2023-11-24 23:58:33
Accustomed to going through customs and immigration controls at airports, the first land border crossing undertaken by Leslie Alonso and Yodeni Masó gave them a different experience, that of leaving one country and in a few minutes entering another. It was December 2022 and they were driving from Lebanon to Damascus, Syria.
It’s funny – Leslie remembers – how after crossing the border point of origin, you travel a short distance through what they call ‘no man’s land’, you reach your destination, you pass the controls and enter unknown terrain, apparently unpopulated until the vicinity. From the capital.
“We went to Syria on that first occasion invited by Father Elías Zahlawi, ninety-two years old, priest of the church of Our Lady of Damascus.
“This Catholic father is a very special person, in the Middle East he is identified as the defender of liberation theology. He had a dialogue with Frei Betto, through Al Mayadeen and Mrs. Wafi’s contacts; “We witnessed that conversation.”
But this father – Yodeni adds – is also a lover of the Muslim religion and has told us that his best friend, whose wristwatch he keeps that he never takes off, was a sheik Muslim.
It was this charming old man, ninety-two years old, who invited us at Christmas that year to see The Choir of Joy, which he has organized with more than four hundred boys, girls and adolescents, and with which he performs a concert every December. at the Damascus Opera House, explains Leslie.
“It was very cold; The show was on the same afternoon as our arrival. We went to the Opera and there we faced the reality of the Syrian war: in one of the songs the Choir of Joy paid tribute to all the children and young members of the group who had died during the hostilities.
“They sang a number dedicated to the pain of war and at the same time the photos of the children who had died and their families appeared. When we left the theater we already had that sad absence incorporated.”
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Yodeni speaks of the affability of Fady Marouf, the friend of Cuba and correspondent of Latin Press in Damascus; worker at our embassy.
—The next day he took us to see the city and also some of its peripheral areas, which before the war were multi-family neighborhoods with numerous buildings.
“The bombs reached there. The buildings were left in skeletons, the apartments empty, completely destroyed. It is the image of the horror, the cruelty of the war, the suffering of the Syrian population.”
On that trip in December 2022, Leslie notes, the army’s checkpoints and security points stood out in Damascus, given the threat from terrorist gangs.
“You had to stop the car, sometimes they told you to get out, on many occasions they checked the trunk. When we returned in May 2023, surveillance was not so evident. There was a sense of recovery, more security in the country.
“In December 2022, on the highway that connects Damascus with the Lebanese border, the towns looked completely uninhabited, and when we returned in May 2023, we saw apartments with clothes hanging, water tanks in place. “People are returning to Syria, due to the government’s strategy of encouraging the return of its nationals.”
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Although Lebanon and Syria are very close – explains Yodeni – and many people, including politicians, maintain that Lebanon was part of greater Syria, they are two different peoples. You can tell who is Lebanese and who is Syrian, just like that, at first glance, physically.
“They are very humble people, very sincere, very affable. She is worthy of admiring her simplicity and ability to get up every day and get the country moving after eleven chaotic, devastating years of so many difficulties and the blockade.”
Yodeni has made three visits to Syria; Leslie, two. She says that there the electricity cuts are overwhelming and that there are even many neighborhoods within Damascus itself that have power three hours on and three hours off, throughout the day.
“It is because the hydrocarbons that Syria has are stolen by the United States. “This way—in their faces—they take the oil and look how the Syrians live,” says Leslie.
Yodeni mentions the sweets: “they are a delight, they have a distinctive touch.” And the food is also different from Lebanese, without disregarding the many links they have as Arab preparations that they are.
Leslie emphasizes that the only thing they have never been able to accept from Syria is coffee. “It contains too much cardamom and is very acidic; They serve a small portion, almost a buchito, in a typical cup, which has no handles.”
“They have a cafe called Habana: the sympathy of Syrians for Cuba is evident. “In the Cuban embassy in Damascus there are many personnel from the place.”
Yodeni says that Fady took them to visit the Great Umayyad Mosque of Damascus and the souk (traditional market) that never closes, neither in time of war nor in time of COVID, people are always there.
“The car bombs detonating through Damascus and the souk full of people buying spices, coffee, Arab sweets, dates… Syria is a country worth admiring, its resilience and resistance,” Leslie bets.
Both agree that, despite how painful the war has been, the Syrian people have managed to rise up. “But Israel is still a latent threat; Right now there is war in Gaza and the Israelis have bombed the airports of Damascus and Aleppo several times.
In Syria—Yodeni adds—the State has more strength than in Lebanon; The institutions work, there is a government public transportation system with connections to the rest of the provinces, the governorates.
“You can see it in how they receive you, what type of activities they organize for you through the embassy, the interest of the Party, the government… During the visit we made in May we went with Aleida Guevara, and we perceived the solidity of the government.
“Credibility in the army is also much stronger than that of Lebanon, which a year ago did not have a president of the republic, only an interim government.”
For Leslie and Yodeni, their visits to Syria have meant contact with the culture of another country in the Arab world, with the pain that war and terrorism leaves in the people, the joy of meeting Father Elías and his Choir of Joy, and having experienced for the first time the passage from one country to another through a land border in the midst of the tense situations that these nations are experiencing. Surely these experiences contain many more emotions, it is up to them to tell us about them. Taken from Cuba in Summary
Outskirts of Damascus, Syria, buildings destroyed during the war against terrorism, September 2023 Dialogue between Father Elias and Frei Betto, December 7, 2022 Father Elías Concert at the Damascus Opera House by the Choir of Joy, December 21, 2022 Souk in front of the Umayyad Mosque, Damascus, Syria, September 2023 Leslie and Yodeni in Damascus, Syria, December 2022
Cover photo: Leslie in interview with Father Elías. Photo: Courtesy of the interviewees.
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