There are 12 marriages per 1,000 citizens in Damascus. That is what official statistics say, and yet there is also a staggering 40% divorce rate in the Syrian capital. Meaning, out of the 1,000 people who get married, 400 of them get divorced. The divorce rate is much lower in Latakia (9%), Aleppo (8%), Hama […]
President Mehmet Ali Talat is a good neighbor—and loyal friend—that Syria does not really know. The 54-year old former electrical engineer is now president of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), which controls the northern third of the island of Cyprus. It has been an autonomous state since Turkish intervention took place, […]
One of my students at the University of Kalamoon recently approached me, seeking advice regarding a job offer he had just received at the general headquarters of the United Nations in New York. It would give him both great exposure and experience. His mind was telling him to grab the opportunity, but his heart […]
During the height of World War II, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill felt the need to raise the sagging spirits of the British people. He gave a memorable speech asking his countrymen to: “Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never in nothing, great or small, large or petty never give in, […]
With the death in Damascus of on 3 April Syria has lost one of its literary heavyweights, a great poet and playwright. Considered a great poet and playwright, Al-Maghout died in Damascus at the age of 73 on April 3, 2006, after suffering from a prolonged period of illness and lengthy spells of depression. Sadly […]
I am by no means disrespectful to the majority of Syrians when I say that “elitism” is good, yet my argument simply implies that those who are not qualified should not rule, neither in Syria nor elsewhere. In general, those who ruled Syria in the 1950s were qualified. And likewise, in general, those who ruled […]
In 1982 while Yasser Arafat was making his painful exodus from Beirut someone walked up to him and asked, “Abu Ammar, where are you going?” Confidently, the PLO Chairman replied, “To Palestine! I am going to Palestine.” Today, in 2002, Arafat has been asked by visitors at his Ramallah place of detention, “Abu Ammar, where […]
Amin Gemayel was elected president of Lebanon on Sept. 23, 1982, thus coming to power in the midst of the Israeli siege of Beirut and the height of Lebanon’s bloody civil war. A Maronite notable from the village of Bikfayya, Gemayel was born in 1942 and earned a law degree from St. Joseph University in […]
Walking through the crowded Shaalan market in downtown Damascus, one sees numerous CD stores, selling DVDs, movies, and playing music by modern artists like Bon Jovi and Sting. A modern sight for an old-fashioned market, one wonders, then sees a small, worn-out wooden shop at the edge of a dark alley. Only those intending to […]
Patriarch Ignatius IV Hazim recalls visiting Pope John Paul II at the Vatican a few years ago. At the time the pope said: “Today the first in the Second Church welcomes the first in the First Church.” It was in Antioch, Hazim says, “that believers were first called Christians, and it was in Antioch that […]