Conversations with Syrians … You will not leave anything to learn from

St. Sergius Church, site of the oldest altar, Ma’aloula
We are a sacred country, yes.  Because of us, because of our beliefs only and because of what our history is, our heritage, our ancestors are gift to us and not the Umayyad ancestors or the Abbasid, we are way older than this, way older than this.  The Ummayyad and Abbasid were dark eras, were dark times for Syria, we make a lot bad and we …  you don’t know that we have created alphabet, you don’t know … so we have, we have  enough to come out of it.
I’m worried about you, you are not willing to learn from us, you are fighting us, killing us, suffocating us.  You will not leave anything to learn from.  Today on your TVs, your politicians, your media, your journalists are lying bluntly and feel happy about it.  What you could say on American TV today, you couldn’t have said it 10 years ago or 20 years ago, so you are more comfortable with lying, with conspiring, you’re are more comfortable in describing the others as numbers, as objects, as use, not as people and souls, not as lives.  This is dangerous for you, we appreciate our lives, the more we lose people we appreciate the life we lost and the life we have, and we make sure that the lives that we lost are honoured.  Unlike you, I am sure, you questioned me yesterday, yes, there are American casualties in Syria, but they hide them away, like they hid the ones that went in Iraq, like they hide the ones that went in Afghanistan.
Abdo Haddad

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