Thursday, March 28, 2024
By Rasha Milhem One lonely night recently, during a particularly hard time of the coronavirus quarantine, a high school friend and I reviewed our lives and recalled the 2000s with some nostalgia.  We are millennials, born in the early 1980s, when Israel invaded and occupied parts of Lebanon and conflict between the state and the Muslim Brotherhood Movement threatened to destabilise...
Veggie Stuffed Vine Leaves Bushra, who arrived in Australia in 2016, passed on this recipe for yalanji to Beloved Syria. Bushra doesn’t follow a written recipe, and doesn’t use exact measurements. Instead she uses her culinary instincts, her five senses, and her love for food and sharing to bring her creations to life. The below measurements are an estimate of...

Syrian Mezze

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  Food isn’t just meant to be eaten for the sake of eating in Syria; food is meant to be tasted, enjoyed, even loved. It’s meant to be eaten slowly and, most importantly, fill the stomach. Food is a staple to the Syrian way of life. It is at the heart of the culture. It’s a way to connect with friends...

Six weeks in Syria

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Born and raised in Australia, Leo (Soltan) Alhalabi identifies both as a proud Aussie and a proud Syrian. On visits to Syria, he has noted the love and support people show each other in moments of celebration and crisis. Most of Leo’s extended family still lives in Syria. Leo is CEO of LGT Tutoring and is a former Victorian, Australian...
Foul, or ful, is traditionally eaten for breakfast (or sometimes supper*) in Syria. The main ingredient is broad (fava) beans. Delicious and healthy, there are quite a few variations of foul, and they include vegan or dairy, depending on whether you choose to add yoghurt or not. The two variations of foul dishes seen in this video were prepared by a Syrian...

I have no power

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I have no power By Nizar Qabbani translated by Norma Medawar I have no power to change you Or explain your ways… Don’t believe a man can change a woman and the claims of men fancying that woman comes from one of their ribs are false… Woman never emerges from a man’s rib…. It’s he who emerges from her pelvis like a fish rising from a basin of water he...
One must work long and hard to arrive at the truthful. What I want and set as my goal is damned difficult, and yet I don’t believe I’m aiming too high. I want to make drawings that move some people … Whether in figures or in landscapes, I would like to express not something sentimentally melancholic but deep sorrow....
Published by Beloved Syria with the permission of the author. Lady Damascus was first published in SYRIA through writers’ eyes, edited by Marius Kociejowski (Eland Publishing Ltd, 2010). Brigid Keenan is a journalist and author. Her book Damascus: Hidden Treasures of the Old City (Thames & Hudson, 2000) and the photographer Tim Beddow who helped her produce it are mentioned in Lady Damascus. See this...
On a crisp winter’s morning in December 2008, a group of university students from Melbourne began their tour of Syria with a visit to the Commonwealth War Cemetery in Damascus, where over 250 Australian soldiers from both world wars have been buried. Kurt, an Australian Army officer, spoke to the students. A veteran of the war in Iraq, Kurt...
… any attempt to force cultures and peoples into separate and distinct breeds or essences exposes not only the misrepresentations and falsifications that ensue, but also the way in which understanding is complicit with the power to produce such things as the “Orient” or the “West”.’ - Edward W. Said (Orientalism, p. 348, 1995 Penguin edition) The following article appeared in...