Spaß, viel Essen und Held_innen in letzter Sekunde: 11 Mal Syrien

When I told my husband that I am thinking of writing „Who are the Syrians?“ his first words were „Do you think someone can answer that!“. Well! I am not planing to submit a social or a historical study in those linse!

Before 2011 only few people heard about Syria, though it is a very old country with a very deep and rich history.  We used to hear „where is that?“ when we answer the question „where are you from?“. Now we often hear things like „Oh! It’s so complicated in Syria!“ We were presented to the world with horrible news, miserable stories and pictures, and of course the refugees ‚crisis‘. Almost no one speaks with Syrians without thinking of all of those in the background.

So I just want to give a simpler image for those people, my people, The Syrians!

11 signs helps you to identify a Syrian:

1. When Syrians speak to someone over the phone, their voice automatically becomes lauder, and the more the person we speak with is far the louder we become. Imagine what happens when I talk from Berlin to my grandmother in Damascus! I don’t need to use the phone, I can hear her from my window!
2. Syrians are absolutely crazy about their food! It’s hard to convince a Syrian that there are other good cuisines in this world beside there’s! I produced a radio program about culture and food in Syria for two years. When I used to ask for recipes, I always have the answer that I will only find this recipe in this village or city, after long discussions and a lot of proofs that this dish excites in other places, I get this answer „well, I am sure they got the recipe from us! And they don’t cook it as delicious as we do!“
3. You don’t have high chances to find a Syrian who says „I don’t know“. The Syrian is an expert of everything. No Syrian will tell you that he doesn’t know the address you are asking for, or he doesn’t know how to fix a blocked sink! Or he has no idea how a spaceship works!
4. Great solutions creators and last minute Hero. The Syrian can always find a solution for most of the situations, it might be weird or funny but most of the times it does the job! And for some reason, we intend to find this solution under the pressure of time even if we don’t have to.
5. We like to make jokes, nothing is serious enough for Syrians! And this might be very annoying sometimes. The best jokes starts with „Homsi“. „Homsi“ is the one who leaves in Homs, a city in the center of Syria, the greatest jokes „Homsies“ say about themselves. My husband is Houmsi! So we have a lot of laughers in the house!
6. The food thing again! When a Syrian invites you to dinner, do yourself a favor and don’t eat from the night before! Eating is a social event, with one simple dish or ten, Syrians can create an enjoyable dinner!
7. We believe that „Walls have ears“ I talked earlier about how loud we are, but not when it comes to politics. For more than 40 years the regime succeeded to creat a doubt that every one we know might be an informer. Unfortunately, that has a very negative impact on us, we don’t trust each other.
8. The Year 2000 doesn’t mean the beginning of a new millennium for us, It’s the year when Al-Asad the father died! After more than 15 years of his death some people experience panic and fear symptoms when they hear his voice or see his picture.
9. When we hear the word „Germany“ we automatically say „Ich liebe dich“. This is the only words we know in German. We heard about „Der Spiegel“ but „Burda“ is more pulpier. And of course we are fond of the german cars.
10. Our favorites sport is watching football games with friends.
11. All People who were born in the 70’s and 80’s have identical memory! In that Time Syria was a very closed country, we all wore the same clothes. Had the same wierd hair style, till late 90’s we only had two TV channels we used to call them

force 1 and force 2. we had three national lousy propaganda newspapers, and a local lousy propaganda newspaper in every province. All of them repeated how great the president and his party are, and how evil the world is. But the newspapers cleaned the windows perfectly.

This can go on to be a very long list! Maybe my husband was right!