The fight for survival and search for hope, in a place where both seemed like impossible dreams, are among the themes of a new poetry book from Syrian refugee and Windsor resident Mohammed Y. Burhan.
Bird from the Battlefront: Reflections from War-Torn Syria, which took 10 years to finish, was released this month. It’s Burhan’s seventh book, and his first in English.
“We had three kinds of death,” said Burhan, 48. “Death if you were arrested by the security forces, because especially at the beginning of the revolution, being arrested means you are killed. Death from shelling and bombing because the régime was crazy, especially between 2012 and 2015. At that stage the régime was bombing without stopping, without distinguishing between kids or ladies or old men. And the third kind of death was the death of hunger, because the security forces were preventing food from entering the city. I can tell you people were eating grass to survive.”
The Syrian civil war began in March 2011 with a wave protests against the régime of President Bashar al-Assad. The civil unrest escalated to armed conflict after al-Assad’s violent crackdown on protesters with arrests, torture, and killings.
Burhan’s hometown of Zabadani, near the Lebanon border, was a key strategic location. The bloodshed came early there.
“It was the first city to get civil demonstrations,” said Burhan, “So the régime was very tough in bombing the city and killing the city.”
Burhan, who frequently travelled between Zabadani and Dubai where he worked with CNBC Arabiya, said he and his family quickly became targets. He hasn’t set foot in Syria since 2012.
“I was wanted by the régime because I was considered the opposition,” said Burhan. “I attended the first demonstration. When the shelling started and the situation got to be very bad, I didn’t travel to Syria because I knew I was wanted, because of my articles.”
Some of his writing had been critical of the Syrian government.
“The régime became very angry about it,” said Burnham, who also runs a consulting company called New Vision Media. “From that date I could not go to Syria because I was getting death threats.”
His family fled to Dubai and applied for refugee status in Canada. But the death threats followed.
“Even when I was in Dubai, I used to get threats over the email and mobile messages, that if you come back to Syria you will be killed, you will be arrested.”
Undeterred, Burhan started chronicling what he had seen and experienced. It took several years to gain refugee status. Burhan kept writing.
“The toughness of the life there was unbelievable,” he said. “Death was staring at you wherever you go.”
But amidst the death and destruction, Burhan saw hope.
“It was very tough, but it was at the same time a very special experience,” he said. “I felt that the people were together again because they were demanding freedom. They were all acting together as one group, and that wasn’t the case before. So there were good points during that experience.
“I lost a lot of friends during the war. My brother-in-law has been killed by the security forces. My wife, her brother has been killed there. He was wanted because he was demonstrating, so her name was on the list as well.” '
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