{"id":2310,"date":"2025-07-09T20:42:39","date_gmt":"2025-07-09T20:42:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/togetherforjableh.com\/?p=2310"},"modified":"2025-08-10T07:55:42","modified_gmt":"2025-08-10T07:55:42","slug":"post04","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/togetherforjableh.com\/en\/post04\/","title":{"rendered":"Return to Jableh after more than a decade."},"content":{"rendered":"

Written by Mr. Ali Qasem.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n


If a genie had come out to me a year ago from his lamp, shouting his famous phrase: \u201cAt your service!\u201d, I would not have dared to ask him for a visit to my country Syria<\/strong>\u2026
Even the genie, most likely, would have been afraid of the Assad regime\u2019s intelligence services and prisons in my homeland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But God\u2019s grace is immense, granted to whom He wills\u2026 And God willed it so: the Tyrant of the Levant<\/strong> departed never to return, and Syria was restored to its people and its children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At that moment, Jableh<\/strong> appeared to me like a mother, putting on her bridal veil and opening her arms, waiting for her children who had grown up in the harsh embrace of exile, far from her and from her sea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ten years<\/strong> in which distance sank its claws into my heart, and exile carved every detail into my soul and body, until I was no longer myself, and my soul was no longer mine.
And today\u2026 I return to Jableh, for my soul to return, and to meet myself once again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Move your heart wherever you wish in love
\nFor love is only for the first beloved
\nHow many homes the young man may grow fond of on earth
\nYet his longing is always for the very first home
<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The dreams of a lifetime come true, and today my feet step on the soil of Syria, that soil I no longer recognize.
On my way to Jableh, the war had left its mark on every city and village I passed through\u2026
In every breeze of air, the dust carried the groans of destroyed buildings and the tears of mothers\u2026
In the chirping of birds that still echo the words of those who departed defending this land.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The car wheels do not move over the asphalt of the streets, but rather roll over the veins of my weary heart, a heart longing to meet its mother\u2026
A mother who has lain for ten years beneath the soil of Jableh, and whose grave I do not know the way to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My heart leads me into the cemetery, searching among the graves that outnumber the homes of the living\u2026
Until at last I stood before your grave, my mother<\/strong>, shedding tears a decade old\u2026
Watering your soil with them, that soil I now breathe, hoping to catch your scent within it\u2014\nthe scent that has left me, though I have never left it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mother\u2026 I am here. I stand at your grave,
Did you recognize my choked voice?
Did you recognize the steps of my wandering feet?
Did you hear the fall of my tears upon your soil?
Oh mother, my solace in you is that today I am here\u2026 returning as a child in his school uniform, resting in his mother\u2019s embrace as she gently runs her fingers through his weary, flowing hair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2026 the beginning and the end of the world.
And here is a story that never ends about a love renewed with every wave of the sea<\/strong>, with its chapters written in the eyes of its people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is not a romantic tale that tickles the dreams of lovers\u2026
It is the unchanging, everlasting truth\u2026
It is an eternal story of a Jablawi<\/strong> who loved the \u201cLady of the Lands,\u201d the bride of cities, and was so consumed by her love that she became a tattoo flowing through his veins.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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