Sharief Al-Homsi shivered, hugged her arms and pretended to pass by withdrawing the Syrian regime.
Standing in front of an audience in Damascus, he told a joke that would have been unthinkable until a few weeks before, when President Bashar al-Assad was suddenly ousted after more than five decades of his family’s oppressive rule.
“We need rehabilitation centers. You can’t just keep this guy away from our life like that – it must be progressive, “said the 33 -year -old actor and screenwriter, describing the omnipresent posters and the magazine Spreads representing the al -Assad dynasty, to laugh at the crowd. He continued to shake. “They will ask us for what medication were you addicted to; We will say: “Bashar al-Assad”. »»
It was a stand-up night at the end of December at the Zadaya Art Gallery in the heart of the Syrian capital. Half of the actors who performed that night lived abroad after fled the country during the 13-year-old civil war that ended with the ouster of Mr. Al-Assad.
Their routines included standard comedy dishes – religion, sex and pressure to get married – but the biggest night punchline was Mr. Al -Assad. An actor referred to it throughout his routine like “this whore”.
The actors savor the possibility of saying things that for decades, the Syrians would be too afraid to decide even in private company. The fear of the famous Mukhabarat, the secret intelligence service, was so deeply anchored that the Syrians lived with the warning of prudence that “the walls have ears”.
But even if they kissed the freedom to make new jokes, the actors, like many everyday Syrians, feared that this new freedom of expression was ephemeral. Ahmed Al-Shara, the acting president of the country who leads Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, the Islamist rebellious group which ousted Mr. Assad, promised the unity which reflects the diversified population of Syria, but there are profound concerns about democratic and government.
Under the government of Assad, Roula Sulaiman, owner of the Zadaya Gallery, said that she had faced restrictions and accusations of organizing political opposition events when she tried to organize events of comedy and culture. Now she is still worried.
“We have not yet tested the new regime,” said Ms. Sulaiman. “Depending on what we see, I think we are heading for more restrictions.”
The officials of the new government had come by his gallery and told him that nudity in art would no longer be authorized, she added. When asked for comments, the government’s ministry of information said he did not know the episode but had no rule for this purpose.
So, as the actors are waiting to see what the new red lines can be, they enjoy the occasion as long as it lasts.
“We are in an interim phase where we can talk about the past and present freely, but we are all confronted with an unknown future,” said Mary Obaid, one of the founding members, as well as Mr. Al -Homsi, of Styrie – A Portmanteau in Syria and the Hysteria – which is charged to the first comedy Platform Standing in the country.
Stylie Trained two years ago in order to broadcast the comedy standing in Syria and establish the first comedy club in the country, a goal that he has not yet achieved.
“We are all afraid, but we hope that freedom of expression will remain,” said Obaid, a 23 -year -old dentist.
Even under the repression of the government of Assad and through a destructive civil war, the Syrians relied on humor – generally dark – as an adaptation mechanism.
At the start of the war, ordinary Syrians began to train rebel groups to fight the government, but often had trouble acquiring weapons. A small group of men recorded a satirical video echoing others announcing new groups, but rather than holding Kalashnikovs, each held a piece of fruit to make fun of the struggle of their group to obtain weapons.
In Aleppo, while government forces began to surround the city’s held areas in 2014, the rebels shared their dinner with stray cats. The rebels joked by saying that they were trying to fatten the cats in case they had to eat them.
Given their tradition of gallows humor, the Syrians could only be equipped to exploit the laughter of the current moment and the decades living under the Assad dynasty.
This includes the combination of staff and politics. After the presidential palace of Mr. Al-Assad was looted following his fall, a photograph of him circulated online, showing him dressed in poorly adjusted white underwear and a tank top.
Ms. Obaid found a overlap of her own life. “I was not shocked by anything from the President’s fall except for one thing,” she started during his routine, “my underwear before undergoing a stomach reduction surgery. Why were they in the president’s palace? »»
Thirty minutes before the show in Zadaya, Mr. Al-Homsi sat in what served as a green room, trying on his comedian colleagues who could become new materials. Paintings covered the walls around him while techno was playing loudly in the main hall.
He joked a recent visit to the Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham security officers and how he tried to hide the tattoos covering his arms, given the disapproval of Muslims from most conservatives towards body art.
Before the fall of the regime, Mr. Al-Homsi would inevitably offer jokes involving Mr. Al-Assad, his wife or the government. He wrote them and deposit them in a document which he labeled “for Lebanon”.
At this stage, he built the joke of the Assad withdrawal symptoms, aimed at extending it into a program offered in 12 stages to wean Syrians from dependence on the diet.
“These are jokes that I could not say here,” he said. “Now I can.”
Zeina Shahla Contributed reports.
