Authenticity

The other night, I was out with some friends for dinner, and after a while spring break and regional travel plans came up.  The far end of the table started comparing various trips around the Middle East, and although I stayed out of the conversation, one sentence I heard stuck out.  "I liked Yemen better than Syria, it's more authentic."  The comment made me cringe. 

I knew what she meant, and I heard her go on to explain how she liked the more traditional flavor that remains in Yemen.  According to her descriptions, which I have heard frequently during the year and a half I've known her, people in Yemen are friendly and welcoming, but are also mostly uneducated and know little about the rest of the world.  They spend large amounts of their time sitting around chewing ghat (a mild narcotic illegal in the US) and throwing wedding parties.  Women are completely veiled, and men carry large daggers.  Guns are readily available, even teenagers carry Kalashnikovs, and although the county is a US-partner in the war on terror, this is probably because al-Qaeda is so popular there that they have a lot to offer us. The capital, Sana, consists mostly of traditional-style mud-colored buildings, no steel and skyscrapers, and the countryside is largely Bedouin territory where kidnappings are common and foreigners cannot go without armed escorts.  I have never been able to verify these descriptions myself, although everyone says it is a beautiful country and enjoyed it very much, so I do hope to someday.

In contrast, Syria is a vast and modern country, which constantly defies stereotypes and expectations.  In the Old City I can buy Qurans outside one of the oldest and holiest mosques in the world, or silk and mosaics as they have been made for centuries, while in the new city I can eat at KFC and shop at Benetton or Gap, and buy Harry Potter across from one of the most towering and stunning hotels I've ever seen.  The authorities see to it this is one of the safest cities in the world, and while some people are welcoming and helpful, others seem to be judgmental and skeptical.   Syria is quickly overtaking Egypt as the media production center of the Arab World, while the opening to foreign investment and the soon-to-be-built stock exchange are bringing in more investment and are shifting the focus so that Damascus is gaining importance as a financial and political center of the region.  Damascus has been the capital of multiple empires for as long as humans have lived in cities, and it continues to be a crossroads between multiple worlds.

When I told a Syrian friend about her comment, he laughed outright.  Syria has largely defined the Middle East for centuries, how could Yemen be the more "authentic"?  Personally, I never like the thought that any place is more authentic than another, since each is what it is.  Syria is a crossroads and a center, so it takes in a bit of everything and is used to modernization and adaptation.  Yemen is on the fringe, and so it is less exposed to new things and remains more stereotypically traditional.  Each is exhibiting the character they have each always been.  But Yemen more closely fits the Orientalist description of the Middle East and continues to largely adhere to our romantic and cinematically-reinforced vision of what the Middle East is unchangingly like.  Syria defies and challenges that view, forcing us to face the reality of the Middle East in the 21st Century, while giving us only glimpses of what it was in ages past.  So Yemen is described as the "more authentic" of the two.  The others at the table agreed with her.