Page - 150 - in Mobile Culture Studies - The Journal, Volume 2/2016

150 Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal 2 2o16 Lisa Eidenhammer| Encounters with a Syrian Introduction The revolution in Syria following the Arab Spring changed Omar Khir Alanam’s life.1 For him it meant going out on the streets, singing and dancing with the spirit of revolution, not being afraid of death. For a long time, the people of Syria had endured a state of not being free, and therefore put all their hopes in the Arab Spring. As the Syrian writer Dima Wannous (2014, 43) points out, it would be a vain endeavor to deal with the revolution and all its aspects within a single article. Even if we recalled and wrote about all the events, it would still be a mere appro- ximation to the pain suffered by the people of Syria. However, the encounter between Omar Khir Alanam and myself is a part of the recent refugee movement, and we want to provide a record with this article. Omar Khir Alanam is one of many Syrians who were forced to leave their country because of the political situation there. He has been living in Austria for over a year. We met in Graz seve- ral months ago. We started as friends, but with the van attack in Graz in June 2015, something changed in our mutual perception. We noticed that we reacted completely different to this situation. After a few months of reflection, I started to conduct topical interviews with Omar Khir Alanam, taking the van attack as the starting point. Graz, 20 June 2015 The official homepage of the city of Graz announ- ced on 20 June 2015 at 5 o’clock p.m. that a man running amok had killed three people and woun- ded 34, of which 10 were in intensive care. He was said to have deliberately chased innocent people with his car in the city center. On the same day, on the occasion of the World Refugee Day, the Austrian Bureau of Information forwarded a report by the European Parliament announcing that the civil war in Syria had now lasted 4 years. The number of people in need of humanitarian aid was estimated to exceed 12 million people. It was esti- mated that no fewer than 200,000 people had lost their lives in the conflict. In 2014, 122,800 refugees from Syria had applied for asylum in the European Union. It is not possible to contrast two events such as those mentioned above. However, two different worlds – Omar’s and mine – met that day, nearly coincidentally. On 20 June, speechlessness and con- sternation spread over the city, its inhabitants and 1 Omar Khir Alanam was born in 1991 in Damaskus. He was involved in the civil protest movement in Syria in 2011. He had to abandon his business studies to his escape in 2013. Omar Khir Alanam lives currently in Graz. He works occasionally as an interpreter for Caritas and writes poems. Abb. 1: Collage of Syrian-Austrian encounter on 20 June 2015, by Lisa Eidenhammer