Damascus—or as the locals call it, Sham—is a magical place. The oldest capital city in the world, it exudes Eastern warmth and a cosmopolitan spirit. Culture, family, community, urban living, it had it all—and with class. My friend (let’s call her Mary) left her roots: She fled Sham, and left her parents in their home in the Wadi al-Nasara (Valley of the Christians). I look at Mary and her family while sipping tea. Even when they smile, the sorrow never leaves their eyes. Their youngest daughter died in a bus bombing during the war in Syria. She was seven years old. They decided to leave the country for “one year only,” they said at the time, “just until the bombings stop.” They had two viable options, Lebanon and the United States. They would have preferred Lebanon: Its culture was more familiar, and they wanted and needed that continuity for themselves and for their remaining daughter. But the political fragility of Lebanon made them hesitate, so they opted for the U.S., assuming it would be politically stable. They had one thought: “There are only three of us now, we don’t want to die.” They had lost their daughter, they had lost their country; to a certain extent they had lost their identity. Mary can’t sleep at night, she lies awake thinking, confused—Should we go back to Syria? Should we make a life in America?—but they can’t imagine making this country their home.
Mahmoud Darwish expresses this ache:
Time passes through us, or we pass through it
as guests to God’s wheat.
In a previous present, a subsequent present,
just like that, we are in need of myth
to bear the burden of the distance between two doors . . .
All of us, whether exiled by force or choice, live in that distance between two doors. We share a smell, Darwish writes, “the smell of longing for something else; a smell that remembers another smell . . . the smell of the original place.”
Read the rest of the essay at First Things Magazine