One must work long and hard to arrive at the truthful. What I want and set as my goal is damned difficult, and yet I don’t believe I’m aiming too high. I want to make drawings that move some people … Whether in figures or in landscapes, I would like to express not something sentimentally melancholic but deep sorrow....
Rasha Milhem
In September 2019, on behalf of ‘Beloved Syria’, I interviewed Ms Rasha Milhem, a Syrian translator, news writer, and filmmaker. Rasha has worked for SANA (Syrian Arab News Agency), the Syrian equivalent of the ABC, since 2009. I found her to be eloquent, deep-thinking and passionate. Â
Having studied English Literature, Rasha is keenly interested in the arts and...
Published by Beloved Syria with the permission of the author.
Lady Damascus was first published in SYRIA through writers’ eyes, edited by Marius Kociejowski (Eland Publishing Ltd, 2010).
Brigid Keenan is a journalist and author. Her book Damascus: Hidden Treasures of the Old City (Thames & Hudson, 2000) and the photographer Tim Beddow who helped her produce it are mentioned in Lady Damascus. See this...
Veggie Stuffed Vine Leaves
Bushra, who arrived in Australia in 2016, passed on this recipe for yalanji to Beloved Syria. Bushra doesn’t follow a written recipe, and doesn’t use exact measurements. Instead she uses her culinary instincts, her five senses, and her love for food and sharing to bring her creations to life. The below measurements are an estimate of...
‘Beloved Syria’ is honoured to present this beautiful documentary featuring the Gardenia Choir, a women’s choir based in Syria which has performed both in Syria and abroad.
At the start of the film, the choir sings 'Barcarolle' from Jacques Offenbach's ‘The Tales of Hoffman’, a song that must be familiar to tens of thousands of choir members and opera lovers...
This interview with Mahdi Al Mahdi took place on 24 September 2019, my last evening in Damascus before I flew out of Syria on my return trip to Australia.Â
I just chanced upon the ‘White and Black Quartet’ when I sat outside my hotel to chat with friends. It was a ‘magic moment’ for me. Â
https://youtu.be/oYcsQFdU9-g
Here, 'White and Black Quartet'...
Published by Beloved Syria with the permission of the author.
'A Child in Damascus' was first published in SYRIA through writers' eyes, Edited by Marius Kociejowski (Eland Publishing Ltd, 2010)
A Child in DamascusÂ
by Josceline Dimbleby
...years later I understood the saying that once you have lived in Damascus, it lives in you
In the early summer of 1950, aged seven, I arrived...
Elaine Rippey Imady, MSI Press, LLC, 2013
Traveling to Syria meant leaving behind my mother and my two sisters and uprooting myself from my small Hudson River town where    my mother’s family had lived since 1765 …. I told my mother … that I had met the man I would marry and she laughed. Seven months later...
By Rasha Milhem
One lonely night recently, during a particularly hard time of the coronavirus quarantine, a high school friend and I reviewed our lives and recalled the 2000s with some nostalgia.Â
We are millennials, born in the early 1980s, when Israel invaded and occupied parts of Lebanon and conflict between the state and the Muslim Brotherhood Movement threatened to destabilise...
An RT Documentary, this video was first posted in February 2019, when people living in most Syrian cities and towns could breathe a lot easier, and had cause to look forward to peace.
'Syrian Tango' features a sculptor, Tango dancers, a documentary film maker, and a composer/musician. In giving a voice to these artists, the documentary presents Syrian people at...
