(Photo opposite: Daniel Wallace outside the Citadel of Aleppo)This is a post meant for male and female foreigners coming to live in the Old City of Damascus, the area where most newly arrived language students end up. It may seem strange to cover both sexual harassment and dating in the same article, but as these two areas of life frequently seem to be on the same continuum here in Syria’s tourist land, I’m going to look at them together. This article is based on three months of living in the Old City, so while its information is up to date, it is hardly definitive. If you have a different opinion, please leave a comment.
Firstly, for foreign women. On one hand, if you are living in the Old City, you don’t have to dress too differently to how you would at home, as many Damascene women are dressing quite revealingly (generally, it seems that while the country’s Sunni majority believe in women covering up, minorities such as the Christians and Alawis do not). Theft and other crimes are also very low; Syrians I’ve spoken to say that rape is very rare, too. However, Western women have a reputation for being sexually liberal, and so there are a fair number of men in the Old City who believe they can stare at and even grope foreign women whenever they feel like it. I’m friends with two young English women who are studying Arabic here: one has had her breasts grabbed in the street; the other had a man knock on her door and, after a lot of talking, forced his way in and demanded she go down on him. Some other foreign women I’ve met don’t like walking through the Grand Souk alone - the feeling of being unsafe varies from person to person.
However, the situation is complex - most Syrian men are not out to jump on you. It seems that if a woman shouts at a man hassling her, the nearby male Syrians will turn on him and start berating the guy. If the police are nearby, they will intervene, possibly with very serious repercussions for the man involved. If you are angry at a guy’s behaviour, shout - no one will ignore the situation. After my English friend told her neighbours about the man who pushed his way into her house, one of them came round and installed a glass spy hole in her front door, just to help out. This kindness, generosity and concern is much more common than the hassle. And Syria seems a world away from the more grotesque stories I’ve heard about Egypt, or from the way Indian women need to worry for their safety in Delhi.
It’s hard to know how a woman can minimize this kind of harassment. According to Syrians I’ve spoken to, it’s very difficult for Syrian men to meet women in public, and so single men are desperately looking for any sign of interest in a woman. Possibly behaving in a way you consider cordial and polite may be suggesting all kinds of other things. Even things like inviting your male foreign friends around for late night drinks may suggest to your neighbours that you are a little suspect. Also, I believe that many of these problems come from us foreigners living in the famous foreigner area, Bab Tooma. Men hear that Western women are “easy” and so come to Bab Tooma, and also the Lonely Planet recommended area, Souk Surouja, specifically to meet girls. A very visible number of foreign women are dating Syrian men, and it’s said that some of these men are telling their friends how great the sex is and so on. If you want to date a Syrian man, and there are large numbers of handsome men strolling the streets who can help you learn Arabic, it might be good to wait a while until you can distinguish the nicer guys from the tourist abusers. Syrian men, it seems, can date much more freely than Syrian women, and the idea that every extended family lives together in a shared house is largely a cliché from the past. Most of urban Syria seems to live in apartment blocks like the rest of the world.
For foreign men, safety is much less of an issue. Another false cliché is the Arab man who will disembowel you for glancing at his girlfriend - you need to worry less about violence in Damascus than you would in a big Western city. However, there is a tricky emotional issue to resolve, which is how much you want to be part of the male leching at women’s bodies that goes on in the country. I can’t explain this very precisely, other than to give the example of the city I used to live in, Taipei, where it was possible for women to wear all kinds of revealing clothes and not worry too much that men would charge up and begin flirting. Things are less relaxed here in Damascus, and the logic seems to be that men have to be kept apart from women: the Old City café / restaurants generally sit men-only groups in the side rooms. There is a sexual tension in the air that maybe isn’t too enjoyable; you may feel annoyed when local men begin conversations with your female foreign friends with lines like, “Hello, are you single”? Sometimes I notice that I’m doing the same staring that my female friends complain about, and the local woman in question tries to hurry out of my line of sight as quickly as possible. It seems hard for men and women to interact casually, even in terms of making eye contact in the street. Possibly all of this is something one learns how to navigate, but right now, I wonder if it would easier living in a more conservative part of the city, where at least on the surface the rules would be clearer.
There’s a regular discussion among us sexually frustrated foreign men about how possible it is to date Syrian women: usually the judgement is that it is very difficult or impossible. I suspect that this is a result of us language students living at such distance from actual Syrian society: Syrians that I’ve spoken to often talk about sisters or friends married to foreign men. The kind of casual dating you may be used to, however, seems unlikely to occur. The majority of women, people say, are interested in dating that will lead to marriage, so if you are not, you may need to be creative with the truth. I’ve heard one language teacher give a rather cynical summary of how to date a Syrian woman: use a local male friend to introduce you to a girl, flatter her with how special she is, and you can date secretly enough that her family won’t find out. Various forms of sexual activity are allegedly possible, which I am too prudish to describe online, but she will most likely want to keep her virginity intact for marriage.
My conclusion: it may be sensible to be more careful than usual when abroad in a country like Syria, even if the other foreigners seem to be dressing and behaving however they like. If, on the other hand, you do meet Mr or Ms Right, I wish you the best.
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