Damascus Next Door
Julie Flynn Badal
Photo by Carol Dysinger
My daughter Cassie was about six when she needed some alone time with me apart from her little sister. I booked a sitter, told her we could do anything she wanted, and then tossed out a few ideas. We could catch a matinee and eat a big tub of popcorn. Or paint tea cups at the pottery studio. Or hunt for fun rhinestone clip-on earrings at the thrift shop.
“You said we could do what I wanted to do,” Cassie said.
“Well, what do you want to do?” I asked.
“I want to go to the Middle Eastern shop for a dress,” she said.
Cassie was referring to the store on Atlantic we passed every time we went to Damascus Bakery for spinach pies. The colorful embroidered gowns and hijabs in the window looked to her like something out of Aladdin. She often begged to go in. But we were usually late for gymnastics, or friends were waiting at the playground, or we had to rush home to relieve the sitter.
Besides, I just wasn’t sure we were supposed to go into that store. My daughter was half Middle Eastern, but I clearly wasn’t. Merchants from Yemen owned the dress shop on Atlantic along with a few grocery stores and restaurants. I hadn’t the faintest about Yemini cultural protocols or boundaries.
I looked down at my tank top and shorts. My shoulders were covered with nothing but freckles.
“How about we go to Haagen-Dazs instead?”
I looked into her raven eyes. There were aspects of my daughter that seemed to have floated down the genetic stream all the way from ancient Mesopotamia. It was the birthplace of brilliant astrologers, architects, and mathematicians. I thought this explained Cassie’s fascination with the phases of the moon and the location of specific stars. Maybe this accounted for the intricate architectures and geometries of her drawings.
It had been another violent summer in the Middle East. Those dresses in the shop window made me think of the war in Syria, of Sharia Law, bombings and beheadings, and children trapped beneath fallen concrete.
But Cassie didn’t know about any of that. That shop window was a connection to something all her own, entirely distinct from me. The dresses kept calling out to her, inviting her in. Who was I to stand in the way?
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s go in.”
The door chimes sounded when we entered the shop. The store was dark and perfumed with rose incense. An elderly man with a beard came out from the back of the store. He wasn’t friendly but he wasn’t unfriendly either. He didn’t ask if we needed help because Cassie knew what she wanted. She sifted through the children’s-sized dresses on the racks until she settled on the perfect one. The dress was unfussy, traditional. The color, a deep turquoise with gold brocade. The shopkeeper led us to a small dressing room in the back.
Now I was grateful to be wearing a tank top because it was about 110 degrees inside the narrow dressing room. I fanned my face as Cassie threw the dress over her head. She looked in the mirror and smoothed the fabric. Stone-faced, she straightened her posture. She was incandescent in that dress. When I checked the price tag at the collar, she suppressed a smile.
As the shopkeeper swiped my credit card, I wondered how others might respond to my daughter in that dress. I worried Muslim women might take offense. Would they think my daughter appropriated a culture that didn’t have all that much to do with her own?
Often, I reminded Cassie that she was Assyrian as I drizzled tahini on her steamed broccoli. But what did Assyria mean to a 6-year-old? It wasn’t a place I could point to on a map. The Assyrian diaspora spanned the globe. They didn’t have a national identity or borders.
When we exited the dress shop, Cassie asked if she could hold the bag. She beamed when I handed it to her. She pulled the bag close and hugged it like a stuffed animal. “This is my culture,” she said.
Julie is a writer, educator, and group facilitator in the contemplative and expressive arts. She has published essays, interviews and feature stories with Tricycle, Salon, Bustle, Quartz, WNYC, The Huffington Post and Utne Reader among others.
