The Iconic Singer of the Syrian Revolution
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Today on State of the World, the iconic singer of the Syrian revolution.

You're listening to State of the World from NPR, where the day's most vital international stories up close where they're happening. I'm Greg Dixon. Syria endured more than 14 years of a bloody civil war with rebel groups fighting the regime of former President Bashar al-Assad. Then in December, with astonishing speed, that regime crumbled and Assad fled the country. And Syria is now reinventing itself.

And PR's Emily Feng has been reporting on this new Syria. And as she traveled the country, she kept seeing one man's face everywhere. So she and producer Jawad Rizella decided to find out more about him. I saw him on Syrian flags, on posters, on the sides of buses and cars. And then I heard him everywhere, too. Ha-na-na-na-na.

In cell phone ringtones and on loudspeakers. And I learned his name, Abdul Basit al-Saru. People sang his songs to me in jubilation on the streets, even children. Jannah, meaning paradise, my country, oh paradise, sings 14-year-old Marwan Janani, born the year the Syrian revolution began, in 2011. He was born in the year of the Syrian revolution.

He learned Al-Seroot's most famous song in secret, risking detention to watch grainy videos of the singer on a mobile phone. Al-Seroot was already beloved for playing on Syria's youth soccer team, and his untrained voice channeled the public's anger into action and into protests against the old regime run by the Assad family.

Even one government sniper started firing on demonstrators. Al-Sarout became the poster child of the revolution. I wanted to find out more about him. Except he was killed in 2019.

But I heard a name when I visited the northern Syrian city of Homs. A man people said wrote al-Sarout songs. And so we tracked him down. This is Ayman al-Masri. He's a sedate man with heavily lidded eyes. Before the revolution, he sold car parts and owned a cake factory.

But when anti-government protests kicked off in 2011, he became a revolutionary and a writer. He started penning chants and lyrics for activists. I wrote for a lot of singers, al-Masri tells me. But al-Saru had a special charisma and kindness. The hint of a rare smile arches al-Masri's lips.

He understood me, and I him, al-Masri says. I understood him just by looking at his eyes, he tells me. If al-Sarut was the revolution's saint, al-Masri was its scribe. al-Masri wound up writing all of the singers some 130 chants and songs, including this one.

To glory and dignity and chivalry, Al-Sarout sings. Homs, his beloved city, will save Arab honor. The pair met when the singer quite literally walked through this store, al-Masri's former home in central Homs.

Al-Masri remembers it had been around midday. The singer was fleeing government soldiers after a protest. Al-Masri's home in the early days of the revolution was known as a safe haven. And so Al-Sirout stumbled in, looking for a place to hide.

Amasri recognized him immediately as Syria's famous soccer goalkeeper. Amasri said at that point he had a bunch of lyrics, but he'd been looking for the right person to give voice to them. And so on that very day in his living room, the two men forged a creative partnership. Today, the house where they met is a bombed out shell. We're standing outside of a

Shelled house, bullet marks on the walls. It used to be pink, but the paint has faded now. It was struck and raided several times by Assad's forces. Everything al-Masri once owned went up in flames.

Later, the regime destroyed his cake business as well, in retaliation for his lyrics. We walked the streets of Homs with al-Masri. He showed us where he and al-Saroup protested and sang, despite numerous assassination attempts. Those days were the pinnacle of happiness, the sweetest of my life, al-Masri tells me.

Almasri and the singer became famous for their music, but they had to go into hiding. Almasri says they never spent more than a few nights in any one place. Then they went underground, literally. They paid to obtain a map of the city's sewage system.

The two traversed the front lines of the urban guerrilla war that had consumed the city of Homs by that point. They crossed enemy lines through the city's sewage tunnels, emerging from grates in the dead of night to meet so al-Masri could give al-Sarut his newest lyrics. Here they are practicing together in 2013. La la la la

Hold up together during the siege of Homs, a major offensive that laid waste to much of the city. Around then, al-Masri says the two men who had once been so in sync started to diverge. al-Masri, a committed pacifist, believed his pen was his most powerful weapon. But by 2012, al-Sarout had picked up a gun.

he decided to become an opposition fighter. Here's his childhood friend and former teammate, Rayed Al Khalid. Al Khalid says al-Sarout saw no other way to resist a regime that was increasingly murderous. Al Khalid spent almost seven years fighting alongside al-Sarout. He watched as his joyful, big-hearted friend tired and hardened. Oh.

Al-Sarout struggled with the death and destruction, but he increasingly advocated for violence over singing as his preferred tool for regime change. Al-Khalid says Al-Sarout often prayed that he would die fighting. His father and five brothers had all been killed.

In 2019, al-Sarout got his wish. He'd been fighting in northern Syria when he was badly injured in a drone strike. Al-Halad was among the soldiers who evacuated him to Turkey for treatment. Abdulbaset al-Sarout died of his injuries the next day. He didn't live to see the revolution he'd sung for succeed. Al-Halad did, but in his joy, he feels like there's an entire chapter still missing, he says. Al-Sarout is missing, he says.

And al-Masri, the lyricist, is now a songwriter without his singer. Today, he wanders homes and sees the past. Al-Sarout's scent, his presence, is everywhere in homes, al-Masri says. There is no street here that we have not walked down together.

We get in a car and head to what remains of the singer's family home. This is the house here. The one that the kids are playing on? Yes. The regime destroyed much of it, and that of his uncles nearby. But the memory of Al-Sarout is very much alive here. A gaggle of children, some born after Al-Sarout died, surrounds me as I approach. Who lived here, I ask them. Abdel Basit Al-Sarout, they say.

Al-Masri is next to me. He's carrying a worn, spiral-bound A4 notebook. The notebook where he hand-wrote most of the first songs Al-Sarout sang. Opening his notebook, he reads one of his and Al-Sarout's chants. The wall's been blown open, so we face the setting sun. My companions have gone ahead of me, he recites. We will live on, for this world is fleeting.

Al-Masri has started writing again since the regime fell, he tells me. His new songs are different, though. They're about life and hope and rebuilding. Emily Fang, NPR News, Homs, Syria. That's The State of the World from NPR. Thanks for listening.

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