the entire world, talked to the people, saw the customs. Only then did he sit down to write. Syria—it is the world. All the
philosophies, all the history, all the peoples of the world are here, right here, in our small country. You see, you speak, you make a note. Then go home and write a book of wisdom.” If you like this article, post it on your favorite website or e-mail it to your friends.
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