العربية[This article by Omar Kaddour is part of a special series focused on Oral Culture and Identity in Syria. Sectarian talk in the sense that I discovered later in life was not common in my social environments. Our cultural and political history can only be buried when it becomes a subject hanging between a story and a joke. When that day comes, there will be no military or intelligence checkpoint to denounce the presence of a person called Omar in a coastal city or cast him as the servant of an officer. And only then a new novelist might then write about a person called Yazid, who is neither good nor evil, but a regular person like any of us who has virtuous and vices.

Source: The North Africa Journal May 22, 2018 07:52 UTC