Man at the Airport

How Social Media Saved My Life—One Syrian's Story

Hassan Al Kontar

• Publisher: Tidewater Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781777010188
• eBook ISBN: 9781777010195
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: Social Sciences

His only weapon was a cellphone. When civil war broke out in his home country in 2011, Hassan Al Kontar was a young Syrian living and working in the UAE. He refused to return to Syria for compulsory military service and lived illegally before being deported to Malaysia in November 2017. Four months later, unable to obtain a visa for any other country, he became trapped in the arrivals zone at Kuala Lumpur Airport. Exiled by war and trapped by geopolitics, Al Kontar used social media and humour to tell his story to the world, becoming an international celebrity and ultimately finding refuge in Canada. Man@the_airport explores what it means to be a Syrian, an "illegal" and a refugee. More broadly, it examines the power of social media to amplify individual voices and facilitate political dissent.

Part One: MAN

Chapter One: The Olive Farm

For those of us who leave our country for a better future, memory stands still. New buildings, towers, roads, and fancy restaurants may have sprung up, but in your mind, the face of your city remains always the same. If you are no longer there to witness the changes, then you can’t imagine them happening, just as you can’t imagine that the people you knew can change as well. After years away, you hardly notice the way you’ve erased all the negatives from your memory, and how your home country has become an ideal—the most beautiful place on Earth. Friends and family may tell you what’s new, what’s different, but your mind? Well, it just will not absorb it. Later, you will wonder if it is a bad thing to keep the idealized home in your mind untouched, frozen in time.

For most of us, war is something you read about in history books, watch in movies or documentaries. It’s not something that happens in your home, to the people you love. If you were a Syrian living abroad in 2011, you changed the TV channel every minute, with the false hope that someone would suddenly say it had all stopped.

Children, their eyes lost and confused, running terrified with their toys in their hands, refusing to forget their innocence in the midst of destruction. Mothers crying with their hands open towards the sky, trying to save those they love and stop the madness; fathers who knew that the normal circle of life is for their children to bury them. But not in Syria, not anymore: wives losing their husbands, coffins on shoulders, rockets and houses falling, tanks moving into cities and terrorists blowing themselves up in the middle of civilian areas. Kidnappers, murderers and rapists everywhere.

The army that I had naively thought belonged to the country turned out to be dedicated to protecting its own interests and those of its leader. On the other side are young men who tasted the sweetness of shooting a weapon and the addiction of the fight. Anger became the master and revenge ruled the streets. I had a wild desire to shout at all of them, “Stop, just stop! We can fix this, we can solve it.” Later, I kept quiet because both sides were ready to attack me for not believing in their solution. I told myself, these are not the people I left five years ago. This is not my country. But we were marching into the dark, and no one would be able to stop us.

I, like all Syrians, had to make a decision, a life and death decision that would change my life forever. No one is ever ready for such a decision. It’s not the kind you are used to making—renting a new place, changing jobs, buying a car, having the courage to ask that beautiful woman to be your girlfriend. My life, future and destiny lay in the hands of strangers desperately trying to remain in power. Depending on which side I supported, I would be brave or a coward, a patriot or a traitor.

I needed to ask myself the right questions, the difficult ones, the ones no one can ever agree on. Who is right and who is wrong? On which side should I fight and why? Do I need to go back? If so, what about my future? What about my family? Am I the type of man who will have no problem carrying a gun and shooting someone in the name of freedom, or to protect the regime of a corrupt dictator? Who would I be protecting and who would I have to attack? Night after sleepless night, I confronted the reality of this war and what it meant for me, knowing that whatever I decided, I was going to pay for it.

It was our olive farm that finally made up my mind.

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Sweida, where I was born and raised, is a small city of half a million inhabitants, a hundred kilometres south of Damascus in a mountainous area. Everyone knows everyone, and it’s very social: hunting, playing cards or watching soccer games. Government employees during the week are farmers at the weekends. Time is not very important there, there is no rush. If you miss your bus because you’re chatting with an old friend, you can always catch the next one. They even have a saying for that: “Take it easy, it’s not like you missed your meeting with the minister.” The area is known for growing apples and grapes in the mountains and olives in the plains.

The farm was between our town and the next one, surrounded by other olive farms owned by relatives and delineated by hand-built walls of black stones that gave the place a timeless air. A grapevine grew along one wall, guarding the rows of olive trees. In one corner some almond trees added a garden touch. A small building, two rooms and a terrace, sat atop a hill overlooking the whole farm. We used one of the rooms to store equipment and the other to avoid the midday heat. There was no electricity, but a small generator powered a water pump and, on the rare occasion we decided to stay the night, we attached a lamp to the car battery.

The town dates from the Roman Empire and, if you listen carefully, you could hear the voices of those who once walked and lived there. My grandfather’s house, which is still inhabited by one of my father’s uncles, is ancient, full of small halls and built of natural black volcanic rock that cools the temperature during the summer. For the winter, there is an old stove that burns dried animal manure instead of wood, an old innovation based on the abundance of cattle and the absence of forest. During the long winter nights, villagers use their stoves to boil wheat. They add sugar and eat it while retelling stories and poems, mostly about our battles against Ibrahim Pasha, son of the great Muhammad Ali, ruler of Egypt at the time of the Ottoman Empire, and against the French General Michaud in 1925. The memories of how we defeated them and kept both our land and our dignity are a part of our DNA and our stories include even the smallest details, down to the individual names of those who fought generations before. We are Druze, a minority in Syria (only three percent of the population); throughout our history we have encountered many attacks, wars and reconciliations based on our beliefs. This is why, in all the countries where we exist (Syria, Israel, Palestine, Jordan and Lebanon), we live in the mountains, where the higher ground gives us isolation and protection, the better to defend ourselves. Although we never fought for power, we have been a major player in the history of Syria.

My city has a history of resisting occupation and, even during our wedding celebrations, we sing to what we call our time of glory, our legacy. Historically rebels who adore freedom, we could not cope with the changing regimes who took control of the Syrian throne, so from the turn of the last century, we started travelling, mostly to Latin America, particularly Venezuela. Almost every family in Sweida has some cousins living there and in other Latin American countries. I myself have many cousins there whom I have never met.

The second wave of emigration came when the previous Syrian president came to power in 1970. He imprisoned some well-known politicians from Sweida and killed others. Knowing our freedoms were going to be taken away from us again, many Druze began to leave and, since the Gulf states were newborn with oil and money, close to home too, we started leaving for there.

If it is true that the man is the son of his environment, then the people who live in Sweida are shaped by land that, despite the olive farms and some seasonal crops, is barren—an endless horizon of medium-sized black rock hills full of caves housing hyenas, wolves, snakes and scorpions, dotted with wild pistachio trees dating back to Roman times. The people there are serious people who don’t joke, not with strangers anyway, who stand with each other in time of need, knowing their survival depends on being together. They may have their squabbles but, in the face of an external threat, they become one, and words like dignity, honour, pride and generosity mean everything.

If you, a tourist or explorer coming from a western country, were by chance to visit our town, you would meet simple people with simple needs leading a simple life—smiling, calm, hospitable people, fairly well educated, who would welcome you any time, day or night, and insist that you eat with them. “You can stay as long as you want, the last bus for the city leaves the station by 5:00 p.m. and there is no cellular service.” If you got closer, if you stayed longer and they let you in, if you set aside your preconceived ideas of the mysteries of the East—magic nights in the desert, riding camels guided by the stars, living in tents, looking after sheep—you would start to see them differently, and you might realize that this was the problem with every invader who tried to rule this land. They made no effort to understand these people.

So, if you had the chance to have a closer look, you would discover this—they know their land, they are the masters there. They don’t attack, but protecting their land and their women is their definition of masculinity. If that were to fail, they could no longer exist, their life would have lost its purpose. Sharply clever by nature, they are generous men of few words, but that all can change in a second. If you come seeking protection, they will protect you no matter what. But if you come as an invader, the volcano that shaped their land thousands of years ago will suddenly erupt. Anger becomes madness—they will be willing to burn themselves down as long as you burn along with them.

The middle class, the majority of this society, provides the community with agricultural products and traditional industries, along with intellectuals, doctors, engineers, officers and skilled workers. This is a community that understands that education is its best and only weapon. They are the writers, poets, artists and athletes. They are the ones who dream of a better country, freedom and democracy, with no corruption. They would be the ones who started protesting, armed with songs from their wedding parties and the principles of their ancestors.

We used to go to the farm every weekend during the summer, and I was not a huge fan. It was hard work, physically demanding—far from the city, friends and TV—and so quiet it was scary. But it was enough for us that my father loved it, a hobby among many, so we went with him, and during the olive harvest the whole family, including my mother and older sister, Solaf, would work. Over time, I started to understand why my father took us with him—so we could know the value of the land and the trees, and that there is happiness in labour and being productive. But mostly he wanted to remind us of our heritage.

One typical summer weekend when I was in Grade Seven, my father and I were having our break under the shadow of an olive tree. The sunlight penetrated the shade through the leaves, a breeze was moving the twigs, and I was trying to sway with it to avoid the heat. Behind us, a hose nourished the same tree, well water so cold and fresh it seemed to come directly from heaven, hitting the red soil with a sound like a small fountain, turning it into something that looked like chocolate and sending a distinctive smell in the air. It sticks with me to this day, the sound of the water and the smell of the soil after rain.

In front of us lay our breakfast, a simple meal of olives, black and green, thyme with olive oil, yogurt, flatbread, cucumber, green onion, green mint, tomato and extra-sweet tea, the way the farmers prefer it, the sugar giving them the energy to continue working. Because I was never a fan of tea or sugar, I was pretending to drink just to fit in.

Without any introduction, my father put down his tea glass, took a quick look around, smiling at the trees, then turned to me and said, “I grew you both together, you know, you and the trees. They are almost your age. Don’t let them die thirsty! Add some more rooms to the house, furnish it appropriately, install electricity, plant the remaining land and, no matter what happens, don’t sell the farm. It is your and your kids’ connection to this village, to your roots.”

I still don’t know why he picked that day, long before the war started, to remind me of my legacy. But I could feel the presence of history, smell it all over the place, and I looked at him with my eyes narrowed, so he would be able to tell how serious I was and that I understood him. I said just a few words, but it was enough for him to let me drive the car almost two kilometres back ...

Table of contents

• Foreword
• Introduction
• Part One: MAN
• Chapter One: The Olive Farm
• Chapter Two: Leaving Syria
• Chapter Three: Two Faces
• Chapter Four: Between the Camel and the Range Rover
• Chapter Five: River of Madness
• Chapter Six: A Normal Person
• Part Two: @the_airport
• Chapter Seven: @kontar81
• Chapter Eight: What Is It with the Media!
• Chapter Nine: Heroes
• Chapter Ten: You’re a Celebrity Now
• Chapter Eleven: The Airport Prisoner
• Chapter Twelve: Endgame
• Part Three: .CA
• Chapter Thirteen: O Canada
• Postscript