Weblog of a Syrian Diplomat in America

Our pride in Tony Sidawy and Firas Al-Kawas

As I have mentioned before, one of the great joys that my current position as an ambassador brings me is the opportunity to know and befriend shining examples of success and achievement from the Syrian community in the US.

Today, I would be talking about Tony and Firas: two role models for any aspiring medical researcher, and personal friends that are very dear to my heart. However, talking about Tony and Firas, without mentioning their (by far) better halves Mary and Malika, would be akin to treachery. I consider myself a closer friend to Mary and Malika than to their husbands, and most importantly, Mary and Malika have extended to my own Rafif all the friendship and warmth that a new comer to town would be looking for.

       

Firas is a graduate of the Faculty of Medicine from the University of Damascus, while Tony is a graduate of its counterpart faculty at the University of Aleppo. Both Tony and Firas are Damascenes (shouam) married to Alepines (halabiat); lucky them!.

Firas is the father of three very beautiful daughters: Souad, Sireen, and Samar, while Tony is the father of a stunning daughter: Michele and a handsome young man: Nicola.

Earlier this May, the largest and most prestigious meeting in the world for the gastrointestinal (GI) doctors met in Los Angelos, California and presented the Master Endoscopist award to Firas Al-Kawas in recognition of his impressive career as a gastroenterologist, endoscopist, and administrator.

Firas Al-Kawas is Professor of Medicine and Chief of Endoscopy at Georgetown University Hospital in Washington DC. He has been active in many professional and academic committees and is currently the chair of the International Committee of the American Society of Gastrointestinal Endoscopy. In addition, he has directed numerous other gastroenterology and endoscopy meetings in the US and around the world and has delivered more than 173 lectures to a variety of national and international meetings and published more than 200 abstracts, papers and book chapters related to gastroenterology and endoscopy. With Malika standing next to him, Firas accepted his award surrounded by more than 300 colleagues, members and industry representatives from around the world.

Tony Sidawy is President of the American Society for Clinical Vascular Surgery, the Chief of Surgery at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Washington DC, and Professor of Surgery in both Georgetown and George Washington University Schools of Medicine. He is the author of numerous articles, multiple book chapters, and two textbooks. Tony Sidawy is also a Governor of the American College of Surgeons, and the Secretary of the Society of Vascular Surgeons. He is the recipient of a number of awards and honors, including his most recent, the Award of Merit from Howard University.

Now don’t get intimidated by these two brilliantly outstanding Syrian medical scientists. Once you meet them, you would be more impressed by their charm, friendliness and human qualities than by their status as men of great standing.

Ghassan Siba'i 2

Some of my favorite works by distinguished Syrian artists.

       

       

Ghassan Siba'i

Some of my favorite works by distinguished Syrian artists.

       

       

Syrian Cinema in New York

I just came back from New York where I spent a day with the organizers of the Syrian Film festival that is currently running at the prestigious Lincoln Center in the heart of Manhattan. It was an event that brought great joy to my heart and made me proud of the many beautiful representations of Syrian art and culture. Amidst wide critical acclaim, I felt that all our collective contribution to help organize and run this festival was worth the effort and culminated in a splendid display of Syrian cinema.

Since Rasha Al-Salti came to me six months ago and asked me to help her organize a Syrian film festival in the United States and Canada, I became totally committed to this project. When she said to me that cinema critics in the US consider Syrian cinema to be the Arab’s cinema “best kept secret” I decided that the optimal way to disclose and reveal this secret would be to wholeheartedly support the efforts of ArteEast where Rasha and her colleague Livia Alexandre work. And that was how this project started.

The main title theme of this event was: Lens on Syria: Thirty Years of Contemporary Cinema, and the subtitle was: The Road to Damascus, Discovering Syrian Cinema. This has provided an unprecedented opportunity to discover over 30 Syrian features, documentaries, and shorts. The screening is taking place between May 5-18 at the Walter Read Theater.

One of the films that I attended was Samir Zikra’s A Land for Strangers which tells the story of the great Allepine enlightened thinker, reformist, and advocate of freedom and liberties Abdul Rahman Al-Kawakibi. Eevrybody who saw the film was fascinated by the character of Al-Kawakibi and by the greatness of the old city in Aleppo which offered a startling setting to the events of the film.

On a personal note, I was bemused by seeing my grand aunt Afifa and my grand mother Nazeera being depicted in this historical film. It is not very often that one would see his family being portrayed in cinema.

The American cinema critic who attended most of the shows, Richard Pena, wrote in the New York Times commenting on this festival: “What is immediately striking about Syrian films is simply how well made they are. I first discovered Syrian cinema for myself back in the early 1980ss. Samir Zikra's Hadithat al-Nosf Metr (The Half-Meter Incident, 1981) impressed me with its sly humor and candor about the June 1967 War; but what really caught my attention-and many other people's too-was Mohammad Malas's Ahlam al-Madina (Dreams of the City, 1983). Exquisitely made and directed, the film offered one of the most skillful weavings of personal story and historical consciousness that I had ever seen. Other Syrian films would reappear at festivals with works such as Abdellatif Abdul-Hamid's Layali Ibn Awah (Nights of the Jackals, 1989) and Oussama Mohammad's Stars in Broad Daylight, but then in 1992 came Malas's second film, Al-Leyl (The Night, 1992) Simply a masterpiece, The Night seemed the perfect next step beyond Dreams of the City; its innovative blending of personal and historical narratives was even more provocative, and his style was further enhanced by various surrealist touches. Clearly, something was going on in the Syrian cinema.”

Faek Dahdouh

Some of my favorite works by distinguished Syrian artists.

      

Never Let Me Go

I was coming back from Colorado Springs to DC when I finished reading the book I had with me. Luckily I was planned to change the plane in Denver, so I went into the airport bookstore to get something for the remainder of my trip, and while browsing the shelves, a novel by Kazuo Ishiguro caught my eye. I have read before his Remains of the Day, and enjoyed its world of suppressed emotions and restrained expressiveness. So I decided to go for Never Let Me Go.

       

Once I started reading this unique novel, I was caught between many contradicting thoughts and reflections: I found it intriguing and engrossing, yet there was that feeling of something missing, just like when the music leaves a dominant scale and you don’t feel comfortable till it comes back to its home key.

The language is ascetic, all emotions and actions are ambivalent, and the protagonists leave you wanting to reach out to them and ask them the one major question that prevailed throughout my journey with this novel: why?

This might not be a masterpiece of a novel, but it is definitely very disturbing, and I believe that the role of great literature is to disturb us, challenge our axioms, stir our emotions, inspire our imagination, and above all, do this in a beautiful way. While the plot was unequivocal, the novel succeeded in raising profound questions that I need to examine.

Never Let Me Go is a novel about children who were cloned to be ‘used’ for the benefit of humanity. However, it is not scientific fiction. Ishiguro does not even mention any aspect of the cloning industry, he does not deal with the emotions of those cloned humans, he simply accepts them as ‘being’ , and deals with their tragic destiny in an aloof reserved way. The great question that lingers throughout the novel is left unaddressed: since they are so normal and so ‘equal’ to us ‘normal humans’, then why are they never outraged by their plight? Is this Ishiguro’s way of warning us against the woes and suffering, albeit silent and dignified, of those cloned human beings? Is this his condemnation of what genetic engineering might result in? I would leave this to the reader to decide, because I believe this novel will create different reactions among different readers.

Ghasan Nana

Some of my favorite works by distinguished Syrian artists.

      

      

Am I the Real Author of my Blog?

Sometimes I get amused by a question that arises frequently. A couple of journalists who interviewed me last month in California asked me if I were really the author of my blog. When my face reflected utter astonishment, they felt a little embarrassed and said to me: “You know, we presume you are a very busy ambassador, and you can instruct one of your embassy employees to write it on your behalf…, besides it discusses a large number of books, do you really have time to read all these books?”.

No comment.

The only reason I write my blog is that it helps me release all emotional tension and indulge in some fun while writing about what I like most: people, art, and books. Sometimes when my job becomes particularly difficult, writing has the effect of catharsis of my psyche.

Additionally, many of my friends and loved-ones, who are scattered across the globe, have told me that by reading my blog they feel they are still in touch with me, experiencing what I am living through while ‘in exile’ in the US.

But most importantly, my blog has helped in one very important aspect. Many who do not know me personally, on seeing the photos of my wife and reading about her scientific achievements, would invariably have the following reaction: after all, a guy who is married to this charming and intelligent lady certainly has some good taste.

       

       

Besides, my blog is creating some hilarious feedback. Many nice, warm and funny comments have been sent to me. Some of them allowed me to actually make new friendships (Camille Alexandre is an outstanding example – though he might be upset with me now for the unforgivable delay in writing back to him). From time to time, I receive comments that actually help me realize a weakness here or a mistake there in my professional role as an Ambassador – I am always ever grateful for this sincere criticism. One particular message that I received from a Lebanese American living and working in Abu Dhabi, Nezar Andari, who is married to a Syrian woman (isn’t he lucky!) highlighted a problem in the Visa issuing policy of our embassy. I gladly worked on the issue, and hope that it is already resolved. He did not ask me for an exceptional favor, but for a whole solution to the problem he had to face while requesting a visa for his son. Following is an excerpt of his reply after my response to his first message:

Dear Ambassador Imad Moustapha: Thanks for your swift and gracious reply. I was not surprised. I really appreciate your willingness to help. I also meant what I said about respecting your presence in the media and your blog. When I am optimistic, I believe one of the ways of confronting all the negatives is through people like Fateh Mudaress or even the many filmmakers that are Syrian. I thank you for being an Ambassador who does not forget to represent the culture of his people. So many ambassadors do from many cultures. If possible, I would like to correspond with you on this in the future as even here in Abu Dhabi more could be done.

Another interesting message was the one I received from a journalist in Turkey, Nir Rosen, who is planning to visit Washington this May:

…I am a journalist whose work has been published by the New Yorker magazine, the New York Times magazine, the New Republic, Harper's, Atlantic and other magazines. most of my work has been about Iraq, and my book about Iraq, 'In the belly of the green bird: The triumph of the martyrs in iraq,' will be out in a week in book stores. its about the first three years of the occupation. You can find much of my work on www.nirrosen.com I am a regular reader of your blog and though my wife and I live in Istanbul we will be in Washington DC … we were both hoping to go to Syria this summer for several months to study and travel. I would like to eventually write about Syria but not before I have gotten to know it. So I wanted to see if I could meet with you while I will be in dc next month to discuss this and other things.

Among the other interesting e-mails I have received I would like to particularly mention those of Ayman Tuleimat from Chicago who is keenly interested in the presentations of Syrian culture, and Jarral Farrah who described himself as a “British medical student and I'm in love with Syria” . To all of them I say: Thank you, your feedback further consolidates my belief that friendships need not be constrained to the real world, they also exist in the blogosphere.

Hadi Toron 1

Some of my favorite works by distinguished Syrian artists.

       

       

Syrian Culture in the US

       

Important Syrian cultural events have taken/are taking place across the US this spring. Some were directly organized by the Syrian embassy in Washington DC, some where partially sponsored, and others were merely supported and encouraged by the embassy. We started by welcoming Syria’s foremost poet Adonis who had two appearances at Goergetown University; a poetry recital evening where he read his poems in Arabic, alternating with a professor from Georgetown who read English translations of his poems amidst high acclaim. Next day he was engaged in a public discussion of modern Arabic literature and culture with the students and faculty members of Georgetown.

The following week, a remarkably talented Syrian musician, Abdullah Shehadeh, dazzled the audience at the Millennium Stage of the Kennedy Center in Washington with his virtuoso performance on the Kannoun. Abdullah presented with his accompanying talented artists his composition The Seven Gates of Damascus, and did not fail to remind his audience that he is a Syrian from the occupied Golan. Prior to that, Abdullah and his ensemble presented the same concert in Michigan and New York. After Washington, he headed to Seattle for his last concert in this tour.

       

       

Meanwhile, the Syrian Embassy is supporting and sponsoring a Syrian Film Festival to be shown in New York at the Lincoln Center early May. In cooperation with the Syrian Ministry of Culture, the embassy has brought 16 Syrian films representing a panoramic overview of the Syrian cinema. Two prominent Syrian scholars are also visiting Washington and New York.

Today, Sadeq Jalal Al-Azm, the Syrian thinker, who won the prestigious Erazmus philosophy prize last year, will give a public lecture at the Gorge Mason University in Washington.

       

                    (with Sadeq Al-Azm, Kamal Al-Khalidi, and Halim Barakat)

Professor Abdul Nabi Steif, head of the Arabic Literature Department at the University of Damascus, was visiting Roger Williams University in Rhode Island, were he concluded a cooperation agreement between his university and the Roger Williams University. Taking opportunity of his visit, we arranged a Syria day at the University, where he gave a series of lectures about Arab culture and Islam, and I gave a presentation about the current issues of the Middle East. A very active and diligent Syrian student at the University,Yumna Deiri, made everything possible to ensure a high turnout at this event.

Finally, Aziz Al-Azmeh, one of the outstanding Syrian scholars and writers is participating in a series of academic panel discussions in New York and Washington. The bottom line: diplomacy is not only about politics. Cultural outreach is a means of paramount importance in trying to bridge the gap between the Syrian and the American people.

       

                         (with Aziz, his wife Nadia, and the late Afaf Majed)