'Oh, my Syria!'

In a different area of Lebanon, I meet another Syrian, this time from the Aleppo outskirts. He is wiry, with grey hair though not yet 50, and a bright face, his presence emanating peace and calm...in spite of what he has gone through and lost.

He and his wife and children have been here about a year, leaving behind their home and his work as a tailor. Here, he cleans the simple lodging where I'm staying.

He is a Kurd, from the Syrian village of Ifreen, and while he says he says he would like to have Kurdish taught in schools, he insists that his area was never supportive of the insurgents, nor with the west's manufactured "revolution". (An interesting aside, but Armenians in Syria have founded public institutions to teach their language.)

"It isn't a revolution," he says (contrary to what an insistent pro-"revolution" foreigner insisted the other day, also insisting if I hear otherwise -- in Syria or here -- it's because they are afraid to speak.  Well, once again, here is a Syrian, uninhibited and not afraid to voice his opinion, and his opinion echoes the countless Syrians I've encountered in Syria and Lebanon).

Here he is, a Kurd, who corporate media and talking heads would say is demanding "freedom" and "revolution." But he’s not demanding those things.  And he's adamant that if there were to be a "revolution," it wouldn't have unfolded as the crisis in Syria has these past few years.  "What is that? Stealing from us, beheading us, destroying my country?  How is that a revolution? If it was a revolution, you target the government not the people, not the history."

I’ve seen the same nostalgic eyes and heard the same "oh, my Syria!"

He speaks of President al-Assad with admiration, praising his demeanor, refusing the western narrative that he'd want someone else as President. (I've heard this before...Freedom).  I look around for lurking thugs pressuring him to speak thus. But there is only this man, speaking from his heart.