Growing up in Syria meant growing up in a rather abstract world, one in which our ancestors are always praised for a greatness that we never saw for ourselves. Yet it still meant growing up feeling the full weight of our country’s illustrious history

We would quench our curiosity with anecdotes from our elders about revolutions and great men of genius. Small wonder then that Syrians of my generation talk about the difficulty of defining ourselves. Straddling such ambiguous worlds, what exactly does it mean to be 'Syrian'? How to reconcile the grandeur of our past with what seemed like a current state of intellectual stagnation? It is virtually impossible to spend 20 minutes with a Syrian without hearing praises of our ‘Lost Golden Ages’. We find ourselves constantly gazing endlessly backwards. And so as any bored, hopelessly idealistic young kid, I decided to be angry at the world and blame it for my confusion: “L’Histoire est écrite par les vainqueurs”—history is after all written by the winner.

Robert Brasillach’s words stuck with me, and keeping my history books at bay, I took to blaming history for mine and my people’s intellectual stagnation. I sought to ‘deconstruct’ everything and anything, plunging into wildly obscure, confused texts that focused on equally bewildering Universalist ideals, and other attempts to tear down notions such as those that see Arabs and the West as two distinct blocks, locked in a bitter struggle.

So imagine my perplexity when asked to help organize what was the Syrian Embassy’s biggest event of the year to be celebrated within the splendid setting of a US Landmark: the Library of Congress (LOC). To my amazement (and great shame), just a few hours into the event, it hit me that not only have I fallen victim to reverse prejudice, but I am certainly perpetrating it with this cynicism. The splendor of the LOC, combined with an atypical hosting of “a Syrian evening,” at a time of great tension between the two countries, definitely raised eyebrows around town. Grandeur and controversy go hand in hand after all. A DC blogger put it this way: “After I managed to pick my jaw up off the ground, I settled into my environment.” After a brief cocktail reception, Nasser Rabbat gave a lecture entitled “Syria: The Forgotten Heir of Antiquity.” The final act of the evening was a performance of a 3,400-year-old song (“the oldest song written by mankind”), by clarinetist Kinan al-Azmah and soprano Dima Orsho.

Looking back, I see this evening as yet another metaphor for the complexity of our culture, and of Damascus itself—a place where the historic fusion of different peoples and civilizations seems to have left it remarkably hospitable and rich in ‘cultures’. Damascus has never ceased to reassure us that it will remain true to itself: diverse, fertile and unaltered.

History, like symbols or language, has always constructed our reality; it has a constitutive power that unites audiences across time and space. My intuition tells me that this capacity of a single object to bring together an infinite number of subjects cannot be wholly unrelated to finding collective solutions to common problems. And so I put my naïve unshakable mindset to rest: History does matter after all—so long as it is used to overcome adversity, and not to claim nationalistic superiority.

Such gatherings, though largely symbolic, will open American eyes to the realities of the Middle East. They reveal both the powers and limitations of politics and diplomacy, yet with them comes the realization that as intricate as they may be, nothing can change perceptions more than a gathering of people to establish grounds rooted in history. True, public diplomacy can sometimes appear contrived, but it is not to be taken lightly.

Fancy cocktail parties are one thing, but remember that the US and Syria are incredibly young countries, demographically. Perhaps engaging people at a more grass-roots level in these exchanges would add value to their power. The power of our young should not be underestimated; it is up to us to take the lead and rid our countries of all types of prejudice if we so wish, instead of holding on to history as mere relics of things passed.

Damascus is a very humbling city; Roman ruins lay in juxtaposition with crumbling mud houses, and next to the “Street called Straight,” one of the few addresses mentioned in the Bible. With the picture of the old city, comes a message … Against the odds it is a symbol of a shared, profoundly human heritage for many, one that can be used as a tool for peace, one to help us communicate with the “other” in different ways.

Rasha Adi works at the Syrian Embassy in Washington, DC.

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