Syria is a delicious country, so it’s no wonder that eating is the Syrian national pastime. Restaurants usually open at noon and stay open until 1 or 2 in the morning, peaking at around 11pm. All day your taste buds face a barrage of sweet tea mixed with apple or melon nargile smoke, honey-drizzled sweets, freshly-baked, cheese-filled pastries, cardamom-spiced coffee, freshly-pressed juices, spicy street foods, varieties of fine dips, and slow-cooked lamb.

Syrians get an especially dreamy look in their eyes when they speak of Aleppan food. As the name implies it comes from Syria’s second largest city, Aleppo. Among other techniques, Aleppans take the myriad of Syrian kebab types and cover them with lightly spiced sauces of pomegranate, dark cherry and more. There’s a certain finesse to all the Aleppan dishes, too. Eating Aleppan baba ganoush for the first time, for example, is a bit like having your first French knife-cut steak tatare after only having known American ground beef.

While variety of food isn’t a Syrian strong point, I imagine most Syrians would wonder why you would ever want to eat anything else? Spend a night eating at Damascus’ rather upscale restaurant Naranj or Aleppo’s wonderful Bait Sissi and you just might agree.

Syria is self-sufficient in food, meaning that it produces enough food domestically to feed its populace with little or no imports. Except for the occasional meddling of the Evil Empire of Nestle, ingredients are almost always fresh and local. Orange, pomegranates, dates, cherries, blackberries, strawberries, olives, honey, an incredible variety of spices, strangely appetizing salty and sweet goat cheeses… and lots of lamb. Amazing.

Equally delicious is the voice of Lena Chamamyan. This young Armenian-Syrian Damascene singer has been recently released her second album, Shamat.

Chamamyan blends traditional Syrian and Armenian music with oriental jazz. She works with a variety of talented musicians who back-up her beautiful voice.. one that has been rightly compared to Souad Massi.

Once again this album comes to us thanks to the efforts of Incognito/Majal. It’s great to see local labels like this do such a good job promoting local musicians. Quality production, great musical picks. Thanks.

Lena Chamamyan - Seher

Syria is a PR disaster thanks to some of the world’s worst foreign policy. Years of meddling and aggressive action has landed it a permanent spot on the rogue nation list. Among other things it has contributed to the continuing decline of its neighbour, Lebanon, through occupation and later with assassinations and sabotage. Syria has also embarked on numerous poorly organized and ultimately unsuccessful military campaigns against another neighbour, Israel. It hypocritically carries out a proxy war against Israel through Hezbollah, an organization that it would never allow to flourish as a political force within its own borders. Plus it has almost undeniably been involved in the international black market for uranium production with such bright lights as North Korea. The list goes on and on…

Domestically, however, it’s another story. Yes, it’s still a dictatorship with little room for organized dissent. But Syria is no Cuba: people can do as they please provided they don’t threaten the Ba’ath, and compared to the majority of its neighbours the country is a model for religious and ethnic tolerance. Don’t believe me? Think for a second about Jordan and Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians and then go talk to a Syrian Palestinian about their better life there. Head over to Lebanon and see the inter-community violence that doesn’t exist a few dozen kilometres down the road in Syria. Check-out women’s rights in Iran and Saudi Arabia and then see scarf-free girls chatting with friends, both men and women, at Damascus cafés.. in public.

Yes, Syria is quite poor and its incredible ability to make enemies and spend so much on the military isn’t helping that, but in general people are doing ok. It is probably the safest place I’ve ever visited and people are noticeably more relaxed, friendly and open than those I’ve met in surrounding countries. While everyone is talking about rising food and oil prices, they’re certainly not alone in that complaint.. and all in all pretty much everyone we met seemed largely content, if not disappointed that their country has such a bad rep. There is none of that feeling of tension or misery that I’ve encountered in so many other, supposedly democratic and non-rogue states.

I’m not defending despotism here, but I am trying to shatter the common belief amongst Westerners that Syria must be a horrible place to live. It’s not. In fact, if I was a student again and studying Arabic I’d happily spend a year there studying.. as many others do. It’s a favourite destination for Arab tourists and, increasingly, bus loads of Italians, Germans and French pensioner adventure-seekers.

When I left Damascus to visit Beirut for a few days I was reminded of the first time I visited Abidjan from Dakar. Abidjan, with its skyscrapers, nice roads and fancy boutiques stands in marked contrast to dusty, poor Dakar, especially the Dakar I first knew six years ago. But underneath all the glitz there was a horrible tension, pure racism in some cases, that spoilt Abidjan for me forever. I couldn’t live there.. and I feel the same about Beirut. For all its gleam and fun and, quite frankly, more sophisticated feel, I’d take Damascus over Beirut any day.

Anyway, I’ve said enough. Go see for yourself and let me know if you disagree. On to some Syrian music..

It was hard at first to find good contemporary Syrian music. As one guy in Hamaa put it, “I won’t tell you because I know you won’t like it.” He went on to say that Syrians are very emotional so the music they like tends to be overly romantic and.. cheesy. (He later told me that his favourite musician was Avril Lavigne.) Another guy in a market in Aleppo told me that his favourite Canadian musician was K.D. Lang because he liked the fact that she was “kind of butch, you know.” Most people inevitably spoke of Egyptian pop stars, plus the ubiquitous Celine Dion and Phil Collins.

Things changed when we arrived in Damascus. Record stores are much more prevalent there and concert posters on the walls of the old city imply the existence of a music scene, however small. There’s even a local distribution network called Majal, a division of Lebanon’s Incognito, that promotes local musicians and sells unpirated copies of their albums in stores around the city.

I left Syria just a few days before the latest round of Majal albums were to arrive at the record stores, but I still picked up a few that I hadn’t seen before. We’ll start with some music from a Majal sampler, The new oriental sounds from Syria. It was released by Incognito in 2007 to promote the “alternative Arabic music scene” in Syria.

The first track is by Hewar, a Syrian jazz project co-founded by the talented clarinetist, Kinan Azmeh. You can find it on his 2006 full-length, 9 Days of Solitude. Hewar, by the way, means “dialogue”.

Next a lovely Syrian classical track by Dima Orsho and Gaswan Zerikly. It reminds me a lot of Dawn Upshaw’s White Moon.

More tomorrow.. when we must also discuss the wonders of Syrian food.

Hewar - Wedding
Gaswan Zerikly - Ma Ihtiyali

I was in Beirut a couple weeks ago just before the last flare-up. How strange to have just returned from this beautiful city with its great restaurants, fun bars, nice coast and true-to-name “Paris of the Middle East” neighbourhoods, only to hear that Hezbollah guerrillas were now occupying buildings around the hotel we were staying in.

That’s what makes this city unique: in the midst of all this tension construction continues at a feverish pace, nightclubs keep bumping, bars keep serving great cocktails, and pensioner joggers with their iPods bounce down the corniche.

That said, Beirut isn’t all fun and drink. The tension while we were there was real: the tanks were everywhere, people were maybe more reserved than usual, and roadblocks/sit-ins had all but closed large parts of downtown plus many other parts of the city. The drive from Damascus still offers views of the unfinished bridge that was blown up during the last round of fighting with Israel, and pock-marked buildings stand ominously beside new Starbucks, Lina’s and Virgin Megastores.

But the Beirut nightlife is no myth. I have this lasting memory of a group of four beautiful girls in a BMW convertible, hands in the air, dancing in their seats as they drive towards Monot street. Many of the bars we went to are definitely up to Paris standards. And while the scene is seemingly smaller than I had imagined, there’s no denying that this is a fun city. A classy city. My nights out there definitely reminded me of Tel Aviv bar hops a couple years back.

So we’ll hear one track today from an album that’s getting old but I still enjoy. Soapkills are a Lebanese trip-hop group featuring the lovely voice of Yasmine Hamdan over Zeid Hamdan’s beats.

The track you’ll hear is off their last release from way back in 2002, Cheftak. They should hopefully have some new stuff coming out soon. Check-out their MySpace page if you want to hear/learn more.

We can thank Mary Louise Congo for her wonderful eye on this and many other photos on this site.

Soapkills - Cheftak