 I'm your host, Cheryl Crozier-Garcia, inviting you to join in the discussion. Please call us with your questions and comments at area code 808-374-2014 or tweet us at thinktechhi. We've all heard the statement, if it bleeds, it leads, with regard to the news media. This refers to the news media's preference for spending the vast majority of its time focused on the violent, the salacious, and the disastrous. Reporters and producers often skip over or omit positive news and overplay negative stories. Syria is one of the countries that seems painted with a broad brush of negativity. Aleppo and Damascus are two of the world's oldest cities and cradles of civilization. And today, Ghazwan Hasna is going to share his experiences of growing up in Syria. Welcome to the show, Ghazwan. Thank you very much, Cheryl. Thank you for inviting me. It's a pleasure, because I really want people to know that what we see on the news about Syria is not the only things that are happening there. And you are more able than anyone I know to tell that story. So can you tell us a little bit about your upbringing and where you were born and where you grew up? So I was born in Damascus, which is the capital of Syria. This is where I went to the primary school, and then after that I moved to Latakia for a few years, and then I went back to Damascus. I love that city. This is where I wanted to be. And this is where I went to the college, where I studied at the College of Information Technology at Damascus University. One of the very well-recognized universities in that region in the Middle East. After that, I got a scholarship from UK, which is the equivalent of the Fulbright. It's called the Chivnik Scholarship for Potential Leaders, and this is where I went to Manchester to do my graduate studies. I get a master there. I decided to come back. I saw a lot of development taking place in Syria, and I went back to Syria in 2009, where I worked with the United Nations and the European Commission on two projects consulting the Prime Ministry of Syria on their development. By 2013, I moved to Hong Kong to complete my PhD, and that's in short. But still very exciting. Could you tell us a little bit more about Damascus University? I understand it's one of the oldest in the world, and one of the most continually operating, shall we say, center of intellectual thought for thousands of years. So can you tell us a little bit about your experience there? You mean Damascus as a city or Damascus University? The university specifically. The university is really one of the most recognized universities in the region, and I feel really grateful and proud at the same time to be a graduate of that great university. Every time I'm teaching, I just recall back the great professors who taught me a lot of things. You can imagine, I graduated from Damascus University, and I ended up being an assistant professor in a very well university here in the United States. Graduates of that university has really very, very good quality. I can't tell you, for example, about just my friends. These are the people where I hanged out, and I hanged with them when I was in my undergraduate degree. I have one of them now working in NASDAQ in London. The other one is working as a research scientist in Microsoft. Before that he worked in Yahoo, and before that he worked in General Electric. I have another friend. We did our project together, and now he's getting an award for being the most innovative person in Sweden. He's now a CEO of one of the social robotics start-up there. I think just having these type of products, I think we'll tell about how good the university and specifically our college was, so I really feel very grateful for all the professors there who taught us and who prepared us to be able to get these opportunities. It's continuing to be a center of intellectual growth? Yes, but unfortunately not until the war started. Until the war started, you see a lot of intellectual people are leaving the country, including a lot of very good professors who are just trying to escape the war to other countries, so unfortunately I can't tell until 2011, yes, it was. Well, what's going on now? I mean, how has the war changed the way, say, people live their daily lives? Oh, it's very... I think it's difficult to summarize that in words. It's war. I can't tell you about myself. I remember during the last few years before I left Syria, I think the war started seriously after I left, but some of the starting symptoms of this war was taking place in 2011, 2012. I remember, for example, even I was living in a very good neighborhood, I had to check my car every day. I have to tell my wife to stay at the other side of the road, and I have to check my car to see if nothing will happen, if the car is good, it's not exploded, then come and join me so I can take you to work. So I think it's very difficult. People are just trying to escape the war, yeah. Well, you brought some pictures to show us. So why don't you show us the Syria that you know and that you grew up in? Yeah, definitely. So I think this is... It's really very interesting. Through the last few years in my life, I was traveling all over the world, and I jumped from place to place. Until now, I've already traveled 20 countries, and it's really interesting if you look over time how the perception of the people is changing about Syria. The painful thing is that people do not know about these countries until there is a disaster, and then all what they know is through the media, even with the freedom that this Web2 technology is bringing us through social media where people can show photos. Still, I will show you something very interesting. I remember when I went to UK in 2017, the University of Manchester is one of the most international universities in the world, and you meet people from all over the world, and they ask you, where are you from? I say from Syria. So many people do not know where is Syria on the map. What is interesting is that I say Syria. So do you know any neighboring countries? Oh, yeah. We are beside Iraq. Oh, yeah, we know, because at that time, the world was taking place in Iraq, so they get to know Iraq. And unfortunately, I wanted people to know about that lovely country, but in a different way. Now, if you ask anyone, do you know Syria, he will say yes, but the problem is how much do you know about Syria? I think they only know. The first thing that can come to their brain is these ugly photos after the war, which is really not the pleasant face of Syria. I would like to ask you this question. We had these discussions before, right? If I tell you, like, what do you know about Syria before we meet and discuss what will be the first thing that you can record? I felt ignorant, but I remembered that Damascus and Aleppo are both mentioned in the book of Genesis in the Bible. And they were cradles not only of civilization, intellectual thought, but also of commerce for many different kinds of products, agriculture, slaves. So they had important—they were important destinations for merchants and others to go to conduct business. I knew that. Yeah, so that's really great, right? Not all the people know that. Like, even I was talking to one of our colleagues, and he said that we know so much about Jerusalem because we are Christians, and Jerusalem means a lot to us, but it's the first time I know that by the time when Jerusalem was important for Christians, Jerusalem was just part of the great Syria, which—because, like, Syria is not the small Syria that we have now. The great Syria was including all of these countries, including Syria, Jordan, Palestine, and they became different—and Lebanon, they became like different countries late after the World War when we get this French and British who decided to divide the greater Syria into different parts. Let me take you through some photos. I would like to go back to slide three first before we go. Slide three. So when I try to tell anyone—can I please go to the previous slide, please? So when I try to tell anyone about Syria, I think usually photos talk better than words, right? But what is really painful, I try to do a very simple search using Google. I write best Syrian photos. I wanted to see some of the nice photos of Syria, and unfortunately look what you can get. Oh, my gosh. Even when you write best Syrian photos, I don't think that these are the best Syrian photos. I really feel sorry for all those people who were, like, impacted by this ugly war. But I think Syria is more beautiful than that. We have beaches. Syrian beaches are really very nice. If we can go to the second slide, I want to see the photos to the right. I want to see those kids playing on the very nice sand. This is the city where my family came from originally. I want to see these very nice resorts and beaches where people can go and have party on the beach. I don't want to see the Jihadi people who are trying or preparing to attack another city. And when I tried to search for Syrian beaches, I got the photos to the left. It was hard to mine the photos to the right. So that's really painful. You know, if I didn't know better, I would say that photo on the lower right-hand corner of your screen. I could have easily said that that was Waikiki or maybe, let's see, other places I've been to, Mazatlán maybe, the Casa del Oro, the Gold Coast. And the photo above of the little girls on the beach, this is a little bit surprising to me because they are not wearing hijab. Oh, so this is another point. I will go through that very interesting point. So what I will try to answer you or what I will try to tell you, some of the facts that the people do not know. For example, when they meet my wife, like here when we are walking and someone is meeting my wife, the first question he asked me, is she Syrian? Oh, yeah, we are Syrians. This is how we look. We don't have to wear hijab. Syria is not a Muslim country. I will go through that and I can't tell you. Let's start by the location of Syria. This is something very interesting. So if we can go to the slide after that. So this is Syria, if you see at the center. It has a very important geographical position that connected the three main continents in that region, including Asia, Africa, and Europe. And for a long time in history, if we go to the second slide, you will see that Syria played a very, very important and a critical position in connecting the different trade routes between the East and the West. So you see, for example, if you hear about the Silk Road, it was going through many cities. Silk Road wasn't like only one road. It was a network of roads. And some of them were going through Palmyra and through Aleppo. And these are two of the very important cities that can tell about the history of Syria. I don't know if you can go to the next slide. So you see, these are one of the few of the Silk Road. Sure. Yeah, some of the routes in the Silk Road and you see one of them is going through Palmyra. The other one is going through Aleppo. Maybe you know about Aleppo and Damascus, but I don't know if you know about Palmyra also. I don't know much about Palmyra, but I do know that because of the network of highways, if you will, that make up the Silk Road, that the people of Syria and this geographic area were extremely diverse. Many different races came and intermarried, et cetera. And for many centuries, there was open religious practice and open—maybe democracy is not the right word—but a more open form of government than we might expect, certainly from other Middle Eastern countries. Yeah, this is really true. I will also go through that, and I will tell you something about the political structure. I'm not a very expert in that, and we agree to avoid politics and regulations, but I will tell you some background about that. And what you say is really true. It has its roots in the history of Syria. As I told you, since I'm explaining this very important geographical position that connect the three continents, so if you look at the Syrian people, they look diverse. Even in my family, for example, this is what I'm telling you. My wife has blue eyes and blonde hair, and when they see her with me here, they just ask me the first question, is she also Syrian? If I look at my kids, you have one of them who's looking like his mom and my daughter is looking like me, even in my family. So we are very diverse. We came from different places. We mixed in a very nice and harmonized way. And through the development of civilization and going through different religions, Syria was the land of Christianity. This is where Jesus came, and so you see people are very tolerant when it comes to religions. We have different religions. We have different minorities. People used to respect each other to appreciate what they have. If you look at the rich history, for example, I would like to go to the next slide, please. Yeah, we can do that. And then right after you finish with that slide, we need to go to break. Oh, yeah, definitely. Okay. Yeah. So if you look at this, this is one of the oldest alphabet that exists in the world, and they found that tablet in Ogeret, which is a historical city, only a few kilometers from the city where my family came from. It's considered one of the earliest alphabets that exist in the world. So that can tell you about the history, the rich history of Syria and how civilized that place was. Yeah, that's great. Can you tell us a little bit more about Syrian civilization and history right after we come back from the break? We need to do some housekeeping. Yes, I will do. Thank you very much. All right. So SID type. I am Cheryl Crozier-Garcia. This is Working Together on Think Tech Hawaii, and we will be back in 60 seconds to learn more about Syria. Stay tuned. Hi, I'm Bill Sharp, host of Asian Review here on Think Tech Hawaii. Join me every Monday afternoon from 5 to 5.30 Hawaii Standard Time for an insightful discussion of contemporary Asian affairs. There's so much to discuss, and the guests that we have are very, very well informed. Just think we have the upcoming negotiation between President Trump and Kim Jong-un. The possibility of Xi Jinping, the leader of China, remaining in power forever. We'll see you then. I'm Jay Fidel, Think Tech. Think Tech loves energy. I'm the host of Mina, Marco and me, which is Mina Morita, former chair of the PUC, former legislator, and Energy Dynamics, a consulting organization in energy. Marco Mangostorf is the CEO of Provision Solar in Hilo. Every two weeks, we talk about energy, everything about energy. Come around and watch us. We're on at noon on Mondays every two weeks on Think Tech, aloha. Welcome back to Working Together on Think Tech Hawaii. I'm Cheryl Crozier-Garcia, and today we are talking with Gazwan Hasna about one of the oldest civilizations in the world, Syria. Now, Gazwan, you were telling us before the break that you and your wife are both Syrian, but you are very diverse-looking. She's blonde and blue-eyed, and you obviously are not. Can you tell us more about women in Syria and the history of women's roles in society and government? Oh, definitely. I think that we are really very proud of. This is also one of the misconceptions, for example. Maybe people do a lot of stereotyping because, again, they don't know much about Syria. For example, as you mentioned, that you are shocked that the people are not wearing the hijab, which is, I mean, related to being a Muslim or something, and I told you that we are very diverse. Let's go back to this slide. I will show you, for example, why do we feel very proud in Syria, that even in the very ancient history, we have Palmyra, and Palmyra was, if you look at the map, this is the borders of Palmyra Empire. This is one of the historical empire that was in that region, the queen, Zanubia. We used to have a queen thousands of years ago, and we are very proud with that until now. This is why you see, if we go to the next slide, please, you will see that we have it even. So these are the two coins that were found in Palmyra that have the picture of the queen, and considering that we still feel very proud about that, it's still on our current currency. So if you look at the bottom, this is the 500 Syrian pounds, and it also has the picture of Zanubia and Palmyra, historical city behind that, because we are very proud about that history. If we go one slide again, so these are few of the historical places that can tell about how old is Syria. It tells about the historical civilization in that place, Zanubia, and in the middle we have Palmyra in the upper left corner. Unfortunately now it's ruined in the war, because some of the extremists, they came and they started even destroying what left from these ruins. That will lead us about the women in the middle of the 21st century. People do not know that, and you told me if we always were hijab, of course we do respect the people. We have different religions. We have friends who are Muslims. We have friends who are Christians. We do respect what you believe. And that's part of our constitution that you should belong to your country, but you should respect all what others believe, and you should respect your religions. But you can see, for example, the photo to the left is Miss Syria in 1952. She looks pretty, right? She's gorgeous. Yeah, she's really gorgeous. And I was very happy to see this photo. If you look at the left, up, up left, this is the graduation of the medical school from Damascus University. Wow. The girls and so all of those are the Syrian doctors in 1940s. If you look at the bottom, this is the woman Syrian basketball in 1950s. These are a lot of things that people do not know about Syria. If you look how that was developed and reflected in the modern history, we go here. We have two vice presidents. If you can go one slide ahead, we have two vice presidents who are women. We have a minister. She's a woman. If you go to the next slide, if you look at the picture to the right, this is the first woman who went for the parliament in 1950. She didn't win at that time, but at least she was able to go for the parliament. The second round after her, four women in 1952 became members. Now in our parliament, we have a 12-person woman in our parliament. And if you look at that photo, this is the president of the parliament, and this is the only the first Arabic woman or the first woman to be the president of a parliament in the Middle East and in the Arabic world. So that can tell you how much women is having respect in the Syrian society. And now the women who were elected to office, they were constitutionally able to run. So there was nothing in your constitution that said only men may vote, only men may serve. But oh, this is why I'm saying that since 1950, the woman was able to go and go for a public office. So Syria had elected women to national office long before the U.S. had. I don't know much. At least 10 years before, I think. Well, maybe not. Margaret Chase Smith, the senator in Maine, I think was in the 1940s. I think she was the first. But you've certainly, like president of the Senate. We haven't had anyone like that that was female. And certainly not in the vice presidential seats of power, although we've been trying. So that's really interesting, because again, people think that Syria is rubble-strewn and oppressive to women, and I, for example, did not realize that you're a secular nation. Do you not observe Sharia law as your governing laws? You have civil law. This is very important. So if you look at the history of Syria, we were occupied by the Ottoman— The Ottoman Empire? The Ottoman Empire for 400 years. In the Ottoman Empire, there are a lot of laws that are built on the Sharia and the Muslim laws. But after that, we were occupied by French, and this is where we get most of our laws. So if you look at how many courts do we have now, I think maybe if we go to the second slide and second slide, I will show you the different courts—no, the second one, please. So we have different courts in Syria, for example. I'm not a very expert in the judiciary system, but I tried to pull this information because you asked me about it once when we have discussion before. We have court of cassation. We have high constitutional court. We have civil and criminal courts, military courts, and security courts. And I think we still have a little bit of Sharia, but not in a way that is controlling everyone only for the personal issue and to reflect respect to different religions. So if you are, for example, a Muslim and you want the marriage to be still in the Muslim based on the Muslim laws, so you go to that court that is specialized in personal issue to complete the marriage. But if you are a Christian, you don't have to do that. So this is the only part which is still left from the Sharia part. All our laws are built on the French laws. See? I didn't know that either. And it looks like from the slides of your judicial system that you have something that is the equivalent of our Supreme Court, which would be the high constitutional court. And then civil and criminal courts, we have those, too. Military courts, we have those. If you watch the TV show, JAG, it's all about that. What is a security court? I really don't know. I told you I'm not the very much expert in that, but maybe it's related to national security or something. But again, I'm not the expert. Yeah. I don't know. But still, it's not at all the judicial system I thought you had. Yeah. I think most of the people do not know that because they do this stereotypical, they have this stereotypical way of stereotyping everything in that region to be similar. So we are different from other countries in the region. Do you think that's why some of the violence may have hit Syria harder than maybe some other places? Well, I think it's difficult to comment on that, especially that we agreed not to touch politics. OK. Sorry. But definitely, I think, yes, part of it. Because, for example, we never hear about all of this extremism in Syria. I lived in Syria for 30 years. People tend to be very tolerant. I will show you some photos. Before I go into that, I will just, I tried to pull some information here from the World Health Organization to show you some of the socio-cultural indicators. Can we go to the previous slide, please? The previous one, please. Previous one? Yeah, this one. So these are some numbers that can tell you about how we are doing in socio-cultural indicators. I couldn't get more recent information maybe due to the war. I don't know. But I got this information from one of the reports published by the World Health Organization. You see, for example, here, like if you look at the female literacy, it went from 47.5 in 1990s into 78% in 2004, which is a great improvement, right? Right. Woman at the workforce, it went from 24 to 29, which is really good improvement. Primary education pupils, the percentage of female is 49 in 2004, but we were even doing good even at 1990s. So I think this is also good to draw some light on these numbers, right? Yeah. Especially, I think, the total literacy figure in 2004 is particularly interesting. 93% is one of the highest in the, certainly, in what would be considered the developed world and also in the developing world. This is one point that is very important to mention. We have a free education system, and the primary education is mandatory. So everyone should send his kids to the school when they are in the primary school age. And when it comes to education, I think Syrian people are really very highly educated, and the education is for free. So we are a big family. We are 11 siblings. Yes, that's too much. I know. Well, my mother was one of 12, so I don't think that's too much. Oh, that's good. So, yeah. So I think we all went to schools. All my siblings are doctors, engineers, lawyers, and that was something great to find, because now once I came here, I don't understand how difficult to be in a system where the education is expensive. So maybe that part contributed to having these high numbers. I'm sure it did. And, you know, I think one of the other issues we need to look at is the important gifts that literacy bring to a community and a social system and a nation. If you can read and write, it's easier to think and get access to information that will inform your decisions, and hopefully everyone then has the talent available to build the communities that they want. Yeah, definitely. I do agree with you. Yes, true. Yeah. So we're going to have to cut it off. So sorry. Will you come back? Oh, yeah. Definitely. Good. Come back another time very quickly. Yeah. Ghazwan Hasna from Syria. Thank you so much for joining us. I am Cheryl Crozier-Garcia. This is working together on Think Tech Hawaii, and we will be back in two weeks. Till then, take care.