My Country
- by Nizar Qabbani,
- translated by Norma Medawar
From the lisp of the
blackbird…
From the saddening
huskiness of the flute…
From the flickering sounds of
the folk songs
From the sighs of the
minaret…
From a cloud at sunset
woven by a chimney and by
the wound of the bricks of
the decorated and widespread
villages…
From the whispers of a star
settled in our east
From a story between
a rose and a...
The interview below with Mustafa Ali below was first published in the second edition of 'Beloved Syria', 2017.
In 2009, Bruce Petty – a political satirist, cartoonist and filmmaker - included Damascus on his list of cities to visit for a documentary film project, a follow-up to his 2007 film Global Haywire, for which Bruce won the AFI Best Documentary...
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.
Having studied English Literature, Rasha is keenly interested in the arts and...
Beit Jabri is one of many remarkable family homes in the lanes of old Damascus that have opened their doors to the public: they may have become boutique hotels or more humble abodes for international students or backpackers. Others, like Beit Jabri, have become cafe-restaurants that offer the delights of the Damascene cuisine.
Sitting at one of the tables in...
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...
“Each civilized person in the world should admit that he has two home countries: the one he was born in, and Syria.”
André Parrot, (1901 – 1980), archaeologist specializing in the ancient Near East; director of The Louvre
Had Syria not assumed pariah status in the eyes of some, the Grand Colonnade of Apamea would be considered among the ‘100 noteworthy...
Written by Jack Bettar
Spread across fertile mountains, between olive and pistachio groves, and across windswept limestone hills, sits an assortment of ancient ruins, some mysterious, but all precious not just to Syria’s history but to the history of humankind in general.
In the Aleppo and Idlib governorates (provinces), there can be found unique and rare insights into life more than...
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.
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...
In this second part of the interview with Damascus University professor Maamoun Abdulkarim, Professor Maamoun speaks about Syria's 'mosaic', exemplified by his own family. The interview was conducted in a Damascus cafe on 22 September 2019.
When he was director general of antiquities and museums during the worst years of the war in Syria, Professor Maamoun believes his innate understanding...
I have no power
By Nizar Qabbani
translated by Norma Medawar
I have no power to change you
Or explain your ways…
Don’t believe a man can change a woman
and the claims of men fancying that
woman comes from one of their ribs are false…
Woman never emerges from a man’s rib….
It’s he who emerges from her pelvis
like a fish rising from a basin of water
he...
