Syrian-Palestinians, a rose in Karlruhe, and a beautiful song
Many of the Syrians we’ve met in Greece, Germany and Sweden (including Lulu in Fagersta) are actually Syrian-Palestinians, many from Yarmouk, a once-vibrant neighborhood in Damascus that’s been decimated by the war. (A young pianist, Ayham al-Ahmed, has been featured in several YouTube videos playing amid the rubble, hoping to draw attention to the people trapped, starving and without water, in the remains of Yarmouk).
Syrian-Palestinians enjoyed a good status in Syria, at least compared to other Arab countries. They held nearly all rights of Syrian nationals (except citizenship and voting rights) and could attend Syrian schools and universities. Now they are refugees twice over.
Yarmouk, located in the southern edge of Damascus, was the largest of the twelve Palestinian camps in the country. According to a thorough, excellent study by Nidal Bitari in the Journal of Palestine Studies, Yarmouk was different from the other Palestinian camps in Syria because it was very diverse (many Syrians also lived there) and was also home to many educated professionals, including doctors, lawyers, engineers and businesspeople.
One of those businesspeople was an elegant woman named Ghada, who fled Yarmouk with her family and now lives near Mainz, Germany with her two sons. I first met Ghada in the German village of Ober Hilbersheim in March, when her brother-in-law, whom I had met in Athens a month earlier, introduced us. (The photo above is a view from the window of his room in the refugee camp in Karlsruhe, Germany, shortly after he arrived. He found the rose on the sidewalk outside the camp, still plump and tender, even though someone had dropped it).
The three of us roasted eggplant together in Ghada’s new home in a sleepy German village, sipping red wine as she recalled her life in Yarmouk, where she ran a pharmacy. “I’m just as Syrian as I am Palestinian,” she said. “I was born and raised in Syria, and its landscape is as familiar to me as my own family.” She loved mornings in Damascus, where she would sit on her terrace drinking coffee, surrounded by the scent of roses. “And at night, we would all cook together,” she said. “We would play music, and my husband would make pomegranate molasses.”
She took out her mobile phone and cued a song, "Pass By Your Name," by Marcel Khalife, the renowned Lebanese composer whose best albums are inspired by the poetry of the late Mahmoud Darwish, the eminent Palestinian poet.
As this beautiful song played on her phone, she and her brother-in-law tried to translate the lyrics into English - “As I pass by your name, I feel like a Damascene who passes by Andalucía" - but they both choked up. The song didn’t conjure Palestine for them, but rather placed them in their ruined, long-gone homes in their city of birth. "Damascus, my Damascus," Ghada said, wiping tears from her eyes. "You can’t imagine how beautiful my Damascus used to be."
- Joanna Kakissis @joannakakissis