Damascus Drama

By Aida Dalati

February 19^th 2007

 

inishing the renovation of the old Damascus house is more work than having a baby. At least when you are pregnant, the project goes along wherever your body takes it and you have some peace of mind feeling the progress at every moment of the day.

Organizing teams of men isn’t at all like that. Inspiring them is very creative work. I have tried the sincere thank you route and then I moved on to the chocolate and juice at 2 pm to boost their energy approach. And last but not least contests; we as a team of twenty men and one woman have competed for meat pies and even chocolate cake and still….. the house is not finished. No one here is really in a hurry and unlike the folks I am used to dealing with, working for extra money or for less, has no effect in this case.

 

 am not saying that Capitalism is dead in Damascus, on the contrary it is very alive but with a twist.  There is a sweet and touching approach to doing business here. You must never waltz in and start talking about work, it is just not done! You can say hello and ask how the family is, talk about the season or politics in general and sometimes not get to the real subject for thirty minutes. If you try to cut to the chase you can do one of two things, proceed with the bad news and accept tea at the same time therefore you are no longer perceived as the aggressor but a guest, or explain that you are form a fast culture and that you do not wish to be rude but time is awaiting!! . What is a girl to do?!!!

 

I have even applied my pre school education background to overcome these transition issues, even Ericsson the great child psychologist would have approved! but still no finished house. I have now resorted to the black book with one hundred issues to be done or solved. Each team gets sub lists that are copied at Anna Maria’s house (my mother in-law) and then distributed out twice a week and she, by the way, thinks the approach could work. Anna Maria was a kindergarten teacher in Denmark. 

I keep saying to myself, I am a clever person and can overcome the culture. Our friend Maher said they are counting on me folding. He once said to me when I had a melt down, don’t let them see you like this Aida, they are trying to shake you down., Damascenes go much further with polite conversation, most of my crew now expect the lists and get it done double as fast like our Plaster prince Abu Ahmad and two brothers. Others use them as Tea saucers for the ever not ending sweet tea breaks they take. So I went out and bought three red canisters and a red dish drainer and asked them to include me in all the tea breaks so I do not feel left out, now we are all in agreement.

 

This is the first time in twenty five years I have the privilege of staying in the Middle East more than a month and I am enjoying most every minute of it.

 

 

WWW.AIDADALATI.COM       Aidadalati@yahoo.com

Aida Dalati Atelier is a studio devoted to hand made clothing and textiles.

640 Menlo Avenue #3 Menlo Park, California 94025. 

Studio Phone 650-838-0003

 

 Copyright Aida Dalati 2007

Ready to Wear Chronicles

January 5^th 2007

New Year Resolutions

Arabic Calligraphy and How I started

By Aida Dalati

 

 for one do not have any New Year resolutions and have never had one that worked. I think life is too interesting, I feel common sense drives life with the occasional interruptions of rotten dictators or lunatic elected officials but for the most part that is where your common sense really comes in, You know the world is not perfect so do the best you can do: Do good in your corner of your town and live as happily ever after as you legally can. If you are in dire need of a New Year’s resolutions consider www.gocarbonzero.com  this is my friend Nicole’s resolution to do better this year for the environment, you all know her she is the one who founded Paint the lily purses. Nicole wants to make the world better by making up for the carbon dioxide your family and hers puts out on an every day basis. Calculate it and replace it by planting more trees. Help the world cool down.

  I am busy painting Arabic calligraphy again but this time on magenta or olive stained wood. After being tortured in Syrian schools with the French methods of cruel schooling and far away from the grueling Arabic literature classes we had to memorize by heart, I have finally found my favorite Arabic poet; Abu Nuwas). He loved wine more than religion, men more than women and clever witty poems more than intellectual poems that showed his mighty command of the Arabic language. That was good enough  for me so I have started painting the poems. In general he lived a short life and died in his late 50s around 900 AD, Islam was about 200 years old. His father was a Damascene and unlike his contemporaries he loathed fake lamenting and embraced life and all the truth it held dear.

  I built my company of fashion by hand painting Calligraphy on my designs in 1990.  I showed in San Francisco back when we had a fashion building near the Design Center. My gross sales then were $5000 per season of wholesale and very manageable.  Eventually I took my clothing collections to Chicago and ended up showing only in New York with a showroom in Los Angeles. Calligraphy at first insured that I stood out and the great thing about it was that no one else was doing it. Eventually I was selling half a million dollars of clothing.  I could not keep up the calligraphy any more. I quit painting in my Berkeley studio after I completing about 200 pieces in one month. My wrists simply gave up and so did my back from standing. I had a table that was 27 feet long and 6 feet wide built for me by my cutters. Shauna my assistant would lay out the finished and pressed dresses and skirts and then I would go around the table and paint poetry on them. I would do stretches sip peppermint tea with my assistant. Check the paint to see if it dried and then the clothing would be flipped over and I would paint all the backs walking around the table.

   For the Menlo studio I have selected lines of poetry where Abu Nuwas praised wine and the great illusions it afforded his imagination.  For example he describes the effect of wine while mounting his horse, or is he just describing the evening as it unfolds after a long and thirsty wait.  Just what is he really describing ?

   Nights I ride on amber like dead           and return  back on a white brilliant

 

rabic poetry has seven seas or ( Seven Meters) seven poetic meters. That means for every half line in rhythm a second wave ( rhythm ) must answer it and complete the full wave. It is absolutely amazing.  Another line talks about Kisra the Persian kings who ruled the region before the Muslim invasions or what is called in Arabic Muslim Liberations. He pokes fun at one of the retreating king and remarks

Kisra’s lute (fertile lands of wine and honey) are for the children of Arab tribes -and the noble tribes of the fair. (The Romans)

Some lines of his poetry describe the horses as seen through eyes drowning in wine and he sees the horse blinders made of the essence of amber and Jasmine. Others he confesses his passion acknowledges his love to wine and says blending life with wine.

 And I shed the clothing of virtue      and battled seas of vice (wine)

 know you are waiting for a verdict on the store static ( Will I close in July 2007 or expand) and to be honest , I am too. I returned in October thinking it is time to move on to the new B&B project in Damascus  but between  you and me it will take some time to get the 17^th century house renovated and up and running, we are so close but no cigar. I have been back in California for three months now and our carpenter/ builder has suddenly become the toast of Damascus and is no where to be found when it comes to our house.

ur builder has now taken on at least 4 more houses and talks of a grand project he is getting, he may be commissioned to re-do the old cobblestone streets in all the old neighborhood of Damascus. Think of it as after re-paving Jerusalem we get his attention. We’ve decided the best thing to do is for me to go to Damascus to gather the flock of workers back into the project and apply Gorilla management tactics. The problem with the builder is that he can not multi task and has never heard of such a phenomenon. Wood necklaces (one foot deep beveled wood frames and base boards) that have to be custom made to over look the courtyard must be installed onto two levels of verandas while the know it all young painter attends to the painting of the interior walls, he in turn can not imagine I know anything about color and is used to working with Syrians who are absolutely frightened at the mystery of house paint.

  Katie our wizard will run the Studio and see to your needs while I am over seas and do not forget our spring hours are back. We will be open Tuesday through Saturday 11 am to 5:30 Pm and by appointment;

January agenda:

  Start the year thinking that you are going to do and finish something hand made and fun.  Always have at least 2-3 art projects going on at the same time. It worked for the master painters, so why can’t it work for you. Our job is to simplify your project for you, so bring it in and ask me or Katie or any other studio member what you need help with and presto! Fashion and sewing are like oxygen for me, it is as simple as breathing.

 

 Remember also to take advantage of our 40% sale on the sewing paraphernalia and Italian buttons, who knows, they may all disappear and you never came to see if you need any of them, or just come in for the sale on the jackets in the back room. All my jackets and accessories need good homes.                                       

Inspiration classes will have to move along until I get back, Sorry Betty and Candice.

Thank you for a wonderful year. Everything went smooth accept for the meter maids who have gone completely  crazy giving out tickets for cars parked a little too much to the right or a little too much to the left. I did visit the chamber of commerce and I did complain and Ms Fran at the chamber promised and delivered on the extended hours of parking, she also followed up and talked to the police chief. I am doing my best to combat the parking ticket plague descending on Menlo Park. Some one out there could do a reality show just on the parking lots of Menlo.

   

WWW.AIDADALATI.COM       Aidadalati@yahoo.com

Aida Dalati Atelier is a studio devoted to hand made clothing and textiles.

640 Menlo Avenue #3 Menlo Park, California 94025. 

Studio Phone 650-838-0003

 

 

 Copyright Aida Dalati 2006

Ready To Wear Chronicles

November Issue 2006

Back From Damascus

Taking Time Out for the First Time in 16 Years

Every time I go back to the Middle East, I promise myself that it will be the last time I have to shuttle back and forth . I like California, but I love Damascus. (I cannot tell you how much!) Having spent all of my childhood there, I realize that after 25 years it really is time to go home.

I really am a city girl at heart, not into the suburban lifestyle. I like the hustle and bustle of millions of women, men, and children going of to work or school every morning. I love walking through the streets when the store owners are opening up and placing their products out to catch the eye of the passers by. I love smelling eggplants and tomatoes and wondering what to make with them because they are in season. This is the Damascus I know and want to share. All six thousand years of her.

Maybe it is the location of the old Damascus house we are restoring. It is nestled between the Great Umayyad Mosque and three Churches, making it a perfect and flexible place to live. If you want a drink, you simply walk to your right when you come out of our little corridor alleyway— down a little road to Bab Tuma or Bab Sharki, (the Christian Quarter, or Eastern Gate of Damascus). .

If you want to go for a self-searching walk you turn to your left instead. This journey takes you down the cobblestone street decorated with flying kilims , carpets and folklore dresses set against the laughter of children sent to buy bread from the three tiny bakeries on our street.  Follow the cobblestone road through the Ancient Roman Jupiter columns and ruins into the high walls of the Umayyad Mosque. There are doors (five meters high) that spill into the public courtyards, the sun casting a pure gold shine on the marble floors from the beautiful mosaic archways.  Hungry?  you stop off at Leila’s, a cozy and tasty restaurant, if you climb the narrow stairs in this house-turned-restaurant and continue to the third floor, you can sit and listen to the calls of prayers from the Christ Minaret just eight feet away from you. Thirsty?  Gets a glass of tea at the Nofarah Tea House facing the southern door of the Umayyad Mosque.  Nofarah is a perfect resting place and for a dollar you can mingle with tourists from all over the world or eccentric Orientalists dressed like Laurence of Arabia.

I have been watching Rick Steve on public television and really feel encouraged and inspired to start a small Bed & Breakfast in Damascus. We may just live in the house at first (that way I will have time to decorate it!) and create the cozy B&B I would want to come home to. We have added two more bathrooms to the house, so I suppose we are moving in the right direction for my new project!

 I emailed the CIA in Napa Valley for hospitality classes that I will need, and they have not left me alone since. I can not imagine myself soliciting my clients at home and on the cell phone every other day and am therefore starting not to like this Culinary Institute of America! Syrians are very friendly and are hospitable by nature. Thank God because they are also totally disorganized and inconsistent. I hope that a Californian approach to customer service and my crazy newfound energy will aid me in this venture!

I have decided not to renew the lease on my Menlo Park Atelier. I will start a pre- Christmas shopping sale on November first and continue until everything is cleared out . The store is fully stocked for the Christmas season and I have brought back fun linens and wreathes to deck the halls with!  My embroidery person in Damascus wanted to know what he should call the circle things I was having him make. I explained that they should be called cakes with a hole inside and we carried on.  I went by car to Beirut and helped my daughter set up her apartment there.  We went linen shopping. I have decided that Beirut is short on fun things for setting up a flat. Beiruties need the unconventional fun or just plain crazy home décor tapestries and textiles that come so easy to me. Perhaps I will continue the atelier in Damascus or Beirut as it is bursting with life and the ideal atmosphere for artists. Look up/ google alternative fashion boutiques like Villa Moda (Kuwait, old Damascus).

Old Damascus, like Jerusalem, used to be divided loosely into religious neighborhoods. Damascus has (parts remain) a massive surrounding wall with seven gates. Some Damascenes write that the gates closed at sunset and did not open up until the next morning. Old Damascus has three quarters— the Christians, the Muslims, and the Jews. I can remember shopping in the Jewish quarter of Damascus,  Ameen street, all throughout my teenage years. It was where a lot of fine brass art and juicy antiques could be found such as wall clocks, pocket watches and Baroque candy dishes.  All you needed to do was dust everything off to see its markings to insure that it really was authentic.

On this last trip, I went back to one of our old time merchants, Sultan. He remembers everything about my American mother who used to take us to see him when we were children. I only started working with him around the age of 27 but he remembers all my family and inquired about each and every one. Around 1987 I went back and Um Khaleil (my father’s farm foreman, also a woman and mother of eight!)  took me to one of her Jewish friends so that I could buy a hand etched brass tray (the one on display in our store in Menlo Park). It was a Saturday and the day of rest and so I visited their family in an Arabic house with a simple courtyard.  I remember being served peeled and sliced cucumbers with white Syrian cheese. I wonder what has happened to that family today. Syria permitted the Jews to leave during an amnesty period years ago and a group of New Yorkers sponsored one way tickets for the families out of Syria.  Some regretted leaving as they had thriving antique businesses in Damascus but left any way.  Others, I am told, never returned because they married their daughters abroad and decided to stick to the plan. Today the majority of the 3000 Syrian Jews have left the country, and only about 50 Syrians decided to stay. Most of Syria’s fine brass work left with them but Damascus brass is still recovering.

Happy Holidays to all of my great talented clients and friends.               

Aida Dalati

 Recommended Readings:

Syria, A Historical Appreciation, Robin Fedden.

Adventures In Arabia, William B. Seabrook

Monuments of Syria, Ross Burns. 

We used this book when we got tired of the Damascus hustle and bustle and risked our necks on the Aleppo fwy. An experience in itself. We drove 3 hours to Latakia and then to Rass Al Baseet to see the Mediterranean coast and eat fresh fish. Will post this trip on the blog.

 

Aida Dalati Atelier

www.aidadalati.com            

 

 

 Copyright Aida Dalati 2006

Ready To Wear Chronicles

October  2006 issue

By Aida Dalati

                                                                                                                               

November Pre-Christmas Sale and Clearance

 Damascus is a folklorist and hand-made junkie’s dream, and this is  were I truly belong!

Work dress code in Damascus, Maybe they should get one!

 recently came back from Damascus with the flu. It did not help that on the flight from Damascus to Amsterdam I woke up and smelled cigarette smoke. I told my self  ‘now Aida stay calm and investigate first’. Everyone else in the plane was asleep. The smell got worse and worse and I decided I had to check it out. I pretended to be an innocent American and waited to see what would happen. The man in front of me next to the window was jerking around and was acting like he had ants in his pants. So I started watching him out of the side of my eyeglasses. Perfect for a spy. I wonder if Prada knew how handy her eyewear is at times like these. Gihad, my husband, woke up and agreed that he too smelled smoke. I whispered to him that we have a potential highjack person and I was going to be the first to know. Gihad thought I was a little off. Then the passenger, in a thick French/Spanish accent asked for his third beer. I kept watching him and I finally got up. He was exhaling his cigarette smoke into the can of beer. Where did he get that idea from, I wondered! I could see a red glow around the Heineken can and therefore had the proof to report him. The crew was oblivious to the whole thing so I went to the back of the plane to report him. The KLM crew walked over to him and of course he denied everything. I hid in the bathroom. When I cam back to my chair one woman attendant grabbed his beer can, smelled it and gave him a nasty warning. Lucky for him!

e had spent six weeks in Damascus, concentrating on rescuing the renovation process and interior design of our old Damascus house, once and for all. As usual, I rushed around too much. I did a crash visit to Beirut to set up my daughter Jasmine in her new apartment four days before we left. Now I think I can relax.

 Banana Republic, Gap and Old Navy (of all people!)  have come to Syria to spread their philosophy. I don’t think they will do well because Mango, Zara and Morgan have already opened shop there and they are more fashion forward to the Middle Eastern fashion taste. Europe is more up to date in the casual fashion realm than America. However, there is never any harm in trying and perhaps this new market will do the drab Gap some good. It would be a lot of fun to start designing in Syria and flying to Dubai for the fashion markets there. I need a change and that is one of the new ideas on my list.

 The good thing about American fashion is that comfort and career wardrobes are taken into consideration in the design process here. In Syria, for example, the biggest complaint was that all the clothing imported from Turkey, Italy, France as well as locally designed, targeted the after work and party clothing wardrobe only. My cousins who work for Byblos Bank or in the field as electrical engineers monitoring cell phone towers etc… complained that clothing in Syria did not take the career woman into consideration at all.

When the local stores tried to make office apparel, it was too pastel for a city full of pollution, public transportation, and too constructed with seams and darts going in all directions. The suits where too masculine as the Syrian working woman skipped the power suit decade and dress codes that American woman just threw out ten years ago. Sometimes it is advantageous to be in the third economic world, because you watch your sisters abroad and learn from their mistakes and try to avoid the same puddle holes. Syrian women, for instance, are aware that they do not have to dress like a man to be taken seriously.

Another woman I met in the family said that she has to look everywhere to find smart and serious clothing. As a chemical engineer, she felt that the Syrian merchant is still working from the past and (he!) has not caught up with the economic realities of the times. Many women do or want to work, and the stores are still flustered over what a dress code for work looks like today.

 I went to pick up my Syrian ID card.  At this particular office the women wore either traditional Islamic head scarves with a serious overcoat with no pattern and all in shades of gray and blue. The other half ran around in tight jeans, slipper like shoes, and tight tops with ruffles and sequence. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Such a big contrast, I did not know who belonged behind the desk and who the customer was. This is the case for most governmental offices because no one has trained the state employees the corporate ways of the world. Syriatell, a private cell phone company, had it all together as did some private banks. In some way it was refreshing to see casual “fun clothing” in the middle of a rush work day, but somehow not professional.

Weddings are still going strong in Syria like everywhere else in the world, but an alternative goal is something all modern women want and like. After all we can do more than two things at a time, why is the world not listening.

he house looks like a Syrian / California house, with yellow hues running through it. We are thinking of turning it into a Bed and Breakfast Hotel, meaning many tiled bathrooms everywhere! The kitchen floors are yellow Travertine marble and there is stone arch shelving to hold the hand-painted Ishani plates and hand blown glasses from the local glass factory.

 Damascus is a hand made junkie and folklorist’s dream, and this is were I truly belong. The Ishani porcelain is made very thin (depending on what artist created it you get different thicknesses and hardness). I was promised that if I order dinner wear it will only break on the fourth drop??!!! I will take the chance. It is too beautiful to pass up.

 

 Happy Holidays,

Aida Dalati

 Copyright Aida Dalati 2006

Ready To Wear Chronicles

By Aida Dalati

August 1 2006    Issue #11

 

Fashion trends for America,   War, more and more war.

Because that is how Bush wants to spread democracy.

 Washington’s Cowboy and Indians policies around the world.

 Color of the season, Red                   

Fragrance of the season, smoke and fire

Style must have, aggression

 I am 45 years old and still re living over and over memories of war, destruction and disbelief.  Some say Israel’s war machine feeds on aggression and if she became human and peaceful she would be ignored, congress would forget about her and stop the aid we the tax payers give to her every year. Too bad our teachers can not  get their hands on a few billion and educate our kids here in American, after all isn’t that the reason we pay taxes here. What has Israel done for the US lately?

 1967 war, Beirut

When I was about 5 years old, Syria and the new Israel were at war, Damascus was bombed, my mother, an American, fled to Lebanon for safety with her three small children. We did not see our father for about three months and my mother slept with a hammer and screw driver under her pillow to protect us from any Israeli midnight visits.  My mother told me later that the American embassy evacuated all of it’s staff early on and  mailed a letter to her informing her to bring money to pay for her family’s evacuation and to meet at a specific location in Damascus, the letter arrived two weeks after the brave embassy staff left. The Danish evacuated all its citizens at its own expense immediately. Needless to say we survived. We had to have black outs in Beirut to avoid Israel targeting our buildings. My mom covered the bathroom window with my brother’s baby blanket so that we could see our way around the house at night. Mom made us playing cards our of wrapping paper and I had the task of making a scrap book to keep me busy, we did not have glue and my mother had me use strawberry jam!? Hey mom jam dose not dry!!!. We spent our time watching (Lost is Space) and I wanted to live with that family in the television, not in Beirut with all the noise and jet plains flying over my head. My mother is a brave woman.

 1973 war, Damascus

At the age of 12 and on my mother’s 33rd birthday, October 6th, America and Israel sent her a gift of 60 American fighter jets and bombed a Damascus residential neighborhood just 5 blocks away from us; we ran up and down the apartment building seven times before the air raids finally took a rest. My mother’s Welsh friend, Maier, had gone to her home to get some clothing and was buried in the rubble of a seven floor cement building with her three children and husband.  Our sweet Syrian neighbor Aunt Sahar who lived on the roof top of our building insisted on making a birthday dinner- I cannot remember if we ever did celebrate it. My father never came home until midnight because some other friends went missing too. My dad spent the day driving from one hospital to another looking for them, later on I found out that he had the children of our friends with him in the car. He even checked the morgues. The next day rescue bulldozers stopped their engines and someone heard a cry they were still buried and you could hear their voices calling for help. Up until that time I did not mind the war because we did not have to go to school. After the bombings I was terrified. Every day during Ramadan we would watch from our balcony the Israeli planes come in to Damascus and drop bombs and then one or two would be hit by Syrian anti air craft and a parachute with the poor Israeli pilot would eject and glide down into Damascus. I did not feel bad for the pilots any more.

 1980 Beirut

Now I am 18 and I insist on going for an American education in Beirut. I am in love with a Danish Syria engineer student and he is studying there. I make it into the University and travel back and forth from Damascus to Lebanon through a bouquet of check points. Some are Lebanese but most Syrian. During my 3^rd semester in Beirut December 22 at 4:30 to be exact and wearing a yellow cardigan Gihad  and I took a taxi to south Beirut and a jolly Sheik was waiting for us in a tall building with his family to marry us. The Sheik asked us to hold hands and placed a white cloth over them and read some Koran and then he smiled and declared us married. He even provided witnesses, his smiley wife rushed in with coffee to celebrate. We paid for the license by selling my gold bracelets I bought with money I made during a summer job in Damascus.  I had to produce my American passport with a paper from the American embassy in Beirut and declare I am single and we got it done. A few months later we re married again in Damascus but our Lebanese marriage license is still our official document. We leave Beirut and regrettably go to Southern California. What a cultural shock. With all the distraction and unsettledness in Lebanon I still would have stayed and will always go back. When you come from a world 6000 years old it is not easy to substitute the culture and the poise of its countrymen and woman. Looking back now, Italy today would have been a good compromise it has the best of the east and the west.

 1982 war Lebanon

I guess my husband and I left Beirut in the nick of time as Lebanon was attacked and bombed by American ships from the Mediterranean and Israelis parachuted down from the coast and occupied Beirut, the beautiful city by the sea.  Some people wonder why the US Marines were killed in Beirut, It is so simple, you can not bomb and kill a people and then come in and think you are welcome. Just look at poor Iraq.  Sunday morning talk shows in the US must start thinking past war world two romantic rescue stories, of American success rescue stories and deal with the reality of today. We Americans were so much more popular then because we were more honest.

 2006 war, Lebanon and Palestine

Jasmine my daughter lives and studies in Beirut, lucky for her and her family, she left the week before the war started. Unlucky were her aunts, uncle, cousins and the 1000 dead civilians. Our family, a party of six ranging from 49 to 3 years of age fled from Beirut to the Cedar Mountains in the North of Lebanon. Five days into the war they heard that this area too was going to be bombed by Israeli American planes, so they packed and fled again, after repeated phone calls from Beirut, California and Damascus to the Danish government, a secure path for an evacuation matured and they were called up, a few days later they received instructions and left by ship for Cypress and eventually to Copenhagen leaving behind everything and every one. My sisters in law are twins and this is the second time they are evacuated form Lebanon because of Israeli bombs, first time at the age of 6 months and the second time now at the age of 38. Death by war is an experience that can not be explained unless you have been directly in it. Each family in Lebanon could only bring one back pack for emergency supplies.  Today they are refugees with only the clothes they are wearing. In America we flip if our fender is bent in a parking lot, I see it every day in front of my store in Menlo Park but at the same time we can not understand why families across the world are so angry about their lives being interrupted by bombs and aggression, how would we like it if our children could not go to school next semester?? because the schools are full of refugees from cities and towns around us. I can not live with this double standard any more.

 Without getting in to the politics of the war I suggest the following art as a cry for some understanding.

 The Syrian Bride. A film by Eran Riklis

A story of a Druz Syrian girl from the occupied Syrian Golan Heights is betrothed to a Syrian TV star in Damascus. Her journey and all the drama her family will go through to see that she gets married. Block buster and Netfilx

 Mazen Kerbaj blogs , Music and cartoons.        http://mazenkerblog.blogspot.com/

Hell, even NPR played this artists work on the radio. Check it out

Mazen is a Lebanese artist based in Paris but is stuck in a building in Beirut right now. He draws a cartoon every day or makes music using the sound of the bombs falling on his city with the aid of his saxophone. He then uploads them to his blog every night/day and or website.

 Kevin Sites. In the hot zone        http://hotzone.yahoo.com/

Hosted by yahoo this team of 3 journalists are in Beirut and Israel today. They feature 2 minute films and blogs that you may find interesting. This team has a mission to cover all conflicts in the world in one year and I think they are doing a great job.

  Rana’s wedding.

A movie about a Palestinian girl who is given by her father 3 days to diced to leave with him for Egypt. Or stay in occupied Palestine and find a husband. She must find her boyfriend, a theater actor across all the checkpoints in Israel and Palestine to ask him face to face if he really loves her. For me this was like the movie Run Lola Run but with a twist.

 Let us not forget Iraq. Netflix has a big selection of Kurdish made films but they tend to be very real.  The irony of the Iran Iraq war has a significant affect on most of those movies.

Al Jazeera news site:     www.aljazeera.net    English version. Articles from all over the world are posted on it even the Jerusalem Post. Decide for your self.

 

 Copyright Aida Dalati 2006

Ready To Wear Chronicles

By Aida Dalati

March 2006    Issue #9

 

 Fashion in Color. Announce your individuality through color…

 Are Men Necessary?  Maureen Dowd’s wakeup call for women: Why is she so mad?

 

 left the Atelier in Menlo Park on Friday and headed straight to Trader Joes to buy my favorite food supplies so that I could hunker down on our boat and write.  Three weeks ago I was lucky enough to get into Manhattan before the great snowstorm to enjoy the fresh white snow all 27” of it before the snow trucks came out to restore the hustle and bustle to the streets. The Train, a trade show I attend to buy clothing for our store was across town and we bribed a taxi to skid us down there and then pick us up later. I dug through the snow to get into the show doorway and it was worth it. You can find adventure in everything you do as long as you have a good attitude.

Two days later I went to see the Fashion In Colors exhibit at the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum. Organized by the Kyoto Costume Institute (KCI)

 

mithsonian Institution by no means has taken up the plight of the fashion industry. Project Runway has a firm grip on that reality. Instead the concept was to examine color with the aid of clothing. Create a constructive dialogue over the effect of color on humans and their societies. Attitudes about black for example, when and why it was ok to wear that color, who was worthy of it and when did it become fashionable, based on clothing worn throughout the last 500 years.  How today, the phrase “appropriate color” becomes de mode and how social attitudes about color changed and became freer over time. Social and political stigma about color has been eroding since the early 1950’s thanks to the clever sales campaigns that targeted and glamorized housekeeping/housewives in America by offering women yellow toasters and turquoise mixers, women could be creative in the kitchen through color options, in appliances, white was no longer the appropriate route to take. At first try this campaign broke the rules of what is considered appropriate for your home, it evolved into everything else you buy or wear and maybe think!!

 

he sixties as it is reported to be, was bombarded by too much pattern and color which was a faux pas in Europe nineteenth century when simplicity reigned for women’s wear was depicted in cream shades of color. Anthropologists would argue that the Baroque and Rococo periods just over did it and it was time to swing the opposite way to a more simple presentation. To me this too went with the politics of the time, if your fashion clothing faded into the background like the fashions of pampered aristocrat women, Beige, in the era of no washing machines.  Soft white clothing meant pure or innocent. Who wanted women to vote! Better yet if we all looked alike (a herd) it made Patriarchy easier to practice on one half of a society.

 

t almost worked for the Taliban. And Saudi Arabia is not far off.  Back in the days, Arabs reserved the color black to the elders of the family and only married women had the privilege of wearing it. Think about it. Black historically is a difficult color to make and therefore special just like red was hard to make and therefore the leaders of the church deserved it more. Today in the Arab Gulf black has turned into a silent visual sign of oppression, a separation. It is why I became a clothing designer in the first place. My Syrian friend Ragda called me up in Dallas and said she had just come from Saudi and wanted to meet me. This took place back in the eighties and I had never seen a Saudi Abayah ever before. Women in Syria and Lebanon do not wear those disgusting cloaks. Black cloaks have nothing to with Islam anything at all. Women are demanded to wear black cover-ups in public over their regular clothing in Saudi Arabia. I was so upset about this ugly cloak that my first collection was hot pink Abayahs like dusters with Bedouin embroidery.

 

 I was talking with my daughter Helen about this news letter and she remarked to me how odd it is that in one of the hottest countries in the world Saudi women are obliged to wear black while the spoiled men are sporting pure white. The funniest thing to my Syrian American family is that those caftans that Gulf men wear tend to be transparent, and when I was a child during the summer, my brother and I used to guess if they wore briefs or shorts.  It was a game we played while waiting in the car for our dad. Saudis vacation in Syria and we used to run into them when my parents went down the mountain for supplies and cheese.

 

ho says color has been liberated?? Societies are divided geographically, cites towns and villages and in some cases Nomads.  Women from all walks of life have a different take on freedom, money, and oppression. Fully clothed like Afghanistan or almost naked like Fort Lauderdale spring break college women, it makes no difference. Once we are made to look alike we end up alike. Surprised about my analogy? Don’t be. Young women in the US today go through all kind of tests about their body, what is considered beautiful to men and what is so called “fashionable”., It is a dangerous phenomenon in the hands of some religious fanatics in the east or some negative male attitudes  here in America.

 

elieve me if women continue to talk themselves down and using their brain less and less and just concentrate on  body type or age lines and look all alike under the knife or not, we are going to have a big problem once our daughters and nieces reach the age of 30 and have to come to terms with gravity, age or motherhood. Why are women giving up their powers so easily?  If we all look the same we are going to start acting the same, how boring. Besides is that what you want our children to learn?? Individual thinking should be reflected in what you are wearing too. They say if you lose your middle class you lose your democracy. I say to lose your individuality you lose your democracy too.

 

Marketing with the aid of color works on all aspects of our life, as research points out, the path Apple computer took when it countered back the giant but gray colored brainy IBM computer, fashionable raspberry orange and green computers merchandising good enough for artists/creative folk like us. Years later when the advertising industry over saturated us with color, Apple pared down with the I pod, a clean and fresh looking white for the too busy world.  Look how America has been divided into blue and red states. Instead of questioning the voting machines and their owners we fought red against blue.

 

ou see color is so clever it has associations connected to it. In nineteenth century Turkish harems, Ice was a luxury before electricity; ice had to be cut out of the mountain and carried down on the back of horses. The drinks you could enjoy in the Palaces of wealthy men at that time were shaved ice with sweet fruit syrup called Sharbat (Sorbet); these fancy drinks of the time were pastel colored as mirrored in the fashionable pale hues back then. Rich men had harems whose women wore these colors in the bazaars to point out their social status and their master’s affluence, contrary to orientalist’s hype, women’s life within the harem’s confining walls was prison like and degrading.  Today, in America, TV, it’s sponsors and executives perpetuate this disregard for women. Maureen Dowd says “From Pornography to Desperate Housewives, Women Being degraded has an entertainment value far greater than men being degraded…”

 

Can we have too much color? Maureen Dowd is a woman I enjoy listening to. I am reading her book of essays, (Are Men Necessary, when sexes collide). Some of us do not need her book to enlighten us about how far we women have not gone but it restructures my priorities when fashion gets too silly and that is therapy for me. I do feel she name drops too much which diverts the readers focus from Dowd’s honest and disappointed report on the status of women in Visual America today.

This book could have been written under 338 pages. Most important for me, as a Muslim woman by birth, her research on Muslim societies fell short. Arabic, American, Chinese or Iranian, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist or Christian women can gain more by communicating with each other directly. If Maureen really cared about the status of women in the world she should write a more informed report about them and do the research.  Dear Maureen: the veil is not the biggest problem in this part of the world, it is the lack of basic women’s rights; for starters, how about divorce, child custody or inheritance laws that protect women instead of the current 1400 year old antiquated Islamic laws that grant them a fraction of the male’s portion if they have brothers or sons, and practically nothing if there are no males in the direct family or if they are Christian or divorced.  Not to mention custody laws that currently grant the father’s family automatic full custody of the children.

 

Recommended books

Fashions In Colors. Assouline Publishing.

 Developed by two Dutch fashion designers Voktor & Wolf , curator Akiko Fukai. The exhibit examined color by categorizing five centuries of clothing from the west into color blocks displayed in an old New York mansion with a five foot wide mahogany stair case and bronze Tundra with glass walls as a back drop to this tasteful and elegant display.

Saudi Aramco World Magazine. A free publication for readers who like to read about the Middle East or Muslim societies in general. Music, art and culture. Published by Saudi Arabia and it is free. photo archive.saudiaramcoworld.com/Gallery

Who Cooked the Last Supper?

The Women's History of the World. by Rosalind Miles. Three Rivers Press

 Copyright Aida Dalati 2006

Ready To Wear Chronicles

By Aida Dalati

Issue number 8    January 2006

 

It is all about dresses and accessories this year.

Damascus Craftsmen: stonework is king ! 

hose of us who are over 40 are in luck this spring season, because if you are like me, everything that was in fashion in the mid seventies is back, and everything I could never afford as a teenager but drooled upon in Harpers Bazar and Vogue are back in all shapes and prices. YSL is pushing glamour thank God, Gucci has a woman designer, Frida Giannini from Rome.  One of the few women designers in the men’s world of high fashion, she is 33 years old and on a mission. Since glamour is really back, it gives me the perfect excuse to go shopping for more elaborate ribbon and trims. The ribbon companies in France find no need to manufacture middle of the line plain ribbon any longer because the high demand by couturiers for better ribbon is on the up swing. These ribbons are a new fun form of art collecting because if your taste runs towards Persian silk carpets, then a meter of a nice ribbon is a good fix for the day. Ribbon is a realistically priced indulgence; it takes up so little space and no calories!!!

I just got back from Damascus and stopped again in Amsterdam for only 7 hours. It is amazing what a person can do in so little time. We hopped the train and arrived in the center of town. It was so cold that we took turns walking down one shady street and then a sunny one to thaw out. I found some nice window displays to ponder over for our store and studied the sale racks to see what did not sell there.

 

ur 300 year old house renovation in old town Damascus is going well and I have new ceilings and floors in one wing and a grand wood ceilings in my new kitchen 4 meters up over my head with a skylight window and a Roman era stone wall that is still intact. One forgets the protocol in the Middle East and for me it was such a surprise that every time we visited the house, the foreman’s helper Abid, a newlywed, prepared Turkish coffee or rose tea to keep us warm because the new cement and plaster in the open courtyard kept the house so cold.

  Every day there was something new to plan or discover, the new stone mason who was thinking of doing a job in Saudi Arabia came to look us over as it seamed to me. I think He decided to like us and bring his team to renovate the original striped stone walls, stone carvings and the courtyard fountain of pink marble. His job will make or break this renovation project as traditional and strict stone styles and mosaics must be restored and recreated to keep the house’s identity and period correct and beautiful. Gihad will supervise this from the States, and when the floors are ready to be laid out we will return to Damascus. We envy the stone mason’s job so much that it’s almost painful. If it was up to us we would remain in Damascus throughout that whole renovation. Abu Alaa is a true artist. This is not his real name, it’s a tile that translates as “Father of Alaa” his first born son.  Likewise his wife then would be Um Alaa; mother of Alaa. As long as all the titles are memorized all is well. I appear half foreign to the Damascene craftsmen and have only daughters, so I am plain Madam Aida.   It is not customary to mix business with family in traditional Damscus homes, but we are an exception and Abu Alaa invited us out to his city Tell. The best stone masons are from here and over 70 % of Tell men work in this profession.  Friday morning came and my husband Gihad and I were off.  It turns out there is a freeway connecting linking it with Damascus and the trip took only 15 minutes.

 

ell was quiet on this Friday morning, the day of rest in Syria, and Um Alaa was beautiful both inside and out, she is about 5’9” tall and regal. They have three children and one more on the way. Um Alaa had made date and pistachio treats for us. She said her husband wanted her to meet me and had told her I was into fashion, something she always wanted to do but has not yet started even though Damascus has a French institute for fashion design. She is also a good cook and he wanted me to taste her creations. All in all, this Muslim woman was beautiful and I liked her husband even more now that I visited their house. She spends her time getting the kids to school in the morning and then goes off to her neighborhood mosque for two and a half hours every day to teach and be instructed in religion and charity work and then spends the rest of the day mothering and tutoring her children. She regrets her husband is not religious like her but hopes God will enlighten him one day. Her eight year old daughter wanted to know why I do not cover my hair and instead of ignoring the question Um Alaa asked me to answer her daughter’s question. I gave my standard answer “As soon as men cover their hair I will follow” it was an honest answer and the little girl smiled. Modern Muslims have a live and let live attitude and I like that.

 

On breaks from the house building and planning I went off to the Gold suke/bazar to find my mother a ring.  I spend a lot of time in the woman’s silk suke it is called that but I do not see silk at all. It is full of Asian made party gown textiles and some French but all in all too elaborate for local use here in Menlo Park. Dress textiles are sold in 2-4 meter portions for gowns and are not cut otherwise. For every sheer evening fabric the merchant has over 30 fun color linings to change the mood or please a skin tone. Needless to say buying fabric in Damascus is a time consuming project. I found cotton embroidered fabrics in the street called straight up in one of the Khans (The old time caravanserai inn and wholesale mart popular in the mid 16^th century and still in full swing today) and that was the best purchase of all. To walk into a stone and marble courtyard 5oo years old and then go from wholesale room to another is the experience of a lifetime and for me that is more important than the shopping itself. I dream of having an office in this kind of setting and one day it will come true.

 

t one trim and sequins store, a jolly but stressed looking owner sat behind the counter while his nephews, all 4 of them, served the over demanding customers. Iraqis with money were able to flee the country and have set up apartments in Damascus. One Iraqi woman wanted a certain pattern book and had to open each one separately only to decide that the one out of stock is the only one she wanted to take home and one of the nephews got hot under the collar and slammed down the last issue as the woman left in a huff. I calmly worked with one of the young men and asked for my discount as that is a tradition if not the way of life in Damascus, and he said OK. At the register I remarked that all the trims are going to the US and then everyone started talking at once. The owner had a Syrian dress designer going to Washington DC for his first runway show and do I think that all Americans like Bush?? Don’t the Americans care about how many people are getting killed on both sides in Iraq and what about business in America, how is it going? Very good I hope. I started to pay and said that the discount they gave me was so small that I could not even get a cup of tea for it and that is when he whispered to his nephew something and suddenly a tall glass of tea arrived with a sugar bowl and a smile. I stood there drinking my tea a little nervous as I am out of practice being the ever fused over customer and next came a sealed package of Ceylon tea, all 100 bags to be exact, as a gift for me. I tried to sneak out without it because I felt put on the spot but they would not hear of it.

 

For more detail on the house renovation please look up the site we will post on the web.

Comments and input to the news letter are welcome and appreciated.   

 

Aida Dalati 01/15/06

 Copyright Aida Dalati 2006

Ready To Wear Chronicles

By Aida Dalati

Issue number 7    December 2005

 

How old does a house or a ribbon have to be

to be declared vintage ?

 

ashion trends these days are a shot in the dark and with Prada and LV parading the black is back routine it makes all our wardrobes confused and at loss. What is up with the merchandisers of the world? I tone down the vintage angle at my store to keep with the times and Anthropology scrapes together every vintage look alike freshly made in India or China. I can not help but feel bad for our customers as they buy fake vintage along with fake politics. Globalization is here to stay and even I can see it has its good side but I do draw the line with prefabricated “vintage” flowers and ribbon.

 

peaking of vintage, my husband Gihad and I have bought a 400 year old house in old Damascus and for the past year we have been struggling with architects and engineers on how to restore it so that we can move into it. For those of you who are not familiar with this type of architecture, the traditional Damascus house consists of three floors. The first floor is made from thick one meter granite stone surrounding an open courtyard with a strategically placed water fountain facing an archway/covered patio this floor is traditionally used during warm summer months. The second level sits on the first level but is made of 5-9 inch in diameter wood beams that are filled with baked mud bricks. This second level is usually used during the winter months as it soaks in the sun and is warmer than stone. The third floor roof top sometimes has “unofficial” rooms called the airplane level, the “Tayara”, a folksy name but a crucial room for views.  Sometimes this room is built illegally because some residents tend to build extra rooms without permits after they have negotiated a hush-hush deal with a reciprocating neighbor. 

 

e got the house in 2004 but it took some time to get all our ducks in a row.  The owner was one of eight inheritors and got cold feet because he did not want to move on up to a deluxe apartment in the sky away from the  old cobblestone streets of the old city. So we had to help him along via his brother in-law who had the power of attorney for all siblings. He had lived in Germany and acquired the German work ethic besides currently being a wholesale gold merchant in old Damascus with a reputation and his word of honor to uphold. Then there was the twisted office of antiquities of Damascus who had recently handed out about 65 restaurant permits to investors to renovate these falling apart 17^th century homes but then  suddenly become sentimental and decided that perhaps now that ex patriots wanted to come home, they (we) should be put on the back burner and forgotten.

 

nyway we got a little hot and bothered and bought two ticket to Damascus by way of Amsterdam. The mission was to detox in Europe from our busy schedules here at home, eat some raw herring and then get things going in the house before I am 100 years old.

 

etoxing mission accomplished we got back on KLM and off to Damascus. Unlike myself Gihad has taught himself to remember names of people and streets he thinks will come in handy one day and so, twelve hours into our landing we were on the streets of old Damascus with a new builder and a new crew just like that. We had met a great carpenter two trips ago who was familiar with westerners’ need for urgent completions and deadlines and had had about 4 years experience working with an elegant Italian script writer who restored a home as a retreat for herself and her family.

 

ecause these old houses are built inside the old city walls of Damascus you can not fit a regular size truck on its streets or haul away when you renovate. As a result residents over the centuries tended to plaster over and over the stone or cover up flooring over and over again as a means of redecorating or updating with the times. During our short stay we were able to peel away and discover five new arches to the house and clay ducts for the pre 1700s owners and a second floor in the courtyard that was covered up by newer but ugly tile. Today it is required that all the debris be taken away in trash bags and carried out by a three wheeled scooter. I will set up some photos of the great renovation/discoveries as they happen. We go back this month to select floor patterns and a modern kitchen layout.

List of recommended readings:

Damascus. Hidden Treasures of the Old City:  by Brigid Keena.  A beautiful coffee table book for architecture lovers and story telling.  Thames &  Hudson.

The Martha Rules.: Martha Stewart. An entertaining book on how to run a people oriented business.

Fillo Pastry cook book: by Tess Mallos.  A great Christmas gift for someone who has collected everything about foods.

 

 

Copyright Aida Dalati 2005