Reporter's Notebook: Syrian Women Roundtable

Feb. 8, 2007 — -- The women of Damascus tell me covering your head is optional here, but Amal Mouradi, a homemaker and translator, says the things people ask her are strange.

"Somebody also once asked me, 'Do you have hair? Do you dress your hair?'" Mouradi said. "Of course, I do have beautiful hair, also."

I asked her whether she wore a hijab.

"No, actually what I wanted to say is that you have in Syria many religions living together," she said. "I am Christian, for example, and I've never asked any of my friends, 'What is your religion?'"

"I, as a Muslim, I pray five times a day, but I've been every single Christmas to the church with my friends," said Thala Khair, a founder of a Syrian private school. "So it just shows what we truly are."

What do they think of American women? They say we have so many opportunities, they think we could benefit from some things they have in Syria: safety on the streets, family to help with children, and the government helping, too.

"They could be a lot better family- and professionally-wise and in making family life in balance with the profession," said Bouthaina Shaaban, a top-ranking woman in the president's Cabinet. "I feel the U.S., as a very rich and strong country, could have offered a lot more for working women."

"I think relationships here are much better like familywise," said Dana Dbbous, a violinist for the Syrian National Symphony Orchestra. "The children stay at their parents' home until they get married, so this is really a very different point. It's not like in the United States."

"We have very cheap and much better kindergarten and nursery," Shaaban said. "I put my children are in nursery since they were 2 months old, and that's how I was able to keep my career and have a family. It's much easier for me to be a career woman with a family in Syria than it is in the U.S."

What about marriage? These women say family influences your choice, but if there's someone you love, there's always a way.

"I think, Diane, if you want to find someone who loved somebody in Syria and wasn't able to marry him because of family pressure, you wouldn't find any," Shaaban said. "There are always ways. You talk to your uncle, and to your aunt, and to your grandmother, and the father, and the uncle interferes. I loved an Iraqi and came from Britain, loved him in Britain, and I came here and managed to marry him."