The Innocents Abroad

There is an honored old tradition that
the immense gardens in which Damascus stands
was the Garden of Eden
Damascus measures time not by days
and months and years,
but by the empires she has seen rise
and prosper
and crumble to ruin.

She is a type of immortality.

She saw the foundation of Baalbeck, and Thebes and Ephesus laid:
she saw these villages
grow into mighty cities,
and amaze the world
with their grandeur -
and she has lived to see them desolate,
deserted,
and given over
to the owls and the bats.

She saw the Israelitish empire exalted,
and she saw it annihilated.
She saw Greece rise,
and flourish two thousand years,
and die.

In her old age
she saw Rome built;
she saw it overshadow the world
with its power;
she saw it perish.

The few hundred years of
Genoese and Venetian might and splendor were,
to grave old Damascus,
only a trifling scintillation
hardly worth remembering.

Damascus has seen all that has ever occurred on earth,
and still she lives.

She has looked upon the dry bones of a thousand empires,
and will see the tombs of a thousand more
before she dies.

Though another claims the name,
old Damascus
is by right,
the Eternal City.


Mark Twain, 1869

At the Still Point of the Turning World

I am in my last twelve hours before going home to the states. A small part of me is aching to go home, to be again amongst what is familiar. Another part of me has found a wonderful space for ongoing work for peace here, and that gladdens my heart as the daily challenges of living here in the middle east have become daily pursuits of purpose - challenges that spark careful contemplation and ongoing curiosity.

Dan, my Voices colleague along with my friend Richard and I traveled out of Damascus on Monday. We had little problem entering Jordan and finding the Al Monzer Hotel where we were staying. It had been close to four years since I was here at the Al Monzer, yet friends from my previous visists here still occupy their sames jobs and welcoming manner. I am especially happy to see Jamil a boisterous young man who loves a laugh and calls everyone his Habeebi (darling). Today I traveled to the Syria embassy with Richard as he needed to acquire another visa to get back into Syria. Unfortunately there is a new policy and the embassy in Jordan no longer issues visas to American citizens in Jordan (which isn't the same story we were told when we visited the immigration office in Syria). Understandably Richard anguishly explained that he was only in Jordan two days and MUST go back to Syria as he has a life to go back to there. The woman at the desk took pity on him and after ten minutes told him to travel to the border and explain to them he has a stay stamp in Syria until the 5th of May. Nevertheless we are hoping that the border guards will allow him to enter Syria if not, we shall see him again this evening. On our way back to the hotel we noticed a giant Starbucks. My curiosity overcame my immediate disgust of this sign of economic imperialism and Richard and I stopped in. I was really curious to see if it was true that whereever one travels in the world, the product that this huge chain restraunant sells will taste the same - as that's the claim. Well, it was true. I ordered a tall Carmel Machiatto and it was indeed the same. In fast the whole decore of the Starbucks was just like any Starbucks in the U.S., the same jazzy music, the same interior decoration and the same rules- NO SMOKING, which you must believe me is a rather strange rule to enforce anywhere in the middle east--its just unheard of, even in hospitals. I left feeling dirty and a little satisfied as I had not had a "normal" cup of coffee in three months.

It was difficult to say goodbye to Richard this afternoon as he has been a good friend to me since the first night I arrived in Damascus when he and Dan picked me up from the airport. I think we spent a total of three days apart in the last three months. Dan and I were very blessed to make friends with Richard as not only does he speak the language near fluently, but he has much the same goals in mind in terms of using his language and his life to serve the purposes of peace and understanding in the world. It was fun for me to have a fellow Philly friend - we'd often talk about our favorite places in Philly or people we both knew from home.

It was a nice surprise to see some of our old friends from CPT at the Al Monzer, Peggy Gish and Cathy Breen were here both on their way into Iraq. Peggy had just come from Iraq accompanying 80 Palestinians, half children, who were fleeing from ongoing oppression in the country. There story is incredible and I could not do it justice here but hopefully soon there will be some articles I will link you to.
Peggy left for Iraq early this morning and arrived safely. CPT maintains a presence in Iraq despite the huge risks they take on daily to continue their work. Cathy Breen who has for so long traveled to Iraq with Voices, went through the month long CPT training in Chicago and is joining the team along with Kathy Kelly in a few weeks pending that the Iraqi Government will issue them visas.

In some ways I feel I am in a place of great uncertainty - entering back into the United States with new eyes will surely challenge me to do life differently, but how? I am not sure. However, in some ways the journey, each step of it contains the opportunity to make different choices, but in that same breath I ask myself how I might use this period of study in Syria or this past ten months of peacework and travel to recognize not better answers concerning peacemaking, but perhaps better questions.

I am running out of steam here, so below is the ending of one of my favorite poems. It is gorgeous and I encourage you to visit the website link (just click on the title of this entry) and be inspired, challenged, and renewed.

In love,
farah marie

What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make and end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from. And every phrase
And sentence that is right (where every word is at home,
Taking its place to support the others,
The word neither diffident nor ostentatious,
An easy commerce of the old and the new,
The common word exact without vulgarity,
The formal word precise but not pedantic,
The complete consort dancing together)
Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,
Every poem an epitaph. And any action
Is a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea's throat
Or to an illegible stone: and that is where we start.
We die with the dying:
See, they depart, and we go with them.
We are born with the dead:
See, they return, and bring us with them.
The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree
Are of equal duration. A people without history
Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern
Of timeless moments. So, while the light fails
On a winter's afternoon, in a secluded chapel
History is now and England.

With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this
Calling

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

Bearing the Silences

I came to Syria because I believed that I may facilitate peace through learning the language of "my enemies". Because if there is not language there is silence, and silence is the seige of our imaginations by the nightmare of the unknown.

I came to Syria because I refused to believe that death was stronger than life, though death's shadow falls across today's dawn, the fires of twilight hold up the sparks of light that shine through the encompassing darkness.

I came to Syria because I am not yet resolved to live by the logic of death that would wield a sword, only to perpetuate that mad chorus of war turning like the needle of a record, broken in wheels of forgotten memories.

As dear Liz said, "To remember is an act of resistance. So let us remember."

Let us remember.

Let us remember that we are dust, and unto dust we will return. Humbled by the simplicity and oneness of our creation. It is this imagination that stumbled in brilliance to create us beings capable of so much joy and sorrow. They are the dueling masks we bear, as we remember.

I would like to remember Tom Fox. Though I hardly knew him, he threw his lot in with those who had been forsaken by the world, those Iraqis whose lives had been torn apart by war. He went to Baghdad to carry this tiny flame of light, to break the silence, to embrace with gentle ferocity the duality of joy and sorrow and to bring with him the promise that the world might be different - he went to practice resurrection and he was executed.

This season of Lent is a time to be reminded of all those whose lives were given so that the world might be different, so that tyrannies of silence may be broken and we might become one with each other and bear the silences of death together.



Call Me by My True Names

Do not say that I'll depart tomorrow
because even today I still arrive.

Look deeply: I arrive in every second
to be a bud on a spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with wings still fragile,
learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,
in order to fear and to hope.
The rhythm of my heart is the birth and
death of all that are alive.

I am the mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river,
and I am the bird which, when spring comes, arrives in time
to eat the mayfly.

I am the frog swimming happily in the clear pond,
and I am also the grass-snake who, approaching in silence,
feeds itself on the frog.

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks,
and I am the arms merchant, selling deadly weapons to
Uganda.

I am the twelve-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea
pirate,
and I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and
loving.

I am a member of the politburo, with plenty of power in my
hands,
and I am the man who has to pay his "debt of blood" to, my
people,
dying slowly in a forced labor camp.

My joy is like spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom in all
walks of life.
My pain if like a river of tears, so full it fills the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and laughs at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up,
and so the door of my heart can be left open,
the door of compassion.

Thich Nhat Hanh