The questions don’t involve the nature of the group that is laying siege to the region, nor the type of relationship with this group in Syria’s future, nor the fierce air raids that residents feel have been continuous since ever. Instead, the questions involve simply the following: how to continue life under conditions that no one living in that country would have thought possible?
At the end of the summer, people in the Ghouta region of Damascus usually head for the outdoors and open spaces, to get a breath of fresh air in the golden wheat fields. As he sipped coffee made from barley, and not coffee beans, Abu Rateb told me there about his deep anxiety. A store in the city of Douma invented the blend after the price of 200 grams of coffee exceeded 1,000 Syrian Pounds.
I don’t know Abu Rateb’s original job. I met him for the first time after the armed factions of the opposition forced regime troops to leave Douma. At the time, he was responsible for unloading fuel trucks in the Ghouta, in cooperation with the local council, and moving the fuel to areas that were safe from bombing.
Afterward, we saw each other in a wheat field, by coincidence. He was limping, and he was now supervising a relatively large piece of land, in the Shaifounieh area, planting wheat. Perhaps he had moved between a number of jobs before settling on this one.
When plastic as an industrial source of fuel became commercially viable, Abu Rateb turned part of the land, in agreement with its owners who had become his partners, into a plastic factory.
The first person who engaged in this activity remains unknown; some believe it was pioneered in Gaza, by Palestinians. But Abu Rateb was the first of the Ghouta residents to benefit from the process, to make gas, and fill tanks with five hours’ worth – for a price of several thousand Syrian Pounds. The price of a legal tank is SP 40,000… if you can find one.
The factory, which began with two barrels, now has a large plastic shredder, and six barrels working around the clock. There are eight employees, and a pick-up truck.
The plastic enters the factory in various sizes, and exits in the form of gas, gasoline, kerosene, diesel, and grease. The grease is mixed with cut-up wood and is dried into small sticks, called «smart wood.» It burns quickly and lasts a long time, and doesn’t leave much charcoal behind.
Abu Rateb isn’t a big fan of talking about numbers; he expressed his anxiety by summing up his situation as follows: He faces two choices; the easiest of the two is difficult. He must either reduce his use of the electricity current, or that of the water, so that he only fills his tank once a week. How can he do the latter when he requires huge amounts of water – for washing and bathing, and for washing the clothes diapers of his newborn son, Mahmoud?
Making it worse is that the large tank – one of three connected tanks – began to crack last night, after a nearby rocket strike that killed four people.
This led him to the notion of installing plastic tanks, which would boost his ability to store water, without having to fill up too often.
«It’s not that easy,» I said.
The main problem is that the supply of plastic is always shrinking, although I don’t tell people this, so that they don’t get scared. In fact, there’s almost no plastic left in the eastern Ghouta. The owners of the warehouses in the town of Arbain sold their last big amount of plastic last week and have now switched what’s left to reserve, so it won’t be sold – or they will wait until the price goes up.
«You know what?» Abu Rateb asks me, taking the first sip of that drink that he calls coffee, «Yesterday, when I was waiting in line to stop the private generator from pumping water, I saw heaven on television.»
I asked him what this heaven was.
«Heaven is piles of trash bags – mountains and mountains of them, everywhere, on every street, on every corner,» he said. «It’s Beirut, my friend. Everyone is tossing their garbage but no one is picking it up. People are walking in the streets with masks on. The government doesn’t know what to do, can you believe it? An entire country is confused, while your friend, Abu Rateb is following this on TV, like an Ali Baba who’s about to enter the cavern.»
Abu Rateb continued to describe the amazing scene. «The anchor hosted someone who appeared to be a connoisseur in the matters of the environment and its defense. He told us that the problem wasn’t the organic waste, which only makes up 30 percent of the garbage. This would eventually dissolve. The problem is the plastic, he said. Imagine! More than 50 percent of it is plastic.
«They showed more scenes of it, and my heart nearly stopped. It felt like I was watching someone throw away bread, and then step on it, and then repeat the process over and over again. I was about to cry. I’ve become black from my head to my toes from burning tires. If they handed over that country to me for a week, I’d fix things and end up rich as well.»
He took a sip of his barley coffee and added, with a sigh, «I can solve the problems of countries, but I can’t solve my own problem. It’s ridiculous.»
Abu Rateb was cursing his bad luck and I sipped some of his so-called coffee with him, nearly dying of laughter. We were sitting among the golden wheat fields and the sound of warplanes, and the far-off noise of cannon fire. I originally became acquainted with Abu Rateb’s sharp sense of humor when I’d open the door for him when he would show up at my home for a visit - even before opening the door, because of the smell of refined oil from burning plastic that he gave off.
«Abu Rateb, you stink,» I’d tell him from behind the door. «That’s the smell of money, my boy,» he’d say, beginning a session of much laughter. «Open the door. What do you know. I swear whenever I pass by a girl, she turns to look at me.»
He’d prepare to enter, and say: «I’ve brought my coffee with me, so I don’t trouble you.» Abu Rateb would begin to tell me how he solved this or that problem, all of them concerning daily life and are more complicated than the Russian intervention, the nuclear agreement, or the Turkish position. Like others inside the besieged area of the Ghouta, he’d deny the importance of political and strategic events and claim that they weren’t one of his priorities. He didn’t do this for no reason, or out of stupidity or ignorance. He would say, while pointing to the roof of my home, «All of your lectures about the problematic signature of the Iranians on the nuclear deal won’t change this broken light you have.»