The hardest person to meet in your new city of residence will be the most important one – your hairstylist. Forget doctors and dentists, these are the keepers and slayers of hair. Today I went to get my hair cut for the first time since moving to Syria and my apprehension grew larger after dreaming last night that I would leave the salon with – horror of horrors – female Syrian hair. This means layers and blow-outs so big they rival the miracles of women in Texas.

So I arrive and have the most beautiful thing done, someone else washes my hair, the best part of any haircut. Then the guy with the polyester track suit (opened halfway down his chest so I can admire his mat of curly chesthair) and attitude to match asks what I want done. I point to a picture of Charlize Theron with her delightful long, straight, minimally layered hair. He starts cutting and is done, umm, maybe 8 minutes later. Zero layers, nothing’s even but I think I have something resembling bangs again. You need to know that my stylist in Vancouver, Glen the Giver of Amazing Cuts and Colour (call him at One Salon on Burrard 604-733-3909), takes at least 30 minutes JUST TO CUT.

Then another guy slaps some weird paste on my hair (to ‘treatment it’) and wraps it (my head) in seran wrap and leaves me there for 20 minutes. After he takes it off and washes my head – again – another guy blow dries my hair. You know how in North America most hairdryers come with cool bursts to help the hair set? This one comes with bursts of… HAIRSPRAY! I’ve never seen or smelled anything like it before. Amazing.

And so I leave the salon with flipped hair smelling like bad aftershave. I don’t look too Syrian and thankfully my hair does not hold curl so by the time I get home, the walk and pollution have straightened it back to normal. I’m not crying so it must all be OK. We’ll see how I feel after one night of bedhead.

1.  Do not try and shake the groom’s hand
2. Do not wear your Nine West sparkly gold heels, not because they’re inappropriate but because women are competitive, especially at weddings
3.  Do not make enemies with the bride
4.  Do not make enemies with the mother of the groom

I didn’t know the thing about shaking hands, but I was doing what we do in the West, shaking hands in congratulations.  Not until I put out my hand did I notice he was holding the Quran and figured he wasn’t supposed to touch another woman apart from his wife.  Mistake number 1.

Mistake number 2.  My friend who I went with told me to wear Western style dress because underneath the hejab the women are all hooched up.  They dress to compete with each other since no men are allowed at the bride’s party.  Then he saw what I was wearing and said that I was about to step into a viper’s den and would get bitten alive.  Apparently I looked too good and was therefore competition.  Competition for what????  No men were there!!!!!

Mistake number 3 was not my fault, the bride was not impressed with mistake number 1 which no one explained to me.

Mistake number 4 was also not my fault.  I was invited to the wedding by the father of the groom whom I met the week before.  After the wedding when I told my friend that the mother was NOT friendly to me, he explained that she was probably ticked off because her husband made a big deal of me being there.  Again, women are very competitive. WHAT IS OUR PROBLEM???????

I have many other observations about what I witnessed that evening but let’s leave it to this one: I think the Sunnis are hipper and more fun but I’m not sure I want to go to one of their weddings to confirm that.

Sorry, not a lot of pictures since I don’t want to post the women without their permission.

The father the groom, Abu Osama, and me. Wow, he looks really little.

I’ve been checking out what the women wear here. For example, can I wear a short skirt, short being around the knee. The answer appears to be ‘yes’ as long as I wear black tights with it. So this is what I do last Thursday on a very warm day. In addition I wear my knee-high black boots. I’m wearing a loose-fitting black top and my leather jacket. I think I’m more conservative than some of the girls here. Not so decide the men in their trucks and cars on the main road by school. I got honked at, whistled at, yelled at. All because, I think, I’m not wearing a headscarf. I get on my service to head home and the driver wants me to sit beside him. I try explaining that I like my seat, this causes a commotion in the bus and the young guy beside me tries to calm the situation.

At last we get to my stop and I jump off as does the young guy. I’m going to the internet cafe, which happens to be closed, so I start walking home. Guys come out of their shops to tell me the internet cafe will open again in two hours. The young guy from the bus magically appears and starts following me around. I eventually tire of him and tell him to get lost which he does not do. He persists in following me around my neighbourhood while I buy groceries and try to lose him. I get to my apartment and make sure he can’t see that I’m going upstairs. He’s not there, at least I’m sure he’s not. I get to my apartment and start telling my roommate about this guy, who is maybe 19 or 20 years old. Ten minutes later my doorbell rings and it’s him, standing there asking for my phone number. So I walk out to where he is and give him an earful in mixed arabic and english. I’m yelling “memnua” (forbidden)and a whole host of other words that my neighbours might not like if they understood. I haven’t seen him since, I think he’s been scared into hiding, as well he should be.

I will NOT wear a headscarf. I know who and what I am and if I have to explain that, OK. Just don’t follow me home, you weirdo.

I finally found loaves of bread!  Not Syrian flat bread, pita bread, naan bread, hard and brittle bread, but a real, bonafide loaf of soft, sliced bread.  Do you know what this means????  I can eat toast now!!!!!  I was so desperate for North American bread I would have gladly eaten stale Wonderbread sent by snail-mail from home.  Alison may not be able to live by bread alone, but at least it makes Alison very, very happy.

Last Saturday the atmosphere started to get a little manic when a brown haze settled over the city.  At first I thought it was pollution but by mid-day the wind had picked up and sand was swirling all around.  The drivers were crazier than before, people were edgey, and the billion stray cats in the city decided to come out and sing in unison.  That evening I could barely see the green lights of the mosques as I was standing on my balcony and when I went to bed I could taste the sand in the air.

The next morning it started to rain – nice to make everything fresh but think about where all that floating sand is going to go.  This is the first time in my life when I didn’t wash just the fruits and vegetables I bought at the market, but also my bags of pasta, jars and cans of other stuff.  Before now I haven’t been a fan of vacuum wrapping everything but now I get the point.

My Iraqi suitor is out of the running.  He’s currently in jail where he’s been for the past week after it was discovered he was a bit of a thief – not of hearts but of cash.  His friends ratted him out after he “borrowed” money from them to buy an apartment and a business.  He never gave the money back.  I think my decision to wait and see if the camels came through was a wise one.

The man who owns the hotel I’m staying at has a 95-year-old father who comes and sits at reception every day.  He challenges every guest to an arm wrestle – which he always wins – sometimes because people let him but most times because he is still tough as nails.  He has taken a shine to me and offered 12 camels and his house to marry me.  His son is concerned dad will throw in the hotel but I assure him this is not the case.  The daughters-in-law think it’s great and would love for me to marry their father-in-law and thereby secure the hotel for their sons when they grow up.  Abu Sameer also wants me to convert to Islam.

The Iraqi man who has the room next to mine says he’ll give me 15 camels and a donkey.  He’s said nothing about converting, he is already married.

Basil, the 22-year-old whose fiancee is 15, says he’ll give me one camel.  He’s not very wealthy.

No one else has entered the race yet, but I think I’m going to hold out for something better than old men, married men, poor men, and livestock.

Everyone who wants to live and work in Syria needs to get an AIDS test done.  There are only two places in the country where you can get the test – one in Damascus, one in Homs.  Two weeks ago the Iraqi president visited with the Syrian president and requested that all Iraqis be sent back to Iraq within 15 days if they can’t get their test completed.  This means every morning before 8am there is a huge lineup at the clinic, maybe 500 people scrambling to get their test so they can stay.  This is in addition to all the Syrians and other foreigners who are there for the same thing.

This morning I arrived at 8am and stood at the front of the line for foreigners, waiting to throw my passport through the gate to the men in the white coats.  The first man was relatively gentle and pleasant, the second yelled and screamed until his face turned red and he sounded like he’d either pass a kidney stone or explode.  I got my passport through on the first try and then stood in the cold and mud for the next three and half hours as relatively gentle man let Syrians jump the queue.  Eventually he yelled out my name and I was able to get inside the gate and wait for another hour and a half.

As I was at the front of the line this time, I was able to watch yelling man take blood samples.  First he yelled at whoever was in the chair, grabbed their left arm and tied the rubber hose around it.  If he couldn’t find the vein in 2 seconds, he’d rip the tube off, grab the right arm and give that a try.  If no vein there, tube off, wrapped on wrist, a little bit more yelling, then BAM, jab into the back of the hand.  If he was lucky he’d hit a vein, but sometimes it looked like he was pulling up muscle or marrow.  I was lucky and ended up with a soft speaking and polite man who managed to get my vein on the first go.  A bit of bruising but at least no emotional scarring.

Tomorrow I go back to get the results – they’d better be negative.

A 95 year old man makes the call to prayer at the mosque closest to my current residence, about 50 feet up the road.  His prayer is painful, you’re begging for it to end before he dies and the last breath gurgles out of his throat.  While he gasps and wheezes his way through the ritual, the other calls to prayer echo out across the city, fading in and out like twisted backup singers.  It’s eerie and I’m glad it’s only 5 times a day.