Yassir, the (Probably) Rapist Kurd

Everyday, a little, old 5-foot Kurdish man walks up and down Old Damascus' main artery, Straight Street, in search of tourist blood. Upon sight of a white face, he hones onto his target and goes into a salesman-like spiel, desperately attempting to get them to come back to his place so he can, ostensibly, "play them some music". Why this man is so desperate for tourists to come back to his place so he can "play them some music", no one knows. They only know that the locals advise not to take him up on his strange offer. And that his Brad-Childress-like-mustache makes him look like a rapist.

For most people, that's where the curiosity ends. But not me. Thus, today, I had the distinct pleasure of spending an hour with the man my roommate and I had come to affectionately know as "Yassir, the rapist Kurd".

In the past month, I've been greeted by Yassir about ten times. Each time, his greeting was the same: "Hello, where are you from?" Because I quickly realized that Yassir had the memory of a drunken 85 year old and seemed to be incapable of remembering that we had this conversation about twice a week, my nationality changed everytime. What didn't change was my answer to his proposition.

No, I'd prefer to not get anally violated today, thanks. Though I worded it differently.

Finally today, knowing that my time in Syria is waning and having been slowly and systematically warn down by Yassir, Andy from The Office style, I took the persistent little man up on his offer. What can I say? I kinda did want to hear some Kurdish music. And more importantly, I wanted to see firsthand what kind of villainy was lurking behind that stache'.

And oh yeah, did I mention that Yassir is 5 feet tall? That may have played into my willingness to go along too.

After becoming reacquainted for the 11th time, we eventually got to Yassir's pad, a tiny little hole in the wall. I would have felt sorry for him, if I hadn't been living in an even tinier hole in the wall for the last few months. And then, Yassir pulled out his instrument.

(Cue misleading dramatic pause...)

(Hold on, I want to draw this out a little bit longer...)

(Okay, that's good...)

Yassir's instrument, fortunately, was a small, handmade Kurdish guitar-like contraption with six strings. He called it a bizzuka. I pointed out to him that, in Arabic, bizzuka translates as your boobs, a little nugget of wisdom taught me by my sometimes Arabic teacher (who by the way hasn't been seen in weeks and could very well be dead). Yassir, and his mustache, stared at me vacantly. Apparantly, I thought, Kurdish rapists don't exactly have the best sense of humor.

For the next 30 minutes, he and I jammed out on the bizzuka and two other instruments, an old Arabic flute-thingy and a one-stringed Arabic violin-majig that was called, if I remember correctly, an urab. They weren't exactly the most complex, technically difficult instruments to play- even when he played the six-stringed bizzuka, he only moved his left hand on one string the entire time, leaving the rest open- but the music coming out of them definitely had it's own appeal. I would compare music created with traditional Arabic and Kurdish instruments to movies shot in grainy old-fashioned black and white; yeah, the quality is infinitely worse than what you can get out of more typically modern instrumentation, but the end result very capably conjures a particular time and place. In the right hands, that effect alone can produce something powerful.

(Admittedly, those hands weren't my own; when I attempted to play the one-stringer, it sounded like a combination between nails on a chalk board and the sound of something slowly and painfully dying.)

Finally, he pulled out two cups of chai, something I had been waiting for him to do. I grew apprehensive; if ever there were a tried-and-true technique that could work for a 5-foot rapist, it would be the "slip a lil' sumthin'-sumthin' in the chai, wait two minutes, then go to town"; the classic of classics. I debated switching cups with him as he turned his back, but ultimately decided instead that if I felt even a little bit dizzy, I would grab his little Kurd-guitar and use it to go "tee-ball" on his face.

A couple minutes later, happily, I was still standing, with a renewed trust in little, old Kurdish men with suspicious motives and even more suspicious facial hair. I told Yassir I had to go, offering him a dollar with the explanation "Here, for the chai". Meanwhile, in my head I thought "Here, for not date-raping me."

But perhaps I had changed my mind about Yassir too soon. As I walked out the door, he called after me, requesting that I bring him my "young female European friends". I asked him if "old, fat, balding non-European dudes" would do. I can't say he seemed particularly interested.

The lesson, as always: the rapist stache' never lies.