The Battle for Home by Marwa al-Sabouni

Author:Marwa al-Sabouni
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
Published: 2016-05-25T16:00:00+00:00

A craftsman at work.

The work of the craftsman lifts objects into a world of meaning that we risk losing in our totally mechanized age. ‘Marks of human labor’ and the ‘memorial of an activity’ can elicit appreciation even from those unwilling to acknowledge the value of hand-produced things.1 But if this goes some way to explaining the appeal of craft production for the consumer, what about the producer? What compels someone to go through such hurdles, to become so ‘hooked’ on handiwork as to devote his life to it? I believe that the social importance of such a way of production far exceeds its economic benefit, and that its true value is even greater for the producer than it is for the consumer. The value of craft doesn’t reside simply in providing essential products for city life; it lies in the way the products are made, and the subliminal education that emanates from them, which is in my view essential for any flourishing society. Such craft production broadens our sense of the universe as an arena for inspiration and creation. Realizing how much it takes to make something teaches us the perfection that we can aim for, even if we can never achieve it. Craft products educate us to strive for commitment and allow us to know what it is like to contribute. These craft skills, accompanied by formal education (in many cases higher education), empowered the people of Baba Amr to create a self-sustaining community that at a certain point became indispensable to the city. That, in turn, meant encountering city life and urban inhabitants, resulting in a certain level of familiarity and openness.

Baba Amr also established its connection with the city by being the main Syrian home of Sufism. The most influential Sufi figures would gather regularly at the Baba Amr mosque. Well before expansion and urbanization the area had its old mosque, with a graveyard that carried special importance due to the notable Islamic figures buried there. Those Sufi ‘masters’, many of whom chose to reside in Baba Amr when it was later developed, had a traditional annual festival that was attended by the whole city, and at which a special kind of sweet was made and distributed among the people and their children. This festival would start as a carnival, beginning in the city centre and proceeding towards a vacant hillside in Baba Amr called Al-Hakourah, where mounted riders performed on horseback and people would assemble to watch. The sweet made at that time of the year was a speciality of Homs and to be found in no other city in Syria. The festivities – combining the social and the religious, the culinary and the sporting, the urban and the rural – had the power to vitalize the whole city, economically and socially. In addition, it engaged people of different urban areas and backgrounds in a single pursuit of pleasure.

Still, the rural traditions of the Baba Amr people and their adherence to their own language prevented them from actually coalescing with the city.

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