Syria’s Historical Heritage Can Still Be Saved

As the ancient Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius once said, “Look back over the past, with its changing empires that rose and fell, and you can foresee the future too.” From Roman temples to Byzantine churches, Umayyad mosques to Crusader castles and Ottoman palaces, Syria has always had an archeologically rich place in history. However, it can only remain untouched in history, as a tidal wave of cultural terrorism sweeps the nation.

The trade in looted Syrian cultural artifacts has become the third largest market in illegal goods worldwide.

According to an official document provided by the Syrian Council of Ministers, Syria has taken more than four trillion Syrian pounds (around $22 billion) of direct damage to buildings and infrastructure. The document also says that 420 antiquity sites have been damaged or destroyed, a much higher number than the United Nation’s estimate of 300 sites last month. The report added that 21,217 historical antiques have been reported stolen or damaged, worth an additional two billion Syrian Pounds (around $11 million).

Additionally, looting also threatens to rob Syria of one of its best chances for post-conflict economy-boom based on tourism which previously accounted for 12% of the national income.

The numbers are shocking, and while tragic, the plundering of antiquities in conflict zones is certainly not new. It happens all over the world when countries are at their most vulnerable. However, what distinguishes Syria’s war on cultural heritage is the deliberate destruction of religious sites in order to spark sectarianism in a country that has historically been a beacon of religious tolerance in the Middle East. Islamist groups in Syria such as ISIS and the Nusra Front have taken to destroying tombs and shrines in particular, which they view as “idolatry” in their medieval, Wahhabist interpretation of Sharia law.

Earlier last year, Iraqi Intelligence Services reported that ISIS allegedly collected $36 million from the sale of Christian artifacts from Nabaq in Damascus countryside.

Even more devastating than the physical loss of these artifacts is the symbolic defeat of a battle in Syria over identity, values and history that has claimed over 200,000 lives over the past four years. The nation’s heritage has been used as a weapon to finance brutality and to erase entire chapters of the country’s past in the attempt to radically reshape its future.

The Deputy Executive Secretary of ESCWA, Abdullah Dardari says “Syrians will face the erosion of the unifying element of their social fabric represented by their common cultural heritage.”

He believes “recreating shared heritage and cultural capital will probably be the most insurmountable challenge facing the nation when and if the fighting stops.”

Many of the artifacts that have been reported missing can be found in plain sight online for auction, such a 15^th century inscribed brass bowl found on Sotheby’s website worth around $16,000, and several other ancient items available for bidding on liveauctioneers.com.

For now, all Syria can do is depend on the international community to implement tougher import regulations and to report when an artifact is found abroad. A petition with 17,000 signatures from archaeologists to ban illegal trade in Syrian antiquities was sent to the UN in September and is expected to be implemented in the near future. In addition, a new law in Germany requires a certified export license for an antiquity in order to secure an import license.

So far, it is only known that Lebanese and Turkish customs have intercepted many objects at the border in recent months. Lebanese authorities have returned several antiques, most recently a 1700 year-old archeological wooden door from a church in the ancient Syrian town of Maaloula. On the other hand, Turkish officials have reportedly filled several warehouses with seized antiques but are refusing to return them to Syria until there is a change of regime.

Uptown Damascus: Where the War Pauses

When I used to look out from my 10^th floor window in the usually calm northern Damascus suburb of Dummar, I saw great sandy mountains surrounding me on all sides, lined with luxury terraces. Directly under my building was the biggest eyesore in the area, a vacant lot which some of the local youth used as a bare-bones football field.  Over the pre-civil war years, my family and I would regularly discuss the potential of this land; how the property value and attraction in the area would sky rocket if something as simple as a public park was built in that place. What nobody ever saw coming was of course, that Syria would spiral into one of the most deadly wars the region had ever seen, or that the lot would be transformed into a $35 million entertainment complex in the midst of it.

Uptown opened its doors in August of this year. At the grand opening, thousands of people poured in to explore the massive new complex, which includes five sit-down restaurants, a shopping center, an indoor waterpark, an amusement park, and a sports academy all completed with meticulously worked architecture and design. Everyone was visibly stunned at what they were seeing, taking in everything with wide eyes and capturing the sights on their phone cameras.

“I feel like a tourist in my own neighborhood!”, exclaimed a young passerby.

However, as expected, this extravagant project has been surrounded by much controversy and unanswered questions.

On a local level, many Dummar inhabitants have been ailing from the effects of Uptown on the area. A group on Facebook called “Campaign to shut down Uptown until Dummar residents get their rights back” has nearly 4,000 members complaining about the noise pollution of the amusement park, which echoes throughout the area past 11pm. There is also the issue of the incredible traffic that blocks a main road on a daily basis, worst of all on the weekend. There is no parking garage to accommodate the hundreds of cars that come in. 30 valet workers have taken to parking the cars along sidewalks surrounding Uptown. Power outages have also been more frequent since the opening of the 24 hour attraction.

The affluent Dummar has been relatively unscathed by the war, making it one of the safest areas to live in the country. Most Syrians visiting from the center of Damascus are thoroughly enjoying it.

Rana Daadoush, from the Tijara neighborhood said “We used to go up to resort towns like Saidnaya or Bloudan on the weekends but it became too dangerous to go a long time ago and we’ve felt suffocated in Damascus. We come here now for fresh air,” she says as she eats mixed grill and smokes hookah in the 2,500 capacity restaurant in Uptown, as her children play in the amusement park.

The BBC along with other news media has claimed that the funding for the complex was provided by some high-ranking individuals in the Syrian government. This was refuted by the owner of Uptown, Syrian businessman Khaled Jarrah.

“These outlets are spreading entirely false and irresponsible rumors. The government of Syria has certainly simplified many procedures for construction, but no individual has ever provided funding,” he said.

The Associated Press has recently tried to enter Uptown to conduct interviews and film, but they were turned away by management at the main entrance.

“Journalists from these agencies are behaving unprofessionally”, said a frazzled Jarrah. “They ask un-objective questions in a provocative manner that is clearly meant to give a bad image to the public no matter what the answer is.”

To his critics who argue that such money should not have been spent this way in such a dire time, Jarrah says that “my point of view is that this is the best time for such projects to be done because Syria is currently in the process of rejuvenating business and investment across the country, and we need to support and encourage all efforts to do so.”

He added that Uptown is now banning any foreign based press from entering the grounds.

Uptown was planned and completed in a year and a half. The rapid speed of construction for Uptown was also quite a shock for Damascenes, who are accustomed to a generally glacial pace where even center points of the capital, such as the Umayyad Square and the Abbasid Square have each taken at least five years to reach completion.

Jarrah says it was his and his teams’ experience in the field of complex building that helped construction move along swiftly.

Jarrah was previously the owner of the popular “Karya al Shamiya” leisure complex on the Damascus International Airport road. After the fighting between government forces and rebels intensified there, it became increasingly difficult for people to access it. Last year, militants of the Free Syrian Army stormed it and almost completely destroyed it.

Many of the remaining attractions from “Karya al Shamiya” have been recovered and brought to Uptown, such as the vintage car showroom and many amusement park rides.

“I believe completing this project smoothly was a positive challenge for us to take on as Syrians,” said Jarrah. “It was a way to show the rest of the country and the world that Syria is still strong and still has the potential to grow despite all the obstacles we face.

In preparation for Uptown, an additional $200,000 was spent on infrastructure in Dummar, where sewage facilities and roads were fixed by Jarrah himself, in addition to the planting of 2,000 trees in the area.

A Few Sips Can Tell a Story

 

Turkish coffee cup reading is an old Middle Eastern ladies pastime. It is a fun activity where your fortune can supposedly be told by the remaining coffee grounds in your cup after you have drank all the coffee and flipped the cup upside down on the saucer and left it to dry. The grounds will form pictures, meant to be read as symbols and interpreted by a “mystic”. Some people take this very seriously and will actually pay to have someone read their cups to tell their fortunes. I’ve done this a few times with women in my family and guests, and it can be insightful and interesting, even if a lot of the time it’s just used as a method to get some juicy gossip out of you.

“Hmm.. I see a handsome man coming towards you, are you seeing someone?”

The readings may or may not be mostly based on the outdated and racist idea that white=good and black=bad, where a mostly black cup will signal a dark heart or difficult times. Nevertheless, it is a great local tradition worth holding onto. There are many ways to read the cup, but the most common is dividing the cup into three parts, the lower part of the cup represents the past, the middle is the present, and the top is the future. The mystic will turn the cup in her hand and read the symbols in relation to one another. Here are a few interpretations of common symbols you may see in a cup:

Bird: News is coming, as I mentioned before black is bad and white is good

Clouds: Difficult days are to come

Roads: The length of it tells you how long it will take you to get something you aspire for

Snake: Someone, usually a woman, is plotting against you

Ring: Someone close to you will get engaged

Human: A person you may know, the person will try to describe them to you and tell you what it means based on the symbols before and after it

Flower: A wish will come true

Dog: Bad omen unless running, then it signals loyal friends

Tree: Changes for the better are coming

Rat: Betrayal occurring

Sun: Happiness, success

Frog: Wariness of criticism

 

Profile: Khaled Hosseini

I have read all of Khaled Hosseini’s books, beginning from The Kite Runner. Millions of other readers of course shared my love of all these masterpieces, where he could make anyone feel nostalgia for pre-war Afghanistan when it was at its peak of business and culture, and take us through the grave effects of wars on the country and its society. Hosseini has been called a “natural born storyteller”, and his writing style sings with color at every word and every description, and he paints pictures so stunning and unforgettable inside our minds. I personally draw a lot of influence from Hosseini’s style and I now make it mission in most of my writing for a reader to be able to see everything exactly the way I see it.

After finishing his latest book, And the Mountains Echoed, I realized that I knew nothing about the man who wrote them and where he drew his inspiration from and what his own mission was. When I did my research, I was able to draw direct links to several characters and plots through all three of his books.

Khaled Hosseini was born in Kabul, Afghanistan, the oldest of five children. His family lived in a wealthy cosmopolitan neighborhood where women lived and worked as equals with men where he drew his tales of Afghani upper class in his books. His father worked for the foreign ministry while his mother taught Persian literature, which Khaled grew up loving. Also reflected in the The Kite Runner is his ethnic tolerance of minorities in Afghanistan. His family had a cook of the Hazara ethnic group, a minority that has long suffered from discrimination in Afghanistan. Young Khaled Hosseini taught the illiterate man to read and write, and gained his first insight into the injustices of his own society.

Khaled Hosseini was in Kabul when he first witnessed political turmoil as the 200-year-old Afghan monarchy was overthrown in 1973. Hosseinis father was assigned to the embassy in Paris and moved the family to France. Despite all the chaos, the family still hoped that they might be able to return to Afghanistan soon. The Hosseinis were still in France when the Soviet army entered Afghanistan in December 1979. The Soviet occupation would last nearly a decade, while 5 million Afghans fled their country.

A return to Afghanistan was now out of the cards for the Hosseini family, and they applied for political asylum in the United States. 15 year old Hosseini arrived in San José, California in the fall of 1980 speaking almost no English. A long way from the luxury of their old lives in Kabul, his family depended on welfare for a time and father and son went to work tending a flea market stall alongside fellow Afghan refugees.

Hosseini would only return to Afghanistan for the first time in 27 years. He was shocked by the devastation that years of war had wrought on the city he knew as a child, but moved to find the traditional spirit of hospitality and generosity was unchanged. Everywhere, he heard stories of the tragedies his countrymen had suffered.

Study Abroad the Smart Way

Two years ago, I decided to transfer from Damascus, Syria to study Communications in Beirut, Lebanon at the Lebanese International University. I am glad that I got this opportunity because the rewards and the education I have reaped are not limited to what I learn in the classroom. I have gained a great sense of independence from having to deal with situations in which my parents would have previously held my hand through.

But at the core of everything I have learned and experienced is the fact that independence and responsibility are what go hand and hand now. Among the most important of course, is the financial responsibility I now owe to myself and my parents for supporting me. Learning to deal with your allowance as a student responsibly however is a skill that takes a lot of trial and error to learn from when you are on your own and suddenly find yourself with more cash available to you than ever before.

Here are a few useful essentials you need to keep in mind when you want to budget as a student:

Convert your currency– Remember, you are not a tourist here anymore and you need to think like a local. It can take a while to get the hang of the currency of the country you are in, and underestimate how much you are actually spending. Don’t look at your receipt and think, “that sounds about right”. You should always be sure that you are getting good value of your money.

Figure out your needs– This is where the bulk of your money will be going to because they are the absolute essentials. Your rent, transportation and food money should always be kept aside. Of course, you can’t always be sure that you won’t need extra for emergency cases, or even just miscalculations. I’ve landed in many a stereotypical university situation where I ended up eating indomie noodles and cheap junk food at the end of the month because of this. My advice? Listen to your mother and take plenty of non- diminishable simple foods back with you whenever you are home. Zaatar and oatmeal are my personal favorites.

Figure out your wants– The fun part of studying abroad is getting to come and go out at the spur of the moment to wherever your heart desires. And maybe you’ll see a great shirt on the window display that you just HAVE to have on your way there. After you have figured out the amount of cash that will go to your necessities, whatever you have left is your disposable money that you need to be careful not to go too overboard with.

Be aware of student discounts– Chances are that you will have many places around your campus and even in the whole city that offer their student customers discounts on anything from books, to food, to clothing. Keep your student ID card on you and benefit from anything you can save on while you still can!

Colorful Cape Town

Fresh out of high school in the summer of 2011, I got the chance of a lifetime to visit South Africa. I first arrived in Johannesburg and spent the majority of my time in the capital, Pretoria with family friends. Both of these cities were beautiful, and unique in ways I had never seen before. However, up until this day, I cannot help but feel a pure rush when I remember my trip to Cape Town.

Our first stop there was the infamous rocky green Table Mountain overlooking Cape Town at 1,086 meters above sea level, which we had to take a terrifying trip up to in a cable car, passing through clouds on our way. As soon as we stepped out we were all nearly blown away by the might of the wind, but I had never felt so invigorated and alive as when I stood on a boulder at the center of the flat mountain top, and took in the majestic horizon, me so far above the land and ocean. I laughed and screamed at the top of my lungs but it was muffled by the pure power of the blows overpowering my voice.

On all of our drives we were treated to soaring, unbelievable views of nature and wildlife. At one point driving on a mountain cliff I actually got choked up absorbing the perfection of it all. It didn’t last long though, because as we were driving we were surprised to come across a herd of full grown wild ostriches wandering the roads. Shortly after, we even saw penguins waddling on the sea shore. We would go on to see the most exotic and striking animals that I would actually picture with crowns on their heads because of how royal they looked.

South African people are actually the friendliest and funniest people I have ever met, but I must admit, I could not help but feel a certain tension while I was there. It deeply saddened me, the fact that the people of this country did not mix together as beautifully as the colors of their nature did. Throughout my whole trip, in the three cities of Johannesburg, Pretoria, and Cape Town, never did I once see a black and a white person mingle unless they absolutely had to. In most cases this was only when there was a black person behind a cashier or with a name tag on their chest. The only time I heard our happy-go-lucky chauffer, Sam being completely serious, was when he bitterly spoke of the official language. “Afrikaans is almost entirely Dutch. The white people just gave it that name to humor the blacks.”

The following day we made our way to the Cape of Good Hope, the southernmost point of the African continent that is said to be purely blessed. So much so that it is in fact forbidden to take any of the rocks and seashells from there as souvenirs, but me in a young act of rebellion reached down to grab a handful of it regardless as a security guard had his backed turned to me, and my brand new iPod actually slipped out of my pocket and the screen cracked on the rocks there. Talk about instant karma! But one of the most beautiful and unforgettable sights I have ever seen in my life was that of an older Muslim man who stood barefoot on the rocky shore and kneeled, praying in the direction of the ocean before him. Mecca was certainly in the opposite direction, but this man must have felt something so much more divine before him as I did, and it will stay with me for the rest of my days.

Who Ate The Last of the Makdoos? Tis the Season To Play The Blame Game

My cousins point fingers at each other and my uncle chides all of them, because now they will have to wait until mid-fall to eat it again. The rest of my family sit silently and try to appear distracted; drinking their tea and staring at the television as to not risk giving away that they have extra makdoos in storage and possibly be asked to make a donation. I suggest to my uncle that he buy some from the local supermarket, and I immediately regret it when 12 grimacing faces look back at me in unanimous disgust.

Few things hit the spot quite like homemade makdoos. It is a very delicate and labor intensive process that is waning craft through the generations and it is becoming more and more difficult to find people who are experienced in preparing this Levantine food staple.

The current situation in my home country of Syria does not help this from dwindling either since the prices of ingredients of aubergines, red pepper, walnuts, sea salt, and olive oil, have sky rocketed and are increasingly difficult to find in good quality. My mother and aunts no longer sit cross legged on mattresses together for several laborious days on crisp fall mornings to stuff the boiled and pressed eggplants with fresh sun dried peppers and newly cracked walnuts. They no longer grasp their cups of Arabic coffee with pruned hands and discuss how many kilos of makdoos each family had ordered for the year. A small family usually takes around 10 kilos and larger ones 20-30 kilos at around 1500 Syrian Pounds (15,200 LL) per kilo, give or take depending on the quality of the olive oil and walnuts. My own family’s preference is to have extra pepper and garlic in the makdoos for a greater flavor kick.

Although this food is slowly becoming a delicacy, it is not a lonely one yet. It is best eaten with some of its friends for breakfast or dinner, labneh, zaatar, olives, and plain yoghurt along with a warm piece of bread and black tea. As I was enjoying this light dinner with my mother and asking her all about makdoos, I told her that I was worried about its continuation as a staple in our food, since I don’t think my generation has the patience for such complicated and time consuming traditional foods as this one. With a laugh she replied, “Don’t worry habibti, come this fall I will teach you to carry on this legacy”.

Dance to the Beat of Your Own Tableh

The great Arab-Muslim philosopher Al Ghazali once said “Ecstasy means the state that comes from listening to music.” However, it has recently become more of a mediocrity that would probably make Al Ghazali roll over in his grave.

Mediocrity in music waters down the complexity of what once made Arabic music so great and lowers listeners’ standards with respect to quality.

It is rare to find a piece of Arabic music that is truly a work of art. It is overwhelmingly some variation of the words “habibi”, “layali”, “ayuni”, “albi” recorded to a generic track of music that may have been used by other artists, maybe even many times over. It is a track we are all too familiar with: a dramatic orchestra with violins and tableh being played with a choir repeating everything the singer says at least twice-over. The unoriginality and repetitiveness of this music can be likened to dancing the traditional Arabic debke, a group dance popular in the Levantine where people hold hands in a circle and dance round and round to the same foot movements of one, two steps, kick. The person at the head of the line shows off his moves and style in his dance, and then the second and third people try to imitate him while the fourth person struggles with his one, two steps, kick. But still they go on doing it for hours and hours.

Arab society is one that is deeply rooted in culture, tradition, and religion and has generally been resistant to change and foreign influence and this especially applies to art and what society perceives as acceptable and what excites its members.

The artists all follow each other, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish between them. There are several channels on television dedicated to music videos, showing many scantily-clad Arab women doing more moaning than singing while writhing around in unbelievable amounts of makeup. Male artists, by humorous contrast, are often shown having a very average physique, often balding and dressed up extravagantly and strutting around in Casanova poses. Sexism is an unavoidable truth, with the nature of any song differing greatly from male to female singer.

The infamous song, “Jamhuriyet Albi” (The Republic of My Heart) by Lebanese singer Mohammad Iskandar was the subject of controversy at the time of its release in 2010. With lyrics like “My heart beats for you but we have no girls here that work with their degrees, our girls are pampered and everything she wants is available”, and “Why cause yourself problems? Assuming I agree that you work, what would we do about your beauty?”, many thought it undermined women’s rights and intelligence. Syrian women’s rights group Mrsaad Nisaa Syria (Syrian Women’s Monitor) even called on radio stations to ban the songs (to no avail), deeming it “an open call to abolish education for women and a flagrant invitation for violence against women”.

One could argue that pop music is the same in any country in terms of song choice and types of performers, but there is also a severe misinterpretation. While learning about pop culture from other countries should always be encouraged in order to evolve, we are forgetting that big Western pop stars also have very high standards. It is well known throughout the Arab World that very few artists are actually involved in the song writing process in any way. Even the biggest names in Arabic music today do not write their own lyrics as they rely instead on paid lyricists, a widely overlooked practice in the Arab world.

However overrated most high profile Western pop stars are, there is no denying that they do have the whole basic package for which they have worked hard for, (a voice, beauty, dance moves, artistic ability, charisma, etc..) a package that most Arab pop stars lack.  We meanwhile have imported many live music based programs from the West into our Arab media namely Arab Idol, The Voice and Arab’s Got Talent to name a few. Are these new shows a way to promote born-talent and art in the Arab world? Or are these fixed 2-5 minute performance shows merely another superficial import that would further skew our view of art and our capabilities? Only time will tell.

Arabic music had what is now called a “golden age” between the 1920’s and 1950’s where artists like Oum Kalthoum, Farid al Atrash, Abdel Halim Hafez and the recently deceased Wadi’ Al-Safi were considered the greats. Although most singers from this age are long gone now, families of three different generations can still be found gathered behind a television watching gritty black and white live concert performances to a crowd of men and women (none of whom are veiled) cheering and clapping while the older family members sing along and tell stories of simpler times. It is not at all unusual to find an Arab teenager with at least a few songs from this age memorized or on their mp3 players, although the equivalent of this in American society, like a 15 year old with Elvis Presley or Frank Sinatra would definitely be strange. This “interestingly signals a possible subconscious feeling that there is yet satisfaction left unattained from modern music”, as Dr. Jason Rentfrow of the American Psychological Association claims. Simply, if you don’t find what you are looking for after digging in your sandbox, you will look elsewhere.

There are many underrated artists in the Arab world that are doing revolutionary things with traditional forms of Arabic music. As different as they may appear on the surface, they all share a common goal of metamorphosing music and culture as we know it.  Take a look at a few of the trailblazers:

Kulna Sawa

Kulna Sawa means “all of us together”, an appropriate name for this ensemble of 11 musicians. In 1994, the group found their signature sound when they began re-arranging several Arabic folkloric songs, and re-producing them in a contemporary style to make them more attractive to a young generation that had forgotten or been unexposed to its true musical heritage. Members use an interesting variety of instruments including a saxophone, oud, piano, and trumpet, in itself a symbol of diversity Kulna Sawa itself has as a mixture of Syrians from different parts of the country and of both Muslim and Christian faith. This fact combined with its powerfully catchy and reminiscent folk music appealing to people of all religious and cultural backgrounds has won the group 2 peace awards from the United Nations and a strong international fanbase.

Mashrou’ Leila

This Lebanese indie-rock band emerged on the scene in 2008 and is made up of 7 alumni of the American University of Beirut. With their unabashed and unapologetic lyrics on politics, sexuality, and society, this band has taken the Arab world and beyond by storm. Lead singer Hamed Sinno sings these often satirical lyrics to the tune of a distinctive but genre less blend of Arabic tarab, folk, rock and electro. On the bands genres of music Sinno says, “At this point in time in Arabic music I think we unfortunately have a set law of mainstream music, so when people say we make alternative music it just means that we are not following what everyone else does.” Sinno is also arguably the first openly gay performer in the Middle East which has not been taken lightly. After an appearance on Egyptian satirist Bassem Yousef’s “Al Bernameg”, critics were in uproar and demanded that both Sinno and Yousef be arrested for promoting homosexuality. A few fan favorites of Mashrou Leila songs are “Fasateen”, “Raksit Leila”, and “Imm il Jacket”.

Rachid Taha

Rachid Taha is an Algerian artist who combines the country’s unique raï music style with rock and electronic influences to create a sound of his own. His gritty, raspy voice singing in frustration and agony combined with his special blend of ‘Rock n’ Raï’ has made Taha a revolutionary figure in Algeria and abroad. There isn’t a topic Taha hasn’t handled in his music, nor an instrument left to be unused which has made him garner rave reviews from many high profile critics in his 33 years as a performer.

Where it All Begins

I’ve been staring at my screen for quite a while now, trying to figure out what my first ever post on my blog should be. There always seems to be a little anxiety with starting on a new social media site, isn’t there? The way that you are portrayed to other people is now completely in your hands. You can now decide what side of yourself you show to the world, or make it all up entirely.

What do you care about?

Who are you reaching out to?

What mark do you want to leave?

I eventually just decided to press on the ‘inspire me’ button, which indeed did its job! This is the question I got:

What was the one experience that completely changed your life? What happened? How did it change your life?

My answer to that would definitely have to be the Syrian Uprising of 2011. Let me first say that throughout everything that has happened, I have been extremely lucky compared to the unspeakable tragedies that others have had to go through. There is definitely a bittersweet beauty and relief in having some understanding of how much we take for granted in our lives, and how much we actually need to get through our days. It also fueled my interest for mass media and communication, in a place where media warfare has mutated to new levels. I  want to spend my life exploring this relation between the individual, the society, and the mass message.

So here I am, an aspiring journalist and social activist  looking to share my thoughts with you on how I see the world around me. This blog will be entirely me, and hopefully entirely you.