All the Mind's on Stage at Bosra

The best of our theater is standing on tiptoe, striving to see over the shoulders of father and mother. The way out, as the poet says, is always through. Arthur Miller

I was not keen on seeing Bosra. Having done Palmyra, there did not seem a need to see Syria's second best collection of Roman ruins. Sure, Bosra is really more Nabatean than Roman, the former being the same guys who created the wonder that is Petra. Oddly enough, both Nabatean cities are well known for the unique coloring of their stone. While the stone of Petra is famously red, Bosra's ruins remain a charcoal black color from the pumice stone from which they were quarried. The Nabateans only moved to Petra in 106 CE when the Romans arrived and took over Bosra. The black stone city would serve for four centuries as the capital of the empire's easternmost province of Arabia, home to 80,000 people and the departure point for trading caravans with the Persian and Chinese empires.



It was not the history that finally convinced me to pay a visit to Bosra on Sunday June 21. It was the theater. Bosra's magnificent Roman theater is one of the largest surviving amphitheaters in the world and it is why most visitors take the two hour trip south from Damascus. My inspiration came via a remarkable essay by the British columnist A A Gill where he describes the stage as the arena that best captures the drama of being human. "Just because somethings old doesn't make it good or interesting or relevant," Gill comments on his visit to the Roman theater at Delphi, "but in all its essentials, theatre is precisely as it was 2,000 years ago. Shakespeare would be able to walk onto any London stage and feel at home, as would Sophocles. Theatre was conceived word perfect. It must have been created to fill some collective need. From it all other narratives flow."



Gill's words left me hooked. I needed to visit Bosra, to cast my eyes over the seats and tap into the wellspring of narrative that has flowed from this stage for thousands of years. Perhaps my over active imagination is to blame. But as I sat in the theater in the heat of the afternoon, with my ears tuned to a song a girl gave to me before I set off across the world, the stage did come alive. A beautiful songstress slowly walked across the stone floor, her face masked in shadows, a long dress spilling behind her as she sang the words that are forever playing in my ears.

Kuneitra Lessons

In eastern Europe I walked through the blasted showers and crematoria that laid waste to a generation of my people. In western China I volunteered in villages whose homes had crumbled like matchsticks in the face of the raw power of the earth. And so when I visited the town of Kuneitra on Wednesday June 17, I was not as overwhelmed by the senseless destruction of the border-town as my Syrian military guide would have preferred.


Over thirty years ago Israel and Syria waged a bitter fight in and around Kuneitra. When the 1973 October War drew to a halt, Israel agreed to return the town to Syrian civilian control, establishing the current de-facto border that runs along the edge of Kuneitra. The decision to cede control of the town to Syria was not made without controversy in Israel. Following Syria's humiliating loss of Kuneitra and the Golan Heights in the 1967 Six Day War, the former provincial capital became seen as "the badge of Syria's defeat, an emblem of hatred between Syria and Israel and a cross that Syrian President Hafez al-Assad had to bear." Many Israelis feared that returning Kuneitra to Syria in 1974 would be rewarding Assad for attacking Israel in the Yom Kippur War.

A much larger controversy ensued after the Israeli withdrawal. Kuneitra lay in ruins. And while Israel claimed that most of the damage was the result of the last two wars, Syria succeeded in getting the UN to rule that Israel had systematically destroyed the town before withdrawing. Ever since Syria has preserved Kuneitra as a symbol of Israeli aggression, a lesson visiting dignitaries like Pope John Paul II and the Chinese foreign minister are asked to accept on their scripted tours of the town.

I hardly qualify as a visiting dignitary so perhaps the Syrians will not mind that I do not buy their narrative. From my perspective, Kuneitra is only a superficial symbol of the 1970 war. The real lesson to draw from the ruins is the failure of the Assad regime to emerge from stilted Cold War politics. Thirty years ago nearly every Arab state was committed to a doctrine that demonized Israel and vilified the western world at large. And while the Assad regime now plays a wily game of alliances with newly assertive Shia voices in Lebanon and Iran, the rest of the Arab world has come to terms with reality and today more or less accepts Israel and the influence of America in the Middle East.

What does Syria have to show for Assad's Machiavellian politics? A country whose citizens are genuinely afraid at the stirrings of liberal democracy in their erstwhile allies, Lebanon and Iran? A regime that boasts of embracing the "China experiment" (al tajriba al siniya) by embracing economic reforms without political liberalization, yet ironically fails to heed the cardinal rule of the China model: separating economics from politics. As Hong Kong based economist Ben Simpfendorfer points out in his recent book "The New Silk Road,"

[While] there are many similarities between the Syrian economy today and the Chinese economy in the 1980s...Today Japanese manufactures are free to invest in China even as Beijing criticizes Tokyo about visits to the Yasukini Shrine where Japanese war criminals are interred. Taiwanese manufacturers build factories in the mainland Chinese province of Fujian not far from the same military arsenals that target Taiwan....[Japan, Taiwan and South Korea] have invested nearly $300 billion dollars in China during the past decade while also transferring years of managerial and technological expertise to China.

Meanwhile, Syria remains committed to a tired mantra that demonizes the very neighbor that could prove crucial to its success. Some of Syria's leaders at least seem to appreciate this strategic malaise, such as the former Minister of State Planning who wrote an article in March 2004 arguing that his country has suffered greatly because of its refusal to come to terms with the State of Israel. The influential former Minister, Issam Za'im, of course was quick to qualify his criticism by insisting that Syria has had little choice when faced by the threat of the "Zionist enemy." The tragic irony of this whole political failure is that Syria is a far more liberal society than the other major Arab states. Radical religious voices like the Muslim Brotherhood and Wahhabi imams are far less established in Syria than they are in Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. Syria seems poised on the threshold between dynamic social and economic development or continued malaise. But who will emerge with the courage and wherewithal to take the country in a new direction?


Postscript:

Most guide books provide incredibly unhelpful directions on how to visit Kuneitra. The reality is that one must first stop by the Ministry of Interior in Damascus. After showing them your passports and assuring them you are not a spy, the office provides the necessary--and free--permit. Travelers can then simply catch a ride on a really cheap minibus that regularly leaves from the main bus station with its final stop outside Kuneitra.

When I visited on June 17, the minibus driver offered to accompany me and my friend into Kuneitra in return for a few dollars. We accepted his offer and after touring the ruins for an hour--easily enough time to see everything--we had become friendly enough that the gracious young driver invited us over to his family's nearby house for lunch. We spent another hour conversing over watermelon and tea, by which point the driver had insisted that next time my friend and I are in Syria, we consider living with his family!

It was fascinating to stand atop a ruined minaret in Kuneitra and gaze across the nearby border into Israel. I had looked down upon the town numerous times before during visits to the Golan Heights in Israel and so I was grateful for the chance to literally see how things looked from the other side of the fence.


The most compelling ruin in Kuneitra is undoubtedly the hospital. From the roof one can gaze into Israel and check out the small UN military complex charged with safeguarding the ceasefire in the area. Inside the hospital there are all sorts of messages scrawled onto the walls. The most intriguing is a series of paintings of beautiful, dark eyed girls. It took me a few minutes to realize that the artist was probably visualizing one of the seventy virgins promised to martyrs by Islam. The best part of the hospital may be the sign by the door. In large English and Arabic script, it boldly proclaims: "Golan Hospital. Destructed by Zionists and changed it to firing target." Because, you know, those Zionists hate hospitals that much.

Palmyra by Night

On Monday July 15 I spent the night amid the ruins of ancient Petra, atop the altar of Jupiter in the inner sanctum of one of the largest temples of the Talmudic era. But first, some backstory:


Palmyra is the Petra, the Luxor, of Syria. It is the big kahuna for tourism in the country, a fact immediately apparent by the four-fold rise in prices and the crowds of touts that greet visitors to the oasis in Syria's western deserts. What is Palmyra and why is it such a big draw for visitors?

Any guide book can tell you the basic story: Palmyra, or Tadmor as it is known in Arabic and Hebrew, was a vital caravan city for travelers crossing the Syrian desert. The Romans prized the oasis as an outpost against the Sassanid empire of Persia. But it was in 267 C.E. that Palmyra became known throughout the ancient world when the widow of the assassinated Roman provincial governor took power and declared an independent Palmyrene Empire. Five years later the legions showed up and dragged pretty queen Zenobia back to Rome in gold chains. Not much of a story except that the modern Syrian state has dramatized Zenobia's brief reign as a proud epic in the history of the Syrian nation. So while tourists come to Palmyra for the grand Roman ruins and epic desert landscapes, local guides play up the tale of the lone queen who bravely faced down the western imperialists.

Palmyra is as can't miss as Syrian sights get so I was determined to visit. Especially because the town known since ancient times as the Bride of the Desert may have been founded by none other than King Solomon, the great Jewish monarch who established the First Temple in Jerusalem. The Bible twice references Solomon as founding Tadmor, a fortified town that the Talmudic commentators explain is located in the western deserts of Syria. So in order to see the history of my people in Syria, Palmyra was a must visit.

There are two downers to visiting Palmyra. First, as I mentioned at the start, Syria's main tourist draw is known for its annoying touts and sky-high prices. Second, the small town hugging the ruins has no single bus stop. Instead it has several, none of which have posted times and none of which will sell tickets more than a few hours prior to departure.

Through a mixture of good sense, daring and my usual fortune with transportation I overcame both obstacles. And if you read to the end of this short note, you too can experience Palmyra in such a way that will never leave your imagination.

The first trick is to arrive in Palmyra in the evening. I got dropped off at what qualifies as the main stop for arriving traffic--a random rest stop four km from the modern town-- around 9 p.m. Three hours earlier I had left Damascus, having paid a few dollars for the long ride into the desert. After brushing aside the few touts waiting to gorge themselves on foreign suckers like myself, I dawdled at the rest stop for a few minutes and then joined a Syrian fellow hitching to the nearby town. Modern Palmyra consists of little more than the main drag where all the tourist hotels and restaurants can be found. Two British travelers invited me to join them over the remains of their dinner and our short chat convinced me to follow through on the crazy idea I had been throwing around on the bus ride through the desert. Rather than stay in a dingy hostel and fork over fifty dollars like my British friends, I was determined to nestle down amidst the ruins for the night. Best decision any visitor to Palmyra could ever make.



Ancient Palmyra lies five minutes away from the modern town. The ruins are open at all hours, save for three of the grander remains that can only be visited by purchasing a ticket during regular hours. Night fall does not qualify as regular hours. Instead it is the time when even the most modest thousand year old arch becomes a glorious reminder of another era, bathed in the glow of the stars and well placed floor-lamps. Palmyra may be worth visiting during the heat of the day but at night it is simply enchanting. The desert wind sweeps through the stone causeways. Dilapidated temples glow with a spiritual sheen stored away for the last thousand years. And best of all, the intrepid visitor has the site completely to himself. And so it was that on Monday July 15, Palmyra was all mine for the night.

After contemplating the ancient city for several hours, I directed my steps toward the pièce de résistance, the Temple of Ba'al. The remarkably well preserved temple may have once been dedicated to a who's who list of pagan gods (Ba'al, Jupiter, take your pick, they were all worshiped here at one point). But its the design of the temple that is fascinating to the inquisitive biblical visitor. According to a BBC documentary, the Temple of Ba'al is the successor to a similar temple that predated the Romans by two thousand years. "Its form," intoned the wise British documentarist, "a large stone-walled chamber with columns outside, is much closer to the sort of thing attributed to Solomon than to anything Roman." In other words, for the time being, seeing this temple is perhaps the only way moderns can glimpse a live visual of Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem!



I intended to sleep outside the Temple of Ba'al, next to the western retaining wall that more or less serves the same presence here as the famous Kotel (Wailing Wall) once provided to the Second Temple in Jerusalem. Instead I ended up sleeping within the inner sanctum of the temple, atop the Altar of Jupiter. My plans changed when my flashlight noticed a draining pipe entering the temple through a small gap in the stone wall. As the main gate was locked until 8 am the next morning, the gap was the only way in. When my shoulders proved up to the task, I squeezed the rest of my body through the crevice and in no time was approaching the inner sanctum, more or less the equivalent of the central sanctuary in the Second Temple of Jerusalem. As I unrolled my sleeping bag on a raised surface, I had no idea that the Altar of Jupiter was serving as my mattress for the night. All I knew was that the bright light of the stars, the ghostly howl of the desert-wolves and the tunes on my MP3 were coming together to make this a night I would never forget.



I woke the next morning before dawn. Once the sun rose, the desert heat and the army of touts would make viewing Palmyra by day a dreadful assignment. Plus I was determined to grab the first bus at 8 AM back to Damascus. Saying farewell to the Temple of Ba'al was simple enough. After checking that the Bedouin guard was still sleeping by the entrance, I squeezed back through the hole in the wall and set out to explore the city by the light of the early morning. A few intrepid folks were already snapping pictures of the inimitable landscape. I had them snap a few of me before setting my sights on the last challenge to conquer in town, the hilltop citadel of Palmyra.



Most of the danger I get myself into is self-inflicted and what happened next is no exception. Instead of following the road that loops around and up the hill to the citadel, I decided to climb straight up the steep incline. The ascent proved far more treacherous than I had anticipated, with the rocks underfoot crumbling down the hill with my every step. Only after throwing my water and sleeping bags back down the hill did I slowly, inch by blistering inch, wedge my way up the rockface and atop the crest of the hill. The citadel, like the temple, remained lock and so after nearly losing my life reaching the main door I was not even able to enter! Some lesson in all this, no doubt.

My last challenge in Palmyra was to get away. After retrieving my bags at the foot of the hill, I ran back to the modern town. A cab driving by offered to take me to the bus station. Of course, since Palmyra does not have a bus station, we proceeded to drive around for twenty minutes, stopping at any number of places in town before finding a bus that was leaving that moment and had exactly one seat remaining! With my luck in place, I paid the driver the only money I had spent during my visit to Palmyra and boarded the bus heading home to Damascus!

Sweating with Syrians

I have been working out for the last several years. Not much to show for all the weight work but it has taken me to some sweaty gyms I doubtless would have otherwise missed.

My gym is Damascus is right off Tahrir Square, northeast of the old city. I was directed there by a Christian Arab after coming to the conclusion that the city's most well known private gym, known as Nadi Barada, was too far from my pad for daily visits. Nadi Barada draws an eclectic mix of spoiled rich teens, iced-coffee sipping gals, and foreigners. An even more impressive group of weight lifters are at work right nearby the entrance to Nadi Barada. For a few dollars, the gruff old man outside this second gym explained that his outfit is a government complex. The equipment was decades older than what I would find in Nada Barada, he admitted, yet his gym was "where the men of muscle come together...it is the gym of champions."

While the coffee crowd and the men of muscle were enticing, I turned down both offers for a more modest gym that is just a ten minute walk from Bab Touma. The owner of the gym is a spitting image for the former professional wrestler Bill Goldberg. And so I was not surprised when the manager, another lumbering guy by name of Fadi, told me during one of our many conversations that like many Syrian men, he is a devoted fan of professional wrestling and a fan of Goldberg in particular. Considering that the wrestler is, of course, Jewish, I cannot think of a better way to jump start American-Syrian relations than for the US government to sponsor a barnstorming tour of the country by professional wrestlers. If ping-pong diplomacy worked in China, no reason why wrestling cannot serve a similar purpose thirty years later in Syria!

Fadi and the other regulars are very friendly, spotting my lifts and amiably chatting me up about life in America whenever they can bear to look away from eying their own selves in the full length mirrors. Perhaps I am the only one who finds our easy socializing disconcerting, harboring as I do the knowledge that my training in this Damascus gym is in preparation for serving in an army whose opponents are likely the buff Arab men that surround me.

As the temperature rose in Damascus, my futile search for a place to swim led me back to Nadi Barada. During my last two weeks in Syria, I swam for over an hour every morning in the gym's outdoor pool. Men only have access to the water from six to nine and by seven am the pool would already be full of legs and arms flailing away. One day, after the lifeguards had blocked off a third of the pool for kiddie swimming lessons, there was almost a revolution. As I smiled and sputtered "viva the resistance," two regular swimmers, an Arab and an Italian, vehemently protested the lifeguards attempt to press a dozen grown men into the remaining three lanes. Their protest was squelched but at least for one moment, in one pool, west and east came together in harmony to advance the rights of men.

Aleppo and Bananas

A saving grace of the developing world is the near universal presence of cheap fruit juice bars. In Ethiopia a few avocado, carrot and mango smoothies would set me back a dollar and stand in superbly as lunch or dinner. The Middle East is no different. Within hours of arriving in Cairo for the first time, I was sipping from a pint sized glass mug of lime green Asab juice, the sweet and tangy sugarcane drink that reigns supreme across Egypt. Asab cannot be found in Syria. According to my favorite fruit juice dude in Aleppo, this is because the Egyptian favorite is the lesser man's drink.

While the juicer's explanation left me laughing at his display of Levantine pride, we were both reduced to tears of laughter moments later when I asked for a milk and banana smoothie and received a whole banana and the wish that I enjoy my time in Aleppo. The joke lay in my confusing the Arabic word for milk, "haleeb," with the Arabic (and Hebrew) name for Aleppo, "Haleb." Mooz wa Haleb, indeed!



Whatever one calls Aleppo, the shortest stay in the city is enough to leave the visitor convinced that nowhere else in Syria has the same degree of charm and old world beauty. Aleppo is a classic example of a can't miss sight without any can't miss sights. Besides the stunning citadel at the heart of the old city, there is nothing in the town visitors must see. What makes Aleppo, one of the world's most ancient cities, so alluring is the magic of wandering through the slanted stone byways of the old city, skipping past the endless displays in the meandering shuk and imbibing the pungent aroma of the olive oil bars of soap that have been an Aleppo hallmark for centuries.

Aleppo was once the final stop along the Silk Road and so there are any number of writers that have evoked the charm of the city's mercantilist spirit. I tackled the city the weekend of June 13 with the added motivation of tracing the legacy of a Jewish community that Haim Sabato recalls in Aleppo Tales. Today the community is only a distant memory. Locals were kind enough to direct me to a synagogue north of the old city. On arriving I found a few stone archways framing a dilapidated parking lot. Not quite the Jewish heritage tour I may have hoped for.

The rest of my weekend was a marvel thanks to an Armenian silversmith, the American star of the national women's basketball team and most of all, John Travolta long lost Syrian cousin. The silversmith came into my life when I staggered into the Christian neighborhood in Aleppo known as al-Jedeida. I had been on my feet since the morning without a penny to my name to buy anything to drink--the risks of traveling solo on the shabbath day! So I am lounging in the shade of the single tree at the center of al-Jedeida when a kindly Armenian man invites me into his shop. Normally I would touch my hand to my chest to signal my disinterest in hearing his plaintive sales pitch. But I was tired and trusting. And better yet, minutes later I was drinking tea and listening to stories of how Aleppo's large Armenian community fled Turkey to their current home.

Before letting me go, the silversmith insisted I chase down the two young women that had stopped by his shop before me. I took his advice and quickly found myself talking with two of the only Americans in Aleppo. Both girls were English teachers. More importantly, they were both really cute and bought me orange juice. And best of all, one of the girls was on the Syrian women's basketball team!



Shabbat ended and I retraced my steps in order to take photos of the sights I had passed earlier in the day. When I arrived at the citadel a troupe of dancers in golden costumes were performing for a large crowd. While I angled for a good shot of the stone castle, John Travolta stepped out from the crowd and volunteered to take my picture. Or at least that is what I thought, especially when the Travolta look-alike said in nearly perfect English "My name is Travolta, perhaps you have heard of me?" Hassan, as Travolta's Syrian stand-in turned out to be named, took a liking to me and we ended up spending the next five hours together driving around the city in his car and then dining in a rooftop restaurant along with Hassan's Iraqi business partner.

The Persian Street

Pundits tend to harmonize about the Arab Street, that nebulous source of legitimacy, the Arab common man. So here comes the story of the summer, maybe the decade: a contested election in the Middle East erupts into popular protest when the common man smells a rat and tells their own government to stuff it. Except the common man isnt wearing a keffiyeh. He--and she--are dressed head to toe in Persian robes. Because it is the Persian street that is making their voice heard. And because I won't be in Tehran anytime soon, I can only stroll the streets of Damascus and wonder what the locals are thinking.

The answer is anyone's guess--I don't read minds, only start conversations. Most Syrians are hesitant to talk politics. Especially when the topic strikes too close to home. As a local girl told me, "Corruption in Lebanon, riots in Iran. Can you imagine what elections would bring to Syria?"

To find out what the elections have brought to Iran, I went to the source. "Nothing else will stop us," a young artist in Tehran wrote to a friend of mine. "Not this shootings, killings, violence, pressure. A re-run of elections,that is what we want as our right, and we are not gonna give up until we get it."

Perhaps my friend in Syria was right about what the Iranian elections could mean for Syria. Because the rest of the young Iranian artist's words have a lesson for the wider Arab world.

"This thing can only be compared to the revolution itself. Nothing else. They attacked the same dorm again and they threw people from windows. [This] is about a tiny guy who came on by fraud, and is trying to stay whatever it takes, and he has hands everywhere because his types have the power in every part of the government. They think that to keep the power, you can do anything--pressure, violence, fraud. This is not what the revolution was for--this is what the revolution was against."

The Victory of 1973

Who won the 1973 October War? Why did Syria and Egypt attack Israel on the holiest day on the Jewish calendar? What did they want?


If you do not know the answer to any of these questions, then do not expect to find answers at the Syrian October War Panorama. Like a similar structure in Cairo, the panorama is a memorial disguised as a museum that purports to tell the story of the 1973 war through captured Israeli tanks and bombastic oil paintings and sculpture. The most curious part of the story is that it does not even try very hard to explain away the less than glorious bits of the fighting. That is, much attention is paid to Syria's successes in the days after launching a surprise attack on Israel. But nothing is said about the second half of the fighting, the bitter tank battles and daring counter-offensives that left the Syrians desperate for a cease-fire with Israeli guns in view of Damascus.

Having visited the Egyptian October War Panorama during my visit to Cairo this past January, I was curious to see what the Syrians would do with their own memorial museum. Both panoramas turned out to be very similar. The reason has nothing to do with the onetime allies and most times bitter rivals sharing a similar interpretation of the 1973 war. Instead it has everything to do with the fact that the same North Korean artisans designed both memorials. Apparently North Korea has some sort of monopoly on creating grandiose memorials that liberally interpret past wars. I suppose they have a lot of practice. Too bad no one ever visits North Korea to see the originals for themselves.


The panorama in Syria starts out with a line of Israeli and Syrian tanks and rockets facing each other as if the fighting just ended yesterday. All the Israel equipment, of course, is destroyed while the Syrian weapons sparkle. The best touch in the outdoor lineup is the inclusion of the Soviet shuttle that took a Syrian cosmonaut into orbit in the 1980s. As if the broken English instructions emblazoned on the outside of the space vehicle were not enough, the entire shuttle is housed within a Korean pagoda!


Inside the main hall I was treated to a ridiculously over the top documentary and three rooms that use vast oil paintings to celebrate Bashar Assad's military prowess in the 1973 war. The first room consists of four large canvases (all painted by North Koreans), each one showing another grand victory from the Syrian-Arab peoples past. After seeing past conquerors like the Umayyad caliph Al-Walid and Saladin, the paintings culminate with a heroic depiction of Hafez al-Assad directing his troops to victory in the Golan Heights.


This room is only preparation for the top floor where the entire room is painted and sculptured to create a panoramic 3-D visualization of the Battle of Kuneitra during the 1973 War. Visitors sit at the center of the room while their chair slowly spins in a circle. The military guide that led me around was quick to point out that the artwork is only a work of the imagination as the real battle in Kuneitra was nothing like what is depicted. He was less sure what message is being communicated to Syrian visitors--including the schoolchildren that visit every year--when such feats of the imagination have to be used in depicting their country's great military "victory."

All that Glitters is not Gold

A friend in Beijing once described to me how all experiences fit into three categories. The best category, according to her reckoning, are those activities one suffers through at the time yet comes to treasure in retrospect. Perhaps that is how I should understand the halfway point of my summer in Syria, when bed bugs and food poisoning came together to leave me suffering in the stifling heat for two miserable days. Until they struck, everything I had encountered in Syria had come edged in gold. My classes, the weather, the food, my newfound friends...everything impressed me. And then I spent two days in a world of retched pain and when I recovered, nothing was the same. Syria still amazes me. But the glitter is gone.

Guns & Roses

Syria, I wrote to my cousin, will be a terrific place for me to contemplate my decision to serve in the Israeli army for the next two years. Save for the need to keep my Judaism a closely guarded secret, I could not have picked a more ideal police state to consider whether I am really ready to enlist.

My commitment remains unshaken. When it did weaken, however, it was not because I found Syrians so gracious and hospitable. Truth be told, I expected no less. The times I found myself questioning my decision to give the next two years to the Israeli army came when young Syrians would share with me the lengths they go to avoid serving in the Syrian army. All Syrian males, except for only children, are required to enlist for two years. And all Syrians, or at least the dozens of guys I spoke with over the summer, have nothing but absolute distaste for the army. Soldiers are rarely granted home leave and their training seems to mostly consist of a series of demoralizing exercises. Or as one Syrian told me, "the two years serve one purpose: making Syrian guys into lifelong alcoholics."

With uniform antipathy for serving in the army (even the army guide that escorted me around the military's memorial to the 1973 October War was dismissive of serving in the Syrian army), Syrians only differed in explaining to me the unique measures they had adopted in order to evade the army. One had obtained dual citizenship in Jordan (thereby invalidating his ability to enlist) through a combination of bribes and family marriages. Another found a doctor who provided him with the drugs that convinced the military board he was medically unfit to serve. Others first deferred their service with university and then fled to the Gulf to earn enough money so they could avoid enlisting once and for all. Paying off the government seems to be the most straightforward way of avoiding the army. The financial option explains why a military officer told me that the army is nothing like what it was in the 1970s. Three decades ago, he insisted, men were eager to die in defense of their country. "Today," the officer explain, "only the poor and those without education are foolish or desperate enough to embrace the army."

My discussion with Syrians about the Syria army naturally led them to inquire how conscription works in other countries. America, I told them, had enough of conscription due to the student movement and the fallout from the Vietnam War. A Danish friend of mine explained that in his country matters work a little differently. He was selected through a lottery to serve as a sentry outside the Queen's palace in Copenhagen. Quite the cushy post, though not tempting enough as he simply told the military he was going to university instead.

I did not have the chance to speak to any Lebanese about their country's army. And so I left only with what I saw. And from appearances alone, the Syrian and Lebanese armies could not be more different. The Syrian army is still driving around in Soviet tanks from the 1970s. And many of their soldiers can be seen in t-shirts and jeans because the one uniform they are issued either does not fit or is too ragged to wear. The Lebanese army, meanwhile, are dressed as if they just raided a North Face factory. The reality is that their spiffy uniforms--and even shinier looking guns and tanks--reflect the millions of dollars of equipment the West has donated to Lebanon. The idea seems to be that a strong army is Lebanon's best hope against the ethnic militias that could return the country to the dark days of the Lebanese Civil War. I am curious how effective this strategy works in practice, as it seems to be the go to move in countries across the Middle East.