Buying a shirt in Syria is a lesson in mental arithmetic

I went down to the market with my niece to buy her a shirt. A simple errand, you might think. But nothing in Syria is simple anymore.

The shop displayed its prices in dollars as though we were strolling through a high street in Texas. The dollar is everywhere. Even the vegetable stalls now flirt with foreign currency. God rest the days when merely mentioning the dollar aloud could land you in trouble.

The market itself was a blur of noise and nervous energy. Vendors shouting over one another, customers weaving through tight spaces, everyone in a hurry – as if lingering too long might somehow cost them more. The market is no longer a place of casual browsing. 

My niece picked out her shirt quickly, delighted in the uncomplicated way only a child can be. And then came my moment of reckoning.

The price was in dollars. I had to convert it into Syrian pounds. Then, somehow, translate that figure into something meaningful after years of currency collapse. And then – just to complicate matters further – recalculate it again in the “new” Syrian pounds after two zeros had been lopped off.

I stood there, mid-shop, waving my hands in the air like some deranged mental arithmetic prodigy, whispering numbers to myself, trying to make sense of it all. But this wasn’t a failure of maths. The economic equation itself no longer made sense.

I asked the shopkeeper for the price in Syrian pounds. He replied, curtly, in dollars. No discussion. No flexibility. The market, it seems, has made its choice and imposed it on the rest of us.

The entire country is operating in multiple currencies while claiming to be one nation. Prices fluctuate wildly from one area to another, from one shop to the next. There is no standard, no real oversight – just a collection of mini-economies, each with its own rules.

Head north, and you’ll find people using Turkish lira. Walk into the same chain store, and you may see prices in dollars in Damascus and Turkish lira in Afrin. This is despite the Syrian citizen being paid in Syrian pounds.

Salaries, even after increases, rarely exceed150$ a month. And so we are left with the absurd equation at the heart of daily life: incomes in a collapsing local currency, prices pegged to a global one.

Before buying even the simplest item, a person must run through a mental checklist: Can I afford this? Is it worth it? What about the rest of the month? Should I wait? Can I make up for it later?

My niece watched me, puzzled. For her, buying a shirt should be effortless: choose, pay, leave. Instead, she saw me grappling with a problem that should never have been complicated in the first place.

Countries in crisis often turn to foreign currencies. Lebanon did so after its civil war and again after the banking collapse in 2019, when trust in the local currency evaporated. But Syria’s case is stranger.

Our currency still exists. It has not been formally replaced. And yet, it no longer seems capable of expressing the value of things.

I am no economist. I am simply a Syrian who returned home after years of exile. But I cannot help asking: if we conducted our daily transactions in Syrian pounds, could we begin to restore confidence in our own currency? And if the answer is yes, then why are traders allowed to confront us with dollar signs at every turn?

The problem runs deeper than what currency we trade in. There is a creeping erosion of certainty.

Nothing feels fixed anymore. Not prices, not incomes, not even expectations. Life has become a constant exercise in daily calculation, a running tally that follows you from the market to your home and into your thoughts.

And the most insidious part? This anxiety seeps into everything. It is no longer reserved for life’s big decisions. It shadows the smallest ones, from buying a shirt to planning tomorrow’s meals. We are trying, desperately, to understand a reality that refuses to make sense.

And perhaps that is the real tragedy. Not that I couldn’t calculate the price of a shirt, but that something so ordinary now demands so much effort, when it should have remained simple, clear, and utterly unremarkable.