The "character" of Abdelbasset Al-Sarout probably best embodies the course of the Syrian revolution, its radiant and spontaneous beginnings, its mistakes and errors, and finally its tragic endings.
Al-Sarout was born in Homs in 1992 in a neighborhood
-Al-Bayyada- whose inhabitants are mostly from the surrounding rural world.
Like Baba Amr, it is also shared by another fringe of the population, former
Bedouins who have come to settle in this third largest city in Syria.
Preceded by his popularity as the adored goalkeeper of the
homsiote Al-Karame Club, he entered the revolution with determination and enthousiasm.
With his hoarse and melancholic voice, he led the processions, flying
over them like an eagle, carried on the shoulders of his fans who used
to applaud him in the football stadiums. They cheered their hero and chanted
with him "freedom, equality" and other slogans calling for the fall
of the Assad regime.
He lived through the peaceful phase of the revolution and personified it by his presence at the head of the rallies in the public squares.
For a time, he formed a captivating duo with the late actress Fadwa Suleiman, a secularist of Alawite origin. A symbol that was supposed to translate, like the songs and the graffiti, a will to fight sectarianism and to defend the imaginary of a national unity that was then the object of all wishes, so desired for fear of seeing it cruelly lacking one day.
-1-
"Bashar wants all people to be his slaves... We are
only slaves of God... Rather death than humiliation".
With these words, Al-Sarout summed up his revolt against Bashar Al-Assad in the
documentary "Waar" made in the first months of the revolution. During
this period, the city of Homs became the center of the uprising, of daily
marches and of the new born citizen journalism. But also of the first armed
clashes between the demonstrators' security service (made up of the army's
defectives) and the regime's thugs (Shabiha). At that time, Al-Sarout
expressed with his natural disarming a popular religiosity, refusing injustice
and preferring martyrdom to submission. A religiosity mixed with
"modern" values such as individual freedom and human dignity. It is
precisely this combination that would give meaning to the Syrian revolution
during the occupation of the streets and public squares in defiance of bullets,
arrests, torture, assassinations and fear embedded in the memories. The
invocations of "Allah Akbar", associated with the calls for freedom
and justice, brought together men and women of different thoughts and
generations, although mainly from working-class backgrounds. They constituted a
kind of "metaphysical" protection that helped them to defy a
sometimes certain death. They also translated their desire and their hope of an
upcoming liberation from the weight of a dictatorship exceeding in duration the
age of most of the demonstrators.
Becoming one of the symbols of the revolution and its
singers during the sit-ins in Khalidiyeh and other parts of Homs, his songs and
recitals were heard on everyone's lips. While fulfilling their mobilizing
functions and exhorting to action, these incantations are nevertheless
different from the usual revolutionary hymns. Whether at demonstrations or
behind closed doors, when Al-Sarout sang in his deeply sad voice: "Oh
Homeland our dear Homeland", he was telling the story of the popular
uprisings from Deraa to Homs, of the "bold" actions led by rebellious
"strong men" braving flames and knives. In doing so, he surveyed the
Syrian map in all its extent, citing names of towns and villages often ignored
by many Syrians. And it is always in the same poetic vein, simple and
spontaneous, that he sang "Janna, Janna", which became the expression
of a will suspended to the advent of a homeland, a paradise, even if it means
burning his whole body. This same song also expressed regret for not having
lent a hand to the city of Hamah following the 1982 massacres: "O Hamah,
we implore your forgiveness, we owe it to you". Here the regrets mean a
lot. For, like most Arab revolutions, the Syrian revolution of 2011 seemed to
be partly in search of a lost time. A time stolen by regimes that have taken
away years of life from people, leaving to the next generation - the one of Al-Sarout - the legacy of a political death and the bitter taste of a
humiliation affecting the whole society. In this sense, to avenge Hamah was to
avenge the affront done to two or more generations, and to rise up against a
turning point in history that had established terror as a system and erected
the wall of fear. A turning point for which the martyred city had to pay the
price and serve as an example.
-3-
Then came the siege of the revolting districts of Homs. In
response to the intensification of the repression, many of the peaceful
demonstrators took up arms to defend themselves and their families. The regime
had already sent its tanks to bomb the gatherings and to perpetrate massacres
among its opponents.
At the end of these confrontations, of the siege and of the
resistance, twice surviving death, Al-Sarout is defeated, bruised by the loss
of his comrades one after the other. He also lost his uncle, then successively
his four brothers.
For a long time, the voice of the young revolutionary was no
longer heard in the gatherings in public squares, but only in darkened houses,
among resting fighters, passers-by who had taken up the cause, or journalists
covering the revolt in their city. Resonating like a mourning, his recital
"Holding on despite the repression of the oppressors" drew the
features of a new stage in the life of Homs and his own. A city constantly
bombed, suffocated, abandoned and isolated from the world. Its mourners, torn
between the will to resist and despair, are looking for support and comfort. To
overcome their fear, they find refuge in mosques or within armed groups, or on
the Internet networks and telephone lines still accessible. All these
subterfuges allow them to cling to life outside the darkness of the siege.
It was during this period that Al-Sarout formed the
"Bayyada Martyrs Battalion". Some of the episodes of its days were
recounted in the film "Return to Homs". The fate of the battalion was
tragic, with most of its members killed in a battle to break the siege of the
city's districts. A few months later, the city itself would be taken over by
the troops of the regime and its allies.
Al-Sarout thus left Homs in 2014. Behind him, he leaves
ruins, vanished hopes, souls and graves. He wanders for a while, then he is
heard making sectarian statements and is attributed with jihadist recordings.
He is seen in photos alongside black flags and some say he even pledged
allegiance to the Khalif of Al-Baghdadi, after briefly getting close to the
Al-Nosra Front. Then he disappeared, and news became scarce except for rumors
that he was in hiding because he was wanted by Al-Nosra.
But in March 2018, during the commemoration of the outbreak
of the revolution, he resurfaced in the towns and cities of the Idleb region.
He was then observed singing, reciting, speaking again at rallies waving the
green flags of the revolution and the free army, under the noses of the
supporters of the black flags, the latter working to destroy and ban the green
ones.
If in Homs, time flowed at a dense pace and in a geographically confined space, it is now crumbling after the departure of Al-Sarout from his city. His stops here and there resembled the fragmented places around them, punctuated by monotonous expectations, death, abandonment and displacement. It is likely, finally, that by joining the Al-Izza Army, at the head of a faction to which he gave the name of his city, Al-Sarout wanted to revive his early days, especially since he chose to operate on the front of the northern region of Hamah, in direct contact with the forces of the regime, its Russian and Iranian allies, that is to say, as close as possible to the city of his shattered dreams. And it is here, on June 8, 2019, that the twenty-seven year old will fall during the fighting.
Al-Sarout's death marks the end of a tragic, tortuous and
symbolically rich journey. His outstanding features remain his courage and
resilience in the face of a regime that inflicted all the bruises of life on
him and his people.
Peace to his soul.
Ziad Majed
The article was first published in Arabic, in Daraj, in June
9, 2019.
