Our New Neighbors

Some of our closest friends here are a family of three—Molly, her two-year-old daughter, Ava, and Molly’s mom, Cathy. They live around the corner from us in the apartment that we are moving into next week, when they return to the US. The apartment is located on a busy street, lined mostly with fashionable clothing stores on the ground floor and residences above. When the shades are not closed, the view from the front window and balcony looks across the street into other flats. Over the course of their three months here, Cathy noticed beautiful paintings hanging in the apartment directly across from theirs, and she dreamed of going over to meet the painter to see his work. The opportunity finally came Tuesday when she caught the eye of a woman in the apartment. The woman waived, she waived back, and they introduced themselves by yelling across the street, eventually meeting downstairs to arrange a time for Cathy to view the paintings that evening. When we stopped by their apartment later in the day to discuss issues related to our moving in, she invited us to come along with her to help translate and meet our new neighbors.

The six of us (Molly, Ava, Cathy, Aaron, Natalie, and me) arrived at the apartment around 5pm. The stairwell leading up to the entrance was dark, old, narrow, dusty, and slightly dilapidated. The apartment couldn’t have been more different. A warm glow emanated into the hall, and the woman, with a beaming smile on her face, graciously welcomed us into her bright, warm salon covered in oriental carpets. Beautiful paintings lined the walls. She eagerly introduced us to her husband, Wadaah, and grandson, Fred (Farid in Arabic), who speaks excellent English because he goes to an international school and spends his summers in Canada. Wadaah, it turns out, is the painter in the family. After we admired his works and those of his friends hanging on the walls in his living room, he invited us into his home studio. There, he showed us numerous smaller paintings as well as a video on an exhibit he put on after the war in Lebanon in 2006. His paintings, he explained in Arabic, represent the people of Syria and humanity in general. Those not about political subjects were mostly of Ma'alula, a town an hour north of Damascus where Aramaic is still spoken. He then invited us to visit his main studio, about a fifteen minute drive into the northwestern hills outside of the city, where we could see his larger works and better understand his painting process.

The next morning, Aaron, Cathy, Natalie, Fred, Wadaah, and I, along with two of his artist friends, Khalil and Boutros, met in front of Wadaah’s apartment for the trip to his studio, which is located in the old town of Dammar. Aaron, Cathy, Natalie, and I rode in Khalil’s car while the rest took a cab. Once in Dammar, we wound our way through streets lined by low, grey buildings made of cinder blocks, as children stared at us through our car window. We soon arrived at the studio, which is on the first floor of an apartment building. It looked exactly as an art studio should look—with two big easels, canvases in various states of assembly, and shelves filled with perhaps 100 oil paintings. Outside, there was a small yard, where Wadaah does most of his work. Something about the yard’s reddish-brown stone wall and the barren mountains nearby reminded me of the art studios in Santa Fe.

Inside, we made the acquaintance of his two friends, whom he has known since at least the 1960s. The first, Butrous, was an English teacher at the University of Damascus who still paints in his Damascus apartment. He does mostly landscapes because they sell the best (in Islam, it is forbidden to make representations of the human form, so there is not much of a market in Syria for portraits). The second, Khalil, also a painter, makes his living as a restorer of paintings for artists, collectors, and galleries. He asked to hold Natalie, and I obliged. I was a bit wary because Natalie has begun to cry when she realizes that someone other than her parents is holding her. Natalie took to him immediately, however, reaching for his glasses, his moustache, and, to my slight consternation, his fake and missing teeth. After a couple of minutes, Khalil returned Natalie to me and started to negotiate with Wadaah to buy a long swath of canvas for a restoration project. After measuring and cutting the canvas from a large tube, they began to show us around the studio.



Wadaah brought out canvas after canvas of his works, including some really incredible oil paintings of Ma‘alula, Wadi Barada, and the people of Syria. Even though he is Muslim, many of his paintings display Christian symbols or subjects because, as he explained, the people of Syria are one. It does not matter whether one is Jewish, Christian, or Muslim, they are all members of the Syrian homeland. Before there was Islam, there was Christianity, before Christianity, Judaism, and so forth. Thus, religion doesn’t matter. It is the people who matter. Aaron and I especially liked the paintings of Ma‘alula. We haven’t been there yet, but it’s supposed to be one of the most picturesque towns in Syria, sitting at the base of tall, sheer cliffs. We have our eyes on at least one painting that we would like to buy. Wadaah has already offered to let us hang some of his work on our walls in our new apartment.

After a couple of hours looking around his studio and at dozens of his paintings, Natalie decided it was time to go home. She started whining and Fred decided that she could use some entertainment. We lay her on the couch, and he played her some Britney Spears on his Gameboy while we waited for a cab. Natalie calmed down immediately and even started wiggling to the music. Once the cab came, Cathy, Natalie, Aaron, Boutros, and I piled in, leaving Wadaah and Fred in the studio to put away his work and pack up a painting as a gift for Cathy to take back to the US (Khalil left earlier to get to work).

I’m looking forward to our move around the corner and to spending more time with our new neighbors. Wadaah has invited us to go with him to Ma’alula, and I’m hoping that Natalie and I can spend some time with his wife, practicing Arabic and possibly learning to cook Syrian food.

Here are some more examples of Wadaah's work, the picture that he gave Cathy and two others with him posing with Fred: