{"id":8512,"date":"2011-02-25T11:08:15","date_gmt":"2011-02-25T16:08:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/joshualandis.com\/blog\/?p=8512"},"modified":"2015-06-07T17:39:03","modified_gmt":"2015-06-07T21:39:03","slug":"asma-al-assad-a-rose-of-the-desert-in-vogue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/joshualandis.com\/blog\/asma-al-assad-a-rose-of-the-desert-in-vogue\/","title":{"rendered":"“Asma al-Assad: A Rose of the Desert” in Vogue"},"content":{"rendered":"

Asma al-Assad: A Rose in the Desert<\/a>
\nby Joan Juliet Buck | photographed by James Nachtwey
\nVogue, February 25, 2011<\/p>\n

\"Asma<\/p>\n

Asma al-Assad is glamorous, young, and very chic\u2014the freshest and most magnetic of first ladies. Her style is not the couture-and-bling dazzle of Middle Eastern power but a deliberate lack of adornment. She\u2019s a rare combination: a thin, long-limbed beauty with a trained analytic mind who dresses with cunning understatement. Paris Match calls her \u201cthe element of light in a country full of shadow zones.\u201d She is the first lady of Syria.<\/p>\n

Syria is known as the safest country in the Middle East, possibly because, as the State Department\u2019s Web site says, \u201cthe Syrian government conducts intense physical and electronic surveillance of both Syrian citizens and foreign visitors.\u201d It\u2019s a secular country where women earn as much as men and the Muslim veil is forbidden in universities, a place without bombings, unrest, or kidnappings, but its shadow zones are deep and dark. ….
\n\"\"<\/p>\n

….The old al-Assad family apartment was remade into a child-friendly triple-decker playroom loft surrounded by immense windows on three sides. With neither shades nor curtains, it\u2019s a fishbowl. Asma al-Assad likes to say, \u201cYou\u2019re safe because you are surrounded by people who will keep you safe.\u201d Neighbors peer in, drop by, visit, comment on the furniture. The president doesn\u2019t mind: \u201cThis curiosity is good: They come to see you, they learn more about you. You don\u2019t isolate yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a decorated Christmas tree. Seven-year-old Zein watches Tim Burton\u2019s Alice in Wonderland on the president\u2019s iMac; her brother Karim, six, builds a shark out of Legos; and nine-year-old Hafez tries out his new electric violin. All three go to a Montessori school.<\/p>\n

Asma al-Assad empties a box of fondue mix into a saucepan for lunch. The household is run on wildly democratic principles. \u201cWe all vote on what we want, and where,\u201d she says. The chandelier over the dining table is made of cut-up comic books. \u201cThey outvoted us three to two on that.\u201d<\/p>\n

A grid is drawn on a blackboard, with ticks for each member of the family. \u201cWe were having trouble with politeness, so we made a chart: ticks for when they spoke as they should, and a cross if they didn\u2019t.\u201d There\u2019s a cross next to Asma\u2019s name. \u201cI shouted,\u201d she confesses. \u201cI can\u2019t talk about empowering young people, encouraging them to be creative and take responsibility, if I\u2019m not like that with my own children.\u201d….<\/p>\n

….And then there\u2019s her cultural mission: \u201cPeople tend to see Syria as artifacts and history,\u201d she says. \u201cFor us it\u2019s about the accumulation of cultures, traditions, values, customs. It\u2019s the difference between hardware and software: the artifacts are the hardware, but the software makes all the difference\u2014the customs and the spirit of openness. We have to make sure that we don\u2019t lose that. . . . \u201d<\/p>\n

That brand essence includes the distant past. There are 500,000 important ancient works of art hidden in storage; Asma al-Assad has brought in the Louvre to create a network of museums and cultural attractions across Syria, and asked Italian experts to help create a database of the 5,000 archaeological sites in the desert. \u201cCulture,\u201d she says, \u201cis like a financial asset. We have an abundance of it, thousands of years of history, but we can\u2019t afford to be complacent.\u201d<\/p>\n

In December, Asma al-Assad was in Paris to discuss her alliance with the Louvre. She dazzled a tough French audience at the International Diplomatic Institute, speaking without notes. \u201cI\u2019m not trying to disguise culture as anything more than it is,\u201d she said, \u201cand if I sound like I\u2019m talking politics, it\u2019s because we live in a politicized region, a politicized time, and we are affected by that.\u201d….. Read the article<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Asma al-Assad: A Rose in the Desert by Joan Juliet Buck | photographed by James Nachtwey Vogue, February 25, 2011 Asma al-Assad is glamorous, young, and very chic\u2014the freshest and most magnetic of first ladies. Her style is not the couture-and-bling dazzle of Middle Eastern power but a deliberate lack of adornment. She\u2019s a rare […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22712,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,73],"tags":[433,432,434,464],"class_list":["post-8512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asad","category-women","tag-asma-al-asad","tag-asma-al-assad","tag-vogue","tag-women"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n"Asma al-Assad: A Rose of the Desert" in Vogue - Syria Comment<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/joshualandis.com\/blog\/asma-al-assad-a-rose-of-the-desert-in-vogue\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\""Asma al-Assad: A Rose of the Desert" in Vogue - Syria Comment\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Asma al-Assad: A Rose in the Desert by Joan Juliet Buck | photographed by James Nachtwey Vogue, February 25, 2011 Asma al-Assad is glamorous, young, and very chic\u2014the freshest and most magnetic of first ladies. 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