Syrian Snapshot

by Rebecca Dowd (Australia)

Making a local connection Jordan

‘The world is like a belly-dancer,’ the Arabic proverb goes. ‘It dances a little while for everyone.’ The streets of Jordan’s northern town of Mafraq weren’t dancing when we arrived. Unless you count the sway of bright, suspended scarves, the cartwheels of discarded plastic bags, the flip and slap of shrak on steaming domes. Our driver, Mazen, parked in front of a small shop, its roller-shutter door half-drawn against the sun. Inside was a four-tiered, bright teal cage on wheels, packed full with white birds. They were too white to be chickens, but too plump not to be a source of food. I wondered whether people bought them alive. ‘Which floor is it?’ I asked my interpreter, as we climbed a staircase as narrow as a bell tower. ‘Seventh,’ Rawan puffed. ‘It’s good for the legs.’ I wondered where she’d learnt such a colloquial expression. We finally emerged from the stairwell and stepped into a long hallway. The ceiling paint had blistered in parts and hung like dead skin. The walls were dirty, engraved with spirals that reminded me of fossilised shells. Rawan tapped her knuckles on the door of apartment fifty-two. Samira opened it slowly, her veiled head tilted downwards. I felt tall. Rawan and Samira exchanged greetings while I tugged off my shoes. ‘As-salaam alaikum,’ I muttered, my only Arabic phrase. Her apartment was small. They all were. It was better than a tent, I reassured myself. Samira gestured for me to sit on a thin mattress on the floor, its limp skin the purple colour of ripe figs. I chose the least-worn end of what was inevitably also her bed, hoping I hadn’t placed my buttocks where she would later rest her head. A gold tray sat on the rug before us, a black and bronze star at its heart. It held three small, torso-shaped glasses filled with strong, Arabic coffee. I can’t drink caffeine – it sends my head into a somersault spin – but I’d learnt to never refuse an act of hospitality. I asked Samira about her life in Mafraq. How often she left the house, whether she felt safe. How she got here from Daraa and what exactly – besides the obvious – made her leave. 'They killed my husband and two of my sons in front of me,' she said, her index finger scraping a line across her neck, like the horizontal bar of a cross. 'My youngest son calls me from Syria sometimes,' she continued. 'They make him describe how they torture him. In detail.’ I squeezed my lips together, as my mother used to do when receiving bad news. ‘They don’t like us, the Jordanians,’ Samira changed the subject. ‘They think we’ll take their jobs, their men. Rats, they call us.’ I asked how the locals knew she was Syrian. They just know, she told me. 'What was your house like in Daraa?' I asked, desperate to lighten the mood. 'Beautiful,' she smiled, reaching for her glitter-backed phone. Every refugee I met had a smart phone. No fridge, one pair of shoes, just enough rice for the week. But always a phone. Family members were missing, fighting, fleeing – it was their only way to connect. Samira’s photographs were nothing like the scenes of horror I’d seen on the news. A front porch draped in jasmine; a spacious, light-filled living room; a vase of Damask roses on a mother of pearl-studded desk. I looked around me. The room was empty, but for a sunken, two-seater couch and a copper vase filled with plastic tulips. And then I realised. This world – the garage-stale air, the solitude, the fear – was foreign to Samira, too. ‘Can I take a photo with you?’ Samira asked. I nodded. 'When the war is over,' she said, 'I will look back at this photo and remember you. For coming here, for listening. For caring.’ She took my hand; it wasn’t much more wrinkled than my own. I wondered whether the lines around her eyes had been carved by war, or were remnants of a happier past life. I was sure that the world had danced for her, once. I hope that it will dance again.