A Syrian refugee in France: Al-Ma’arri statue awaits return to homeland

Syrians revolt

In 2011, the Syrian people revolted against the tyrannical regime of Hafez al-Assad's son and successor, Bashar al-Assad. Massive peaceful demonstrations erupted across the country, and Syrians began to take down statues, memorials, and images of the al-Assads — particularly those of Hafez. It was a symbolic rejection of the regime's forced erasure of Syrian culture, identity and life.

In 2013, the al-Assad regime managed to turn the Syrian Revolution into a destructive civil war, allowing extremely radical, fundamentalist, and regressive Islamist organisations a presence in the Syrian arena.

These groups quickly took control of several cities and areas of the country. Consequently, one of these organisations decapitated the statue of al-Ma'arri in the town of Ma'arrat al-Nu'man and dragged the head through the streets.

Since the onset of the war, the Syrian people experienced mass displacement. They scattered across the world seeking refuge from their home country which became unlivable.

A common cause

In France, a group of Syrian refugees established the Najun Organisation to group Syrians together, raise awareness over the Syrian plight, and connect the Syrian diaspora with their homeland.

One project they took on was to construct the missing head of al-Ma'arri's statue to replace the decapitated one in Ma'arrat al-Nu'man. Work began in 2018 but it wasn't until 2023 when it was erected in Montreuil.

Montreuil, where al-Ma'arri's new head stands, was nothing more than a suburb on the outskirts of Paris up until the 1960s. However, it was later turned into a city following France's urban development spree.

Nowadays, French immigrants from the countryside along with refugees from Africa, North Africa and Syria live there. The memorial marble inscription that stands at the statue's platform reads: "He will remain a refugee in Montreuil until he can return to a Syria that is free of tyranny, killing, extremism, and occupation."

For Asim al-Basha, owner of the statue, the destruction of any work of art can never erase its intellectual value.

In a previous interview with Al Majalla writer Shadi Alaa Aldin, Asim said the new statue "is a testimony that al-Ma'arri's remarkable intellectual heritage is still alive a millennium after his death, particularly his emphasis on the human mind as the primary and foremost guide for a good life".

Asim adds: "Unfortunately, though, we still didn't learn this most important lesson taught by al-Ma'arri. Our communities are still governed by blind belief in divine predestination which is keeping Arab countries in their regressive backwardness."

Commenting on keeping Al-Ma'arri's eye sockets empty, Asim says: "It is well-known that al-Ma'arri, nicknamed "the Captive of House Seclusion and Blindness", had such an amazing insight despite being blind. I chose to leave his eye sockets empty to emphasis the blindness he had to live with. Instead, birds perching inside his empty eyes."      

Conflicting connotations

Al-Ma'arri's statue has conflicting connotations. On the one hand, it reflects Syria's powerful artistic scene but, on the other, it highlights the pain of Syria's tragedy — including displacement and the sorrow that comes with living away from one's homeland.

"Ma'arrat al-Nu'man is still occupied by the enemies of freedom and dignity, regardless of their ideological affiliation."

Asim explains that the new statue was stored for five years at a warehouse in the Spanish city of Grenada, until the Montreuil city council granted it asylum.

"Hopefully one day it can return back to its homeland," he says.

A uniting symbol

In Montreuil, we stood for a few minutes in front of the statue that stands at the entrance to the main road that connects Montreuil to the French capital. We took some pictures of it on a sunny Sunday morning.

Generally speaking, French Sunday mornings are quiet, as most people come out to the streets quite late. However, Montreuil's popular market was already swarming with people on that early morning.

A French passerby pointed to the statue and told us that the city's municipality approved its erection and inaugurated it during a ceremony that included undrawing the curtain which revealed it for the first time. 

The man said he learned a bit about al-Ma'arri being a splendid poet and a rationalist philosopher of his age, noting that the statue's inauguration brought Montreuil's residents — who hail from different backgrounds — together.

Montreuil's market street has several African and North African stores and restaurants, and recently some Syrian restaurants have opened. In a vast American-styled restaurant in front of a retirementhome, some elderly people of North African descent sat.

One of them, an Algerian man, explained: "Montreuil is a place that rarely has any statues, as it is a new city that emerged from a Parisian suburb. Actually, the curtain-undrawing ceremony of the statue inspired me to read some of al-Ma'arri's poetry on the internet."

On our way back from Montreuil, we stood again at the statue and read its long inscription:

"A Syrian poet and thinker who, despite being blind, had extraordinary insight and free life. A millennium back he condemned political tyranny and religious extremism and regarded the human mind as the sole guide to truth."

"When the people of his hometown Ma'arrat al-Nu'man rebelled and took to the streets in the spring of 2011 demanding their freedom, the Syrian regime first bombarded the town, then it turned its cultural house into a detention centre where it arrested, tortured, and killed its peaceful protestors."

"In 2013, jihadist extremists took over the town, and the first of their crimes was to decapitate the statue of al-Ma'arri that stood on a platform at the town centre.

Work on this new statue of al-Ma'arri started in 2018 in the Spanish city of Granada at the hands of Syrian sculptor Asim al-Basha thanks to generous donations given by survivors of Syrian detention centres."

"The new statue stands as a symbol of peace, culture, and close ties between the world's peoples, cities, and generations, and as an icon to all those who call for achieving freedom of expression and human rights, and for releasing detainees in Syria and everywhere across the globe."

Al Ma'arri's life and works

Let us now shed some light on the life of al-Ma'arri. The man lived most of his life as an ascetic who renounced worldly pleasures, followed a strict vegetarian diet, abstained from causing any harm to animals, dressed in tattered clothes, never married or had any children, and secluded himself at his house to contemplate existence and the state of the world.

Al-Ma'arri was known to be a pessimist by nature, which made him utter the following famous verse in which he expresses regret that he was born unto this world:

"This wrong was by my father to me done,

But never done by me to anyone!"

Ibn Khallikan, a literary critic who passed away 154 years after Al-Ma'arri's death, mentions in his book "Deaths of Eminent Men and History of the Sons of the Epoch" that al-Ma'arri asked for the above verse to be inscribed on his grave.

However, the most famous of al-Ma'arri's poems is the one which is often taught in school curricula, since it expresses the essence of his personal creed very clearly. The first verse of it reads as follows:

To my way of thinking and my conviction,

Worthless are both singing and lamentation.

Later in the same poem, Al-Ma'arri says:

Behold the tombs that fill our earth, my friend,

And tell where are the graves of the ancient dead?

Tread slowly and with reverence upon sand,

I think it's the remains of their bodies' end.

It might be worth mentioning that al-Ma'arri lived during the last days of the First Abbasid Dynasty, whose empire has disintegrated into several smaller and insignificant states.

He also lived in the same era of the great Arab poet Al-Mutanabbi (915-965), adopting an almost entirely opposite poetic direction to the latter. Al-Mutanabbi was only seeking wealth and recognition through praising influential rulers, whereas al-Ma'arri relinquished all worldly ambitions, and secluded himself in his house in Ma'arrat al-Nu'man.

Before his self-imposed seclusion, though, al-Ma'arri spent a year and a half in Baghdad, which was the intellectual hub of that era. Some claim that he had even visited Yemen. Ironically, all these countries — Iraq, Syria, Yemen (also Lebanon) — are witnessing endless turmoil and civil strife.

About Asim al-Basha

The statue's sculptor, Asim al-Basha, was born in Argentine's capital Buenos Aires in 1948 to a Syrian immigrant father and an Argentinian mother. He studied the art of sculpture there, then lived for a while in Granada. Besides being a sculptor, Asim has also authored many novels, including "A Letter in Gloominess," and "The Last Damascene in Granada".

Later, he studied in Moscow, then went to live in Syria in 1977. However, Syrian intelligence reports led to the punitive decision of appointing him as an arts teacher in the remote town of Al Hasakah, instead of becoming an arts professor at the university.

When the Syrian Revolution broke out in 2011, Asim was detained by the regime intelligence, then released. His brother Numayr, however, was killed in one of the regime's detention centres.

Asim documented the memoirs of his own detention and the loss of several of his artistic works in the book "A Couple of Days in Yabrud." Later, he had to flee Syria went to live in Spain.

Along with other Syrian personalities in the diaspora, such as the two actors Faris al-Hilu and Jalal al-Tawil, the filmmaker Usamah Muhammad, the singer Muna Umran, and several other artists, writers, and intellectuals, Asim established the Najun Organisation.

The organisation managed to raise funds for erecting the statue of al-Ma'arri's missing head, as countless survivors from the Syrian regime's detention centres responded enthusiastically.

Along with Palestinian and Lebanese counterparts, Syrian intellectuals in the diaspora were eager to create an illuminative Syrian intellectual presence in Europe.

Thus, they donated for hewing this massive bronze monument (al-Ma'arri's head statue weighs one and a half tons and is 3.25 m high).

Their aim was to commemorate the great Syrian philosopher-poet and rationalist "as an icon that symbolises the Syrian people who are waiting for justice, peace, and democracy to be realised in their country".