In this post, I will seamlessly weave together frat boys, the Persian Empire, fetishes, and fruit juice.
Cultural obsessions often lead to overwhelming desires in the minds of the individual. Whether it is idolizing fame, wealth, sex… people learn what to want and which venues are deemed expectable in order to pursue it. But what happens when people are simultaneously told to want one thing, but not allowed to indulge? Well, some seem to develop fetishes. This struck me when I was at a soccer game between Iran and Syria. Imagine, thousands of men packed together into a stadium with fantastic colors and lights, the echo of whistles and yelps, the wave of a flag in every-other fist… yes, getting hopped-up on nationalism is a good outlet for the fact that you can’t touch a woman until you’re married; but it certainly isn’t a solution. One girl learned this the hard way.
When my friends invited me to the game, I told them no. But who can resist a face-off between two of the three axes on the world’s 1982 Toyota minibus of Evil? …surely no freedom-blooded American such as myself.
Keeping with the tradition of walking to any destination more than 10 minutes away, we stopped at a juice bar before reaching the stadium. In our group there were four Americans, one Australian, and one Brit; also keeping with tradition, we picked up two Syrians at the juice bar. What seemed like a casual, quite common befriending of some locals turned out to be a God-send. Sure, we could’ve found the stadium by ourselves; but getting in is another story. What I can only describe as a bid for lifeboats on a sinking ship, getting through the entrance gates, even if you have a ticket, is a competitive sport in itself. And while a crowd of anxious young men pushing themselves through a small hole is intimidating, it is even more so when the hole is not a door, but a gap in a long line of billy-club-clad riot police. You don’t want to get pushed into them. (A side note: Syrians tend to use grand hand gestures while talking, even about the least animate topics. This is also true of the guards with large bats in their hands, making a friendly instruction like, “You can’t get in through there,” seem like an attempt on your life.)
As our two new Syrian friends shepherded us through the crowds, the two American girls with us were immediately grabbed by the guards. They weren’t going to let them through (we later learned that there is a separate entrance for the women). This was very alarming to all of us non-Syrians, as we didn’t know why they were being grabbed. I can’t imagine what was going through the girls’ heads, but I immediately felt myself reaching for my glasses, knowing that with my luck in Syria, I would be the first to be clubbed as we all clung to each other and argued with hand gestures and broken Arabic trying not be separated. Thank Allah our new Syrian friends jumped in and half argued/half pushed us all through the line of guards with an authoritative smile.
Once in the stadium, the now-shaken girls insisted on not sitting in the rowdy (student?) sections of the stadium, which constituted about 85% of the stands. After purchasing $1 Syrian flags to wave from our seats behind the Iranian goalkeeper, we quickly attracted a small crowd of curious Syrians, all wanting to meet the Americans who were cheering for their country…. or so I thought.
And this is where I will pull the whole story back to the discussion about fetishes and the unfortunate girl. You see, as Syrian male, your chances of getting any romantic action are slim. Reason being that Syrian girls rightfully guard themselves and their reputation like it’s their life… cause it is. If it is found out that they have broken the rules (and given the lack of privacy here, people usually do find out), they will have a very hard time ever finding a husband, not to mention be a huge embarrassment to their family. It is not the same for men. They are not supposed to indulge either, but if they do, they are not scared the same way a girl is (both literally in the case of the physical deflowering of a woman’s body—I serious, they even have reconstructive surgery for that sort of thing here—and metaphorically in regards to their reputation). This makes Syria a country full of horny men (I mean more so than a normal country).
Despite Syria’s conservatism, sex is saturated in the images of advertising, music videos, movies in the cinema (mostly American), and the way each gender dresses (aside from the more conservative individuals). If Syria was REM’s “Everybody hurts” video (youtube it), the caption of the girls’ parents would read, “Here’s a push-up bra, five pounds of make-up, and some heals, now make sure you come right home after school.” I can’t imagine the captions of the younger folk, but I’m sure these mixed messages are not easy on the psyche.
In some cases, this frustration turns perfectly normal sexual interest into intense fetishes and leads to the desperately-immature objectification of women. Pair this with the double standards of behavior, which leaves room for the males to bend the rules, and you have a society where any women perceived as being “loose” is the center of everyone’s attention. “Here’s my chance,” they seem to think. And thanks to Hollywood’s portrayal of Western women (at least the particular movies which make it to the cinema here), any foreign girl who is obviously not Muslim is assumed to fit the bill, and therefore coveted. This leads to aggressive flirting from some men towards foreign women, and in rarer cases, public molestation, or sometimes worse.
Much like the drinking culture for U.S. college students (kids who are shown in movies and told by parents and friends how much fun drinking is, but not allowed to indulge until being 21), in Syria, a dangerously-immature obsession develops in some people about women and sex. They don’t ease into things with innocent kissing and long, horribly-awkward relationships that (hopefully) demystify the opposite sex, for example, by teaching one not to see women as just a set of boobs to be grabbed in a soccer stadium.
At the game, the girls we were with were constantly being gawked at. The guys sitting behind us didn’t seem to care that me and my Australian friend were staring them down for about three minutes straight as they pointed, stared, and laughed at our friends’ bodies. We decided to rearrange our seating so that we formed a sort of a phalanx (perhaps inspired by the former Persian Empire in the neighboring section) with the girls in the middle. But this didn’t stop who we originally thought were just friendly Syrian men from coming over to chat with all of us. It quickly became clear who they wanted to talk to. Their flirt was quite intense, and their insistence became so discomforting that we had to leave the game early to avoid further harassment and what would’ve been a rowdy conclusion to a 1-1 game. But this was only after we saw a great commotion in the stands behind us. I looked up to see roughly 40 teenaged Syrians running over to take pictures of who turned out to be my friend from Britain. He was escorting a girl (she looked American or Euro) out of the stands. I pushed through the disturbance to pat him on the shoulder for a surprise hello (he had left Syria two weeks ago and we figured we’d never see each other again) when he told me what happened. As riot police were pushing us out the door, I learned that the girl he was with was getting her chest grabbed by some kids. He decked one of them, and now they were being escorted out of the stands before things escalated.
The night before this, at the only dive-bar in Damascus, I watched my German friend literally dodge some 40-year-old Iraqi lips from smooching her. She had been flirting with my other Australian friend, while three middle-aged Iraqi guys watched from another table. One of them must have assumed that it was a free-for-all, because he pursed his lips and went right for her. He must have really put his weight into it too, cause when he missed, he fell right over, only to be caught by my the Australian.
Man that was awkward.
The Iraqi then apologized and invited them both to his house for dinner….
I don’t mean to paint a bad image of Arab men, these individuals are certainly the minority, and sadly, their behavior seems all too familiar to other dip-shits I’ve seen in the good-ole U.S. of A. But I guess it just goes to show that we’re all the same, in a sad, sad way. “Global solidarity via sexual assault”? Yikes.
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