The new etiquette for Syrian dating

As Syrians become more liberal, and technology allows people more access to each other, society’s need for etiquette creates the new rules of Syrian courtship.

Rosy-cheeked and sweaty after a strenuous hour of kickboxing, 23-year-old Leila was leaving the gym when she spotted something on her car. “I’ve been watching you,” a scribbled note said. “I want to know you better. Please call me.”  For weeks, Leila punched and jabbed, only to find the same scribbled phone number waiting for her at her car after her workouts. Who was this? She didn’t bother to find out. Then one day, one of her classmates, who had been kicking punchbags beside her for weeks – but had never talked alone with Leila -- approached.
“Why haven’t you called me?” he asked.

And so began a friendship between the two amateur boxers. Just a friendship, stresses Leila, an attractive university student who grew up in Damascus. The two talk on the phone once in a while about movies and other benign subjects. They haven’t met in person outside of the gym and they may never, says Leila.

Still, here was a chance for Leila to get to know someone she might not have met if she’d followed her parents’ – and society’s – “laws,” as she calls them.

These laws would have dictated that Leila meet potential husbands, not even boyfriends, surrounded by both of their families over a coffee meet-up, likely arranged by two very excited mothers.

Forget the hushed phone conversations and covert car cruising that have become standard fare for many young couples getting to know each other here in Damascus. In order to become acquainted further, they would have to be engaged.

“I don’t like [that way],” Leila said, driving around in her car, looking for a parking space on a busy, Ramadan night. “I like to choose who I am going to spend my life with.”

A rite of passage, teenagers and 20-somethings like Leila have always attempted to evade social rules, but in Syria, that rebellion is a lot more innocent than that of their Western counterparts. Young Syrians who wear the same fashions, watch the same over-sexed TV dramas and listen to the same explicit music as the young people in Europe and the US speak romantically about sharing lingering glances in cafes, chasing down their love interest by car or on foot and questioning friends and family like a detective to know more about someone who has caught their eye.

Lina, a 35-year-old Damascene who is now married and was introduced to her husband through family members, recalled years of this innocent courting.

“There were guys that followed me home for years and I wouldn’t even look at them,” she says, giggling. To outsiders, this all might seem more like stalking than wooing. But for young Syrians, this is the same game that their parents and grandparents played. It’s a game of balancing tradition and propriety with daring and chivalry, all under the gaze of family and friends and the powerful Damascene rumor mill that can ruin a reputation in a snap.

What’s different today, as opposed to 20, 10 or even five years ago, is the technology that allows teenagers and 20-somethings to evade that watchful eye and avoid becoming the dreaded talk of the town.

While before couples would have had to meet secretly, sit next to one another in public and pretended to be strangers while talking, or pass information through friends, mobile phones and email have opened the communication channels as never before.

Instead of their mothers conferring on the phone about the personal information about their children, Facebook and other social networking websites are virtual catalogues, offering young people an opportunity to check out potential mates – or dates -- for themselves.

Bluetooth, the technology on most mobile phones that allows users to know the identity of other users within a limited range and send messages, photos and music, has turned the café scene in Damascus into a pick-up playground.

Here’s how it works: A guy might spot a girl he likes at a café. He checks his phone. Around him, he sees various user names and the types of phones these users have. Using this information, he can deduce the girl’s Bluetooth identity and send her a message.

Mahmoud, a popular and chatty 24-year-old business student who frequents the capital city’s cafes, said he finds this practice a bit sleazy, but has a flirtatious friend who meets at least two young women this way every time he goes out for coffee – even though he is engaged.

“All he wants is an affair,” says Mahmoud, tsking critically and admitting that he believes many of his males friends are equally as interested in meeting up with young women just to make out, rather than date seriously.

Despite the technology, there are some young Syrians, like Mahmoud, who say they prefer to stick with the old fashion methods that their parents used when meeting the opposite sex, like being introduced when out with a group of friends. If they use modern technology in romantic pursuits at all, they limit their use to what they’ve defined as proper.

When Mahmoud uses Facebook, for example, he says he never tries to add a girl as his friend. He prefers, first, to send a personalized message, introducing himself. Yet, despite his attempts at online chivalry, Mahmoud says many young women have been initiating contact and adding him as a friend. “The young women are getting harder, more confident than before,” he said, explaining that this could be a good or bad trend, depending on the girl.

As with all spheres of modern life, young women are becoming more powerful, Leila agrees, but there’s a specific reason for their aggressive romantic pursuits these days: The well-documented “Brain Drain” has pulled some of the city’s most eligible bachelors far from the scene, a reality that leaves an imbalanced ratio of young women to guys and encouraging young women, many of whom feel social pressure to marry by the time they turn 25, to take the initiative.

One of Leila’s friends, she said, has weaved through busy city traffic in hot pursuit of a guy.

“It’s a problem I’m facing,” said Leila, who wants to marry within the next two years and doesn’t plan to leave Damascus. “I don’t have a lot of options but guys do.”

In this pressing situation and a dating scene that is largely underground, Leila said it’s hard to know which guys are serious about her and which guys just want a different girlfriend each month. This makes “The List” evermore attractive, she said.

“The List” is an informal roster of eligible young women and guys in Damascus. Like an oral history recorded only in spoken word, it exists solely in the minds and phone lines of mothers who call around town and match-make, Leila said.

Particularly in the summertime when the weather is nice, Leila says her mother receives two or three phone calls a week from the mother’s of young men, hoping to meet Leila. While she doesn’t like the awkward meetings that surround these set ups, one benefit is that at least Leila knows a guy is serious about marriage.

Likewise, engagement for many in recent years has become less of a declaration of an intention to marry, but rather a green light for a couple to spend time together, unchaperoned. It’s not uncommon now for engagements to be broken with little drama or damage to one’s reputation, Leila says.

Some young women, in fact, are getting engaged simply to bring attention to themselves and basically announce themselves as potential brides on the social scene, she said. For Leila, it’s hard to know whether to test the unchartered waters of a secret boyfriend, or stick with her family’s methods that feel old fashioned and awkward to her.

The urges, the sentiments, the dreams for young people are the same as their parents, but the game is just a little bit more complicated.

Mahmoud, too, says after several botched attempts at having a girlfriend, he’s confused about how to be honorable in this changing dating scene shaped in part by technology. Like Mahmoud’s Bluetooth-flirt friend, he says some young women seem to be looking to play, rather than searching for a serious partner, and are asking for things he feels uncomfortable doing, like making out atop Mount Qassioun, Damascus’ notorious lovers lane.

Still, when he thinks about the way he’s felt, just gazing at a potential girlfriend, he seems hopelessly – and happily – lost in the game.

“I feel like I will have a heart attack,” he says. “It’s nice, though, as well.”
Dania Akkad is a Syrian-American jounralist currently based in Damascus.