介紹內戰前大馬士革齋戒月情況
In the next few days, Londoners are set to enjoy a
cultural and musical event
aiming to bring the Ramadan traditions of the Arab world into the heart of the
British capital. The diasporic Arabs currently observing the grimness and
uncertainty of the Arab political landscape from a distance will definitely
find in this event a dose of hope and solace. They’ll celebrate classical
Arabic music and the storytelling traditions known in Arab urban spaces by the
name of Hakawati theatre. But as many Arabs and non-Arabs will participate in
the event, Syrians from Damascus, in particular, will jubilate over
the celebration of a tradition to which they are familiar, a tradition which is
now slowly dying in a burning Damascus of civil strife and severe food, water
and electricity shortages. For many Damascenes who are going
to the event, memories will be revived about Damascus’s old mosques, walls,
souks and historic cafes and palaces, the spaces of history which once showed
how the holy month of Ramadan could be a platform for artistic and musical
revival and also a platform for social solidarity and charity crossing
religious and class boundaries.
As many people who visited Damascus during Ramadan
before 2011 would recall, the city had always been keen on
taking a moment of deep respite to show its best of traditional culture and
music. The flaneur inside the city, in areas like Bab Al Amara, Salheyi,
Meidan and also Bab Touma would have noticed how the old cafes in Damascus
would become theatre-like spaces where one could find a storyteller mounting
the stage and donning his red Tarboush while telling love stories about
heroic and charitable characters like Antar, Abla, Qais, Laila and King Baibars
of the Mamluk period. The audiences, puffing on their Shishas, would
look stupefied and wholly taken into the adventurous world of the main
characters and into the metamorphosing sound bites of the storyteller.
