Fragments of Memory

Here are fragments of memories from my Syria formed in childhood. To me, these are important memories that decades of absence have failed to erase and make irrelevant. Despite living and adapting to other lands, Syria is the only place I feel a primordial connection to. This sense of belonging is perhaps subjective but paradoxically seems to grow with time -and age.

• Getting separated, at age five, from my mother in Souk el Hamidieh and making my way back home while my parents and the police frantically searched for me...
• Breathing the cool, crisp, early morning mountain air of Slenfeh...
• The large sepia-toned portrait of my grandfather, whom I never met, hanging in a thick wooden frame in my grandmother's house...
• Feeding ducks in Jnainat el Sabkeh (does it exist?) in Damascus...
• The familiar comforting smell of my grandmother's house: a whiff of samneh from the last meal mixed with the smell of laurel-scented olive oil soap
• My cousin demonstrating to us the flammable nature of farts (yes, it is true)...
• Picnicking at the family's bustan and watching my father's uncle, a large man, singlehandedly finish off a whole basket full of oranges...
• Taking in the scenery on a languid, hot summer day, while riding a Beirut-Lattakia taxi with Um Kulthoum playing on the radio... And watching in awe as we drove past Qalat el Hosn up on the hill...
• Watching the snow fall over Damascus and having my mother point up to Jabal Kaisson and tell us that Madame Holle (a German fable) is shaking the feathers out of her pillow case...
• Family picnics in Zabadani...
• Looking up from the street to see our newborn youngest brother-the only Damascene among us- held up to the hospital room window by my mother...
• Swimming at Shate' al Azrak...

These are some of my nostalgic memories of Syria. Memories distorted by the filter of time and distance but nonetheless real memories to me.

Filtered but not forgotten are the unpleasant memories; the hasty, forced departures and the fragmentation and dispersion of a vibrant extended family into the four corners of the world. This is a story that can be told by tens of thousands of Syrian families driven away by the stifling political oppression and lack of economic opportunities afforded by the inept, corrupt and dictatorial rule of the Baath regime for the past forty three years.

(Photo by AK: Winter, Western New York)