Ideas - The bittersweet freedom to grieve in Syria

Episode Date: January 14, 2026

"Those who remember the disappeared would also disappear." Under dictator Bashar al-Assad, grieving publicly in Syria was punishable. Now the silenced stories of lost loved ones are emerging and there are public spaces to grieve. Syrian architect Ammar Azzouz's friend and colleague Taher Al Sebai was killed on his street in 2011. After 14 years in exile, Azzouz returned home and says it's not just a right but "a duty to remember." IDEAS hears about Azzouz's classmate from architecture school, the lives of a father, a brother, and a singer who became the voice of the revolution.Guests in this podcast:Jaber Baker is a novelist, researcher, former political prisoner, human rights activist, and filmmaker. He is the author of Syrian Gulag: Assad’s Prisons, 1970-2020, the first-ever comprehensive study of Syrian political prisons.Ammar Azzouz is a British Academy Research Fellow at the University of Oxford. He studied architecture in Homs, Syria and is the author of Domicide: Architecture, War and the Destruction of Home in Syria.Noura Aljizawi is a senior researcher at the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. She was a prominent figure in the Syrian uprising and a survivor of abduction, detention, and torture.When civil war broke out in his home country in 2011, Hassan Al Kontar was a young Syrian living and working in the UAE. A conscientious objector, he refused to return to Syria for compulsory military service and lived illegally before being deported to Malaysia in 2018. He became trapped in the arrivals zone at Kuala Lumpur Airport. Exiled by war and trapped by geopolitics, Al Kontar used social media and humour to tell his story to the world, becoming an international celebrity and ultimately finding refuge in Canada.Khabat Abbas is an independent journalist and video producer based in northeastern Syria. Since 2011, she has extensively covered the developments that have shaken her country starting with the popular demonstrations, to the fight against the so-called Islamic State and its aftermath.

Every day, your eyes are working overtime, from squinting at screens and navigating bright sun to late-night drives and early morning commutes. They do so much to help you experience the world. That's why regular eye exams are so important. Comprehensive eye exams at Spec Savers are designed to check your vision and overall eye health. Every standard eye exam includes an OCT 3D eye scan, advanced technology that helps your optometrist detect early signs of eye and health conditions. like glaucoma, cataracts, or even diabetes. It's a quick, non-invasive scan that provides a detailed look at what's happening beneath the surface. Don't wait. Give your eyes the care they deserve.

Book an eye exam at Specsavers from just $99, including an OCT scan. Book at Spexsavers.cairs.com. Eye exams are provided by independent optometrists. Prices may vary by location. Visit Spexavers.caver's to learn more. This is a CBC podcast. Hello there. It's Nala Ayed. Before we start this episode of ideas, why don't you hit follow on the podcast app that you're

using right now? Following us is the easiest way to find out about new episodes as they drop. Our aim is to feed your curiosity with compelling stories and thinkers and to help make sense of the world today. Ideas episodes are available every weekday, so you're always bound to find something that piques your interest. If you already follow us, thank you so much. Maybe you could give ideas a rating or a review? Every little bit helps people find our podcast, and we really do appreciate it. Thank you for listening. Now on to today's show. Welcome to ideas. I'm Nala Ayyid. In the summer of 2025, after the fall of the Assad regime, Syrian writer Jabar Becker started planting fig trees. Behind each tree, there's a whole life.

One mother mentioned her son. He was my friend. His name was George Abdel-Latif. And she said, my son's name is George Abdel-Latif. This is the first time I've said his name out loud in 13 years. These trees honor the departed. We spent a long time choosing the term the departed. We didn't want to say victims or martyrs or murdered.

We chose the departed, those who decided to leave us and face their fate, giving us freedom in return. One of the participants was planting an olive tree. He was paying close attention to it, cleaning the area and putting stones around the tree. I asked him, why all this care? The others can help you. He said, no, I don't want anyone to help me. This is my brother. for the first time, I feel my brother's here with me. This feeling, the physical presence of pain,

pain becoming something real, place, a memorial. It's something that gives me a chance to mourn. The number of people imprisoned, tortured, disappeared, and killed Andar al-Assad is still impossible to ascertain. The number of masquerqueers, exceeds 100 in Syria, at least the ones we know about today, and I believe the number could be more than 180. Violence in Syria reached a point where even the remains of the dead were moved from one grave to some unknown place. Do you see how much insistence there is on keeping the wound open and deep, an open and permanent wound?

You wouldn't be allowed to see even your own child's grave. So that's why there's a search for a translation of this violence, a translation in terms of meaning, using Viktor Frankl's equation. Suffering without meaning equals despair. We don't want despair. We want suffering plus meaning so that we can return to life again. What is the role of these gardens? You talk about the wounds

remaining deep and open. That was the goal of the regime. What is the role of these gardens in stopping that process in helping the wounds heal? Honestly, our first goal, one of the ugliest remnants that the regime left us, is drought.

Syria today is basically a huge desert, no trees, no green spaces. That's the first point. geographically. And socially, there's another kind of drug. We don't talk to each other. The goals of the fig gardens are at first for Syria to become green again through the souls of its people. Every tree named after one of the departed restores greenery to this country, and it becomes a platform for others to release their pain. I asked Jabbert why he and his colleagues chose fig trees to remember the departed.

One day my colleague Marwa al-Salum, who was working on this project with me in Idlib, sent someone from her friends to photograph houses in their village under Assad's control. All the pictures of destroyed houses she sent us included fig trees. I told her, okay, the title is decided. The goal is clear. Our compass is clear. It's the fig gardens. The fig tree is the tree that fills the void, fills the absence with living presence. And from that came the name the fig gardens. Our first garden after the fall of the regime was in Dairmar Moussa in the Kalamoun mountains, about 80 kilometers from Damascus.

The land was donated by the Khalil Monastery, whose students were disciples of Father Paolo Dahlio, the Italian monk abducted by ISIS and later lost in Raqa. Next year we plan to plant gardens across most of Syria. All of them are fruit trees, named after civilians who died for freedom in Syria from 1970 until today. Why you? What does this do for you taking this project on? I myself was in prison from 2002 to 2004 in Sednaia Prison. Few people would call it a good experience, but it was the most important experience of my life. Those two years and one month I spent there were perhaps the most significant time I've ever lived.

In that prison, I met people who became my teachers. They taught me journalism, writing, care, and culture, all the things I carry with me today. A large number of them died under torture, and many died during the siege at Aleppo's prison, like my friend Ahmed Hamdo al-Mahmahmoud, who passed away because he had no medicine and there was no water in the prison.

Others, I don't know their faith, but I'm certain that most probably died in their cells. Even after being released, many were killed because they upheld the high moral standards they had learned in prison. They refused to be like people who acted badly. For example, Jamal Abu El-Ele. was killed at a checkpoint because he refused to hand over a car to the officer in charge

as it belonged to his employer. And Jamal didn't want to betray that trust. The truth is, the list of those who've passed away is very long, far beyond the names I mentioned earlier, like George Abdel Latif. All of these people are beacons, lights in my life. I've always been learning from them. I feel it's my duty to respect them. to remember them and to remember them beautifully. The duty to remember them beautifully. That moral impetus is something ideas producer Pauline Holdsworth has been thinking a lot about.

What is that moral impetus? What have you been thinking about? So I have been thinking about what it means to remember somebody beautifully and how it is that we create spaces of remembrance. Four years ago, I met a Syrian architect named Amar Azus, at the time he'd been living in exile in Britain for a decade. We were talking about reconstruction, and he said something that I've never forgotten about how reconstruction could either create a landscape of forgetting or a landscape of remembrance. And so what can that look like, a landscape of remembrance? Yeah, so space, I think, takes all of these different forms. We can have physical space. We can have a physical land. of remembrance, as we've just heard about with the fig gardens, where they're planting these trees and kind of embedding memories into the physical landscape. Space can be digital. It can be metaphoric. And I think it can be sonic. It can exist on the radio. So you wanted to create a space of remembrance here on ideas? I did. And I remembered a former CBC program that I think some of our listeners will also remember called The Late Show, which had this very simple and beautiful premise of

deep dive obituaries of people from across the country. So with that as my inspiration, I invited four Syrian writers, thinkers, activists to speak with me about somebody that they loved. And so who are we going to hear about? We are going to hear about a friend from architecture school with a very shy smile, a soccer player who became a revolutionary, a beloved father who died while his son was in prison and a brother who took up arms to fight ISIS in the Northeast, but whose family always imagined someday might become an actor. My name is Ammar Aziz. I am British Academy Research Fellow and a lecturer at the University of Oxford.

I would like to remember my colleague and friend at the Architecture Department. His name is Tahrir Saba'i. He was perhaps one year younger than me at the architecture. department and he was one of the kindest and the most innocent and pure souls. I would never ever imagine he would cause any kind of like harm even to an aunt, you know, even to a small insect. He was a tall young man, blonde and with a very light color of his skin. And everyone described him.

really as an angel. And that's the image that I always have in my mind, you know. A very tiny smile. Like he's so shy that he wouldn't have even like a big smile. But a very pure soul and a wonderful heart. That's how I would always remember Tahr. He was just finalizing his architecture degree. And he joined the peaceful protest in 2011 in Homs.

and I also included his story in my book because he was killed in my own street. And during that protest, the peaceful protest, a bumon was thrown on the people. And he and two other children were killed at the same time on the same day. And I went to walk off in his funeral because I was still in Syria at the time. in 2011 in one of the areas called Baba Amr. And I remember getting the wrong direction when I was going back and I saw a tank and I was just completely shaking if I would be arrested or killed on that day.

Amar left Syria later in 2011. After the Assad government collapsed, he was able to return home for the first time in 14 years, to visit his family home and to walk on the street. where Tahr was killed. I imagine that probably as you're walking on your street, that, you know, his memory is always,

it is very embedded in that space for you. In every street, in every building, there's something about death and about disappearance. And I think, you know, when you're walking in humps, you really feel this heavy weight of the people who left, the people who are no longer with us. I do remember seeing, for instance, graves that have numbers but no names in one of the neighborhoods. And I still remember like going to an area called Kermiz Dayton where one person who wanted to build his home there in this entirely destroyed area in the neighborhood.

When they started digging, they found a mother and the father and a child remained. the bones of them and the remains that they were blindfolded and handcuffed under the rubble. And it was told to them by the forensic doctor that these people must have been there for more than 10 years. And I think, you know, in my street, in many other streets, you know, they become almost like places of grief and places of trauma. But I feel that death is everywhere And that's why You know I think of Homs as also a death world

And for us that's why also we need to To remember So that we can also imagine from this death world Into like a life world You know While he was in Syria Amar heard stories emerging for the first time Stories that couldn't be told

When grieving itself was criminalized I still remember in one of the conversations that I met with one of my family friends and she was talking about her brother who was missing for many, many years and she told me that all these years when he was arrested by the Assad forces, she was going to work every day in one of the governmental institutions and she would tell her colleagues that her brother is working in Dubai. And the reason for that is that people are afraid to say that my brother has been arrested or my brother is under one of the security branches because those who remember that disappeared would disappear. And unfortunately, all these years when he was disappeared, they didn't know if he's alive or not.

They didn't know where he was. And only this year after the collapse of the Assad regime, they found out that he was. killed in Sednaia prison. Those who remembered the disappeared would also disappear. That chilling fact led Amar to a powerful idea, the right to remember.

I think in addition to having a right to remember, we have a duty to remember because without this memory, how can we move forward? I think those who were supportive of the machine of horror,

they refused to remember. they want to pretend that everything happened for something, you know, because these hundreds of thousands of people were wrong and they needed to be killed. So I think it is both a responsibility and the duty for us to remember that creating these collective spaces of memory and grief means that we come closer to the pain of other communities. And therefore, instead of having a blank page where we hear a, about only absence and irasur and silence,

we are filling these blank pages with new stories that they have been waiting for decades and for many years to be told. And of course, I live in the UK where the UK is very great in, you know, memory and remembering. And we have like sometimes you're walking in a street of London and you have a blacks on the walls of the houses and it would tell you Virginia Woolf lived in this house

or Oscar Wilde studied. in this college or et cetera. And I think, like, you know, as an architect, also thinking about this topic, I always think, what is our responsibility to create perhaps a digital map of, you know,

information about every arrest, about every torture site, about every place where somebody has disappeared? Amar still longs for a way to remember his friend Tahr and to do so publicly. Because until now, you know, many years later, so it's been almost 14 years now,

that the university did not acknowledge his killing. They did not make any form of remembrance. And actually, I remember when his classmate in 2011, he told his friends

like, let's not enter the class so that we can almost like do a peaceful protest. We remember our friend. Not everyone joined him, but what was, you know, we can, you know, almost like, do a peaceful protest. happened is that one of his classmates reported him and they arrested him from the university. I was there. I was in the collective action that we tried to take on campus and we were arrested

or we were like followed and reported. Since then it was no longer safe for us to go to the university to grieve collectively. One of our friends, or one of our even professors who lost. This is Nora Al-Jazawi. She's a Syrian human rights activist and now lives in Toronto, where she works as a researcher at Citizen Lab, studying the long reach of digital repression around the world. Like Amar, she was a student at the university in Holmes

during the early days of the revolution. I even wrote an article about it. Back then in Arabic, I called it, the four minutes playing in this critical time of four minutes because we called on students to come and it's going to be only one minutes of silence and then we will just go. And it was supposed to be at 12 sharp.

At the last minute, Nora and the other organizers decided to hold their silent protest at exactly four minutes to 12. It happened and then we just like finish everything we wrapped up before 12. And this is why they couldn't manage to arrest so many of us. They were coming on time. They were dreaming to come on time, but we took one step ahead. It was just our proactive major to protect as many as we can from our community. The family was threatened if they would call for a funeral or if they would allow people to come to their place. They might

arrested the other members of the family. So they started just bury their loved ones in darkness at night. And in our culture, collective grief is really, collectivism is really a key. People would come

together. Even like sometimes if you invite someone to a wedding, they might not come, but the same people would come if there's something bad. If you lost someone, they would come to be there. In 2025, Nora returned to Syria for the first time since she went into exile 13 years earlier. To me, like the first time I went to Syria, I couldn't go to my city.

I couldn't go to Homs because this is the trauma that I'm not ready yet to confront. So it was just like touching, passing by from outside, driving from Damascus to Alipo. But like, I will never go to Hams now. I'm not ready. And eventually, I realized that I'm not ready because none of my friends during the revolution has returned yet. So I was waiting for someone to grieve with. And on my second trip in the summer, I found this person.

When you found a friend to grieve with, who is it that you wanted to remember? So one of them is Abel Basit Sarut. the singer, the voice of the revolution in Homs. Yeah, the moment that I realize, we are really free in Syria, is the moment when I crossed the borders and his songs were played everywhere in the streets. His voice was never, even if he was made.

Yeah, he wasnton, he was present everywhere. His presence everywhere. Abdul Basad al-Sarout was a soccer player who joined the revolution in 2011 and whose voice was unexpectedly exceptional. He was not trained to be a singer, but his voice, his Badawi, and he has all of these beautiful elements in his voice and in his character. And yeah, like he stood up and he started just singing and bringing people together.

So he was the star. At that moment, he came to the regime attention and the regime wanted to kill him. Abdel Basid al-Sarut became a revolutionary for eight years, until he was killed in 2019. When Nora returned to Homs, she walked through the streets with their mutual friend, remembering Basit in the places they'd once gathered.

We were walking in the streets of our own collective story of the revolution, remembering that Bassett was sitting here. He said this, and you remember, you disagreed with him, and you were just laughing. And crying, like, I don't know, it was just mixed off all of these very complex emotions that usually you process while grieving.

We don't cry only because we lost someone, but we're remembering the person in the place with the people, with all of the complex of our emotions towards that moment, towards that person. We loved Bassett, but we didn't agree with him all the time. He yelled at us, we yelled at him. Sometimes he was jerk. Sometimes we were just like assholes.

He always admired me because he said, like, you are a very brave woman. And to them, in general, in Syria, people who are not trained for gender sensitivity, they would say, you are as brave as a man. And he called me Abu Nour. It means the father of Nour, not Nura. And I was okay with this.

Like, thank you. I really appreciate it. But, like, there are so many brave women as well. like, no, you are Abun Nur. And literally everybody around us during the revolution was calling me Abu Nour. In 2012, Nora, or Abu Nour, as some called her, was detained and tortured for seven months.

The news devastated her friend Bosset. People told me that when he learned about how the regime kidnapped me and I was eventually arrested, he cried. And he was just like so mad. And he said, like, if there's anything I can do, if I just go to them and surround and tell them, like, take me instead of her. Our other friend, who we grieved as well, Osama Habbali, he kept telling him that, are you really concerned about Nura?

You should now, at this moment, feel sorry for everyone is interacting with Nura from the regime. you should call for the freedom of Nora's interrogator and security guards because absolutely she's giving them a very hard time and you should be really sorry for them. Osama Habali, the other friend Nora just mentioned, is someone else whose memory she holds close. Osama was also this very complex personality, very brave.

He cared a lot. He loved us. He loved everyone. But he was always like mad. He was always on the edge. And every time things would get harder and he felt overwhelmed, he would say, this is the last revolution. I will be with you.

There's no second revolution. This is the last one. I'm like, okay, just take it easy. Relax. Osama was the one who was like really advocating for every single one of us using all of his connections and like, this should happen. Even when I was detained, he was, he was injured. He was in Istanbul and the Friends of Syria meeting. He met Secretary Clinton and he had only a few minutes with her.

So he said quickly what he wanted to say about the like political processes, the need to. coordinate more with people inside Syria to work with young revolutionary guys instead of working with the old classic political opposition. But also he looked at her and he told her, like, I want you to issue a statement for my friend, Nur. She was detained. She's one of us, and we want her free. Like, when I knew about her, like, wow, somehow, how did you have time to say this? Unfortunately, I couldn't went, like a few days before my arrest, I tried to, I went to Homs. I was in LLOP, I went to Homs a few times.

I looked at Osama everywhere. I don't know, like there, I had this voice inside me that I needed to see Osama, but I couldn't see him. While I was in detention, Osama got arrested. And since then, we have not. until today, like he's still missing. The regime issued a death certificate, but to us as his friends, it's not closure until we find his buddy

and we have a grave for our loved friend Osama. Osama Habali, Abdel Basit Asarut, Tahrer Saba'i. Three names among six. so many others. Here again is Javar Bakr, speaking about his project to plant a tree for each departed soul. We had an experience in Kafar Sousa, one of the neighborhoods in Damascus that rose up against the regime.

We agreed with one of the mothers that she'd come and talk about her children. We'd brought a large walnut tree, four years old, so it was tall. She started telling us that she had done. three children who had been killed. We told her that we had only one tree and asked her to choose the name of one child. Sadly, we didn't have a space for three trees. While we were having this discussion, a woman walked by who had nothing to do with the event. We didn't know her. She came up and asked, what are you doing? I told her, we're planting a tree for the departed, for the people who were martyred. She said, my son, my son has a martyr.

that encounter gave me the sense that wherever I go, if I have a tree to plant, I can tell anyone passing by. You can give it a name, and they will. I've always felt that all of Syria is made of the departed, that all of Syria are martyrs, that everyone is a victim. But nobody's paying attention. That's why I say the tree is a new beginning. This is idea.

I'm Nala Ayyat. Every day, your eyes are working overtime. From squinting at screens and navigating bright sun to late night drives and early morning commutes. They do so much to help you experience the world. That's why regular eye exams are so important. Comprehensive eye exams at Specsavers are designed to check your vision and overall eye health.

Every standard eye exam includes an OCT 3D eye scan. Advanced technology that helps your optometrist detect early signs of eye and health conditions like glaucoma, cataracts, or even diabetes. It's a quick, non-invasive scan that provides a detailed look at what's happening beneath the surface. Don't wait. Give your eyes the care they deserve. Book an eye exam at Specsavers from just $99, including an OCT scan. Book at Spexsavers.caver's.ca.caiars.cai Eye exams are provided by independent optometrists. Prices may vary by location.

Visit specksavers.cai to learn more. This ascent isn't for everyone. You need grit to climb this high this often. You've got to be an underdog that always over delivers. You've got to be 6,500 hospital staff, 1,000 doctors, all doing so much with so little. You've got to be Scarborough. Defined by our uphill battle and always striving towards new heights.

And you can help us keep climbing. Donate at lovescarborough.ca.a. I stopped counting how many of my cousins and family I have been lost when I reached the number 56 back in 2015 or 16. And it's still going on right now. So I'm not sure we are recovered. Even if we are sitting here in Canada, feeling the peace or having our rights, having our voice. is here if we want to talk. The one you lost are no longer numbers.

They are faces with stories, with names, and with families. One year after the fall of the Assad regime, Ideas producer Pauline Holdsworth asked four Syrian writers and activists to contribute

an obituary for someone they loved and lost. We're calling this episode The Right to Remember. My name is Hassan O'Contar. I am Syrian-Canadian. I have been in Canada for the last eight years now. And currently I'm working with the Canadian Red Cross. I'm also the author of the book, Man at the Airport. And that's very much it. It's the small things in life for me personally that keeps remind me of the people I lost.

I'm going to give you an example. I lost my father in... Late 2016, it was actually the New Year's Eve of 2016 or 31st December. He's the one who made me, who am I, who gave me all the skills in life that I needed. I remember my father when I was a kid, we used to work on our farm, and then in the evening he will grab a book and he will start reading to me. I knew a lot of things about history, mathematics, sports, politics, especially when I was a kid through my father. And he even gave me the necessary life skills to survive in case. I think he believed that life is going to hit me hard at one point and he was trying to make melody.

Hassan was living in Dubai when the Civil War began in 2011. He was a conscientious objector and refused to return home because he was afraid he'd be conscripted into the Syrian armed forces. I refused to join the call, he said, because I didn't want to be part of a killing machine, to kill my own people, or to destroy my own house. When his work permit in the United Arab Emirates expired, he spent the next five years there trying to evade detection. At the end of 2016, he was arrested for being without papers. He was in jail when he learned that his father was dying back home in Syria. And I could see the phone through the past, the iron fires of the south. And I spent the whole night trying to reach out to the phone just to call my family and I could not.

I could see from my small cell sitting on the floor looking at the smallest window ever on the ceiling. I could hear the fireworks and could see the large. lights. And now every every New Year's Eve, I keep remembering my father, I no longer celebrated since 2016. But I also now sitting here in Canada, Vancouver, watching what's going on in Syria right now, especially in my province, Suita, which is a minority to rules. And we have been massacred four months ago. I believe now that my father have been died once for natural causes, and his work had been assassinated, and his soul is being just tortured right now. I believe my father had died three times. According to the Syrian Observatory for

Human Rights, 765 people in Sueda were executed extrajudicially by members of the Syrian Ministries of Defense and Interior in July 2025. And the one place that meant the most to Hassan's father was destroyed. His most precious things after his family was his olive farm and they just burned it to the ground and destroyed the whole town. Our olive trees are no longer there and it makes me sad because it was a symbol of his still existed in this life. And then his brother, who is 82 years old, who has connections to Canada, by the way, he has three Canadian sons living in Ontario, who worked for 20 years. As the manager of the Syrian Red Crosson in Sweden, Braven 20 years, he volunteered his life for humanitarian work, and he refused to leave his house. So they shot him. They executed him, and they kept his wife with him.

his cause for three days. She did not, they did not allow her to leave. So I think his soil somewhere, his spirit somewhere is being tortured now for what happened to his brother. It's the dream that we believed in, that how naive we were to believe in democracy, to believe in revolution, to believe that we are going. And that's a part of the ongoing grief as well. all what we believed in was nothing but a lie. I envy the people. I totally envy the people who, if you ask them a question,

what's the most difficulty in your life or the saddest day, one particular memory will jump into their head, and they will start speaking about it. Because if you are to ask me this question, I don't know where to start. And I told you that I no longer celebrate New Year's Eve and now I no longer celebrate my birthday because the attack in my province happened in July 13th, which is my birthday. So I'm very much not celebrating anything anymore.

Yeah. Do you feel within Syria, within the diaspora, that the lives of those who were killed in Swayda are being remembered? Or is there this pressure to say we've moved on, we're in the new chapter? As a Syrian or a Canadian? Maybe you both. As a Canadian, I'm a disappointed, very disappointed. Because we just assigned a non-residential ambassador.

And he went there and shake the hand of those who killed. As a Syrian, well, I just heard myself saying, Syrian it's no longer there I'm not sure I can say as a Syrian any longer it's the Syria that I grow up and I knew Damascus the city that I studied for seven years there I I don't recognize the people I don't recognize the place and I'm not sure that we can see Syria the same we we used to so if people ask me now I I would rather say I am a droose from Suede, maybe former Syrian or something, but it is, it's a massacre and it's a war crime. Here is a story. I am too much into stories because I have a niece who is five years old, six years old now.

I saw her for the first time in 2024 in Egypt. We named her Yassim, which is the Arabic name for Jasmine. Damascus is the city of Yassimine. It's known by its Yassine, Jasmine. And I'm afraid in the future, we named her after Damascus, the capital of Syria. And I'm worried in the future she's going to ask me, why did you name me after the city who was starting, destroying our houses? killing our people, kidnapping our women.

Why did you leave me after such a city? Why did you do that to me? It's now start to me, the same way my birthday, the same way New Year's Eve, her name would be her curse and a constant reminder of what happened. So she would never be able to move on because of her name. But because we once loved that city and we belonged to it, and it turned out to kill us all. This is a big question, but what would you say your relationship is with grief?

I mean, to be a Kurdish person, unfortunately, who borne with the grief, because we are facing tragedies and massacres since ancient times. So this is why when we born, we named out after a name. of someone who we already lost. So literally we born with that mark. Myself, I carry a name of Chabad, which means struggle, work, and it's a name of someone who fight for Kurdish cause and full. My name is Habat Abbas. I am from Kamishli city, which is in Rojava, northern eastern of Syria. I am working as a freelancer journalist. I am based between Syria, Rojava and Berlin.

As I said, we're born with that. We're born with the oppression, especially in northeast of Syria, in Rojava, such a region that's completely been abandoned and neglected by the Syrian regimes always. So you're born with the poverty, you're born with the lack of the infrastructure, education, health sector.

You burn with all that, which is in a way shaping your world, which is dark and limited. and very kind of oppressed against your culture and your identity. And grief, it's a thin line that's connecting all that. So death is something very live around us. You know, it's fresh. It's never there is before the war even.

The beginning of the civil war changed things radically in northeast Syria. While the Assad government's attention was directed elsewhere, Kurdish political parties pushed for self-rule. Although the Northeast has been autonomously governed since 2011, that doesn't mean there's been peace. The war didn't stop, the fight didn't stop, because we started directly open front lines from Turkey, from Iraq. First, it was Free Syrian Army.

Later on, it was a Nusra Front, which is now ruling Syria under the name of HDS. And later on, it was an ISIS attack. And at the same time, the Syrian regime took Iranian-backed, They were always contacting attack. ISIS always were still two hours, attacking as different tactics like ISIS sales. Eight of December, last year when Bashar al-Assad's regime fall,

at the same day, the Kurd lost the city of Manbitch, because Turkish-backed militias attacked at the same day and they controlled that city. And then they pushed the Kurdish forces to what we call, Shreimdam on the Erfidis. And there was a brutal fight took a place until early March. So while everyone was celebrating the full of Assad in Damascus and Hamas and Alipu, we were facing massacres. So when we talk about griefing, literally, never we had a chance to grieve because it's a continuous. What does it do to a community to never be able to stop and grieve?

I think what's unique about the Kurdish culture specifically, who, to my knowledge, they are inspired from Palestinian griefing way of struggle and resistance when they were losing their fighters. They would use this griefing in order to push forward. And the Kurds use the same culture. So, for example, when there is any fighters, male or females, full in the fight, or even civilians as a result of attacks. Always they use that as a ceremony. And in this ceremony, it's bringing everyone together. The ritual that's been built up around this martyrhood,

it's strong and deep and, in a way, lifting up the families to another level that they fulfill what their children full for. For example, before a few days ago, I was chatting with one of the fathers who lost his daughter. She used it to work in, she was an engineer,

she was working in the municipality and ISIS conducted an attack against a Mishli municipality back 2015. So she's been killed in that attack. And now the father, he is the head of the comming, which is the smallest unit

of autonomous administration structure. And he said, I would never let the comming of Shahid Amina, the martyrs Amina, his daughter, at all, because this is the way that's keep her alive. Is there anyone whose memory you would like to speak about?

Yeah, I lost my brother in the fight. Zana, he's my youngest brother. So for me, it was not just a brother. It was just a friend and even kind of, I consider myself partially like a mother. Because we helped my mom to take care of him. He was really very funny and very pretty. And always we expected him to be active because he was so good in that.

And he was making everyone around him laughing all the time, you know. And with the war started, everything changed, you know, the education being impacted. All the talk, it's about the politics, about the attacks, it's about the war around. and the attacks of ISIS against shangal, the Yazidis communities. It was a turning point. He saw the news, and especially with the thousands of the Kurdish women, Yazidis, who have been kidnapped and enslaved by ISIS. He said, I will pick up the weapon.

Because if our woman, the YPJ, the fighters are now carrying on the weapons, I should also have the honor to go and join. Of course, we were against that idea of him being a military personal. And we said there is many other ways that we can be active in the civil works. But he said, do you expect me that to see you being attacked by ISIS now and enslaved? And I will just be sitting home watching you to be taken. And at that time, 2014, it was really very critical period for all. us, it was a matter of, you know, like surviving or not, because at that time, ISIS took over

Mosul and then Shangal and Kobani, and we were squeezed in the between and the attacks was happening from all of them. So he didn't accept that. And his personality, it was absolutely opposite of what you imagine the military should be someone who hated the rules or, you know, like someone who always liked to break the rules. But at the same time, we, the responsibility, with the high responsibility. He was young, but very tall. So this is why he lied about his age when he joined the YPJ. And of course, someone not experienced it.

With the YPJ started the fight against ISIS, who already were Al-Qaeda or very famous jihadist groups that they have the experience and they fight in different countries. And then they came and they started to attack our areas. So our young people, men and women, pick up the AKs with very limited resources. As a result of that, we lost many, many in the beginning in the first years. So this is why I lost my brother when they tried to open the corridor, humanitarian corridor, for the Yazidis 19th of August 2014.

How old was he? 17. I think because I was a journalist, so I didn't accept the classic way of griefing. So what I did, I directly started to do a short film about him and his life and his group that they fought ISIS and they opened the corridor. I also painted his photos in a way that he liked, like cartoon, like, you know, things that he love it. My brother, for example, he was head of the sports union, so he held all the championship under his name. And we as a family of Zana, we given the T-shirts to the teams, we given the trophies. Also, my sisters at that time, she was the head of the library, so she organized all the books.

We donated all our books to the library, and we named it under his name. His friends, because they loved him so much, he was someone who, you know, as I told you know, life. So after he fell, there was a couple of new recruiters who joined the YPJ and they picked up his name, as I told you as a nickname to continue. Also, his comrades, they named the brigade under his name. And now it's a special forces brigade. Zana, that they are still fighting

ISIS. So each one of us grouped in a different way, but myself to accept to talk to you and talk about him, it's one of the way that I keep him alive in my days and in my

words. It's the small things in life that keeps reminding me of him. If I read a good book, I would remember my father. If I made a first cup of coffee in the one I would remember my father. Every time I buy some olives or all of all. I think I always talk about Osama in particular in the events related to detainees and human rights offenders.

And I always say that Osama managed to advocate for my freedoms. Maybe in a way or other he saved me. But it was for a reason. Unfortunately, I couldn't do the same for Osama. But I'm sure that deep down, I'm still alive to keep the link story. So, yeah, I feel like every time I talk about these stories, about them in the way that they were truly, where it's my grief, but also it's one of my ways honoring them. It's love.

It's love. Yeah. It's not about the tears. It's about the love. And even when I tear up, it's just one other ways to tell them that I love them so much. And, yeah, life is hard without them. Nura Al-Jizawi, remembering her friends, Osama Habali, and Abdulbasid Asarot.

Before that, we heard Hassan Al-Quntar, remembering his father, Salim and his uncle, Ha'il. Chabat Abbas, remembering her brother, Zana,

Jabr Bekir, remembering George Abdel-Latif, Ahmed Hamdo Al-Mahood, and Jamal-Au al-Ula. And Amar Azuz, remembering his friend, Tahr Assebae. He also wishes to remember

his friend, Mazher Thayara. This episode was produced by Pauline Holesworth. Translation by Tadok Uzbechi. Readings by Greg Kelly. Our web producer is Lisa Ayuso. Technical production, Sam McNulty. Our senior producer is Nikola Lukshic.

Greg Kelly is the executive producer of ideas, and I'm Nala Ayyad. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca.ca slash podcasts.