Faith No More asks, Syria investigates

That's a shrunken screencap of my website tracker from yesterday, detailing one Syrian visitor. Curiously, the person's Internet connection is through something called the Department of It Knowledge. What could such a department be responsible for? Investigating what It is? ("Gather 'round, boys, because marginalizing women is the it thing for 2006! And go ga-ga for Bashar, because Democracy is once again out, out, out!") Perhaps they're really excited by eBay's new ad campaign? It's unclear: Google and LexisNexis searches showed nothing, so it was time to expand the investigation.

With Skype, calls to Syria cost 37 cents a minute and knowledge of It Knowledge was surely worth the price. (Also, I have a day off today and nothing better to do with my time.) I rang up the Syrian Ministry of Tourism because I figured it was one of the few places I'd be guaranteed to get an English speaking person. I heard one long continuous beep, followed by static, followed by short beeps, followed by short beeps that had static between them, followed by more static, followed by short beeps that were four times as loud as the previous beeps, followed by silence. Then Skype disconnected and declared the call “failed.”

I wasn't giving up on Skype so fast, though. There were two people on from Syria that had SkypeMe mode on, so I asked them about the DOIK. Saleem and Saef, however, did not respond. So it was on to the U.S. Embassy in Syria. A machine with a friendly-sounding American woman's voice picked up, informing me that they're only open from Sunday to Thursday.

Was all hope lost? It seemed so. But just then -- as I was typing this post, in fact -- Saef called me through Skype! Oh my. I answered and heard a television murmuring in the background.

"Hello?" I said.

"Hi," he said in a rather cautious tone, more like "ha-eee."

"Hi!" I said, already impressed by the exchange.

"Yes?" he said.

"Oh, well, see, someone visited my website from the Department of It Knowledge in Syria, and I didn't know what that was so --"

And then he hung up. I'm guessing it was because he didn't understand a thing I was saying -- after all, his Skype profile lists his language as Arabic -- but the adventurer in me would like to think he got scared when I mentioned the elusive DOIK, like I was asking a North Korean to dish the dirt on K-Jong Illin'.

So, what could DOIK be? This list of Syrian government ministries contains a Ministry of Information, which seems like the most reasonable choice. But amusingly -- and appropriately, really -- the Ministry of Information's website contains absolutely no information. "Our Site is under reconstruction... Please, come back soon!" it says. But, nah. I think I'm done.

Posted by Jason Feifer at December 23, 2005 10:25 AM