Education

Joshua Landis

A cross between the Wild West and a small, tidy college campus familiar to anyone schooled in the United States – this was my first impression of Kalamoon University as I drove into Dayr Attiyeh. The small dust-devils kicked up by the relentless winds sweeping along the Damascus-Homs highway died away as we entered the Kalamoon campus. The grand entrance into the university was dotted with handsome new trees and its median covered with a thick bed of green grass, newly mowed and vigorous, despite the brilliant and scorching sun of the Syrian badia. Professor Sami Moubayed, my host, leaned toward the windshield of his car and excitedly began pointing out each of the new buildings. To the left was a string of neatly painted dormitories, each four stories high. To the right began the administrative and classroom buildings. Our car stopped at a well tended quadrangle; workers were watering rose bushes and splotches of new lowers that seemed to have been planted only yesterday. In the distance several new buildings were under construction, accompanied by a shiny white mosque, the minarets of which had yet to be capped with their pointed tops.