Songs of the Soil: When Nations Wander Through Their Long Night

In the earth’s storm-laden night, at the frayed edges of a map devoured by fire and carved by the knives of the ambitious and the lust of invaders, America spins its web over severed Syria like a patient spider. They said: "They have left," and the ers cheered under their covers—only to wake and find it was a mirage that had vanished, while the heavy boots still pressed their eternal signatures into the dust.

The rifles once rested on nine hundred shoulders, then rose to two thousand two hundred as the specters of borders loomed closer. Later, their numbers thinned, and the frame shrank back—not from weakness, but as the serpent sheds its skin to prepare for the strike. Fortresses rose, secret mandates were penned, decreeing that someone must always stay behind to guard the myth: that ISIS, that rebellious ghost, must remain the eternal excuse for presence, until the earthly gods grow weary of their bloody games.

In the dams and the y ports of the East, the soldiers’ tents anchor themselves deep, far from the eyes of a regime that now watches over the ruins of a kingdom where kings have vanished and only hollow castles remain. They say, if the faces change, new tents may be raised—for when a land is abandoned by its people, it opens its heart to any stranger carrying a sword´-or-a compass.

Meanwhile, across the river, hidden from view, the Kurds gather. On their backs they carry a century of broken dreams, and in their hands, a handful of hopes spun between mountains and exile. There, on a trembling table barely strong enough to bear the weight of hope, they try to draw a new map—one that will not betray the color of their blood, nor the toil of their fathers.

It is neither secession nor an escape from history, but an attempt to resurrect a dream in a new language: lands breathing in their own tongue, peoples sharing bread and destiny. Just as the flag of Kurdistan once fluttered over the mountains of Sulaymaniyah without toppling Baghdad, perhaps a new sun may rise over northern Syria—if it remembers that under its light dwell Arabs, Chaldeans, and Syriacs, all born of the same soil.

Yet the winds rarely blow the way the farmers wish. Northern Syria is no clear mirror, but a mosaic of faces, tongues, and flags. If the Kurds wish to be architects of dawn rather than prisoners of ambition, they must weave the shroud of division with the thread of reconciliation, and vow upon the torn walls of their cities: there can be no democracy for them without democracy for their neighbors.

And then, there is another pain knocking at the gates: the Arabs who forgot their neighbors, who let the Kurdish language become estranged from their tongues, like sad songs lost in a marketplace that no longer remembers their tune. How strange it is that an Arab might master the dialect of sultans from love dramas, yet fail to grasp a single word of the Kurdish spoken by neighbors of a thousand springs!

Some wise souls in the north have opened windows for dialogue, releasing a "sun" that pierces through ignorance and embraces Arab hearts with the news of the Kurds. If only the Arabs understood: he who does not learn the language of his neighbor remains forever a prisoner of his own ignorance—even if he ruled all the earth.

Elsewhere on the broken stage, a man named Ahmad al-Shar a speaks in Syria’s name, as if the land still lies beneath his feet—while reality slaps him with a harsher truth: Syria, as he knew it, has shattered into fragments. From the Euphrates to the coast, from the south to the far banks, the blood has scattered and the banners have fallen apart.

He speaks of unity whose keys he no longer holds, of a rebuilding whose stones he cannot gather. He made promises, and the earth betrayed them. He swore oaths, and the rifles betrayed him. And now, he stands a shadow speaking beneath a sun that no longer belongs to him, like a man calling out in a valley abandoned by beasts and men alike.

Then comes another voice speaking of "building an army," as if the roots of evil were not planted in the very soil of those weapons! From which mythical tree shall they pluck a pure army, when its roots drink from the earth of extremism and black flags? How can the West hand over weapons to an army whose leaders, only yesterday, were pledging allegiance in the schools of ruin?

Syria does not need new guns—it needs a heart that does not betray, an eye that does not close to pain, a tongue that does not betray the word. It needs a constitution written in the blood of conscience, not in the blood of factions.

Thus, between the illusion of withdrawal and the dreams of federations, between limping promises and barren negotiations, Syria groans. Over her torn body, hands race to claim her, each declaring itself the savior—yet the dreamers do not know: salvation will never come from without, but must be born from the ashes within.

And peace upon a land that has learned to live despite the spite of maps—and to sing songs of the soil that never betrays.

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