June 2022. UN Secretary General António Guterres has called the humanitarian situation in Syria “disastrous” for millions of children, women and men. It would be the largest refugee crisis in the world. Bombarded on June 10 by an Israeli raid, the delivery of humanitarian aid is disrupted at Damascus airport. For a third time in four years, the writer Jean-Pierre Gorkynian (sniper, Memory d’encrier, 2020) went to Aleppo, where part of his family still lives. Narrative.
We are in Sryan Al-Jadadeh, the Syriac quarter. My cousin Gio and his fiancée, Mariebelle, are practicing their dance moves on Hoy tengo ganas de ti for their wedding, scheduled in two days. The choreography was proposed and taught to them by an expert in wedding planning who has a storefront in Aziziyé, one of the most upscale neighborhoods of Aleppo. The couple expects nearly 150 guests. The wedding promises to be most sumptuous.
I came straight from Montreal to attend the celebrations. I bring an envelope well bulging with denominations of US dollars intended for the young husband. My wedding present. It was he who, in 2017 and 2018, allowed me to write my novel by giving me the keys to Aleppo, leading me to the front of the battle, to crossing lines of snipers so that I can represent as faithfully as possible the combat scenes that are there. I owed her this little flower.
Unfortunately for both of us and for the guests, the few bottles of scotch and champagne that I had bought in Paris were confiscated at the customs control, at the Lebanese-Syrian border of Dabosiyah, through which I entered the country by car. Malesh, it doesn’t matter, he repeats to me with his usual casualness; After eleven years of civil war and four years of intense aerial bombardment over his head, I can assure you he has seen worse. Besides, it’s still not impossible to find, in Aleppo, scotch and champagne.
Gio and his city
He hasn’t really changed since we parted ways in 2018. Still that usual, imperturbable composure that makes you feel like he has a solution to all problems. What in fact, there is no problem. The war destroyed his father’s four businesses. His family was greatly impoverished. He is unemployed. Electricity only works for three hours a day. His little start-up laser wood cutter struggles to cover its fixed costs. Add to that that he busted his ass buying Shiba Inu (SHIB) during the bitcoin bubble. One could rightly believe that he would be a bit discouraged. Not at all, in fact. His bourgeois misfortunes may well befall him, they won’t wipe out the smile he wears on his lips. It’s that a man has found a woman. His sweetheart is an exiled childhood friend, who became Swedish during the war. She came back for her man. This marriage is a bit like Gio’s passport to leave the country. He who, when I was younger, when I met him for the second time, in Beirut in 2017, when he was a refugee, dreamed of freeing his homeland from terrorists, even if it meant dying on the front lines as a martyr on the land of his ancestors.
The times have changed. Most of his friends managed to get visas and went to live abroad. Others have been able to benefit from private sponsorships. Suddenly, the city was quietly emptied of its rich. Those who remained became poor. And the poor, on the other hand, have become miserable.
The humanitarian crisis
According to the latest figures from the World Food Program (WFP), 12.4 million Syrians suffer from food insecurity, which represents an increase of 4.5 million over the last year. A national record. Years of conflict, population displacements, the COVID-19 pandemic and now the war in Ukraine which is disrupting Russian wheat imports, coupled with the oil crisis, soaring prices and the sharp devaluation of the Syrian pound are exerting a enormous pressure on families, who can no longer meet their basic needs.
Take for example. In July 2018, when I was last there, the US dollar was trading at around 500 Syrian liras on the black market. Today, it trades at almost 4000 lira, an increase of 800%. However, the national average salary – paid only in local currencies – benefited from an increase of only 400%. The price of unsubsidized bread, meanwhile, skyrocketed by 1500%. As for the price at the pump, it has doubled, which is roughly equivalent to the global trend. However, fuel is rationed at 25 liters per household, every 17 days. Any excess must be traded on the black market.
Meanwhile, Gio smokes Heets, wears Ray-Bans, sports a Buddhist bracelet, walks around with big wads of Syrian pounds that overflow from his shirt. He wants to look like his favorite influencers at all costs. He belongs to the Christian bourgeoisie of Aleppo, relatively well off, which never really dissociated itself from the government, even at the height of the revolution, fearing persecution from the Islamists. It is a community made up largely of descendants of survivors of the Armenian genocide who were nearly 400,000 to flock to the gates of Aleppo during the murderous deportations, between 1915 and 1920. It is said that they were nearly 10% before the war. Today, they do not even represent 1% of the population, according to the diocese of Aleppo, which makes them a people threatened with extinction. No wonder, in the light of these figures, that Eastern Christians tend to fall into the traps of communitarianism and withdrawal.
Preparations for the wedding
I managed to catch Gio between two races. He wants everything to be perfect. This day is so important to him. His family invested a lot of money in it… maybe too much. It’s almost uncomfortable. But he is the eldest of his siblings. And in these countries, some parents live only to see this day. Everything has been thought out, down to the smallest detail: the invitation cards, the caterer, the photographer, the hotel, the DJ, the decoration, even the pyrotechnics. The organization of his day depends on several elements that are beyond his control: the cleaner cannot finalize his suit before 5 p.m., due to a lack of “amps” before 1 p.m. You have to plan your route accordingly, otherwise it will waste fuel. He therefore prefers to delay his visit to the florist in the evening. He will take the opportunity to carry boxes to the hotel and discuss with the manager a few minor details, such as the positioning of the projectors and the layout of the tables.
I could not help judging his decisions, given — among other things — the financial burden placed on him by this event, which I attribute — in my humble opinion — to the weight of tradition and uncompromising conservatism. I didn’t dare ask him about it. Basically, what am I getting into? But the obsession with decorum started to seem frankly ridiculous to me when, in 38 degrees Celsius, we were all swimming in our suits, without air conditioning, and the photographer was dictating practically our every move to arrange the scenes and photograph them. .
Nevertheless, there is something impressive, and moving, in the fact of celebrating the union for life of two people. I have to confess to you shamefully that I ate until I burst my stomach (nearly ten appetizers before attacking the main course, to then finish with the dessert) with this idea in mind that I was in a country at war, going through the worst famine in its history. But there was something about these celebrations like a show of force. At least that was what I sensed in the will of my cousin and his family. A refusal to let war dictate their dreams. A way to challenge bombs, shells and snipers. Their way of saying they exist. Or rather, that they existed as such, according to these customs. At that moment, I wondered what the children of Gio and Mariebelle will remember about their Syrian heritage. Will they take an interest in it, as I did? Or will they deny it, like my sister?
Before the ceremony, Gio’s friends surrounded him to give him a beating. An old Aleppine rite, I was told, so that the newlywed could never again envy his life as a bachelor. They then carried him on their shoulders to his young wife, chanting sacred Syriac songs in chorus, calling on God to give him the best of luck for the future.
It was their way of saying goodbye.