Life in Syria’s Capital Remains Barely Touched by Rebellion

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DAMASCUS, Syria — As protests broke out across a restive Syria on a recent Sunday, and crowds were dispersed yet again by gunfire that left many dead, the conversation in the capital dwelled not on the uprising but rather on nails, along with the choice of polish and hair color and the latest in makeup trends.

“I want either fuchsia or orange to match my dress,” a woman in her 50s said as she rummaged through a box of nail polish in an upscale beauty salon in Damascus. “Either one.”

It does not take long to realize that there is a disconnect between Damascus and the rest of Syria. With a mix of denial and fear, and occasionally even satisfaction at the government’s determination to stanch dissent, many Damascenes insist on another reality.

Sometimes jarring, sometimes reassuring, the detachment appears to have only deepened as the country plunges into some of its starkest international isolation since the Assad family took power in 1970 and as cities fall victim, one by one, to a ferocious crackdown by a government seemingly without direction.

Syria’s uprising has entered its sixth month, and protesters continue to defy the heavy-handed security forces that have, by the United Nations’ count, killed more than 2,200 people since mid-March. Sanctions have mounted, and once-friendly nations have criticized President Bashar al-Assad, urging him to reform and declaring that they have lost patience with his government’s attacks on its own people. Others have called on him to step down.

But Damascus, be it at the beauty salon, in its somnolent neighborhoods or in its fear-stricken mosques, remains the linchpin, a reality that even activists acknowledge. Until protests reach this capital, their thinking goes, Syria’s leadership will avoid the fate of its ossified equivalents in places like Egypt and Tunisia. And so far, Damascus — along with Aleppo, the nation’s second-largest city — has stayed firmly on the margins, as anger builds toward both cities from Syrians bearing the brunt of the uprising. “Trust me, everything is normal,” insisted a manicurist at the salon.

The salon, whose clientele includes the wives of the “rich and famous,” as one hairdresser described them, is just one of many examples that indicate how well Damascus has managed to shield itself during months of violence across the country. “At the beginning, there were some guys demonstrating for freedoms and rights, but it later turned out they were only trying to create a sectarian war,” the manicurist said. “The security forces are hunting them down, one by one. And they are almost done with them.”

Her version of events is one that is repeated daily by Syrian state news media and television channels close to the government: that the country is facing a foreign conspiracy to divide it and that security forces are battling armed Islamist extremists who are terrorizing residents and have killed 500 police officers and soldiers so far.

Even in neighborhoods where activists and protesters have reported demonstrations, life quickly returns to normal, as the government tries to rewrite what just happened, residents say. As early as dawn, they say, city employees clear the scenes, cleaning up bloodstains on the ground and painting over antigovernment graffiti.

So it went in Kfar Susseh, a wealthy neighborhood in Damascus where security forces wounded several protesters last week. According to residents, peaceful worshipers emerging from the Rifai mosque came under fire as they chanted a slogan calling for the fall of the government, a slogan uttered from Tunisia to Bahrain. They were chased through the neighborhood, caught and severely beaten as residents standing on their balconies pleaded with security forces to show them mercy. The protesters were later taken in military buses to detention centers.

During a visit two days after the unrest, the neighborhood was buzzing. Save for a sign declaring that the mosque was closed, there was no evidence of trouble. Unlike Homs and Hama, where the uprising has managed to knock down the wall of fear and allowed people to say what they want to say, no one here seemed to broach politics in the streets.

Pedestrians walked by, rarely glancing at the mosque, as if a long look would draw the kind of attention so long feared in a country notorious for its security apparatus. A woman leaned against the mosque’s iron fence. Across the street from her a sign read, “I am with Syria.” It, too, seemed too sensitive to stare at.

The poster was one of many on the streets here that are part of a campaign aimed at raising loyalty to the government. Not far away, another sign warned, “Be aware of those who are trying to instigate strife and attack them.”

At the salon, curiosity is subversive. The entrance of any new customer jolts the conversation back to orthodoxy; the choice of nail polish returns as a topic.

But in less-guarded moments, even here in a bastion of unreality, the reverberations of the uprising are felt. Terms once taboo in public in Syria come up in casual back-and-forth: opposition, sectarianism, demonstrations and the very word “uprising.” Behind closed doors, the idea that nothing is different gives way to fears that something has changed.

One manicurist said she was shocked when she accidentally learned that one of her closest friends opposed President Assad, who inherited power from his father in 2000. The manicurist and her friend are Christians, and, like other minority groups, they fear that a change of leadership would usher in a more conservative administration, perhaps delivering the country to Islamists bent on enforcing a tyranny of the Sunni Muslim majority. Christians often point to Iraq — where their very existence as a community is imperiled — to offer a notion of what can happen in times of violence and chaos.

As the rest of the country has become more conservative, Damascus, with its veneer of modernity and consumerism of the past decade, has become less so, they said.

“Ten years, 20 years ago, we never dared walk on streets wearing sleeveless shirts without being harassed,” the manicurist said. “Now, no one dares look at us.”

Though she declared herself to be one of Mr. Assad’s biggest fans, she acknowledged that reform has come too slowly and corruption has become too common. Her complaint was directed at no one in particular, least of all Mr. Assad, whose intentions she refused to question.

Across from her, a bride-to-be in her mid-20s said that she had not turned on the television for days. She did not want to stress herself out with the news of the uprising, she said, as activists here and elsewhere tried to spread the unrest to Damascus.

On the day before her wedding, several relatives called to ask about the situation in her neighborhood. “Everything was quiet,” she kept repeating to them. Curious, she finally relented and turned on the news to find out that Arabic-language satellite channels were reporting demonstrations in her street. There were none, she insisted.

“Everything is normal, just don’t watch Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya,” one of the manicurists said. “They are spreading lies. Watch only Syrian channels to learn the truth.” And off she went to discuss nail polish.