The scene in a Damascus is a Halloween party: a vampire, medieval knight, and a man dressed as a militant walk into a bar at a Damascus hotel. Pounding music greets them, with a break dancer doing head-stands. The DJ booth has a man and woman swinging, Associated Press reports.
Over the loudspeakers, a deep voice intones: “Welcome foolish mortals. There’s no turning back now.”
Amid a deep conflict beginning at the edge of Damascus, and spanning across swathes of land in Syria, Syria’s elite spend their free time in cafes and at parties. A new mall and amusement park rides keep the miserable monotony and sad realties of war at bay.
The Syrian conflict grinds on, well into its fourth year, and almost no family has been left untouched by death, injury, poverty, homelessness, or missing relatives.
“We want to change our boring routine,” said Naja, a she-vampire with fake blood drooling from her reddened lips. “Every day we live a horror show (in Syria) but this one is a comedy,” she told the Associated Press, laughing at the hotel Halloween party.
Like most Syrians, Naja only gave her first name, worried about offending Syrian government officials. Inside the club, one man sported a fake luxurious beard and a flowing robe, as the Associated Press reports.
Break dancers performed to the famous song “Turn Down for What.” The small Halloween party crowd cheered on the break-dancers spinning to the lyrics. A young man posed for photographs with his girlfriend.
Inside the booth, the DJ spun music, as another man worked the lights.
Outside of the hotel, however, the sound of aircraft bombing a nearby rebel-held town shuddered through the city.
This year, great attention has been paid to how middle-class and upper-class Syrians spend their time amid war. Syrian businessmen opened a mall in the coastal city of Tartous, and a smaller one in Damascus. A new entertainment center called “Uptown Palace” in Damascus features amusement rides, a shooting club, bowling, and sports fields, Associated Press reports.
Activists argue that these new developments suggest a certain callousness toward the suffering of their fellow Syrians, who have increasingly suffered since the conflict began.
Businessmen, however, suggest that the new entertainment options are actually a form of defiance at a time of war, and that their patrons badly need the distractions.
Television footage of Uptown Palace from a summer’s day showed the amusement center packed with families strolling the sprawling complex of water fountains, brightly-lit shops, and flashing lights. Children slid down red, yellow, and blue sides in a water park. Some residents fastened themselves into ball-cages that were hurled into the air. Others rode a pirate-ship style ride that flipped them over, Associated Press reports.
Other nightlife areas, in rebel-held territories outside of Damascus, are no-go zones now. “Daesh”, the local Arabic slang for the Islamic State, are who the locals blame for their lack of nightlife options.
The poorer Syrians find relief in the grand Umayyad mosque of Damascus. Fayza, 44, a cleaner at the mosque, leaned against the mosque’s outer wall, taking in the afternoon after finishing her work.
One of her sons was a soldier who went missing in southern Syria. Another one of her sons was wounded in fighting and she fled her home in a nearby town because of clashes. “We have so many worries,” said Fayza to the Associated Press. “I come so that maybe my heart will rest a little.”
