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5 December, 1960. 56 years ago, a day not many today will remember but it was the day our great grandfather Hashem Bek Atassi passed. After an already long career as Ottoman administrator of Beirut, and Governor of Homs, Hama, Baalbek, Anatolia and Jaffa , Hashem helped lay the foundations to build a modern Syrian nation state - the state that began to be destroyed in the years surrounding Hashem's death and has been made into Hell on Earth in the last five by those who see its peoples, cities and cultures as collateral damage. Hashem was President of the Syrian national Congress, three times elected President of Syria and signed the independence Treaty with France. May be peace rest upon his memory and the souls who have lost their lives in Syria - he could ever have imagined what would come to pass. Some pictures of a time gone by - Hashem's state funeral, Prince Philip's visiting him as guest of honour at the Palace in Damascus - his times mentoring Prince Faisal of Iraq, the signing of independence in Paris , the first and last constitutional transition of power in Syrian history , and of course gratuitous Fez pictures from the archives...

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A little piece of Virginia Woolf for a cold Saturday ....... because if walking the streets of New York feels like being in a film, then certainly roaming the streets of London on a cold autumn's afternoon must be living in a book...

"The hour should be evening and the season winter, for in winter the champagne brightness of the air and the sociability of the streets are grateful. We are not then taunted as in summer by the longing for shade and solitude and sweet airs from the hayfields. The evening hour, too, gives us the irresponsibility which darkness and lamplight bestow. We are no longer quite ourselves. As we step out of the house on a fine evening between four and six we shed the self our friends know us by and become part of that vast republican army of anonymous trampers, whose society is so agreeable after the solitude of one's own room. For there we sit surrounded by objects which perpetually express the oddity of our own temperaments and enforce the memories of our own experience. "

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We are greater than our despair. The negative aspects of humanity are not the most real and authentic; the most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love, and to be greater than our suffering. We are best defined by the mystery that we are still here, and can still rise upwards, still create better civilisations, that we can face our raw realities and that we will survive the greater despair that the greater future might bring.

'Turn on Your Light', Ben Okri

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An abstract of my research in Lebanon conducted with Syrian woman has been published the Council for British Research on the Levant  

An excerpt of which above 

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Stay here with me. We’ll start a jazz band. 

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Techfugees Conference & Hackathon

Moved by the plight of refugees in Europe, a number of technology industry people have formed a small voluntary team to create the free, non-profit, "Techfugees" conference on October 1st in Central London, at Skillsmatter.

Tickets here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/techfugees-tickets-186499444…

On October 2nd we will be running a "Hackathon" with the Telefonica-backed accelerator, WAYRA, to work on tech solutions and products to aid both refugees and agencies.

Tickets here: http://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/techfugees-hackathon-tickets-…

We'd like you to come.

The background:

In the last 48 hours our Facebook Group and Twitter account has exploded, with over 700 people from the tech community signing up. There is clearly a huge desire amongst the tech community to get involved.

See: https://www.facebook.com/groups/Techfugees

This will be an entirely non-profit event to bring together tech engineers, entrepreneurs and startups together with NGOs and other agencies in order to address the crisis in ways where the technology world can bring its considerable firepower.

Our partners for the conference and hackathon are Skillsmatter and WAYRA. More partners will be announced soon.

SPEAKERS SO FAR FROM: UNHCR Rewired State Paula Schwarz, StartupBoat Anne Kjær Riechert, Refugees On Rails Marieme Jamme, Africa Gathering Bernhard Niesner, Busuu language-learning startup Marianne Bouchart, HEI-DA Data journalism institute

On October 2nd we will be running a "Hackathon" with the Telefonica-backed accelerator, WAYRA, to work on tech solutions and products to aid both refugees and agencies.

Tickets: http://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/techfugees-hackathon-tickets-…

The aims of the Hackathon are to start working on products and solutions that can be fed into the I Am Here Hackathon in Berlin, run by Rewired State, on October 3rd. This will increase the chances of tech products being deployed by Winter.

We would like you to come and engage with the tech community so that we can help discuss and build solutions.

We are also looking for sponsors to cover the costs of the event.

Please email mike@techfugees.com about the event content and petra@twistedtree.co.uk to sponsor the costs of the event.

Techfugees Conference WHERE: Skillsmatter at CodeNode, 10 South Place, London, EC2M 7EB MAP: https://goo.gl/maps/8vCHh

WHEN: October 1st 9am - 5.30pm

Lunch and coffee/tea will be served.

ATTENDANCE: 300 people

AGENDA: This will be circulated in the next few days. Speaker suggestions can be sent to mike@techfugees.com

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Oxford-Jusoor Scholarship for Syrian Students

Very happy and proud of this news -- thanks to everyone who helped fundraise  and raise awareness this year. Do share with your Syrian friends and family who might not otherwise have thought of applying to Oxford this year. And please don’t hesitate to be in touch with me if you are Syrian, applying to Oxford want help with your application. 

Jusoor is very pleased to announce Oxford-Jusoor Graduate Scholarship for Syrian Students St Antony’s College and the University of Oxford, in partnership with Jusoor, are offering one scholarship a year for entry in 2016/17 and 2017/18 to a student who is a Syrian citizen or a stateless person residing in Syria to study for a one year Master’s degree at St Antony’s College in the University of Oxford. The scholarship covers course fees, college fees and a grant for living costs of at least £14,057. Awards are made for the full duration of your fee liability for the agreed course. The scholarship is jointly funded by the University and by Jusoor. The scholarship is only tenable at St Antony’s College. All eligible applicants will be considered for the scholarship, regardless of which college (if any) you state as your preference on the graduate application form. However, successful applicants will be transferred to St Antony’s College in order to take up the scholarship. There is no separate application process for this scholarship: to be considered, submit your application for graduate study by the relevant January deadline (8 or 22 January 2016, depending on your course). Selection is expected to take place in April 2016. Full list of the eligible programs can be found here: https://www.sant.ox.ac.uk/prospective-students/fees-and-funding/scholarships-new-students/oxford-jusoor-graduate-scholarship

University of Oxford Graduate Application Guide: http://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/graduate/applying-to-oxford/application-guide

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Remembering September 9, 1936 ... their hopes for immediate independence were dashed only a few months later, but 79 years ago at least there was still hope and vision for Syria as a country. 

In this picture, Hashem Al-Atassi, my great-grandfather, is signing the Franco-Syrian Treaty of Independence (1936) as head of the National Bloc delegation. He returned to Syria in triumph and was elected President of the Republic. However, World War II broke out and France refused to ratify the treaty, claiming that it could not give up its Middle Eastern colonies in this context. Atassi then resigned. With the fall of France in 1940 during World War II, Syria came under the control of the Vichy Government until the British and Free French occupied the country in July 1941.The Free French declared the conditional ‘independence' of Syria again in 1941, but it wasn't until the Syrian Chamber of Deputies unilaterally voted on 30 November 1943 to remove article 116 of the constitution, which gave the French power of veto over any bill, that Syria gained any real measure of independence. On February 26, 1945 Syria declared war on Germany and Japan. Continuing pressure from Syrian nationalist groups and British pressure forced the French to evacuate their troops in April 1946, leaving the country in the hands of a republican government that had been formed during the mandate with Shukri al-Quwatli as President. Hashem al-Atassi would become President again in 1949 and in 1954. — 

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Palmyra, city of ruins, city of prisons

New article by Yassin al-Haj Saleh par Yassin Al Haj Saleh

في الوقتِ الذي كان خطرُ تدمير مدينةِ تدمر الأثريّة موضعَ اهتمامٍ عالمي، كان تدميرُ سجنِ تدمر على يدِ تنظيمِ الدولةِ الإسلاميّة موضعَ حديثِ السوريين، لشدّةِ رمزيَّتِه المُشْبَعة بممارساتِ نظامٍ أمنيٍّ هدفُه كسرُ أيَّةِ معارضةٍ كانت وأيَّ فرد كان. نصٌّ شهادة.

Deux images de Palmyre imprègnent l’imaginaire collectif des Syriens. L’évocation de l’une est rarement associée à l’autre. La première nous est enseignée à l’école. C’est celle d’un grand site touristique ; nous voyons les colonnes antiques à la télévision, peut-être même lisons-nous dans les journaux des éléments sur le tourisme annuel qui s’y rapporte. Mais il est un autre Palmyre, invisible : celui de la terrible et effroyable prison qui a semé la terreur parmi les Syriens tout au long des deux dernières décennies du XXe siècle.

Ce double visage de Palmyre est une métaphore de toute la Syrie. Le pays entier se compose de deux mondes dissociés, un premier monde visible où la vie se déroule de manière ordonnée et un monde invisible, enseveli dans l’obscurité, la souffrance et la peur.

http://orientxxi.info/magazine/palmyre-des-ruines-palmyre-des-prisons,0930

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So the violence we are seeing is not very unusual. As for sectarianism, this is politics.When I was a child you didn't ask anyone if they were a Christian, a Jew or a Shia Muslim. Nobody cared. But it is easy to control people through religion." "Was he a psychopath? I think most people in power probably are. Even in the West by the way, although their power is more constrained because people learnt from history that if you put too much power in one hand it is very difficult for an individual not to become a despot." "In our society, to tell the truth, we suffer from a serious disease which is sometimes infectious and this disease is hatred. There is an environment of hate and revenge and when you are living within that it is very difficult to see beyond it.The politicians are liars and hypocrites. The majority of people are short-sighted and selfishness is like a blindfold. Some have got a lot of money now and they are very happy but they're not aware they are heading towards the cliff."

Ala Bashir, Iraqi artist and former personal doctor to Saddam Hussein

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2015/04/qa-art-chairs-saddam-hussein-doctor-150402063859266.html

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I always tell the truth, even when I lie.

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Golden oldie from 20 years ago  .... visiting a bedouin tribe on a road trip (desert between Oman and UAE) 

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Akkar, Relief and Reconciliation Peace Centre 

Children’s French lessons and nursery. 

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Jordan, September 2014.  Oxford academic exchange. 

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Pénélope est fidèle à Ulysse, mais nous ne savons pas à quel point elle l'aime...comme vous le savez, on peut être parfois absolument fidèle et cela sans aimer...Dans certains cas même, la fidélité est une forme de vengeance, de chantage, de revanche de l'amour propre...