By Jasmine Hsieh
The Scene staff
Florissant Valley physics professor Rihab Sawah recalls the Syria where she grew up as a happy and peaceful place.
Family gatherings happened on a daily basis, she said in an interview.
“People don’t need to call each other and make appointments,” she said. “They just show up at your door, and if you have somewhere else you are going to, you’ll cancel that.”
On weekends — which are Fridays and Saturdays in Syria — people would roll out rugs under trees and have picnics, even in the middle of the city, where everyone driving by could see them.
“They wouldn’t do that for just a few hours,” Sawah said. “They would do that until 3 or 4 in the morning and then get up and go to work.”
Damascus, Syria’s capital, is the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world, dating back at least 6,000 years. There’s a saying that, “If you walk through another room, you’ll arrive in another ruin.”
Ma’loula, a city slightly north of Damascus and deep in the mountains, is mostly made up of Armenian Christians. Residents still speak Aramaic, a language from the days of Jesus Christ.
Aleppo, a city in the north, is described as the “virtual capital” of Syria. It’s full of important businesses.
Syria also is known for having the most ethnically and religiously diverse population in the Middle East.
The majority of people are Levantines, now commonly described as Arab because of bonds to Arab culture and history. There also are Armenian Syrians, Kurdish Syrians and Jewish Syrians, which go back to the early days of Judaism.
“People speak their mother tongues at home, and when they step out on the street, they all speak Arabic,” Sawah said.
The major religion in Syria is Islam with varying denominations. About a quarter of the people are Christians.
“Think about all those people with different ethnicities and religions mixed together, all in one place, living homogeneously — or at least until the uprising happened,” Sawah said.