Tomorrow, I leave Syria. I am an American who has lived here for a year-and-a-half, and will return to a place where Syria is widely feared and misunderstood. Because I know nobody wants to get stuck sitting next to the know-it-all Orientalist, I’ll have to keep to a minimum my defenses  – and criticisms – of Syria while out in social situations.  

I have plenty of each, and few people back home are interested in hearing either. They’re content with their ‘axis of evil’ summation and whatever misconceptions come with it. Below are a few of the misconceptions I’ve discovered during my time here.

Syrians journalists are lazy:

In my tenure as the managing editor of Syria Today, I’ve never worked with such a talented and resourceful group of journalists. Back in the US, reporters for the most part sit at their desks, ring up a half dozen people for 10-minute chats, cobble together a few quotes, and churn out a story.

Not so here. Setting up an interview requires weeks, sometimes months of paperwork, phone call after phone call of cajoling, an occasional pre-interview meet-up, and usually an hours long chat, complete with endless cups of tea, for comments and quotes that will take up at most a few hundred words in our magazine. It’s a labour-intensive job. From Alma coaxing government officials on the phone, mixing kindness and assertiveness to get what she needs, to Nadia running from ministry office to ministry office, asking for one statistic that everyone says the next guy possesses, to Qais trekking out to villages to talk to farmers who’ve had their land expropriated, our reporters could teach a beat reporter at a newspaper in New York a thing or two about perseverance. 

They are also biased:

Correction – media institutions here are often biased. There is a Ministry of Information that censors the press, and many publications are explicitly pro-government. And sure, some of the people who work there toe the line. But the journalists I have worked with at Syria Today are fiercely critical thinkers. They know how to work within the system to write stories that are of public importance. They shed light on issues from small injustices against individuals to major overviews of political reforms and what they might actually mean in practice. 

Our editorial meetings each week are an opportunity to share anecdotes, theories and opinions. They are a place where I am challenged to think critically and to avoid assuming that I know better because I am a westerner. I know less. Much less. But I am lucky to be learning.

Syria is scary:

I know, it is quite a general statement. But that’s usually how stereotypes work.  I can’t reiterate how many times friends from home have made this comment. Little do they know that my life consists primarily of working on a fascinating current affairs magazine with a bright group of young reporters (see above) and sitting on outdoor patios sipping cheap Lebanese wine and discussing politics.

Long before the uprising began here, Americans who knew nothing about Syria knew only to be wary of it. Yes, the last few months have been a time of tragedy and a lot of people have lost their lives unnecessarily. But the Syrian people are certainly not scary. They are, at risk of generalising, the nicest, most welcoming and hospitable of any I’ve encountered. Leaving Syria three months into the Arab Spring here is a bittersweet experience. I will continue to worry about the safety of the people I know, and to hope that there is an end that is both peaceful and gives citizens the freedom they want. But now I’ll be watching it from a distance.

Claire Duffet is the Managing Editor at Syria Today