Seite - 154 - in Mobile Culture Studies - The Journal, Band 2/2016

154 Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal 2 2o16 Lisa Eidenhammer| Encounters with a Syrian the painters Wissam Al Jazairy and Tammam Azzam, as well as music by the singer Samih Choukeir and short films at the Syrian audiovisual arts NGO Bidayyat. Schiffauer states that the experience of the Self and the Other are inseparably interrelated (1988, 255). As a result of the dynamic approach, we were constantly confronted with the issue of questioning ourselves as well as the other, in order to unravel the stories that had been spun around us. Hamid Reza Yousefi (2008, 41) argues that that encyclical hermeneutics, especially in the area of interculturality, provide a tool with which to respond to the mutuality of meeting others. It is about both sides: how do I perceive myself and how does the other perceive me? Interculturality should be committed to communication which promotes multi-dimensional thinking and rejects monocausal thinking. Yousefi states that you have to try to understand if you want to be understood (2008, 27). More important than completely understanding the other was the mutual respect with which we dealt with each other’s stories. Moreover, it is a shared desire of both of us to add our voices to the ongoing debate about refugees. In other words, our throats should not be cut but release our voices to communicate with the people of our society and to challenge them to interact and communicate in their turn. Syria, a complex reality According to Bourdieu, revealing the mechanisms that make life painful does not mean sol- ving them: “It takes more than that” (1997, 825). It is foreseeable that the people who try to escape from these mechanisms of violence in Syria will encounter extremes here in Europe when seeking asylum. In every place where human beings gather, there will be contrasts and similarities. It is a crucial task of cultural studies to draw attention to smaller shades and bigger contrasts and to highlight their complexity. Of course, conflicts or mechanisms are not solved by this. However, it leads to a more differentiated and, probably, more sensitive view of things; one becomes critically aware of the complexity of contrasts without over-generalizations and prejudice. The essential difference between the van attack in Graz and the current situation in Syria is that while the van attack was an absolute exception, the war in Syria remains a daily reality in which several systems of power and violence are involved. The Syrian conflict has long ceased to be merely regional. Syrian civil rights activist and journalist Ali Atassi and producer Christin Lüttich (2014, 175) point out that the story of Syria also tells about the petrified international humanitarianism. A solution of the unfathomable conflict and the restoration of democracy drifts out of sight with every passing day in which the world does not act. Larissa Bender (2014, 10) also notes that the Syrian war has transformed into a proxy war, however, a war fought at numerous frontiers at the same time: Sunnites against Shiites, Saudi-Arabia against Iran, Tur- key against the Kurds, USA against Russia, just to name a few. According to Bender, “The ones who suffer are the Syrian people who took to the streets against a brutal regime and who see how their power to decide on their future has been taken out of their hands entirely.” Omar Khir Alanam sung for freedom on the streets of Damascus. Today, on the anni- versary of the revolution, he sings on the streets of Graz for freedom. He will not let his voice be taken away from him and he will not stop fighting for freedom. Like Sadik Al-Azm (2014, 19), a retired university professor of philosophy, Omar keeps insisting on the fact that the Arab Spring in Damascus started as a peaceful protest movement, and only after the extremism of