Making Do in Damascus: Navigating a Generation of Change in Family and Work

4. Engagement, Faith, and Family

105 4 Engagement, Faith, and Family After God, the parents. —Syrian proverb Wafa’ lives in a neighborhood made up of mostly second- and third-generation Palestinian refugees. Her parents’ families moved from Palestine to Golan in 1969 and from Golan to Damascus in 1973. Shortly after that, her mother married her cousin. She was thirteen. Wafa’ is the second oldest of eight children. She attended the local school through the tenth grade, but then her father became ill, and she dropped out to help her mother and take care of her siblings. For two years, she worked doing cross-stitch for a local artisan shop, helping to design patterns and new items that would be attractive to the European and American markets. The job paid well and drew on her considerable artistic talents. From the beginning, she faced stiff opposition from her oldest brother, who said she would ruin her chances for marriage. Because their father had been sick, her brother had begun taking on his responsibility to protect and provide for his sister. At first, he simply questioned her when she got home about where she had been and how long she had worked. Then he began to insist that she start to wear a more conservative style of hijab rather than the colorful one she had been wearing loosely draped over her head and shoulders. When she refused, he became angry with her and said she was going to ruin the family’s reputation. After some weeks of arguing with him, she relented and began to wear a light-blue scarf, turned over at the corners of her forehead and tucked under her chin to cover her hair in the more conservative Damascene style. 106 | Making Do in Damascus He eventually argued that putting on the hijab was not enough. The microbus driver had befriended her and had begun going well out of his normal route to pick her up close to their home each morning. She said he felt sorry for her because they live so far from the last stop. But the driver was also a relative, and her brother heard that he wanted to marry her and that people in the neighborhood were talking about what was going on between his sister and this man, so he began to pressure Wafa’ to change her behavior. Like a dripping faucet, she said, he lectured her every day. Drip, drip, drip. It eventually became unbearable, and she stopped working at the shop and started doing cross-stitch for the owner at home. Ashort time later, Shadi, the microbus driver, moved to the Netherlands in search of work. He wrote to Wafa’, saying that he loved her and wanted to marry her. She wanted to marry him. Her brothers told her to be careful. “Maybe he says that he loves you and will bring money and marry you, but it is better to wait and see what he does rather than listen to what he says.” A little while later the man wrote and said he was going to marry someone from the Netherlands just so that he could get his residency papers. It wouldn’t be a real marriage, just a convenience, so she waited. Later that spring he traveled to Damascus and brought his wife, and everyone saw that he was really married, not just for convenience. A year and a half later Wafa’ married a cousin and moved to Amman. The cousin’s mother had been visiting Damascus and learned Wafa’ was still unmarried. Her son was looking for a wife, so the mothers met and talked over the possibility while Wafa’ served coffee and sweets. Yasir joined his mother during their second meeting the following week— Wafa’ again serving but otherwise waiting in an adjacent room. Yasir told his mother afterward that he liked Wafa’ very much and wanted to make arrangements to marry her. Because Wafa’ was nearly twenty-eight, her mother and brother agreed this was likely to be her best, if not last, chance to marry. Wafa’ agreed—Yasir was her relative, and he seemed polite and had a good job. She would finally be out of the house and no longer under her brother’s authority. . . . By the time Anisa was sixteen, she had received and rejected multiple proposals of marriage. Many were relatives; several were sons of close Engagement, Faith, and Family | 107 family friends; and a...