At the Bus Station, Aboard the Bus

Akhbar beckons me over from a nearby table. Portly in an endearing, Humpty-Dumpty-like way, with the face of a kindly elementary teacher. His English: good, not great. He introduces himself. We figure out we're on the same bus together, a five-hour haul through desert landscapes to Deir Ez-Zur, in the middle of nowhere. He's dressed sharply, modern, counter to that baggy traditional tunic crap so popular. This he points out to me. Turns out Akhbar really likes the West, its ways and wants and women, the whole heaving system of it. How he put it: 'You have good civilisation.' He does not allow Syria into this latter category. We talk and talk and talk some more. A qualified engineer, he's jetsetting off to Germany in three months time in order to complete a Masters degree. Mum and Dad are helping foot the bill, all of it. He's learning German at the German Language Institute in Damascus. You should see his cheeks glow at the mention of living in progressive, cultured, liberated Germany. It's enough to make you cry, cry tears of I don't know what. Akhbar is a good man, if not a little Westernly pious. He uses words like 'dictatorship,' 'backwards,' and 'third-world' out loud in public, which is equal parts brave and stupid. He is a Muslim, like everyone else here. But I think he wants something else.

Muhammad's seat is behind me on the bus. He's young, inquisitive, bears the moustache-and-goatee combination so popular around these parts, so kitschy and hipster in the West. We talk a bit, mostly about his English and the learning of it, where I'm from and what it's like, in Australia. (Not this hot, for starters. Nor this openly dirty.) Halfway through the ride there's a stopover, whereupon Muhammad seconds me into the seat beside his. Interesting kid, Muhammad, twenty years old and midway through a degree in English Language. A bit different, preternatural, from a family of fourteen and very interested in Arabic literature. He's getting off a stop after me, two hours later, at Abu Kamal, a dinky township ten kilometres from the border with Iraq. We have a lot of time to burn.

So we talk. About America, Iraq. Turns out his extended family was slaughtered in the Iraq war. He used this word, in his second language: 'slaughter.' This individual, in real life, affected by the shit we view pedestrianly on the news. Why does America think it's better than the Arabs, think it knows better than them? It's not all of America, I tell him. I know, he says, I know. Maybe it comes down to motives, I say. And fear. Maybe they're scared not to have control of things. And maybe there's by-incentives, like oil. (Maybe it's really about democracy, but I don't try that one.) Why does the world think we're terrorists? Why is France banning the burqua? Why, why, why?

How, as a lay tourist, am I meant to answer any of this? Am I representing my country, my culture, myself? Also, I'm on a bus full of diehard Muslims. No mentioning of suicide bombers, even though I want to go there, just to see if he'll bite. And I don't know about France, all I know is that it doesn't quite have the ring of absolute freedom to it, does it, the banning of the burqua?

I turn the tables, put this to Muhammad: Why do Arabs think Western women are immoral, sluts? Because it's wrong, he says, to dress and act as they do. It's against the very word of the Koran, simple. But our society, the men-and-women-openly-interacting part, it really works, I say. It's not like the Hollywood movies, don't be gullible. It's free, it's fair, it hardly destroys our society like the Koran warns against. You should come see it with your own eyes, make your own mind up. He just shakes his head, searches for words, mutters something about 'point-of-view.' And what else can he or anyone else do, ultimately? Listen, share, agree to disagree. Push the point, offend, apologise.

Finally, we get to Deir Ez-Zur. Stuck on a bus for five hours of daylight, I don't get the sense I've wasted time. Akhbar is here. He will take me to the hotel, help me extend my VISA, show me around. The secret police will be wary, watching. They will summons the hotel clerk to get Akhbar's phone number 'in case something happens to foreign guest.' But Akhbar won't care, he's loyal to me, my way of life. Individually we will get into bed and try for sleep as meanwhile, somewhere in the desert dark, Muhammad will be watching the stars out the window bored, approaching his family home, ten kilometres from the border with Iraq.