the saddest place in Halep

A friend wrote me some days ago that he would love to see the world through my eyes.
Here it is. Through the eyes of a priviledged european female person in the beginning twenties in a
special night in one of Halep's nightclubs.

What is a nightclub in Halep/Aleppo?

In this case it is a room with several other, smaller rooms attached. The light is dimmed, there is a
stage and several tables with couches. Men are the only „customers“ here. The women who can be
seen are here „for fun“, but I would call it work. What they sell is wishes, love, their bodies. How
ever you want to label it.


After being used to the buisy streetlife in Aleppo, where women are covered with scarfs in a vast
variety of ways up to being absolutely covered where you cannot even see the eyes, I am shellshocked
by colours, skin and movements. I feel thrown back to Europe, where women in miniskirts
and neckholder-tops are more the norm than women in tschador.


The women come from different countries, the ones I spoke to were from russia and poland. They
get a half year or a years contract. But what do they do?

They sit and talk. They get drinks for free when they enter the nightclub. They dance. The flirt with
the big bellied men. If they want, they go with them. To one of the hotels nearby. Mostly they
decide with whom they go with. Sometimes not.


How did I get to this place and why do I think it is a sad place?

I went there with a friend. He goes there every now and then with a mixed group of people.
Foreigners, travellers, friends, locals. To change the situation. Just for some moments, minutes,
hours. We went there and danced with the women, made fun, talked with them, listened to what
they had to say. Nobody of us touched them nor did any of the males in our group ask for a
telephone numbers or went with them to a hotel. We were merely there to take time with them. To
show them, that we value them, no matter why they decided to go on this way.
Next to all the laughter, the shared looks and dances, the sadness of this place was always present.

Of course, there are women who decide freely that they want to go this way. Who like their jobs or
who like to have sex in this way. But there is the other side, where it isn't merely a job, but where
economic reasons or family dragged the women into this.
One friend who was with me that very night, asked me while the nightclub closed at three in the
morning, if I think that some women would understand why we were there. I said, I didn't know.
Maybe some, maybe some not. But I was pretty pessimistic in general, because sharing and having
fun together for some hours doesn't change a general situation and in the end we left them alone
again in their life with the daily experience with what their life is like. And I could go on with my
priviledged european female mid-twenties-life. Just as if nothing had happened.