dispatches from here

A motorcycle ride from the Syrian Security Forces...Read on for more details!

I’ve been getting a little bit of flak for not updating the blog in the past week or so, and I apologize.  But it wasn’t my fault, blame it on Bashar al-Assad.  And this (long) post is being written from the relative safety of Beirut!

A little bit of background.  Syria is a police state, but not a very good one.  Everything here is logged and asked about.  Want to get a hotel room? Passport please.  Want to use the internet? Passport please.  Want to get on a long distance bus?  Passport, occupation, father’s name, and mother’s name, please.  Arriving in Dier-Az Zur? Passport please.  Come this way, have a seat, get comfortable and answer these 10 questions.  At first it’s a bit scary, but it very quickly becomes annoying and time consuming.

And where does all this information go?  In dusty beat up binders in piles on the floor.  They aren’t indexed or organized in any particular fashion, and each time my info is jotted down in the officer’s sloppy Arabic handwriting, they spell name differently.  They have to transliterate from English and each person has their own way of doing.  And I don’t understand how it makes anyone safer or my less threatening if they know my father’s name…I could make up a different one each time and they’d never be able to figure it out.

Imagine this: someone decides to find me or where I’ve been. They have to call all of the thousands of police checkpoints across the country and have them look through their piles of binders for some guy whose name they spell differently each time. This is supposed to scare me? In America, while not a police state (yet), we’re tracked much better and more accurately.  If someone wanted to, they could figure out where I’ve been for every  second of every day for the past 10 years just based on my cell phone and credit card charges.

Back to the main story:  riding the bus to Hassakeh, a city in the far eastern desert about 160km from the Iraqi border.  We decided to come here because there are a lot of Assyrian villages north of the city and we wanted to celebrate Kha B’Nisan (Assyrian New Year) here in the villages (more on that later).  A few km outside the town, the bus stopped at a police checkpoint and the driver asked for our passports, which he handed over to a Syrian security forces officer.  He walked back to his vehicle, a 1990’s faded grey Chevy Silverado truck with an absolutely massive machine gun mounted on the roof and talked on his cell phone while leafing through our passports.  We got our papers back without incident and thought we were done as the bus continued on to Hassakeh.  Getting off the bus, we found that the machine gun truck had followed us the rest of the way and was situated a hundred meters away, watching. An Assyrian friend had come to pick us up but was flagged down by the machine gun truck as we loaded up our bags.  The officer pulled George aside and interrogated him for about 10 minutes just out of earshot.

George came back and sat in the car, saying that nothing was wrong but everything was OK.  He started the car and slowly pulled off while nervously lighting a cigarette and checking his rear view mirror.  I looked back only to find that the machine gun truck was still following us.  Now, I’m not sure how many of you have been followed by a machine gun mounted truck, but it’s pretty scary.  Especially when someone tells you its not a big deal.

At the hotel, we sat in the lobby for 30 minutes with our Assyrian friends and the Syrian security officer as he asked us questions.  He would ask something in Arabic, it would get translated into Assyrian, I would translate into English and discuss with Adam, and pass it back in Assyrian and then into Arabic.  With so many steps, I had no idea if anything I was saying was actually getting to the officer, or what he was saying.  There would be long bits of Arabic back and forth, obviously talking about us but not to us.  But the whole ordeal was eerily cordial, with lots of tea and fake laughter.  We were told that everything we did would have to be reported to the officer, everywhere we went, by which route, and when we would back.  Through translation, we were told that this was only for our own benefit, the officer was only here to keep us safe and protect us. This was just one big frustrating Kafkaesque game! Our friends nervously lied to us, “No, its good that he’s here, and the officers here are very good and friendly, and they do a great job of keeping people safe!”  What total crap!

Finally dispatched to our room, I was completely flustered.  The main feelings were of disorientation and guilt.  I couldn’t sit and think straight, I couldn’t put sentences together, and I felt deep down that I had dome something wrong, that I was guilty of horrible crime.  My stomach flipped over and over.  After getting my head screwed on a little, I started to get really angry! I hadn’t done anything wrong, I had followed all of the illogical rules, played all the bizarre games, and here’s this heavily armed ignorant security forces jackass making me feel like crap.  It’s a feeling that really bends your brain, and I can totally understand how living in this type of state can break your spirit.

So for the next three days, Machine Gun (his new nickname), followed us around everywhere.  Each time we left the hotel, the clerk would ask where we were going, call the officer, and he would magically show up.  He would walk 20-30 meters behind us, meandering along with us. We were almost seated at an internet café when the officer walked in.  He spoke to the café owner for a few minutes, after which the café owner apologized, saying we couldn’t use the computers because they were all down for maintenance.  Excellent.  Undeterred, we walked to another internet café and sat.  Security officer guy sat across from us for the hour and watched.  Maybe now you understand why I didn’t update the blog.

This continued for three days. No longer scared but frustrated and annoyed, Adam and I began trying to talk to him.  We would ask him for directions and restaurant recommendations, walk in circles and zig zag across the street.  He was pretty lazy, coming in late morning and leaving around dinner time.  Again, if you’re going to bother following us, why not do it around the clock?  And if you’re going to protect us, where are you at night?
On day two, we left the hotel early in the morning before he arrived and hopped on a bus to the Assyrian village of Halmon.  Again, the bus was stopped and a different officer interrogated us.  We ended up in the village with a motorcycle escort, following us around as we meandered aimlessly through this mud brick village. He would lose him for a little bit and he would randomly pop up from behind buildings and watch us walk by. At the end of the day, we were about 3km from the bus stop and tired. So I thought, “Hey, didn’t he say he was here to help us?” Time to call his bluff. We walked over to him and asked, thanks to an Assyrian translating into Arabic, where the bus stop was (knowing it was 2.854 km away thanks to the GPS in my pocket).  He told us it was too far to walk and we could get a taxi.  “A taxi? I don’t see any around. Man, that sucks…is there any other way we can get there? Hey, could you take us on the back of your motorcycle?” At first he was surprised, then a little unsure how to respond, and finally with a hand motion and a yalla, Adam and I hopped on the back of his motorcycle to the bus stop.

And that is how I ended up on the back of a Syrian security forces motorcycle riding through the Eastern Desert.  We knew the system now, and the semi around the clock surveillance was kinda fun.  And away from the Syrian Police, hanging out in Beirut, I feel so free and comfortable and will never take our American civil liberties for granted again.

A little bit of security forces through the side mirror

The security forces officer said I couldn't take his picture...but he didn't say anything about his shadow. From Left to right, Adam's head, my head, and security forces guy's head.