סוריה – הבדלי גרסאות
תוכן שנמחק תוכן שנוסף
פעמי-עליון (שיחה | תרומות) מ תיקונים |
תגית: שוחזרה |
||
שורה 256:
המיעוט ה[[דרוזים|דרוזי]] בסוריה נחשב כחלק מהאוכלוסייה ה[[מוסלמים|מוסלמית]].<ref>{{קישור כללי|כתובת=https://citizenship.cet.ac.il/ShowItem.aspx?ItemID=e8974aa5-534b-41af-b891-eb2da84fc727&lang=HEB|הכותב=|כותרת=הדרוזים בישראל: שאלה של זהות|אתר=citizenship.cet.ac.il|תאריך=|תאריך_וידוא=2020-06-04}}</ref>
== The Jesus of Damascus ==
Ahmed's psychedelic dashboard pierces the night towards Damascus, passes Saudi trucks lit up like Christmas trees, sits alongside a snake of lights with the first Iraqi license plates, fills with caravan music, passes a large blue sign with the words Baghdad, pushes me into a half-sleep populated by illuminated refineries (Kuwait?), mysterious women (Aleppo?) and reeds in the wind (Nasiriyah?) towards the Persian Gulf. Ahmed the taxi driver is a true caliph. Peaceful and overflowing, always with the same, fundamental key word in his mouth: "No problem". On the back seat a box of biscuits, a hookah, a supply of bottles of water, a blanket for sleeping.
At the end of the highway, the Capital shines on the side of a mountain like a lemon granita, a basket of diamonds in Ali Baba's cave, a nebula of a thousand and a white light completely devoid of rectilinear traces. The air is very pure, the desert is nearby. Six million inhabitants, but it is not a megalopolis of aliens, it is a plural city where you feel at home even as a foreigner, a center that has retained part of its original complexity. But all of Syria is like this, the ancient sign of Christ is everywhere, from Mount Lebanon to the desert, visible, flaunted, diluted in a never totalitarian Islamic presence: the discreet and tolerant one of the Alevis, the Muslims closest to Jesus.
«I I recommend that as soon as you enter Syria, inform the ministry that you are traveling with a journalist's visa", they repeated to me in Rome before leaving. Well, I have been persistently calling Damascus for three days, but there is no official who is alarmed or wants to appoint a guardian angel to me. The only thing that watches over me is the face of Assad Jr., the young president-ophthalmologist omnipresent on a thousand billboards. I travel freely, I have the impression that everything in Syria is better than you expect.
A total polyphonic anarchy.
The first signal starts out clear, then a second, a third, a fourth definitively break the silence. It is no longer the pre-recorded voice that comes out simultaneously from the Turkish minarets. That of the Syrian muezzins is a total polyphonic anarchy. Shrill, baritone, hoarse, slow, nasal, deep or low calls like those of a pope. A branched sound wave that invades the labyrinth with the first light of the sun and leads you towards the great goal, the Omeiad mosque. A magnet of faith, in the heart of the bazaar.
Ahmed guides me through the crowded streets. The first chadors appear, black, unmistakable. They frame the faces of women with terrible eyes, aging quickly, who go whimpering to the mosque, to pray in the mausoleum of Hussein, the martyr of martyrs, the bloody sign of discord with the Sunnis. "Be careful - warns the taxi driver - no Muslims", those are not Muslims. How are they not Muslim? «Shia, shia, no muslim» repeats Ahmed with conviction. They are Shia, Persian or Iraqi. So not Muslims. The deviation in Islam immediately pushes the journey in unexpected directions.
I stop to talk to three women in black, crouching in the shadows. They understand that I am Italian. One asks me for money, another tells me to follow her, she takes off her shoes at the entrance to the mosque, she crosses the immense courtyard flooded with light barefoot, she stops in the scorching air with the wind blowing up her skirt, she turns around herself, looks up, directs my gaze towards a minaret on the external perimeter wall of the mosque, and hisses: Issa , Jesus. Ahmed confirms, it is Jesus. The minaret is the tower where He will announce the end of times and divide the good from the reprobates. Here in Damascus even the children know this.
The Shiite still beckons me to follow her into the limed light of the courtyard, she takes me howling softly to the main entrance of the mosque. These women in black always howl, it's as if their chador imprisoned and let out an infinite pain. They caress walls, kiss portals, mumble crying litanies. Inside, a buzz of faithful, beggars, Muslim tourists with videophones, a coexistence of ecstasy and indifference, imbecile technology and Pythagorean proportions. The woman crosses the carpets towards the center of the mosque, stops in front of a large sarcophagus barely visible in a cage of green glass.
«John the Baptist», she whispers. It is the tomb of John the Baptist, Ahmed translates, increasingly confident. It is the mausoleum of the man from the Jordan, surrounded by weeping Pakistani pilgrims, kneeling Saudis, women from who knows where who insert propitiatory banknotes into every crack of the tomb, children playing on the carpets. A green bier, like the one in Mevlana in Konja. And here too, as in the house of the dervishes, a direct devotional wave, which bypasses the hegemony of the imams, imperiously recalls Christianity from the deepest heart of Islam. «Let yourself be carried by the wave of the sacred», the monks of Bose in Piedmont had warned me before leaving. But this time I don't even remotely imagine that the surprise is only just beginning.
"We in Damascus became Christians before Saint Paul."
An antiques dealer tries to trap me by asking me where I come from. Yes, his name is Josef, he also speaks Italian and is Syrian Catholic. "We in Damascus - he boasts - became Christians before Saint Paul". He invites me into the shop; from the terrace on the third floor, he explains, I will be able to see the whole city. We go up a spiral staircase, we emerge in a shop cluttered with objects. «Here - he says - on this side you have the Muslim fabrics. Here the inlaid wood of the Christians. And here are the brass instruments made by the Jews." On three walls, the three religions of the Book in the form of furnishings.
Jews? Are there still any? «There must be about twenty of them. They have lived here for three thousand years, the majority left ten years ago, with the Madrid agreements, after the first Gulf War." I feel that the journey takes me back in time with an iron logic. Every monotheism refers to its predecessor. The Shiite woman sent me to Christ, now the Christian sends me to the Jews. From the terrace the antiquarian points to the synagogue, far away, in a labyrinth similar to the Neapolitan Basses.
I ask Ahmed if he feels up to it. «No problem» he replies without getting upset. Damascus and Jerusalem are still at war, the telephone lines are cut, but we set off in search of Jews in the heart of the bazaar. An idea so crazy that it's feasible. Where is haus yahuddin? «Ici très peu de juifs»; «Juifs allés, allés». Few Jews, departed Jews. But everyone collaborates to orient us without embarrassment. The neighborhood has not lost its memory. A cobbler draws me a map, the carpenter sends us to a junk dealer's shop. We are now sailing by sight, Ahmed is amazed. He lived in Damascus for 20 years but he has never been on those streets.
The butcher sends me to the baker, a room as hot as Hephaestus' cave, with an oven that swallows loaves of bread and cooks them in an instant, inflating them like balloons. I distribute cigars, the workers give us hot bread. The people in the alleys buy it freshly made from the shop window. I ask: «The synagogue? Where is the synagogue?". A customer points to a house bolted with chains, Yahuddin repeats , I realize that the neighborhood is full of closed houses, the sign of an epic move. I set off along streets covered with American vines.
A name, El Katateeb street, a patio with fig trees, mosaics and rubbish, poverty and nobility. Then the walls of the Jewish school founded just 15 years ago and immediately abandoned. A caretaker chases us away. The school has become state-owned, the souk of history has swallowed this too. But I leave, but with the strange sensation of being at home, protected by a single mercantile brotherhood, as if the bazaar were inhabited by Jews disguised as Muslims, a people of Zelig where the word "Levantine" suddenly becomes transparent.
== ראו גם ==
| |||