Diary of Agnese – 4
At 6 I’m woken up by the crowing of a rooster and the singing of the Muezzin.
The others are used to it by now, I was too when I lived here. But every time we start all over again.
Today I’m following the group in the local activities.
They are trying to organise some inter-religious communal moments in occasion of Ramadan and Lent, which this year overlap for a little while.
The Muslims will have their month of fasting, which we all know by now, even in Italy. The Christians have 40 days of penitence, which we’re used to see unobserved in Italy, but here are carried out by fasting from midnight to midday, and by abstaining from all animal products.
Syria really is big and travelling it’s not just the scenery that changes, but the ethnic and cultural geography as well.
In Qusayr we are in a mixed area, home to different faiths: Sunnis, Alawites, Syrian- Catholics and Greek-Melkites.
In the north there are the Kurds.
It’s not easy for those who get here to navigate all these differences, in between
similarities and diffidence.
Yesterday A., a friend of ours and journalist from Aleppo, working in Damascus under Al Jazeera, was telling us of the situation up North, of how the treaties silenced the weapons, but amongst the Kurds dissatisfaction festered.
He says that the challenge will be fostering community from the ground, between people.
We try to promote this “from the ground” kind of work here, starting from civil society. We all know how war is done, because we study it since elementary: how foreigners are attacked, which weapons humanity created throughout history; spears, shields, trenches, gunpowder...
Yet on Peace we are ignorant. Which instruments do we use?
How do we avoid retaliation and revenge? How do we rebuild civil society?
We don’t study reconciliations, we memorise the dates of Peace agreements at most.
It’s a knowledge that needs to be discovered and rebuilt.
We will try to start with the younger demographic and with women.
We are organising a yoga meetup for women at hour place, created for Alawites, Christians and Muslims.
An intercultural yoga.
We try to create a “neutral” space to meet and get closer to each other, without need
for words.
We spend the day inviting people, not through a quick notice, but slow visits throughout which we listen and then extend the offer.
I go with P., who has been here in Syria for 4 months, after 3 years in Lebanon with the Dove, and we go visit a Christian family.
They came back here long before the Sunnis, their house is pretty and dignified, nothing alike the empty and cold rooms of those who just came back.
They ask about us, why we are here.
Their questions are pressing and provocative.
How much money do we bring? What do we do, concretely, for them? It seems to me they wish to be seen in their struggles and fear.
“Our neighbours came back and that is alright. We haven’t done anything...and neither have they. But we don’t feel safe.
This new government took away my job.
I worked in administration, I was close to the people. It’s not that I sided with the
government...it was just my job for 30 years.”
I ask her what she wants more than anything, and what she wishes for the future.
“The certainty of being able to leave peacefully without fear, with my neighbours and in
my country”.
P. tells me that during her first visits some Christian families had some very strong words against the Sunnis, as if all of them were dangerous.
Us doves have told them of how we have lived in their camps, of how we met them and of how they are people exactly like them.
Slowly a breach is opening, giving way to a chance in their words. A little less judgment and a little more openness.
OPERAZIONE COLOMBA
