Damascus and Aleppo, Syria – Until the fall of the al-Assad regime, the word “dollar” was forbidden in public. Instead, people used anything green – my favourite substitute was “molokhiyeh”, the green leaf eaten in a stew in Arab countries.
This was a story I heard many times from Syrians when reporting from Aleppo and Damascus in the days following the regime’s overthrow. Under the former regime, the walls had ears and anyone could be listening on a street corner or the other end of the phone line.
