aleppo's slums

Social and juridical norms as observed in an Aleppo “marginal” neighborhood Zouhair Ghazzal Syria’s main cities, beginning with Damascus and Aleppo, are padded with neighbourhoods whose housing, design, and sewage facilities are the product of the residents themselves. Known in the common official dictum as “the zones of illicit habitat,” such neighbourhoods have been constructed from scratch by the inhabitants themselves, defying all kinds of rules and regulations imposed by state and municipal authorities. This chapter focuses on one such Aleppo “illicit” neighbourhood at three interrelated levels. First, it examines the norms of the habitat created by the inhabitants themselves. The latter have to decide not only at planning their own homes, but also public infrastructures, such as roads and pavements, water, electricity, telecommunication and sewage facilities. Second, it analyzes the contractual norms that lie behind the exchange and sale of properties. Since such neighbourhoods fall outside state regulations, the users must create their own contractual norms to exchange property, in such a way that contracts would eventually become “legal” once endorsed by state officials. Third, we examine the private and public norms that help construct the space for a “society of individuals.” Taking into consideration Erving Goffman’s motto that “the street is a society,” we follow actors in their face-to-face situated encounters, paving the way to the dialogical structures that make the existence of a “society” possible. Normalizing the illegal: the unmitigated disaster of Aleppo’s illicit neighbourhoods Three interrelated levels of analysis come to mind when analyzing Aleppo’s illicit neighbourhoods, all of which centre on the establishment of regulated norms and normative values. The first set of norms is related to the habitat. Broadly speaking, what is commonly referred to in the official jargon as “illicit” neighbourhoods (or specific illegitimate informal zones within legitimate neighbourhoods) are usually no more than informal trespassing zones. Let us assume for the sake of simplicity the existence of vacant plots of land at the city’s outskirts, all located within the urban “regulated planned area” under the mukhattat tanzimi, which could be either private or public (state property). Before issuing any construction permits, the municipality should in principle first create a neighbourhood plan, partition (farz) all plots in order to determine their boundaries vis-àvis the public space (pavements, roads, schools and parks), and determine infrastructural needs (water, electricity, and telecommunications). Construction permits are then issued either for residential buildings or commercial properties. Prior to receiving a permit, however, landowners should have their properties legalized at the municipality’s cadastre, in order to receive the much needed tabu akhdar, the green form officializing ownership. The whole problem of the “illicit zones” (manatiq al-mukhalafat, and al-sakan al‘ashwa’i) is twofold. First, the areas did not receive any formal infrastructural plan from the municipality prior to construction, which pushed residents of other areas or from the Ghazzal: normalizing the illegal 2 countryside to improvise their own plans and go ahead with construction at their own risks and perils. Second, ownership of the individual land plots has not been in most instances officialized either, nor have permits been issued prior to construction. Consequently, ownership tends to be “customarily” traded, with all kinds of properties moving in one direction to another based on trust and custom. That users invest so much in property and construction outside the legal norms is indeed staggering, but, as I point below, it comes as an outcome of historical, political, and social shortcomings, which have been accumulating at least since the mid-1970s. Third, the new residents would “improvise” their own plans, including decision making regulating water pipes, sewage, and electricity grids, not to mention the reception of a land phone line (the broad availability of cell phones has eased such concerns). Finally, constructed properties, whether residential or commercial, would be “illegally” exchanged, based on “legal norms” sanctified by the users themselves. “Norms” would thus be constructed at three interrelated levels. First of all, users, once they would have seized a property, whether legally or illegally, would have to plan their own homes, decide which materials to use, and even allocate portions of “their” space for public use. Even though such matters would not represent any “collective” action per se, and would be the outcome of individualistic (if not poorly planned) actions, the outcome would be one of collectively sanctioned normative values that would regulate the habitat, while determining its contours in the absence of an officially sanctioned “legal” framework. Second, considering that the bulk of those properties have been “illegally” owned and transmitted, the mode of illegal transmission becomes itself a “legalized” norm of transmitting properties through the use of quasi-official or officially sanctioned documents and procedures. The present chapter is mostly concerned at elaborating on this crucial issue. Thirdly, we now approach the most fundamental aspect of the problem, that of the creation of social norms specific to illicit neighbourhoods. Individual and families from different backgrounds, ranging from nomadic tribes to rural peasant families from the nearby countryside, to impoverished urban middle class families who relocate in the outskirts, all come together into peripheral urban spaces, searching for labour and cheaper alternatives to inflated real estate prices. That’s the most intriguing aspect of those neighbourhoods, whether old or new, and certainly the most difficult to pin down for researchers: How can we, as researchers, document the formation of norms in private and public spaces? Since direct observation proves the most crucial element, what is the role of situated encounters in such an experience? The lingering regional and economic imbalances in Syrian history Not long after Syria received its independence in 1943 was it the subject of a coup d’État in 1949 by Husni al-Za‘im, a Kurdish officer who inaugurated the era of militarized politics. Even though Za‘im’s rule lasted for a palpable six months, and was followed by a series of coups up to 1953, the coming of the military into politics had not yet affected the ancien régime created under the auspices of the French mandate. In Ghazzal: normalizing the illegal 3 effect, from 1943 up to 1958, when Nasser became the president of the newly created United Arab Republic (U.A.R.), the combination of élite and middle-class system that took shape in the aftermath of the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire, had pretty much well persevered. Syria’s “first republic,” as it is often called, maintained the characteristics of the liberal spirit of the mandate, an ethos that even the military coming to power found hard to dislodge. In a strange way, the military even contributed towards the further liberalization of a repressed Ottoman élite. Thus, Husni Za‘im, in spite of his short-lived rule, managed to promulgate the bulk of Syria’s modern civil laws, beginning with the Qanun al-madani and the penal code in 1949, while Adib Shishakli came up with the no-less impressive code of personal status in 1953. The important point for our purposes here is that the coming of the military into politics neither dislodged traditional class equilibriums, nor did it drain yet rural and urban relations, as the cities were able to absorb rural migrations without disrupting bourgeois middle-class life. Such equilibriums would begin their longue durée disruptive cycles only in 1958, when Syria “united” with Egypt in what became known as the United Arab Republic. In effect, it was soon after the brief military interlude of 1949–1953, that the bourgeoisie, composed mostly of the old Ottoman notables class (under the aegis of president Shukri Quwwatli), lost its imagination and freaked out of the political scene, giving full power to Nasser’s corrupt bureaucratic régime. In what would become Syria’s “second republic,” between 1958 and 1970, the coming of the Baath to power in 1963 looks in hindsight as the event that capitalized on and benefited the most from the unfortunate Union. It was at this stage that the bourgeois middle class felt deeply threatened. Not only were its financial institutions and manufacturing properties for the most part nationalized, but gradually the bulk of its rural properties were lost to small and medium peasant families in the agrarian reforms of the 1960s. It was the change in the status of agrarian properties that would eventually trigger the decisive change in the urban-rural relationships. Even though “building on the properties of others” (al-bina’ ‘ala aradi al-ghayr) was “promoted” by peasants and small landowners who received their fair share of property in the wake of agrarian reforms, migration towards urban areas had yet not affected the cities in the 1960s. In the three decades after the mandate, the standard of living was in par with inflation, providing enough opportunities for tenants and landowners alike. More importantly, breaking the law when building on the properties of others, or building on your own land without prior permit, were no easy matters. Cities grew out of an Ottoman tradition where the rule of law mattered to the urban élites that kept it alive through the sharia court system. That same system was further liberalized throughout the mandate and gradually adapted to the needs of an ever expanding professional middle class. It was then the early postcolonial military régimes that pushed further the liberalization of law through the formalization of codes and procedures. That was about to dramatically change in the 1970s. When Asad came to power in 1970, then confirmed in a national referendum in 1971, Syria had already received its reputation for being politically unstable. Not only had it suffered like Egypt the massive Ghazzal: normalizing the illegal 4 defeat of the 1967 six-day war,1 but, more importantly, the Baath’s statist policies were a big disappointment for society at large. Thus while for the well-rooted professional (and “secular”) middle classes such policies represented a reversal of the liberal trends that had been painstakingly acquired during the mandate, for the popular classes and rural populations, not to mention the ‘Alawis of the mountains, they were too little too late. Asad’s genius (assuming he had one) consisted precisely in his ability to quickly seize on his predecessors’ shortcomings. Unsurprisingly, however, his method was not one of eschewing the sixties statist policies in favour of liberalization and the enhancement of the rule of law, but he rather opted for populist strategies that enhanced confessional and regional ‘asabiyyas. It is indeed that kind of mutation, which occurred in the mid- to lateseventies, that is of interest for our topic here, that of understanding the unlimited expansion of illicit neighbourhoods. Such an expansion was the outcome of three interrelated factors. First, the rapid growth of the state apparatuses, whether in their civil branches (state bureaucracy, public education, and the Baath party, in addition to multiple “youth” movements), or the military (the army and a mixture of privatized “presidential” militias), not to mention a diversification of intelligence agencies (amn al-dawla, and the various mukhabarat brands). Second, with that kind of numerical push for a combination of civil and military jobs, the number of state employees soared to over fifty percent of the total workforce (compared to just 20 percent in the fifties). Therein lies the heart of the problem when it comes to the rapid urban growth and the popular neighbourhoods that locked the outskirts of most Syrian cities: all kinds of individuals and families, hoping to benefit from the newly expanded statism, migrated to the cities, and with the galloping inflation, the loss in real wages, and the rise in real estate prices, they had no other choice but to opt for the ever expanding illicit neighbourhoods. Finally, the state, rather than proceeding with well thought out urban plans, opted for all kinds of mitigated (if not suspicious) policies, laws, rules and regulations, that completely clogged the real estate market, making it even more difficult to exchange property legally, not to mention all kinds of impediments to receive legalized building permits. In sum, the state’s reaction to urban growth was slow and clumsy at best, and littered with a proliferation of ineffective laws and regulations whose only aim was to foster abusive relations with private property, thus benefiting speculators, bureaucrats and party officials, while placing landowners at the mercy of municipal and local (regional) committees. Before we move on to the normative rules that regulate the legalization of illegal properties, we need to expand a bit more on the three factors outlined above that eventually led to the massive urban crisis the Syrians are witnessing today.2 1 While the 1948–49 so-called “war of independence” created a massive influx of Palestinian refugees—close to a million—towards neighbouring Arab countries, giving Syria its fair share in what became known as “temporary camps,” which de facto translated as slum neighbourhoods outside the traditional cities borderlines, the 1967 six-day war proved even more dramatic, as over 150,000 inhabitants of the Golan Heights moved to safer areas (including the outskirts of Damascus) within a three-day period, creating the largest population influx in Syrian history. 2 An anonymous article, edited and published in the web daily Akhbar al-Sharq (14 November 2007) by Tarif al-Sayyid ‘Isa, digresses on some of the reasons that led to all forms of illegal urban expansion in contemporary Syria. Ghazzal: normalizing the illegal 5 To begin with, the present urban crisis could not be properly understood without coming to terms with a major truth, namely, that construction initiated by private individuals has become extremely costly, due to rigid zoning laws, the hassles (caused by bureaucratic slowness and corruption, and high legitimate or illegitimate fees) that one would typically encounter at receiving the appropriate construction permits, and inconsistent state laws and municipal regulations, mostly aimed at “deregulating” private property. In short, not only inflation is rampant, and the basic building materials (manufactured mostly by the state) are not always available, but more importantly, the transaction costs have grown considerably since the late 1970s, pushing users towards more affordable solutions, beginning with the outright revulsion against construction permits. Do-it-yourself illicit practices The influx of migrants towards the cities suburbs (many were would-be state employees, or at least hoping to be so), combined with rampant inflation, wage stagnation, inefficient bureaucratic norms, and rigid zoning plans, all contributed therefore to the situation of irreversible crisis that the Syrian cities find themselves into at present. But then it would be unwise not to underscore, albeit very briefly, the legal implications of it all. In effect, the urban and property laws, which for the most part were promulgated in the mid- and late-seventies, then reinforced in a series of amendments in the eighties or later, and which led to the present crisis, could be read as attempts to “deregulate” private property, with a covert endeavour to weaken even further the propertied urban groups.3 Consider for instance law 60 whose purpose was initially to “take care” of urban expansion, and which did just the reverse, allowing all kinds of municipal and regional councils to confiscate land as they please in preparation for a fiveyear urban plan. But even the amendment that came twenty-one years later (law 26 in 2000), in spite of placing limits on abusive confiscation, did not contribute much at regulating that awkward phenomenon, as it is still perceived as a coerced “selling” of the properties of the well-to-do at cheap prices, far below their market value. Add to this that back in 1976 the propertied groups were hit hard by law 3 which forbade the buying and selling of properties on an open competitive basis. The users were therefore left with a do-it-all-yourself situation where they had to create their own “laws” for “seizing” properties, constructing neighbourhoods, and exchanging properties and rents. We should pose for a moment and see what is “legal” and “illegal” under such conditions. Or, rather, is “legality” the main issue at stake here? 3 Even though most properties are owned by individuals, and are registered under individual names, property ownership in Syria, as in the rest of the eastern Mediterranean, tends to be status- and family-oriented. Many of the rural properties in particular would be collectively owned as mushā‘ (or shuyū‘), while urban properties, in order to keep up with the family ethos, would be registered under more than one name. Needless to say, the state largely benefited from such collective-cum-family ownership, as it knows very well that decision making among family members slows down considerably under such conditions. Thus, abusive confiscation of properties for the “public good” became the norm, encouraged by all kinds of laws and regulations, leaving family owners totally helpless in most instances in the face of labyrinthine court procedures. Ghazzal: normalizing the illegal 6 In other words, should the bulk of properties in the “anarchic” neighbourhoods (‘ashwa’iyyat) be looked upon as “illegal” or “illicit”? They certainly are from the viewpoint of the official authorities who describe such areas as “zones of collective transgression” (manatiq al-mukhalafat al-jama‘iyya). Within that perspective, the “illegality” of constructions in slum neighbourhoods is the outcome of four interrelated transgressions: absence of a construction permit; building on the properties of others (private or public, including waqfs); lack of an ownership contract (“the green form,” tabu akhdar); absence of a legal tenancy or sale contract. It should be noted that usurpation and the violation of the rights of others do not have to go through all four levels. For instance, it is possible that an actor without construction permit is nevertheless violating state and municipal laws on his/her own land: that is, the ownership is legal but not the construction project. In effect, it is quite common for users to decide to forgo the construction permit even though they already own the land. There are various reasons behind such illegitimate actions: (1) the area in question is not yet within “the organizational plan” (al-mukhattat al-tanzimi),4 or else it is, but the neighbourhood in question has yet to be partitioned (farz) and various spaces delimited (tahdid) for public use (pavements and roads, mosques, parks, schools and hospitals); (2) the neighbourhood has been partitioned but receiving the appropriate building permits proves a hazardous task, due to high fees (which even if users could afford, but nevertheless decide to override) and bureaucratic slowness and corruption; (3) it is much cheaper and affordable to bypass the law; (4) residents can come up with their own architectural designs and styles, often borrowed from the rural areas that they have moved from. Legalizing “illegal” ownership When a private property is used for the sake of an “illicit” construction, the property itself could either be owned by the person proceeding with the construction, or else it could belong to someone else. In the latter case, de facto settlements could follow suit with the landowner either immediately (during the various construction stages) or much later (sometimes years later). It has been reported to me by some residents that it has become more and more difficult to build on “the lands of others.” Apparently such violations were the rule back in the 1960s, when the phenomenon of “illicit neighbourhoods” had just seen light, and when much of the terrains outside Aleppo were owned by some of the “big families” who had inherited their properties from Ottoman times. Those families, which for the most part either lived in the city’s old neighbourhoods or in modern homes outside the old city, kept farms (mazari‘) on lands acquired in Ottoman times. With the decline in agriculture, the professionalization of the middle classes, inflation and the decline in real wages, the value of land itself became much more lucrative than its meagre agricultural produce. Naturally, farmers living in those areas or in the countryside were the prime purchasers. Soon, however, the original owners realized that those new owners were not only illegally constructing on the lands 4 The purpose of such plans is to delimit “urban” and “rural” zones, in order to protect the latter from excessive abuse. Ghazzal: normalizing the illegal 7 they had just purchased, but even expanding their constructions on lands they did not own. Today, however, unconstructed terrains outside the city’s limits belong mostly to peasant and nomadic families, tribal sheikhs, or the nouveaux riches who had benefited in the last couple of decades from all kinds of lucrative deals. “It is very difficult to build one someone’s else territory,” said one of the residents of a slum neighbourhood east of Aleppo, “as some of these properties belong to residents in the neighbourhood, or to their relatives in villages further east, or to tribal sheikhs, or to people in the city. That’s the big change from the 60s when those lands were to few families from the city, who had no contact at all with the aliens who grabbed their lands and violated their rights.” Granted then that residents are building on their “own” lands—or at least going for de facto settlements—how do they manage their leases and property transfers? We are here into lawless territory where the inhabitants themselves create their own norms and laws. Not only do residents have to design their homes, and manage enough space for pavements, roads, alleys, water pipes, sewage facilities, electricity and phone cables (and now fibre-optic equipment), but also figure out the “legality” (or “illegality”) of the whole business of settling in such neighbourhoods. Because they have no access to legalized contracts, the residents create their own sets of legalized—albeit “illegal”—contracts. What this implies is that in spite of the grossly illegal nature of all transactions—lack of proper permits, planning, and contracts—life goes on as normal, and residents have to live by that reality. Considering that the “green form” is a near impossibility, residents have to opt for what comes closest to a fully legalized ownership, namely, contractual settlements that grew in parallel to those imposed by the state. In themselves such contracts are neither legal nor illegal. At one level, they do what all contracts do: to describe an exchange relationship between two or more parties. The problem here, however, is that the property that is the subject of exchange has not been legalized, and sometimes even the land upon which the building has been erected has an illegal status (for instance, because it is public property, or is waqf, hence belongs to the ministry of awqaf). A language has therefore to be devised to construct a terminology of exchange that would attempt to bypass the illegality of all transactions. If we see things “in the eyes of the state,” the whole process would look like a complete aberration. But looked upon from the perspective of the actors themselves, the contractual settlements would make more sense. The process is simple enough for the layman to understand, and one should add that, ironically, it is even simpler than state procedures. In effect, had the residents followed the normalized state procedures, not only the incurring costs (on their side of the equation) would have been higher, but the bureaucratic procedures would have been more complex. From the example outlined below, it turns out that the residents, while working out parallel set of procedures to the legitimate ones, use state institutions to endorse their own “illegitimate” procedures. Yet, at face value, what the residents’ documents are claiming is perfectly “genuine,” in the sense that each document describes what was going on with the property: x purchased from y the following property, as described, for a specified sum; or x rented from y the following property, as described, for a specified monthly rent. But even though the provided information would be (in most instances, we presume) “correct,” it lacks “credibility” in terms of the information that it Ghazzal: normalizing the illegal 8 avoids spelling out: namely, that the area on which the property stands has not been partitioned (farz) by the municipality, nor has the landowner sought any permit to proceed with the construction. Suppose, as with our first case below, that the building was illegally erected back in 1990 without a prior construction permit on a property that belonged to the same person who had initiated the construction. The landlord then sold his property in 1991 through a “procedural fiction” type of contract where buyer and seller exchange (false) claims that the seller sold his property, received part of the payment, and then refused to deliver (more on such procedures below). The same property was subsequently transferred from one owner to the next through similar procedures. What is remarkable then is that residents would routinely use various state agencies—in particular the “settlement courts,” mahakim al-sulh—to proceed with their transactions—even though at the very root of each one of those contracts lies an “illegal” act. In effect, a settlement court would take over contracts while knowing beforehand that the entire property subject to the act of exchange (either sale or rent) was illegally constructed, without any prior permit, while possibly trespassing over someone else’s property. Most of those contracts are therefore attempting to legalize either a single or double violation, or in other words, each contract sits on a single or double violation. Hasan ‘Abd is presently a state employee at the Ministry of Petroleum, having served in its Aleppo branch for close to a decade. His B.A. degree in social sciences from Aleppo University (which he received in 2005), and various salary increases since 2000, when Bashar Asad came to power, have boosted his salary to above SP10,000 a month ($200). A father of seven, he belongs to the Waldah tribe, and more precisely to its alSa‘ab ‘ashira branch. He shuttles weekly between his native village east of Aleppo where his parents and extended family still live, and his neighbourhood of Karm al-Muyassar where he has settled since the early 1990s with his cousin-wife and seven children. The Karm al-Muyassar (“Olive yard of Muyassar”) originally belonged to notable families (a‘yan) who had inherited their properties from Ottoman times, and probably in this case dominated by the Muyassars themselves. Such families controlled the city’s suburbs through a system of farmed lands which in some instances served as a buffer zone to the properties that they owned in remote villages. Only under the agrarian reforms, slyly initiated by Nasser under the Union, and then by the Baath protagonists in 1963-1965, did land ownership begin to move. It does seem that it was indeed the shifting of ownership in some of the lands in Aleppo’s suburbs from the big families to small and medium farmers which had initially prompted the illegal movement of construction within agricultural zones. Thus, small to medium farmers, who all of a sudden became owners thanks to the agrarian reforms, preferred to build rather than farm on the newly acquired properties: apparently the properties were too small and too fragmented to be worth the effort of farming. The movement accelerated in the 1970s with the state’s recalcitrant role as the largest employer of the nation. “When I used to come to Karm al-Muyassar as a teenager back in the 1980s,” says Hasan, “it was to play football. Most of the terrains were olive yards, and there was very Ghazzal: normalizing the illegal 9 little construction around. I would have never dreamt to become an owner in that same area fifteen years later.” How do you become an “owner” in an area like that? Figure I: View of Karm al-Muyassar in July 2007. Floors are added on the original infrastructure as they are needed, without an official authorization. Ghazzal: normalizing the illegal 10 Figure II: Water meters are designed by the inhabitants themselves and are in public view in the eyes of the beholder. The process of ownership involves a two-step procedure which, ironically, is much simpler than what state bureaucracies would have required. The first step involves a “procedural fiction” where buyer and seller claim that the property has been purchased but the seller refused to deliver. Procedural fictions have been common at least since Ottoman times (Ghazzal, 2007: chapter 2), and they mainly serve to confirm and establish the validity of acts of sale or rent which under normal circumstances would be hard to acknowledge. In our case here, the construction was probably completed in 19891990 on a land that seems to have been owned by the same person, hence there was no trespassing over another property. Having, however, constructed in an area that had no partition plan (ghayr mufraz), and with no construction permit in hand, the original owner, whenever he wanted to rent or sell his property, had to opt for a contractual settlement through a procedural fiction. Today the areas of Karm al-Muyassar that had been initially partitioned (mufraz) by the municipality, and those that still are not (ghayr mufraz), are separated by a wide boulevard which at night shines with yellowish fluorescent bulbs. Hasan’s home is located only few blocks east of the demarcation zone. What distinguishes the two zones—the legal from the illegal—is not so much the standard of living, which in both instances is for the popular and subproletarian classes, as much as the quality of construction. While the partitioned areas are ripe with five-six floor high-rises, shops, boutiques and small manufactures, they are faced with the more austere one-two level constructions, euphemistically referred to as “Arab homes” (hosh ‘arabi), for the simple Ghazzal: normalizing the illegal 11 reason that their epicentre consists of an inner “courtyard,” which these days is more of a covered staircase than an inner yard per se. What is characteristic of those “Arab homes” is their insistence upon looking at the inner space of the home as something totally “private,” where no eye could prey through its outside walls and windows. Even Hasan’s terrace on the top floor, which he added to the lower two floors only recently, after ten years of hard work and a couple of loans from state agencies, is completely walled to the exterior, blocking the panoramic view of the neighbourhood and the city’s endless eastern expansion: “I really need my privacy. When I sit with my wife and kids on our terrace in the summer nights, we need to breeze some air, and we don’t want anyone preying at us.” This desire for “privacy”—or rather the fear from intrusion—explains the unusual absence of pavements: instead, the main doors are protected through an angular stoned wall which acts like a massive curtain that blocks any inside view. But the big divider between the two areas is the ownership title. Thus, while the partitioned western areas of the Karm have all been planned by the municipality prior to construction, and hence each property (home, shop, or manufacture) should—at least in principle—be identified with its “green form,” the eastern part of the neighbourhood lacks such luxuries. If your property is legal—meaning both land and construction have received the “green form”—then you transfer it through a regular sale contract, and the new owner would receive in turn his or her “green form.” The residents located in the eastern zones of the Karm have to operate differently. The first step would be a procedural fiction where buyer and seller exchange claims, and where a judge would rule in favour of the buyer, followed, much later, and only if necessary, by a quasi-“regular” sale contract. But even if the two steps have been successfully completed in a court of law, with a judge’s full endorsement, the lucky owners would still not receive the illustrious “green form.” Let us first closely look at the procedural fiction. The one-page handwritten document was signed by a juge de paix (qadi sulh) in Aleppo’s seventh civil court on 2 May 1994, when Hasan decided to “own” the property and transfer it to himself. Knowing that this was one of those homes “illegally” completed around 1989–1990 (even though the original terrain may have been legally transferred through a “green form,” but that remains uncertain), he knew beforehand that the property, which was transferred to several successive owners between 1990 and 1994, could be “legally” “owned” under his own name only through a procedural fiction. The main purpose of a procedural fiction is to come to help on an issue that could not be dealt with through regular channels. In our case here, Hasan knew that the entire neighbourhood, having received no partition plans, is “illegal,” and that his own property, having originally not been granted with a construction permit, is also “illegal.” In a civil court in Aleppo he poses himself as plaintiff in a lawsuit against the then “owner.” Ghazzal: normalizing the illegal 12 Figure III: A typical fictitious contract of sale, whereby the sale is posed as a fictitious litigation between a seller who failed to deliver and a buyer who is claiming his property, which is ratified in an official Aleppo civil court in the Palace of Justice. For a complete translation, see Appendix below. Ghazzal: normalizing the illegal 13 Section one of the lawsuit reads as follows: In the lawsuit dated 17 January 1994 the plaintiff claimed that he purchased from the defendant the totality of 14 shares (sahm)5 from property number 2900, in Aleppo’s tenth residential district, for a sum that the two parties had agreed upon, and which the defendant had received in toto. The defendant owns the aforementioned property thanks to a court’s ruling number 451/4967 in 1993, but still has not transferred (faragh) the property to the plaintiff. We therefore request that: 1. a notice (ishara) be inscribed on the property’s form (sahifat al-‘aqar); 2. to notify the defendant of the litigation; 3. to confirm the sale in his presence; 4. to remove the litigation’s notice once the property has been transferred; 5. to have all fees and expenses paid by the defendant. The first thing to notice is that plaintiff and defendant were both situated within a “friendly” litigation that they had both initiated, even though the court’s ruling did not state that fact overtly. Herein lies the essence of procedural fictions: namely, that the litigation is not to be taken for “real,” but only as a procedure to confirm a transaction, which in this case is an act of sale. Why not then go directly for an act of sale? Precisely because the property in question is illegitimate, a direct act of sale would not work: since the property neither has a partition number not the green form, it would not be eligible for sale through a regular sale contract. The procedural fiction, which in this case transforms the handicap into a litigation between plaintiff and defendant, totally bypasses the “legal” issue of the property’s ownership. Second, the judge’s ruling notes that the defendant had owned the property since 1993, and we should add that the ownership was also an outcome of a fictitious litigation from a previous “owner.” Which means that between 1990 and 1994 the property went through at least two acts of sale, both as fictitious litigations conducted in a court of law. Obviously, judges know very well what is behind such contracts, and that users seek the litigation (khusuma) form precisely because they have to appear in front of a judge in a civil court. In effect, centring around the notion of “litigation,” procedural fictions (often referred to as hiyal in the old Hanafi manuals) were common since Ottoman times (if not before) for the precise reason that their formula entitled the litigants to receive a ruling in the presence of a judge. Since a judge’s ruling would in most instances be irrevocable, an act of sale through a fictitious litigation would carry more weight than a regular act of sale. The second part of the lawsuit goes as follows: In the open court hearings, the plaintiff reiterated his claims and, accordingly, requested a hearing in his favor. The defendant also acknowledged his opponent’s rights in their totality, and had no objection for a ruling in favor of the plaintiff on the basis that the latter would assume all fees and expenses. The two parties agreed on that. Considering that acknowledgment (iqrar) is at the root of evidence (sayyid al-adilla), and it has the status of contract for the acknowledger (huwa hujja ‘ala al-muqirr); Considering that the notice of the litigation (isharat al-da‘wa) has been inscribed on the property’s form based on contract number 373/1994; 5 24 shares of a property represent its totality, that is, the full one-hundred percent. Ghazzal: normalizing the illegal 14 Considering that the court has sought the opinion of professional expertise, a visitation to the place has revealed that it is composed of an Arab home (dar ‘arabiyya) whose main door is oriented towards the west, with two rooms, a living room, a staircase that leads to the top floor. The house, constructed in concrete, is made for residential living, and the expert estimated that it was 20 years old; Considering that from the ruling that the defendant ‘Abdul-Karim has brought with him to court, he owns 14 shares of property number 2900, based on a previous civil court ruling number 451/4967, issued on 31 August 1993; And based on articles 62, 132, 200, and follow up articles 99–100, and articles 148, 386, and 826 of the civil code; It was decided, 1. Confirm the present act of sale between the plaintiff Hasan ‘Abd and the defendant ‘Abdul-Karim Zayn on the 14 shares of property number 2900 in Aleppo’s tenth residential district, and the transfer and registration of the shares in the plaintiff’s name in the city’s cadastral registers. 2. Retract the lawsuit’s notice as soon as the ruling takes place. 3. Payments of fees and expenses are on the defendant. Signed on Saturday 9 April 1994 by the judge and his assistant. What is remarkable in this document, which emanated from a civil court, is that it totally avoids the “illegitimate” (mukhalif) nature of the building in question. Moreover, it gives the wrong impression that the construction is perfectly legal, has a specific number allocated to it in the city’s cadastral records, and that it has been standing as it is now for at least twenty years. Of course, none of that is true. To begin, we know for sure that the 14 shares (of a total of 24) allocated to the building are neither officially recorded in the city’s cadastral records, nor do they carry the celebrated “green form” for that matter. Furthermore, since the entire area has not even been partitioned (ufrizat) by the municipality, the latter cannot provide maps that would delimit each property with the number allocated to it. In effect, and based on my informers’ knowledge of the area, I was told that to date (2007) the municipality has yet to prepare topographic layouts for the area at large. In other words, the municipality is left with the only choice of acknowledging such slum neighbourhood as a fait accompli. The other possibility is a partial or complete reconstruction through a mixture of state, private, and foreign investment funds (more on that later). For the moment, however, the neighbourhood lacks adequate maps, sewage facilities, water, electricity, and telecommunication infrastructures. So the number 2900, which the suit claims was assigned to the property, is therefore totally bogus. The property’s current owner, Hasan ‘Abd (the plaintiff), told me when I visited him in July 2007, that the number 2900 must refer to the “entire area”—and even that was open to speculation (which area? which boundaries?)—and not to his “own” property. Moreover, and contrary to the court expert’s claim that the property must have been at least 20 years old, Hasan told me that he is almost certain that the foundations and first floor could not have been completed prior to 1989-1990. In short, and at the margin of the fictitious litigation itself, lye several other “fictions,” beginning with the property’s alleged number and its age. Finally, and this in itself is a remarkable omission, considering how important it is, we never know from the document what the value of the property is. Such “omissions” prove to be characteristic of procedural fictions in general. Had the plaintiff specified a specific sum for the transaction, the judge would have summoned him to furnish evidence: for instance, the value of the transaction, and modes of payment. But that is not the purpose of a fictitious civil lawsuit: the aim here is solely Ghazzal: normalizing the illegal 15 to confirm the act of sale, not the value of the property and the modes of payment. It is therefore common in fictitious litigations that either no sale price is mentioned, or at best the sale price is so minimal—or “symbolic”—that the judge would not even bother for evidence. As we will see in a moment, the sale price becomes important only once the contact of sale is formalized. Overall, then, the civil courts tend to be quite soft with their “illegal” owners (or tenants). Not only the formal “illegal” status of the property is never mentioned, but the judge seems to be playing the “language games” (see Dupret & Ferrier, this volume) of his actors. To be more precise, the language strategies displayed by the actors (judge, plaintiff and defendant) are a combination of formalized procedures that borrow from so many sources that they look like a bricolage puzzle. Thus, elements of the civil code are there for sure (quoted in terms of their specific codes), and also the formal routine of a litigation (the plaintiff-defendant duo), in addition to the judge’s ruling. An essential element of the language game is what the formalized litigation “hides”: mainly, the original “illegal” status of the property, and the fact that this court of law is legalizing a transaction on an illegal property. The court also makes the bogus claim that the property was assigned a specific number, providing the false impression that the area and street in question, which include the litigious property, have been partitioned (mufraz) and the properties received their “green forms.” Moreover, the court, through its expert, claimed that the property must have been at least 20 years old, which I was assured by the owner himself, is not the case. Needless to say, the court plays in favour of its disputants, accepting their language games at face value, while leaving behind the “genuine” status of the property. We are therefore into an unusual situation, characteristic of such illicit neighbourhoods, and where several state agencies are working independently of one another. On one hand, stands institutions like the city’s council and municipality, which are always “late” and cannot keep up their services with the high level of demand. Planning lags behind, the fees are high, and the bureaucratic routine is merciless. On the other hand, even though users would violate every law on the ground, they would nevertheless come to courts that would be user friendly to process their litigations, providing them with a substitute to the “green form.” Rethinking context In order to understand what at first hand seems like bipolar contradictions—the legal and illegal, the legitimate and illegitimate, and the legalization of the illegal in civil courts—we have to contemplate how actors work their language games within specific contexts (or “frames,” as Erving Goffman would call them).6 Within each situated encounter, actors are into active procedures that help them define the situation at hand. Thus, for every situated encounter, actors would practice within indices of contextualization. What therefore looks at face value as irrational bureaucratic procedures—for instance, that a civil court ratifies a sale contract that lacks the proper 6 Isaac Joseph, Erving Goffman et la microsociologie, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1998, 102ff. Ghazzal: normalizing the illegal 16 “legal” endorsements when it comes to property rights (the green form)—could be sociologically looked upon as contextual rites of passage transformations. The social actors are constantly moving from one context to another, and for each context active procedures are deployed to define the situation at hand. When for instance buyer and seller are on their own the “illegality” of their situation could be overtly stated without any need for euphemisms: they both know beforehand that the property lacks the proper “green form,” and that it has no registration number with the city’s municipality. When they both are in court, as plaintiff and defendant, for the purpose of ratifying their sale contract, the judge would know beforehand the property’s “illegal” status, and that such properties could be “legalized,” without receiving the proper “green form,” through procedural fictions. Had the property been legal in the first place, the two parties would have directly opted for a regular sale contract (see below), and then the buyer would have received a “green form” from the municipality’s cadastral offices under his own name. The irony here is that a regular legal sale contract could take as much as a year to be completed (until the reception of the “green form” by the buyer), or even more, in particular if the property has a sign (ishara) attached to it from a previous lawsuit, while it is only weeks before an illegal contract is settled in a civil court. For our purposes here we will distinguish between two operative levels of contextualization. 1. The ethnographic context consists in this case of the legal expertise, which consists of the expertise of the civil courts, and that of the actors outside the system, such as buyer and seller, who in court assume the role of plaintiff (buyer) and defendant (seller). Actors mobilize their communicative resources in respect to a specifically situated context, and they account for their actions in respect to that same context. 2. The conversational context and its negotiated order. We have dealt above with a typical contractual settlement where buyer and seller negotiate with a civil judge the possibility of a litigation-cum-contract where the “illegal” status of the property is precisely resolved by not evoking it. Granted that the judge had gone through the same kind of settlement many times before, and that he was, on that occasion, only applying a “formula” that would legalize the selling of an illegal property, he nevertheless had to deploy his “contractual competence” for the task at hand. Courts therefore do not simply come up with rules, regulations, and norms ready “to be applied.” Had courts proceeded that way the illicit neighbourhoods and their contractual settlements would have been left entirely out of their adjudicative system—at least until new legislation would come at their rescue. Another sale contract With his 1994 contractual settlement Hasan ‘Abd had secured the ownership of his new home. But he was still without regular water, electricity, and telecommunications facilities provided by the state, and, needless to say, the entire area lacked sewage utilities. It is indeed common for illicit neighbourhoods to remain without state-run utilities for several years, or for over a decade. Residents would typically proceed with Ghazzal: normalizing the illegal 17 illicit utility connections from neighbours “on the other side,” that is, with those areas that are profiting from the state’s benevolence. As hacked electricity and phone cables are visible all over such areas, the thin metallic water pipes are for their part barely noticeable. Residents learn how to “share” electricity and phone lines with the more fortunate residents of neighbouring areas. Then, once the illicit area has fully “matured”—which, in most instances, implies that the vacant areas have shrunk considerably, and the density of the population is comparable to other crowded areas— the utilities companies step in and propose their services. In other words, planning is always piecemeal and the outcome of circumstances on the ground, rather than the product of more global plans. But to receive the services of the electricity company, which residents look upon as a top priority, a contract of sale is needed. The document that we discussed above was more of a contractual settlement that confirmed the buyer’s ownership through a fictitious litigation than a regular sale contract. It is therefore not the kind of ownership contract that the electricity company would accept to consign a meter specifically for the house. Under normal circumstances, the “green form” would have served nicely for that purpose. When the form is not there the alternative is a less glorious form of ownership: a regular contract of sale. Hasan ‘Abd concluded a formal contract of sale only in 2002. Even though the earlier 1994 sale confirmation through a fictitious litigation was enough for all purposes, by 2002 regular state electricity has become available, and a formal sale contract was needed in lieu of the “green form,” which is unobtainable, for an electricity meter to be installed. The 2002 contract is much simpler than the one concluded in 1994. To begin with, it comes printed on a form to be filled by the two parties. Only two witnesses sign side-byside to the buyer and seller. The form itself is printed at a regular commercial press, and is not an official state document, even though it does for practical purposes serve as one. Article 1 of the sale contract specifies the names of buyer and seller, the location of the property and its number, and a brief description of the construction. Article 2 specifies that the sale value was SP350,000 ($7,000). Article 3 notes that the buyer paid the seller SP50,000 ($1,000) as an “advance payment” or deposit (ra‘bun), which would serve as a damage compensation in case the buyer defaults. Article 4 states that the seller has promised to pay all taxes and fees attached to the property, and complete all the necessary repairs by September 2002. Article 5 states that the buyer has made up his mind after carefully examining the property and all its annexes. Article 6 states that the seller has agreed to transfer (faragh) the property to the buyer within a two-month period, and in case the seller has failed to deliver, his failure would be looked upon as a deliberate decision not to sell, and he would pay the buyer as damages the sum of SP50,000 ($1,000), without the need for any warnings or prior invocation. The buyer would then have the right to receive back his “advance payment” and put an end to the contract. My understanding of the text is that in case the seller defaults, the buyer would receive back in addition to his “advance payment,” an amount equal to the original, or a total of SP100,000 ($2,000). Ghazzal: normalizing the illegal 18 Article 7 states that if the buyer defaults, in addition to losing his deposit, he would pay the seller for damages SP50,000 ($1,000). The seller would be given the option to annul the contract, or to confirm it, or to pursue the buyer in court. The final articles 8 to 11 are on fees and expenses. The 1994 and 2002 contracts obviously represent different language games. The two had to be devised either separately or in combination to one another in lieu of the “green form,” which was impossible to obtain. Thus, while the 1994 contractual settlement was explicitly devised—in the form of a fictitious litigation—to confirm the act of sale, the 2002 contract was more straightforward, and its sole purpose was to make the owner eligible for basic state utilities (electricity, water, and phone services). The fictitious litigation in the 1994 contract prompted a court’s hearing and a judge’s ruling—hence its importance—while the regular 2002 sale contract did not—hence its value is more formal. Indeed, as the judge’s ruling carries the stigma of authority, and is hard to revoke, users opt for such a prestigious and more reliable cachet over a regular sale contract. A grammars for a microsociology of neighbourhoods We have now reached the most emblematic level—that of understanding the norms that guide social relations in such neighbourhoods. When asked about what “guides” them in their daily lives, residents would drop the “tribal factor” (al-‘amil al-‘asha’iri) on the top of their head. But what exactly are the “tribal norms” or “values” and how do they affect such an “urban” environment? The well-established residents of Aleppo’s old and middle-class neighbourhoods typically rebuff claims that popular neighbourhoods have anything “urban” into them, as it is commonly assumed that their new residents bring their “tribal values” from their villages and nomadic lifestyles. The so-called “tribal factor” ought to be taken seriously by researchers for a variety of reasons. To begin with, the residents of the peripheral popular neighbourhoods keep strong ties with their villages and tribes, as a nexus of economic relations grows between city, periphery, and neighbouring villages. As visits to the village tend to be frequent, their significance is more than economic, as it fosters the traditional values associated with the countryside and nomadic life. Second, as family relations are taken seriously, marriages tend to mimic kin relations within the family or tribe, which means some predominance to the paternal cousin’s marriage, a preponderant importance accorded to the mahr (as a way to discourage multiple marriages), which could be worth the price of an apartment and is factored on the value of gold vis-à-vis the Syrian Pound, and finally, a predominance of “customary marriage contracts,” which are officially registered only once the couple needs to (for instance, for their kids to be accepted in public schools). Moreover, when migrating to the city, the tendency is to choose a neighbourhood where some of “our kin are already there.” However, even though some of those neighbourhoods are outweighed by specific tribal affiliations, urban settings are too complicated, and economically non-compliant, for a “continuous” juxtaposition of tribal affiliations, de facto scattering kin members all around the peripheries. Residents share that innate knowledge through a “mapping” of the territory in terms of various kin affiliations. Ghazzal: normalizing the illegal 19 Third, kin relations could be strong enough to regulate public behaviour. During my last visit to Hasan’s neighbourhood in July 2007, a young man was stabbed to death a couple of nights before in the wake of a fight with a small youth mini-gang in the same neighbourhood. Apparently, the “elders” from each clan took rapidly control of the situation, and within 24 hours handed in the culprit to the police; the latter were informed of the killing only after all inter-clan settlements were over. Hasan transformed this event into an anecdote, as evidence of the strength of conventional clan ties over state institutions, beginning with the police. It would be fair to say that in some instances clan ties “take over” or “replace” the tasks of state institutions: the police only move in after the decision was internally made to deliver the alleged “culprit,” and obviously as to who ought to be delivered as “culprit.” At times, it is a minor that would be delivered as “culprit,” on the basis that penal laws would put him on trial under mitigating circumstances. At every level of the lifeworld, therefore, exists that flimsy tension between the weak pre-existing state infrastructures, always attempting to expand further in the lives of individuals, on one hand, and the local practices of neighbourhoods on the other. Fourth, clan relations could be influential in the job market. Residents have either to find jobs in the neighbourhood itself or in close neighbourhoods, or else in the city at large. Many of the new peripheral neighbourhoods, such as Karm al-Muyassar, unlike the northern Kurdish neighbourhoods with their small to medium textile and shoe exportoriented manufacturing facilities,7 generally lack decent manufacturing hubs. Instead, the available jobs tend to be oriented towards the direct neighbourhood’s needs (construction, carpeting, carpentering, and car repairs and maintenance), and which are occupied by a high percentage of male teenagers. As clan relations tend to make a difference for the local neighbourhood jobs, or even for the other close neighbourhoods where the clan has some presence, they are overall irrelevant for the city at large, in particular when it comes to state employment, or for jobs in the manufacturing zones (Kallaseh, ‘Arqub, ‘Ayn alTall, Shaykh Khudr, Hulluk, Bustan al-Basha, and the industrial zone). Some small to medium manufactures, located in the north-west of Aleppo, have larger proportions of Kurds than average, due mostly to their proximity to Kurdish neighbourhoods, and because of the superior skills of Kurdish young men and women. Kurdish women, due to weaker religious and clan pressures, enjoy higher employment rates. Fifth, clan relations have some influence on the routines of daily life. That is the most difficult level to pin down and understand. I would like to propose a preliminary set of sociological categories, situated within the sociology of action, that would eventually serve for a more thorough research. Frame. Harold Garfinkel8 quirkily stated in his early work (which has been recently published) that an actor acts based on a “cognitive style” that would allow him or her to 7 In Kurdish neighbourhoods, where clan relations have broken down, prostitution is on the rise. That is particularly true of Shaykh Maqsūd, considered as the hub of prostitution and drug trafficking. The northern Kurdish neighbourhoods have strong connections with the region of ‘Ifrin, a conglomerate of 366 villages. 8 Harold Garfinkel, Seeing Sociologically: The Routine Grounds of Social Action, Paradigm Publishers, 2005. Ghazzal: normalizing the illegal 20 assess, understand, and react to a specific situated encounter. By assigning the “actor” (or “member”) to a specific situation, Garfinkel attempts to delineate the “actor” from the (philosophical) “person” or “individual,” while showing that the actor’s cognitive framework is only geared towards that situation. The notion of “frame,” which was introduced by Erving Goffman in one of his latest and most compelling works (Frame Analysis), assumes a “cognitive style” through which actors would practically understand and organize their social experiences. A frame thus helps actors in orienting themselves while interpreting and evaluating a specific situation.9 The notion of frame could be crucial for a multilayered understanding of illicit neighbourhoods. To begin, we have noted the importance of what actors describe as the “clan factor.” Because it is “all over,” the tendency among researchers would be to develop a general regulating matrix where the “clan factor” would be all over the place: from marriage, the habitat, neighbourhood life and recreation, to securing a job in the labour market. The notion of frame by contrast avoids reducing actions to a general regulating matrix of sorts, be it the clan or the economy, as it situates the cognitive capacities of actors within situated encounters. We have seen for instance how, in the absence of state regulation (due to the “illegitimate” labelling that has befallen on such neighbourhoods), residents have to “legalize” their “ownerships” (or tenancy rights) through a number of contractual settlements that require actors to interpret the situation at hand. Thus, in the absence of a “green form,” users could opt for a “regular” “illegitimate” (the second type-contract analyzed above) type-contract that would work just fine under some circumstances (e.g. to receive basic state utilities, if available), but would be looked upon as a “weak” “proof of ownership”—hence the usefulness of a fictitious litigation (the first type-contract analyzed above). Actors would therefore learn for which type-contract to go based on the frame that would determine which contract would be relevant for them at a particular juncture. Context. What determines a specific context is the available resources within a frame, which users assess based on the indices of the situation. When users come for example to a civil court to ratify a contract of sale (type-contract #1), they know beforehand that their home is situated in an “illegal” zone, and that the building itself is therefore “illegal.” They nevertheless do come to a court of law, knowing that the act of sale would be legalized through a fictitious litigation. Thus when the user poses himself as a “plaintiff” he knows that he is not one per se, but he indexes his action within the frame of the “legal context” of the civil court. “Legalizing the illegal” achieves therefore a more meaningful strategy once understood within the notions of frame and context: the users are simply “legalizing” an action that transfers the property from seller to buyer, while avoiding, however, any mention of the non-availability of a “green form” for the property that has just been transferred. Involvement, commitment. Actors become involved and committed once they assume a “role” within their “communities.” The intensity of an involvement and its significance would vary considerably from one framed context to another. Let us assume, for instance, 9 Erving Goffman, Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience, Northeastern, 1986. Ghazzal: normalizing the illegal 21 that some individuals, whether young or old, assume the dubious role of “clan coordinators” within their own neighbourhoods. They could thus intervene and offer their services for things as diverse as a contractual settlement, or a sewage problem, or a fight that has erupted among a group of teenagers. As those are different situations, which would obviously need the mobilization of different resources, the same actor would not participate with the same kind of involvement and commitment, even if the “clan context” is played in each of these situations. Moreover, the “clan context” would in all likelihood play very little, if at all, once the actor moves outside the neighbourhood, say, for his daily job in the state bureaucracy: his involvement there would be limited to the bureaucratic context which generally assumes different resources than neighbourhood interactions. Face. The social value that a person claims through the line of action that he adopted during a situated encounter. To stick to our example above, when a neighbourhood resident adopts the role of “clan coordinator,” it would not be enough for him, in the context of a situated encounter, to simply claim that “he belongs to clan X, and he is only acting as coordinator for the benefit of the community.” Such a claim would constitute the “social value” at work in an encounter, but since the “face” is neither located inside nor outside an individual, nor in what actors overtly state or claim, but in the flux of events within a specifically framed context, which determines the “value” at stake: hence the social value (face) is never stated once and for all, but always in a flux. Face-work. The common expression “to save one’s face” implies that, during a situated encounter, one has to adopt a certain posture, as a protective gesture, and to come to terms with possible dangers in a particular situation. The “clan coordinator” could adopt tough or soft stances, and his posture must find the right equilibrium based on the situation he finds himself into. Again, and in relation to traditional kin sociology, microsociology does not operate within a broad notion of kin that would absorb all the daily strategies of the life-world. It instead follows actors in their situated encounters, pointing to the postures that they adopt and the manoeuvres that would ensue. Interaction. The reciprocated actions that the protagonists exchange as individuals, teams, or as groups, and which could be located in public (the street) or in private (at home), are in themselves either focalized interactions—involving direct conversations and face-to-face work—or non-focalized, for instance, street interactions. The latter are particularly rich in popular neighbourhoods, as streets and empty lots (parks and public recreational spaces tend to be absent) are filled with youth “buddy teams” (even though age is not necessarily the determining factor). But while male teams could be present at every street corner, pavement, or empty lot, complete with mats, chairs, narghiles, trictracs, food and drinks, women are more private and sit together in public only at their home’s main entrance. Children, who are all over the place, play the go-between among age groups, men and women, homes and families, and neighbourhood zones and their clan divisions. Children pose easily for photographs; they would even pursue the photographer until their photo is taken—and with digital cameras, they must see the snapshot immediately. Men consider that posing in public in front of a camera is an act of pure manliness, a provocation that women cannot afford. Indeed, men often challenge the photographer with “provocative” poses, and by calling them directly: it is the anonymity Ghazzal: normalizing the illegal 22 of the encounter that is at stake here, the kind of anonymity that a woman cannot afford—not even with a female photographer. Girls, by contrast, until a certain age, when they are still not wearing scarves or veils, would also do the same as boys (or grownup men), that is, until ages 12 to 14, when the culture of shame steps in and isolates them in the space of the household. Bedouin women usually do not veil themselves—only urban women do—and their attire tends to be more vibrantly colourful. A “foreigner”—or someone perceived as such due to body language and attire—is like an “intruder” who is shamelessly gazed at by everyone in the street: men, women, and kids. As that whimsical feeling of “foreignness” is instantaneously bestowed on the bearer, he or she could be openly asked questions about their origins (nasab or nisba), nationality (if suspected to be non-Syrian or non-Arab), whereabouts, current residency, profession, and the reasons for being in a shanty neighbourhood “like this one.” Such an overt openness is indeed characteristic of such neighbourhoods, as “privacy” means more “the inner space of the home,” than, say, that of a “private (bourgeois) individual” with rights and duties towards himself and others. In other words, the notion of a public privacy is here practically inexistent. As a decent fraction of the men has served in Lebanon, either as workers or in the military (or both), in the last 30 years, the anonymous individualism of the people in the street is what strikes them the most over there: “that you walk around, and no one—no one—looks at you, is what’s most amazing in Beirut,” said a young man, while comparing the attitude of people in his own Aleppo neighbourhood. However, gazing at a woman from the neighbourhood is inappropriate, as it can be even looked upon as a deliberate act of provocation. But a woman “from the outside” is another story, in particular if the “outside” is further from “home.” In similar vein, looking at your neighbour’s home from the inside privacy of your own home—or worse, from your veranda—is more than inappropriate. Indeed, there is a parallelism between the sacredness of woman-as-hirma,10 and that of the inner space of the home: as the latter is perceived as feminine, it is de facto the space of honour, and if trespassed, then that “honour must be washed” (ghasl al-‘ar), for instance, through an honour crime, which in Syria is acknowledged by the courts as such. “Private,” if it means anything, is therefore that of the “interior” feminine space of the home, and certainly not associated with an abstract right of individual privacy.11 Public order. An order that is founded on the right to look (droit de regard), which implies that others give us that privileged right to look at them, and to react accordingly. What Goffman labelled as “the presentation of the self in everyday life” is an outcome of the right to look and looking back at one’s self, or, in other words, how the self constructs (an image of) itself through the looks of others. Not looking at a woman of the neighbourhood, and not gazing at the inside of a neighbour’s home, are instances of public order. In such instances there is no notion of “self” that would be “universal” enough to be abstracted from the common concerns of clan honour, trespassing over a woman’s virtue, and the dynamisms of tribe and clan, and 10 From haram, what is sacred. See Pierre Bourdieu’s structural analysis of the house of the Kabyles in Esquisse d’une théorie de la pratique, Geneva: Droz, 1972. 11 Ghazzal: normalizing the illegal 23 their urban-rural connections. As the self has a hard time distancing itself from the group at large, team behaviour dominates in particular among men. Men-in-teams of all ages — a phenomenon referred to as “office”-work, maktab—occupy street corners and empty lots, home and shop entrances, mosques and sufi orders (if available), enjoying that endless right to look in public.12 Their coming in teams (s. fariq, pl. furaqa’) of sorts is a combination of kin and labour factors: shopkeepers, for instance, use their shops—or, rather, the front pavement—as meeting spots for men, whether employed or not. As lots of young men are either employed with very low salaries, or benefiting from sporadic employment, or have been unemployed for years, the maktab has become their favourite occupation for gossip and street observation. Creating an “autonomous” private and public self independent of the group at large could therefore prove an arduous task. Hasan told me how a man he had known for some time started regular visits to their home, only to show interest in his eighteen-year eldest daughter who had just passed her baccalaureate, and soon asked her for marriage. But as his daughter did not manifest any interest, he decided not to pressure her: “For my generation, marrying one’s paternal cousin, as I myself did, was imperative. But not only I think that none of my seven kids will go in that direction, they will take time and make their own choices. I won’t force them into anything—not even the girls.” Granted that Hasan’s daughter has more room for herself than her mother did, she still has a long way to go before she gets that autonomous space of her own, as much of the public order does not yet see individuals in terms of their private rights. Privatizing illegal zones? Recent news reports have indicated that the Syrian government has, for the 121 or so illicit zones and their estimated 11,000 hectares of illegally constructed areas, struck a deal with a private Saudi company totalling $440 million. The General Habitat Company (al-Mu’assasa al-‘amma li-l-iskan), considered as Syria’s prime public company, is the main beneficiary of the joint venture that the government has worked out with al-Oulah (“The First”), a private real-estate Saudi company. Out of the $440 million that would set the new real-estate joint company, 30 percent would go for the Mu’assasa and the remaining 70 percent would be in the hands of al-Oulah. It remains to be seen, however, how the newly established joint Syrian and Saudi public-private gamble would concretely actualize its work. Considering that zones labelled as mukhalafat are illegal from the state’s point of view, the Iskan could, for instance, propose new plans for each one of the illegitimate 121 zones, which could imply either a partial or total destruction of the built areas for the purpose of infrastructural rehabilitation (ta’hil). It remains unclear, however, whether the residents themselves would have any voice at all: Would they be simply “fairly” compensated and then asked to leave? Would there be compensation settlements where both parties—the tenant-owner and the new joint venture—would compromise for a fair price (bi-l-taradi)? How will the compensation schemes work out concretely, and who will decide what are fair and unfair policies? 12 Faedah Totah, “Maktab,” in La Syrie au présent (Paris: Actes Sud, 2007). Ghazzal: normalizing the illegal 24 There might be several reasons behind the government’s policy shifts, assuming that the aforementioned joint venture will see light as planned. First, raving reviews in the last decade—and more and more are published on web services—have indicated that the slum cities that strangle the main urban areas are nothing but “timed bombs” waiting to explode. Damascus itself has 38 illegal zones (out of the estimated 121 on the national scale), whose projected area ranges from 30 to 50 percent of the capital’s urban neighbourhoods. Second, as 85 percent of construction sites are in private hands, and as the state seems to be slowly withdrawing from its old socialite policies of the 1960s and 1970s, the tendency would be to look for a “solution” to illicit neighbourhoods among private investors. Third, considering how close they are to the legitimate zones, some of the illegal areas have become financially quite lucrative, prompting official authorities and private financiers alike to look at them as zones of capitalist investment, rather than social drawbacks. The official authorities may thus have opted to open those areas to local, Arab, and foreign investors, hoping that in the meantime the illegal tenant/owner would move to other areas, which in itself would reinitiate the infernal cycle of constructing in agrarian areas without prior authorization. As the nation-state is a never ending enterprise, even in the most advanced liberal societies, always expanding in all directions, while attempting to control lives and territories, social actors have to fill in the gaps on their own, through their daily practices. When it comes to the societies of the eastern Mediterranean, however, due to the brisk transition from an Ottoman imperial administration to colonial and postcolonial state formations, the historical weaknesses of the nation-state are even more visible. In this instance, users of a particular space—for instance, those occupying the populated marginal neighbourhoods in big urban agglomerations—not only create their own space, but more importantly, have to establish normative values that would otherwise be part of the overall arching structure of state enterprises. What is therefore remarkable is that users tend to mimic the now remote state infrastructures as best as they can, creating their own living spaces through placid negotiations with state administrative and juridical institutions, in particular the civil courts. What emerges in this process are negotiable norms, which sooner or later would be integrated within the larger framework of a nation-in-progress, and of spaces where power relations are determined more by what is materializing on the ground and less by the historical weaknesses of authoritarian régimes. Ghazzal: normalizing the illegal 25 APPENDIX Translation of sale contract in Figure III. In the name of the Syrian people [Names of judge, assistant, plaintiff, defendant, and representatives] Subject of the lawsuit: sale confirmation I. The lawsuit In the lawsuit dated 17 January 1994 the plaintiff [Hasan Abd] claimed that he purchased from the defendant the totality of 14 shares (sahm)13 from property number 2900, in Aleppo’s tenth residential district, for a sum that the two parties had agreed upon, and which the defendant had received in toto. The defendant owns the aforementioned property thanks to a court’s ruling number 451/4967 in 1993, but still has not transferred (faragh) the property to the plaintiff. We therefore request that: 6. a notice (ishara) be inscribed on the property’s form (sahīfat al-‘aqar); 7. to notify the defendant of the litigation; 8. to confirm the sale in his presence; 9. to remove the litigation’s notice once the property has been transferred; 10. to have all fees and expenses paid by the defendant. II. Verdict In the open court hearings, the plaintiff reiterated his claims and, accordingly, requested a hearing in his favor. The defendant also acknowledged his opponent’s rights in their totality, and had no objection for a ruling in favor of the plaintiff on the basis that the latter would assume all fees and expenses. The two parties agreed on that. Considering that acknowledgment (iqrar) is at the root of evidence (sayyid al-adilla), and it has the status of contract for the acknowledger (huwa hujja ‘ala al-muqirr); Considering that the notice of the litigation (isharat al-da‘wa) has been inscribed on the property’s form based on contract number 373/1994; Considering that the court has sought the opinion of professional expertise, a visitation to the place has revealed that it is composed of an Arab home (dar ‘arabiyya) whose main door is oriented towards the west, with two rooms, a living room, a staircase that leads to the top floor. The house, constructed in concrete, is made for residential living, and the expert estimated that it was 20 years old; Considering that from the ruling that the defendant ‘Abdul-Karim has brought with him to court, he owns 14 shares of property number 2900, based on a previous civil court ruling number 451/4967, issued on 31 August 1993; And based on articles 62, 132, 200, and follow up articles 99–100, and articles 148, 386, and 826 of the civil code; It was decided, 4. Confirm the present act of sale between the plaintiff Hasan ‘Abd and the defendant ‘Abdul-Karim Zayn on the 14 shares of property number 2900 in Aleppo’s tenth residential district, and the transfer and registration of the shares in the plaintiff’s name in the city’s cadastral registers. 5. Retract the lawsuit’s notice as soon as the ruling takes place. 6. Payments of fees and expenses are on the defendant. Signed on Saturday 9 April 1994 by the judge and his assistant. 13 24 shares of a property represent its totality, that is, the full one-hundred percent.