A flag with a photograph of Abdel Basset al-Sarout is seen in Homs, Syria, on Jan. 31.
Yahya Nemah for NPR
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Yahya Nemah for NPR
HOMS, Syria — His face is in every single place in Syria. It is plastered on the nation’s new flags, on sweaters and on the aspect of buses.
His voice, untrained and unfiltered, is ubiquitous, too: utilized in cellphone ringtones and blared from loudspeakers.
His identify is Abdel Basset al-Sarout. As soon as the goalkeeper for the nationwide youth soccer workforce, at 19 years previous, he grew to become one of many best-known protesters demonstrating towards Syria’s autocratic Assad regime.
Solely now, with ruler Bashar al-Assad forcibly ousted final December, can Sarout’s singing be performed publicly in Syria. Kids, some born through the revolution and who memorized his lyrics in secret, belt his songs jubilantly on the streets.
NPR needed to search out out about him — however he was killed in 2019, at age 27, in battle with Assad’s forces.
Touring within the northern metropolis of Homs earlier this yr, nevertheless, NPR realized of a person that folks mentioned had written Sarout’s songs.
The unlikely revolutionaries
The lyricist is known as Ayman al-Masri, 52. He’s largely unknown inside Syria, regardless of the recognition of his songs.
Earlier than the revolution started, Masri bought automobile components and owned a cake manufacturing unit. When anti-regime protests started in 2011, he threw himself into organizing demonstrations.
A music-lover and beginner author, he additionally started authoring verses for varied activists and singers in his hometown Homs, one of many first cities to stand up towards the Assad regime.
However Sarout was his finest singer.
“Al-Sarout had a uncommon charisma and kindness,” he says. The trace of a uncommon smile arches Masri’s lips. “He understood me, and I him … typically simply from a glance in our eyes.”
As he tells it, he and the singer met after Sarout tumbled in by means of his entrance door within the revolution’s early days.
It had been round noon; the singer was fleeing authorities troopers after a protest. Early within the rebellion, Masri’s dwelling in Homs was identified a secure haven. Sarout got here on the lookout for a spot to cover. Masri acknowledged him instantly because the well-known soccer goalkeeper.
Ayman al-Masri carries a pocket book the place he hand-wrote songs, in Homs, Syria, on Feb. 1.
Yahya Nemah for NPR
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Masri had reams of lyrics written, however he was on the lookout for the precise individual to present voice to them. That very day, in his front room, the 2 males cast a artistic partnership.
If Sarout was the revolution’s saint, Masri was its scribe. He ended up writing the entire singer’s 130 or so songs and chants.
Their most well-known music, “Janna, janna, janna,” — Arabic for “paradise” — grew to become a protest anthem that might rouse hundreds of demonstrators at a time.
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Its lyrics go:
Heaven, heaven, heaven. Heaven is our homeland.
Oh, our beloved homeland, and its gracious soil
Even your hearth is heaven.
The music is now inextricably linked to the Syrian rebellion. “I memorized ‘Janna’ in grade two or three, however we didn’t dare sing it out loud,” says Marwan Jnani, 14. He was born in 2011, the yr the revolution started and realized the signer’s most well-known music in secret. His dad and mom warned him: “If any person heard you singing it, they might take you underground, and you’ll by no means see the sunshine once more.”
Throughout Homs, protesters linked arms and sang out their defiance by means of the music, even within the face of regime snipers and artillery strikes that grew to become more and more widespread on any pockets of resistance.
“These days had been the head of happiness, the sweetest of my life,” Masri remembers.
A broken road in Homs, Syria, on Feb. 1. A lot of the town was destroyed throughout aerial bombardment and concrete warfare with regime-aligned forces throughout Syria’s civil battle.
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Going underground
Because the pair’s renown grew, so did the hazard they confronted. Regime forces tried a number of occasions to assassinate the 2 males. Masri says they by no means spent various nights in anybody place, sheltered by sympathetic Syrians who risked arrest for serving to them.
In 2012, Assad’s forces started a siege of Homs. The town was referred to as a bastion of among the earliest and fiercest resistance towards the Assad regime. In retribution, regime forces — assisted by Russian airstrikes — focused the town with vicious bombardment and street-by-street city battles.
Most civilians fled as artillery strikes decimated an estimated 60% of buildings and meals provides dwindled. The singer and the songwriter had been among the many Homs residents who selected to remain, retreating into the warren of alleys in Homs’ previous metropolis.
Masri’s lyrics — as soon as triumphant and upbeat — took on a extra mournful tone as hunger and demise grew to become endemic in Homs. After two of his colleagues had been killed in an artillery strike, he wrote the next music, together with his personal mom in thoughts.
Oh mom, in a brand new gown
Have fun my martyrdom.
I come to you a martyr dressed within the Eid’s clothes
And heaven is my new dwelling.
Have fun and be proud of me, and forgive me for leaving you.
And he continued to collaborate with the singer. He paid to acquire a map of the town’s sewage system. The singer and the songwriter traversed the frontlines of the city guerrilla battle that had consumed the town of Homs by that time, with one half of the town overtaken by regime troopers and the opposite half managed by insurgent teams.
The pair needed to cross enemy traces by means of the town’s sewage tunnels, rising from drainage grates in the dark to satisfy so Masri may give the singer his latest lyrics. Starvation stalked civilians and insurgent fighters. Masri says they boiled wool rugs to eat and stripped bushes of their leaves for sustenance.
By this time, the 2 males, as soon as so in synch with each other, had diverged of their views.
Ayman al-Masri wanders by means of the stays of his previous dwelling, the place he first met Sarout, in Homs, Syria, on Feb. 1.
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Ayman al-Masri poses for a portrait on Feb. 1.
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Yahya Nemah for NPR
Masri, a dedicated pacifist, believed his pen was his strongest weapon. Sarout had picked up a gun, turn into an opposition fighter, and was fixated on releasing Homs from regime management. As his closest family and friends died one after the other, the singer more and more advocated for violence, over singing, as his most well-liked software for regime change.
“Abdel Basset needed to defend himself. All Syrian individuals, particularly in Homs, had been compelled to show to weapons,” says Raed al-Khalid, 34, a former highschool soccer teammate of the singer.
Finally, Sarout was compelled to desert Homs. Proper earlier than sneaking out by way of an underground tunnel, the singer gave a controversial endorsement of the extremist group Islamic State, or ISIS, providing to work with them.
Khalid spent nearly seven years combating alongside Sarout. He watched as his joyful, big-hearted pal grew extra weary and extra hardened: “Generally, he would inform me, I simply wish to relaxation. I’m so drained. However in every single place he went, individuals needed to spend time with him and listen to him sing his songs.”
Folks pose for photographs in entrance of a banner of Abdel Basset al-Sarout in Homs, Syria, on Jan. 31.
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“A chapter is lacking”
Khalid says Sarout typically prayed that he would die combating. By the tip of the battle, his father and 4 of his 5 brothers could be killed battling the regime.
In 2019, Sarout acquired his want.
“I used to be the final individual to see him alive and to bid farewell to him,” says Mohammad al-Sarout, 24, the singer’s nephew, who grew to become a insurgent fighter alongside his uncle in northern Syria. “He was going out, and I instructed him, watch out; there’s a drone within the sky.”
Shortly after, the singer was badly injured in a strike.
Khalid, his former teammate, was among the many troopers who evacuated him to a hospital in Turkey for therapy, however Sarout died of his accidents the subsequent day, aged 27.
Khalid buries his face in his arms when he thinks about his pal’s final moments, his disappointment combined with pleasure at witnessing final December the tip of the regime that they sacrificed a lot to topple.
“There’s a whole chapter to this story that’s nonetheless lacking,” says Khalid. “Abdel Basset is lacking.”
Mohammad al-Sarout, the singer’s nephew, took photographs with supporters on Jan. 31.
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A boy within the metropolis of Hama wears a sweater with a photograph Ayman al-Masri, pictured above the date Dec. 8, 2024, to commemorate the autumn of the Assad regime.
Yahya Nemah for NPR
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Yahya Nemah for NPR
Masri, the lyricist, is now a songwriter with out his singer. At this time, he wanders the town the place he and the singer made their identify and sees glints of the previous.
“Sarout’s scent, his presence, is in every single place in Homs,” Masri says surveying the destroyed streets, most of which nonetheless haven’t been rebuilt for the reason that regime’s siege of the town. “There is no such thing as a road right here that we now have not walked down collectively.”
The regime demolished a lot of the singer’s former dwelling — and that of his uncle’s close by.
However the reminiscence of the singer could be very a lot alive on his previous road. As we method what stays of his household home, a gaggle of youngsters — some born after he died — encompass us. I requested them who lived right here, and guffawing, they reply instantly: “Abdel Basset al-Sarout.”
Kids collect on the stays of Abdel Basset al-Sarout’s former dwelling in Homs, Syria, on Feb. 1.
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Yahya Nemah for NPR
Masri is with us, immersed in his personal recollections. He factors to a nook of the home, subsequent to a lacking window; that was the place the singer could be sitting, ready to greet his songwriter, each time he entered, he says.
On this go to, Masri is carrying a spiral-bound A4-size pocket book the place he hand wrote many of the first songs the singer sang. There is no such thing as a written anthology of their songs, nor does his identify ever seem in credit as their creator, however this skinny, dogeared pocket book is the place his connection to his favourite singer is preserved.
Opening the pocket book, Masri begins to recite one among his previous verses. The wall has been blown huge open, so he faces the setting solar. Close by, a mosque begins its name to prayer.
Ayman al-Masri reads from his pocket book of lyrics outdoors the stays of Sarout’s household dwelling.
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Yahya Nemah for NPR
Oh mom, my brothers, my buddies, and most of my companions have gone forward.
We’ll dwell on, for this world is fleeting.
Costume me within the gown of martyrdom and ship me off in honor.
Now with the regime he opposed gone, Masri says has lots to dwell for once more. He has began writing once more for the reason that regime fell, he tells me. His new songs are totally different; they’re about life and hope and rebuilding.
