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Christel's Diary

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24 February 2006

Capital of Islamic Culture

The weather is excellent ! It is like Summer in Belgium. The Syrians don't believe me. Every time I tell them : The weather is like Summer in Belgium, they smile at me clearly thinking : She is crazy.

On top of that, the city of Aleppo is being transformed day and night now. Buildings and bridges are being cleaned, parks redesigned, roads repaired... Within a few weeks Aleppo will receive a lot of visitors as it is the "Capital of Islamic Culture" this year.

Bab Antakia, the entrance to the part of the Medina where I am living, is also being completely cleaned up. All the little shops along the ancient city wall have to move across the street, behind some official buildings and the "meat and fish" souk with its typical odour also has to go. I do not know where. I will miss it. Never buy anything in it, as I am not sure my stomach can stand any meals prepared with the food they sell there, but it's a shortcut for me to go to the park and the shopping center giving me each time a very typical flavour of every day live in the Old City.

It will get very busy. Very much so, because the touristic high season is starting. I will probably have to flee to the countryside. Although I would like to take part in the upcoming festivities.

In the meantime, Serwat's baby has been named officially "Judy". According to the sjeik, this is an Arabic name. So, everybody is happy.

And Dzjidde has recovered. He is eating, drinking, sleeping and talking, although not all at the same time. He decided to stay a little bit longer amongst us.
I will visit him soon to say 'Hello".

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16 February 2006

Non-verbal and verbal communication

Have been out of town the whole week and spent most of my time in Ebzimo and Kafaramme.

Dzjidde (Grandfather) is very ill and everybody expects the worst. Most of the time, he doesn't recognize anybody, except for a few of his children and sometimes he suffers great pain. The few moments is better, he is asking for all his children to be with him. But everybody is hoping he will recover. Maybe...

In the meantime, I have began to talk more - in Arabic, I mean. Up until now, I was always the silent one. No big conversations, but that is not what the villagers expect. They want to talk about the weather, about the price of food and other basic stuff.

Since a few days, I'm using "a" as "yes". It took me a long time to do this. "La" (French pronunciation) while raising the head and eyebrows came natural already in the Summer. Just raising your eyebrows is enough to say "no". Raising your head at the same time is a definite "no".

A lot of non-verbal communication is used over here. You can have a conversation without saying a word. Some other examples are :

- turning the hand while the fingers are pointing upwards with a questioning painful expression on the face means : What's the matter ?
- moving the head sideways a few times while smiling and telling something means : I'm very pleased about what I'm telling. It is almost the same as the Indian way to say "Yes".
- moving the hand from left to right in front of the breast or a bit higher while the fingers are pointing upwards, the head is raised means "never".
- nodding the head while uttering a few "ts"s means "That is a sorrowful or painful matter".

I also discovered that people over here use 'Harraam" a lot as a polite way to say that they do not agree with some decision or with a certain action while it actually means 'Bad luck'.

Khaled, Serwat's husband, doesn't want any name that is foreign - It is 'Harraam" - while Serwat is only interested in foreign names. The baby hasn't got a name yet.

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10 February 2006

It's a girl !

After many weeks of suspense and guessing on the timing of birth of Serwat's baby, it finally happened... 3 days ago... it's a girl !

I haven't seen it yet, because stayd in the village this week where it was relatively quite. The house was almost empty, as Mama and Sabah, 1 of the eldest sisters was staying with Serwat for a few days and Amtie Fozie was in Kafaramme taking care of Hadji or Dzjidde (Grandfather).

Yesterday evening I came back to Aleppo for 1 night. The house is empty, as Serwat and family are staying at her brother's apartment and Moonaf, the student living in another room of the house is spending the weekend in his village.

Today, we are leaving for a few days to stay with a friend near Afamia.

I'll probably spend the rest of the week in the village(s) again, but you never know, because I learnt by now that you cannot make a planning here. I am not a planner, but the few times that I decided to do something on a particular day or time, a proposition is coming up to go and travel a few days or to pay a visit to family or friends. And when I say that I really have to do something that particular day or time, I am asked why.

There are 2 things they don't understand here : that I need to be on my own from time to time and that I want to do things by myself.

Now that the house is empty for a few weeks, they want me absolutely to stay in the village the whole time, because it's not safe nor good for me to stay there alone. I'll meet them for 2/3 of the time. And sometimes I'll have to disappoint them.

By the way... the baby hasn't got a name yet, because it is a girl. For a boy, it would be the name of Khaled's father without any questioning. The family is betting on Christel or Helen. I think it'll be Helen. Maybe, it will be another name. We will see.

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03 February 2006

Wedding

After a sunny week with cold nights, we are having a grey and rainy day which is a god gift for the villagers, but not for the foreigners living in the city.

Monday morning, we left for Palmyra along my favourite route through the desert. There are many villages still with beehive houses and stables. We saw some Bedouin women making bread the traditional way and stopped to ask for some. As always, the Bedouins are more than generous. In the next village, we stopped to have the car cleaned and I was invited to have tea on the corner of the street by a whole bunch of curious men and woman. The conversation was in Arabic, of course. As usual, the tea was very sweet and I prefer tea without sugar. The Bedouins put the sugar in the teapot. They presume everybody has a lot of sugar with their tea.

The car needed to be spotless, because we were going to a wedding in the evening. The party which is not mixed. I mean, the men have their party and the women another. At the end, the bride and groom are driven around town with a lot of cars following them to tell the whole town about the marriage. Needless to say this is accompanied with a lot of hooting and even shooting in the air.

Back in Aleppo, I decided to go to the hairdresser. The hairdresser is Armenian and has a big salon in Azizieh, the mondain part of Aleppo. Even though it is in this part of the city, I only paid 4 Euro for a haircut and I'm very pleased with the result. I am not afraid to walk around without a scarf.

The baby still didn't arrive. The doctor - another one - said it is only due after 1 week. Serwat and her husband walk around the city the whole day, because she needs the exercise. During her whole pregnancy, Serwat has almost never been out of the house and now it is hard to find them in the house. When they are at home, they are sleeping, because - as you can expect - they are very tired after these excursions. I can see the despair on Serwat's face. She is very worried. Fortunately, her belief is helping her through these times.

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