Displaced families from Afrin in a municipal school in Qamishli, in northeastern Syria, on May 24, 2025. (Credit: Gabriel Blondel/L'Orient-Le Jour)
Lyrics from a song drift from a tent set up in the middle of the road: "Don’t put a stone, plant an olive tree on my grave." A portrait of Ciwan Hesen, a renowned singer from the Afrin region, hangs on the sun-scorched canvases. Inside, around 50 people gather in silence as the musician’s tambûr revives memories from beyond the grave, memories of a martyred city and forced exile."His songs reflect the pain of the displaced, ours. When we hear them, we remember Afrin and its olive trees," says Ibrahim Haftaro, co-president of the Afrin Association, which organized the ceremony. Historical context, here Between the Kurds and Damascus, a century of tumultuous relations The day before, in a hospital in Aleppo, the 45-year-old Kurdish artist succumbed to injuries sustained in a gas bottle explosion at his home. News...
Lyrics from a song drift from a tent set up in the middle of the road: "Don’t put a stone, plant an olive tree on my grave." A portrait of Ciwan Hesen, a renowned singer from the Afrin region, hangs on the sun-scorched canvases. Inside, around 50 people gather in silence as the musician’s tambûr revives memories from beyond the grave, memories of a martyred city and forced exile."His songs reflect the pain of the displaced, ours. When we hear them, we remember Afrin and its olive trees," says Ibrahim Haftaro, co-president of the Afrin Association, which organized the ceremony. Historical context, here Between the Kurds and Damascus, a century of tumultuous relations The day before, in a hospital in Aleppo, the 45-year-old Kurdish artist succumbed to injuries sustained in a gas bottle explosion at his home....