October 2019
In July 2019, I visited an exhibition titled The Sea by acclaimed Aussie artist Luke Cornish at the Bondi Pavillion Gallery, Sydney.
Luke had kindly contributed to the second issue of Beloved Syria, so I was really pleased to catch up with him and see more of his work from Syria receiving very respectful attention in Bondi!
With Luke's permission, I took...
'A Foolish Man', the story below, is from Kan Ya Ma Kan: Folktales and Recipes of Syria and its Ethnic Groups by the late Muna Imady. It is published here by 'Beloved Syria' with the permission of the author's mother, Elaine Imady.
This story comes from Sweida.Â
As explained in the introduction to 'A Foolish Man', Sweida is the southernmost of Syria’s...
Over lunch, I interviewed Hana about Fairuz, the Lebanese singer that Syrians across the country listen to in the mornings. Hana's daughter Karla helped translate.
Once upon a time,
There was a paradise.
It was on earth.
It was in Syria.
It was a haven for great civilisations.Â
It was a haven for Mother Nature.
It was a generous land with generous people.Â
It was an incubator of remarkable inventions.
It was the land where life was lived richly.
It was the theatre where love danced joyfully.
It was the place where million-year-old souls...
This gallery of images brings together photographs already presented on other pages of Beloved Syria. When I took these pictures, I was given permission to present them online -to a world that knows so little about life in Syria, so little about the remarkable warmth and spirit of Syrians.
(Note: It is very possible some of the images were taken...
‘Beloved Syria’ is honoured to present this beautiful documentary featuring the Gardenia Choir, a women’s choir based in Syria which has performed both in Syria and abroad.
At the start of the film, the choir sings 'Barcarolle' from Jacques Offenbach's ‘The Tales of Hoffman’, a song that must be familiar to tens of thousands of choir members and opera lovers...
In September 2019, Rasha Milhem - Syrian journalist, translator, writer and filmmaker - spoke about 'Restart', the short film she wrote at the end of a diploma course. In April 2019, it won her a 'best scenario' award.
Rasha explained that the movie focuses on people who remained in Syria during the war and their family members who left Syria;...
An RT Documentary, this video was first posted in February 2019, when people living in most Syrian cities and towns could breathe a lot easier, and had cause to look forward to peace.
'Syrian Tango' features a sculptor, Tango dancers, a documentary film maker, and a composer/musician. In giving a voice to these artists, the documentary presents Syrian people at...
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.Â
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...
Lena is an Armenian Syrian singer, composer and musician. Described as a Syrian ambassador spreading the jasmine voice of Damascus, she has performed in Germany, England, Sweden, Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon, and Russia, as well as her home country of Syria.
She sings mainly in Arabic and Armenian, but also in Syriac, English, French and Italian.
Lena graduated from Damascus University in...
