Damascus: A bearded and muscled young man in camouflage fatigues drove up to one of the checkpoints of the Syrian capital, facing the Central Bank of Syria.
He was driving a black Audi A8 with a private Syrian license plate.
The car merged into the special lane for military personnel and VIPs — to avoid getting stuck in traffic or having to get screened by the soldiers on duty.
The car was owned by an industrialist, who was riding in the back seat, but when his chauffeur handed his documents to security personnel, his passport read “Islamic Republic of Iran”.
The soldier took one glance and let him pass.
It has now become a common occurrence in the capital for well-to-do Syrians to hire Iranians to drive them around, as their passports give them preferential treatment at military checkpoints.
“My employer used to employ a Syrian chauffeur but sometimes it took him a day to carry out tasks because of traffic and checkpoints. Because I’m Iranian I can do the same tasks in one hour,” the chauffeur who told Gulf News his name was “Abu Ali” said.
“I speak good Arabic but I don’t get to use it much. Its better if I speak Farsi at the checkpoints, they let me pass faster,” he said.
Throughout their long history, the residents of Damascus have always invented creative ways to cope with their changing environment, especially in times of war.
“They have a built-in mechanism — a remarkable adaptability to change — that makes them adjust, very quickly, to changing conditions” says Ahmad, the managing director of a training suits factory that has also hired an Iranian citizen to run its day-to-day paperwork.
“What’s important is to get our work done” he notes, adding that he hired Ja’afar, a 25-year-old Iranian student studying at Damascus University for a monthly salary of $300, to accompany their delivery trucks as they commute through Damascus.
“A Syrian errand boy costs less — no more than $100 per month, but the extra pay is worth it because it gets things done much faster. It’s almost like magic how easy the delivery goes when Jaafar is carrying it out,” he told Gulf News.
Jaafar, a cleanly-shaven young man with specks spoke to Gulf News saying: “I study during the week and work with my Syrian employer in the afternoon, and on Saturdays. The money is good — it pays the rent and covers my expenses.”
When measured against labour rates in the Syrian market, this young Iranian student is making 150,000 Syrian pounds — the equivalent of a middle management salary in the private sector.
If a Syrian were hired, he/she would cost no more than 60,000-75,000 pounds.
Iran has been one of the chief backers of Syrian President Bashar Al Assad’s government, but it has not only sent its soldiers to help fight rebels, but average Iranian citizens have also been dispatched.
For the past two years, Iranian real estate developers and private citizens have been silently buying houses throughout the old city of Damascus.
This is a known “secret” among all Syrian property owners and real estate agents in Syria. Privately, everybody complains about Iran’s investment scheme but nobody dares object in public, not out of fear but rather, financial need. All of the lucrative deals are signed off in foreign currency — a life jacket for residents of the Old City who are plagued by devaluation of their local currency after five years of war.
Not a single one of the homes purchased by Iranians has been transformed into anything provocative or high profile. They are just buying homes and “keeping a low profile” until the guns go silent in Syria, making use of their comically low prices in the global real estate market and clearly, waiting for a time when Damascus will boom and they will become very profitable investments.
