gifts and consequences

This weekend in Dresden, it felt a little like my birthday. There were neither candles nor cake, and nobody sang for me, but I got gifts. When it was my birthday, months earlier, my sister had ordered sheet music through amazon, but the delivery failed, and she was refunded her money. Instead of paying lots for sending the paltry booklet by mail, she decided to give it to me in person, the next time we saw each other. This was only now, three months after a birthday that already had two threes in it.

Having saved a lot on stamps not stuck on an envelope, my sister had money over to add to a few sheets of music that I will probably never be able to play properly anyway. When I went to the Middle East this summer, no one was more wishful to join than my sister. She now made her point forcefully by giving me a guidebook to Syria and Lebanon. 'We're going in spring, aren't we?' were the accompanying words.

Of course we are. There can be no doubt. I liked my trip this summer but felt shortchanged. Too many things I didn't see, too many avenues I didn't explore. Syria can't be reduced to Damascus, the only place I visited, and even there, I only got a small glimpse. This summer I traveled under the protection and guidance but also constraints of a Jordanian friend of mine. Next spring, we'll be on our own.

This prospect is exciting but also scares me considerably. While I read everywhere that Syrians are a friendly bunch and the country is as safe to travel as a country under authoritarian rule should be, my friend imbued me with his own views. I learned that Syria is highly corrupt and its people pathologically wicked and criminally deceitful, axis-of-evil material if you will.

In order to deal better with potential double-dealers and racketeers and to avoid the worst scams, maybe even to ingratiate myself with the locals, I decided to get a basic understanding of the language, to advance beyond reading road signs to actual speaking. This morning, I registered for an Arabic class at Imperial and tonight was my first class.

The teacher, a jolly woman in her forties, hails from Egypt. She speaks Arabic natively and knows her way around the language. She also knows, like a storyteller from thousand and one nights, how to embellish meaning with baroque verbal ornament. This is highly entertaining and, as I'm starting from close to nothing, highly edifying as well.

Among the students, four stand out. With their mixed British-Syrian origins they promise to be more important for preparing my trip than any guidebook could. They might have an opinion on what to visit and what to avoid. And if they haven't been to Syria in years, they might at least know a place in London that sells knafe. I'd mark that with a celebration.