Damascus Becomes Haven for Westerners Learning Arabic

American and European students who love the cheap tuition for Arabic classes and the purity of the dialect (it’s close to classical Arabic) have been going to Syria’s capital for years. But in the latest report on the trend, NPR notes that the community of young language students from the West are also stepping out of the usual expat and study-abroad bubble. Looks like they’re at least taking time to discover a complex, restless and intriguing country often reduced to caricature as a member of an extended Axis of Evil.

Photo by James Gordon via Flickr (Creative Commons).

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