You have 7 credits left in your SIM to waste. You’re at the airport about to leave in a few minutes after a short vacation visiting friends and family and you won’t be back in years. The question is: Who do you call to savor these last moments?

Nobody. I’m leaving Syria right this minute and I’m not very happy. Things did not go as planned – at all. I’m not very settled in Syria even as a visitor and that’s the problem I am struggling with. American-Arab as I am, Arab-American I am no longer. I am more another culture, maybe more American-Arab than ever. Nothing is as it used to be. Yes, that’s my ill and I am trying to beat it out of myself; exorcism from a rooted inconsistency within self. Some foreign element I cannot come to terms with so it must exit now.

I share only a past and a heritage with my country. We unite on a common history and religion and that is all. Masjid Al Amawee and good old people that remind me of older times are my links in. I cannot cope with the duality of living abroad and maintaining my local identity in Syria. I am even a foreigner here. Really, I am not fully congruent with any one culture. I have to be of both.

This year things have changed here. Let’s explore what’s changed for me this year; maybe in these events I will find my new self and the reason for my sad parity, my momental loss of self.

One, I got married and tipped the boat proving my Syrian side is stronger than my American side. I made a firm statement by doing that. My wife is Syrian and I speak more Arabic at home now and so that’s good. One would think that helped me get closer to my country. I correct myself: I still love the people and the language. Still did not do it for me…

Two, I moved to Brunei for an opportunity for career growth…and I have on the way made big leaps in personal growth. A quiet place very different from the rest of the world, Brunei that is. Different value system and a different interpretation of life and time it is living in near-Chinese Asia. Exact opposite of the Arab world. This topic needs another stretch.

Three, I moved into a home away from family. I’ve set up much to my own liking. I have probably grown deeper into loving my ways. Some of which were balanced wobbly between two cultures. Coming to Syria I’m nobody with value in the public eye except in the eyes of friends and family. Streetwise, I’m a stripped cob of corn as new as I am old and worthless.

It’s now becoming apparent how much I’ve evolved into the earth I have traveled. From America, raised Syrian, Muslim altogether, add fitting into Brunei after Oman, then subtract how much Syria has changed from the good values I know in it. The sum is an explosive figure that is hard to appropriate, each element counteracting with the rest. I wonder when faced with a decision, do I act American, Syrian, Muslim, or Bruneian? I am not to be envied. Now I know why I am so very indecisive about everything, including picking something to eat on a restaurant menu every single time.

Aside from this all, Syria itself has changed. At the departure hall. She’s with routine disgust calling for passengers to board the plane over the PA, shouting their names as if shaking their babies to death and threatening their lives with a microphone knife. What’s with the bad attitude? What did they do to you in cell 54? Why take it so personal if you’re a bitch and no one cares? This is my last memory of Damascus.

I wonder if they will ever wake up to a new amplitude, a new rhythm sonorous with the way everyone else sees it outside these gates of hell. Wake up to common courtesy and civility. Don’t tell me we’re Greek and loud so it’s OK! People are telling me I’m not understanding them here when I confuse jokes for insults. Well maybe I don’t. No wonder taxi drivers are the swindling devils they are here: people respond to fury with fury. Fire begets fire and nothing good ensues.

Don’t believe the talk. Nothing has improved since last year. Except for the shaded bellies of good faith and reputable lineage of good people, my country is befalling moral debauchury and urban decay. Why would I want any piece of this? Someone please remind me…back to Brunei Darussalam: abode of peace…