Ezra Mannix

With the agreement to return Syrian refugees to Turkey, it’s worth remembering that despite what Amnesty international says about Turkey being unfit for refugees, Turkey has a number of educated refugees and displaced persons who are making their way in Turkey doing things like NGO work, translating, teaching English, and more. This post is profiling one such refugee (though he isn’t technically a refugee, it’s close enough), Eyad Abdulkader.

With his soft eyes and timid smile, Eyad is a thoughtful man, wise beyond his 28 years. Cut from an academician cloth, he came to Turkey to do a masters in classical Ottoman literature before the war.

In March, Eyad came to Istanbul from his home in Gaziantep, where he does part-time NGO work, for a short vacation. He agreed to let me interview him for ezramannix.com. We went to Sahtin (which means afiyet olsun in Arabic), the Syrian shawarma place in Aksaray where I interviewed Monte. (Eyad gave the Halep kebap three stars out of five).

In this first of a two-part interview, this Simpsons lover, reciter of hundreds of poems, skilled cook, heavy smoker, matte tea lover, bookworm, polyglot (he’s fluent in Ottoman Turkish) opened up to me and my wife Zeynep about his life: growing up under the Assads, the revolution, the war, living in Turkey, being away from his family, what he misses about pre-war Syria, and more.

Could you tell us a bit where you are from what you studied in your home country, and what you study now?

I’m from Aleppo, studied there at Aleppo University. I studied Turkish literature there and I am doing masters in classic Turkish/Ottoman literature now at Ataturk University in Erzurum. I am currently in the thesis stage.

Why Turkish literature?

Well, I was curious about literature. I could study either English literature or Turkish literature. It was a new thing for me so I chose Turkish literature.

Could you tell us about your childhood?

It was pretty normal and comfortable. I am the youngest child, the prince (laughs).

What did your parents do before the war?

My father was a civil servant and my mother a housewife. We are siblings, 2 boys and 2 girls. We were middle class, a little bit upper middle class maybe (laughs).

Eyad at Sahtin, ready to devour hummus, thoom, and tabouli

What did you think about the government growing up? I know Syrians don’t talk much about politics.

Yeah. My childhood was the period of “the father”. (Hafez Assad, the first Assad, father of the current Bashar Assad). We couldn’t talk about anything. My parents couldn’t talk about anything related to him. People had his picture everywhere, in books, in the streets.

Like Ataturk here?

Much more. The police and intelligence were everywhere. They could interfere with everything without a show of paper work. I was 13 years old when he died. I’m sorry to say I was happy.

There was some hope at that time, right? Bashar, the son, was educated in the west and people thought there would be some more freedoms, right?

Yes, people were hopeful, but there were some red flags in the beginning. For example, the Syrian constitution said you have to be 40 years old to be president, but he was 36, and in, like, 5 minutes they changed the constitution in the parliament.

That’s a bad sign.

However, he started to talk about his liberal opinions and liberal life. He started to talk to the opposition. They made a proposal. They called it the glasnost of Damascus. But after two days he arrested all of them, all the people who made the proposal, and Bashar said the president should be Muslim, male and from the Baath party. From that point on, we knew it would continue the same way.

In the Arab spring, what sort of role did you play?

Well, when the Arab spring started I was enrolled in my studies at Gaziantep University. I did a masters in Gaziantep, but I couldn’t continue. I was worried for Syria, because I couldn’t imagine it would arrive at this point, especially after Mubarak and Ben Ali left. I thought (the regime) in Syria wouldn’t last more than one month.

Then, there was kind of announcement on social media that there would be a big demonstration in Damascus, so on the 4^th of February In 2011, I was in Damascus waiting. The protestors couldn’t do anything. By coincidence I saw 5 or 6 of my friends. They were waiting for the demonstration to begin. I went to Damascus for one day. When I couldn’t do anything I came back to Aleppo, then Gaziantep.

Can you tell me about the Massacre of Homs?

It was a kind of strike. They gathered in Homs at Ramadan. There were religious people, they started to pray, then people who were atheists or not religious started to protect them.

Sort of like a brotherhood?

Yeah, but then the police started to open fire. Police killed around 300 people.

300?

Yes. Now, going back to this brotherhood, these demonstrations used to be on Fridays after prayer. A lot of Christian friends were waiting outside of the mosque to join them. I remember in the first Easter after the revolution, the regime started to think that these people who were demonstrating were radicals who would burn the church, so it was I and some of my friends who were worried the regime would do a provocation, so we went to the church and stood outside the church to check if anybody would come and do anything.