Welcoming Obama with a grain of salt

“Well,” my friend, Ahmed, said on the phone, “I guess you were right. Mabruk!” It was around noon on November 5, just hours after I watched Barack Obama give his historic acceptance speech in Chicago. I had stayed up all night to watch the election results. Now, my phone was ringing off the hook with calls and messages from Syrian friends, many of whom seemed entirely shocked that Obama had actually been elected.

“You are not ready to elect a black president,” another 20-something friend had said over dinner, weeks before the election. “I’ll buy you a bottle of champagne if he wins.” In addition to doubting that Americans were ready to elect a black president a little more than 40 years after the end of Jim Crow laws in the South and the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., many Syrians whom I talked with just didn’t imagine it was possible.

I guess I wasn’t really sure either. Voter fraud, another Supreme Court decision, just plain conspiracy -- after eight years of the Bush administration, these friends were suspicious that something would inevitably happen to prevent another Democrat from ever making it back into the White House. Quickly, shock turned to merriment, and, by the end of the day, I had received messages, thumbs up fromseveral taxi drivers and even a huge bouquet of flowers covered in glitter to celebrate.

Then the questions began. “Do you think he will pull out all of the troops from Iraq?” asked my 18-year-old friend, Moustapha, a student. “I don’t think he should do that. That could be a mess.” “What is he thinking, picking that guy?” wondered Leila, 28, who works in human resources for an oil company. She was referring to Rahm Emanuel, a pro-Israeli Illinois congressman who was recently named as Obama’s Chief-of-Staff.

Particularly with the recent American attack at the Syrian border, the continuing chaos in Iraq, the warming of relations between Europe and Syria and the possibility of continuing talks between Syria and Israel, Obama’s decisions could have a real and tangible effect on the future of young Syrians. So, it seems as the shock around his election has faded, younger Syrians are now wondering how different Obama will be from his predecessors.“How much control does he have?” said Nabil, a 25-yearold business student. “It’s the people around him that make the decisions. It’s all just a game.” “Can he say no to the Israeli lobby?” asked Reem, 22, who is working at a local company and hoping to attend a graduate school in the US.

“Maybe he can. Maybe he can’t. I don’t know.”For 24-year-old businessman Ali, Obama was a welcome change, regardless of the fact that he doesn’t know what to anticipate from the president elect. “Look, I think George Bush was the worst,” he said.Obama, he said, “has some new ideas and wants to bring change.”What exactly that change is, Ali said, he’s not sure; but when compared to the last eight years, he thinks it has to be a sign of better things to come for the region.

In less than two months, we’ll begin to see. Until then, I’m enjoying my bottle of champagne.