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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| Syrian Refugees in Turkey: Song of the One-Legged Revolutionary |
| 2012-03-03 |
| Being a Jihadi is a wonderful occupation. "Stumpy" can now hop off to Somali and become a one legged pirate. Beautiful recycling in action, absolutely no waste. Win/win for Allen. "People want freedom, Bashar leave... Freedom is beautiful, Bashar go to the moon, we need freedom," the man sings feebly, in a teenager's untrained voice, trying to keep rhythm with his arms, one covered in bandages, the other connected to a drip. He is a munshid al-thawra, a singer of the revolution, he says, and this is his favorite song, the one he would usually bellow to the swelling crowds during the protests back home. Home, till now, had been a village near Hama in Syria. Today, it is a hospital bed in Antakya, across the border in Turkey. He is a handsome kid, just turned 18, his eyes dulled by the medicine but unmistakably alert, a crop of dark hair framing his smooth, evenly chiseled face, one of the few parts of his body not riddled with shrapnel. Of his left leg, the only flesh exposed to the elements is a row of misshapen, iodine-stained toes, which sprout, like black-orange mushrooms, from beneath thick folds of bandage and gauze. All that remains of the right leg is a stump. For all he knows, the rest of it, sheared off by shrapnel from a mortar shell, lies among the debris of his family home. |
| Posted by:tipper |