Homecomers

There are no barriers between people, nations or civilizations

Sitting in the midst of the hustle and bustle of Rawda café, men come up to him and say hello, parting with some vital information, and his cell phone rings a number of times. He apologizes every time, but it is good to see this man in his element, and he seems positively content. “The film industry is all about networking and getting contacts,” he explains. “I like to see a bright side to any situations; if I’m an unknown in England, than in Syria I’d be known.”

“It hurts me to see ancient cities like Damascus and Aleppo being spoiled so badly with unorganized, unplanned growth,” says Sarhad Haffar, general manager of Emaar Syria, seated in the company’s palatial offices at the Eighth Gate project, near Damascus. “For the last few decades, activity in the construction sector was minimal, and there was a big gap in the know-how, professionalism, and ability to pull off big projects. This negatively impacted the society and the necessary urban development of the city.”

Mehdi Rifai

Reading the Homecomers column, perhaps the enormity of returning back to Syria is not impressed strongly enough. For most here, it would seem that you are returning to the familiar, to a family and society that understands you and wants to help you. Most often, however, you are actually returning to the unknown, to a place where you have few professional contacts, and where you must start everything anew. It is a brave step, and Mohammad Ajlani is a brave man for taking it.

A well-known, well-respected political analyst and lecturer in France with a high media presence, Ajlani has returned to Syria with the will and desire to make a difference, to help Syrian society with all the skills at his disposal. His family worried that the adaptation process would be too taxing, and that leaving their well-established lifestyle in Paris would be too difficult a change. “Syria today is welcoming those who are trying to wake up the country,” he says. “I really see that I can make a contribution to Syrian society. My ideas on the political situation, and my love of education and sharing my knowledge can really make an impact.”

After a colorful 15-year career with the IFC in Washington, DC, and as he prepared to advance once more within the organization, a chance meeting set him on a new path, and brought Bassel Hamwi back home.

 “Damascus has something better.”  No matter what he saw, or where he was taken and he’d seen the spires of the grand churches in Spain, and walked along the shores of the Champs Elysees  Bassel Hamwi’s parents made sure to impress that one fact on their young family.
His father a career diplomat, Hamwi was whisked away shortly after he was born in Syria to spend nearly three years in Madrid, followed by nearly ive years in Paris.

“I always wanted to go the academia route, but the industry job was too attractive to refuse for a fresh college graduate,” jokes Aref Altawam. Indeed, he has the education for an academic lifestyle, getting his doctorate in engineering mechanics from the University of Florida in 1990. It is also not too difficult to imagine the softspoken man teaching a class, or running a research lab. The more you speak to him however, and the more he preaches proactive steps to shake things up and get things happening, the image of the comfortable scholar begins to disappear.

“We’re going to need you to sample wells.” His ears perk up. It’s the summer of 1989, and he’s at an interview for a job in the waste management department with Dr. Po Wang in the County of Orange, California, in his best suit and holding an empty briefcase. “Sampling whales?” he thinks to himself, unsure if he’d misunderstood; with English his third language after Arabic and French, and Dr. Wang not a native speaker himself, it was hard to tell. As an electrical engineering student at California State, he’d had no reason to work with animals before. Still, this was actual engineering work, not the menial library and lab jobs he’d held till now. “I could do that.” Born in Damascus in 1967, Amer Moujtahed graduated from Laique in 1985, probably the best school in Syria at the time, and a member of high Damascene society. It was somewhat shocking then to learn that none of it counted once he traveled to the United States to study. “In the US, you start from zero.” Moujtahed says. Although he started from scratch in the US, he quickly proved that he had a drive to succeed that was uniquely his own. Three years after getting the job at County, he was quickly promoted to the “Project Management” program, which takes the best engineers and fast tracks them to management positions. “I brought a lot of the concepts they taught into my work,” he says. “One is the five nines, where I’m 99.999 % responsible and accountable for all the work that I put out.” It’s this strong work ethic that helped him complete a project to protect landfills in California from the approaching El Nino in 1996, which was a year late when he started, and which he completed on time nonetheless. Successes like that brought him in 1998 to Epoch, the largest privately held ISP in North America. Cutting his teeth on a project that would allow changes to the network without crashing it, Moujtahed quickly became Director of Systems Engineering and Corporate Data Security, a position no one before him held for more than three months, and which he kept till he left the company in 2002. During the Epoch years, success followed success. He was responsible for cleaning up the Y2K problem that plagued all IT companies. His quick thinking also managed to avoid the Denial of Service catastrophe, which shut down other American ISPs, by installing the security hardware a year before the attacks occurred. So why return to Syria? “I had never intended to stay in the US after I graduated, it was my father who kept encouraging me to stay,” he says. Moujtahed was very close to his father, and for a moment in the interview, he is moved beyond speech while talking about him. “He was my best friend. I spoke to him almost daily since leaving Syria.” At 8:20 PM, on February 14 2002, Amer got the call he always feared to receive, telling him his father passed away. Exactly one month later, standing over his father’s grave, he made a decision. “I’m responsible for my family unit at large,” he says. “They help you when you need money to get educated, when you’re traveling around to make a living. By the time you’re in a position to give back, you’re a million miles away and the people who’ve helped you have passed on. Would you accept this from your children? Then why should your parents?” The following June, he sold his house, two cars, and gave up all his stock options, and, with his wife and two children, prepared to make a go of it back home. And what a go it’s been. Five years later, Moujtahed has worked for Transtek; held several director level positions at Syriatel, and now heads iTech Syria, which specializes in IT, designing, implementing, building, securing, maintaining and operating networks, systems, and applications, as well as providing IT support. “I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished in Syriatel and iTech,” he says. “We’re operating at the same level they do in the West, and it’s powered by Syrians 100%.” He still uses the managerial methods he learned in the US. His company’s motto is “do it once, do it right” signaling his belief that in IT, there is no margin for error. He’s also created a lat organization, where everyone shares accountability and successes equally. “It’s a melting pot, where over 70 Amer Moujtaheds work together to succeed.” He also inds that it’s easier to achieve work/life balance here in Syria. “In the West, you are a hostage to your job, your house, car payments, and most of all your credit cards, working till you’re 60 when you can finally reap your reward,” Moujtahed asserts. “But who says you’ll reach 60?” In Syria, he actually sees friends and family all week long, and can relax on his small ranch near Damascus he always dreamed to buy, a dream he probably would never achieve in the US. “Why do Syrians who succeed in the West and in the Gulf think they can’t succeed equally over here?” Moujtahed asks. “We create our own chances, when our preparation meets with opportunity. The money you’re going to make, you’re going to make anywhere, so why not make it at home?”