HTS fighter offers ‘brotherly recommendation’, asking me to put on headbandrevealed at 11:46 Greenwich Mean Time
Nafiseh Kohnavard
Middle East correspondent, reporting from Damascus
On our strategy to Damascus’ major Umayyad Square, I meet Abul Hammam, a Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) fighter, and his cousin Mohammad.
They hug one another tightly, assembly after 15 years aside.
Abul Hammam, 30, initially from Damascus, says he was
preventing in Aleppo for years initially of the Syrian revolution the place he
joined HTS. He has been in Azerbaijan for some years.
I communicate to him in Azeri a bit of.
“Your identify is Arabic however you aren’t Arab. Where are you
from?” he asks me.
I cautiously inform him that I’m initially from Iran’s West
Azerbaijan.
He smiles, saying: “Many of our ancestors are from Balkan
and outdated Soviet Union nations close to Iran. I like Iranian individuals however not the
regime. We fought with them.”
He goes on to ask me whether or not I’m a Christian – I smile, attempting to
keep away from speaking about faith. He continues: “May I provide you with a brotherly good recommendation? Do
you’ve headband?”
I say sure I’ve it with me.
“I feel you’ll be nicer in the event you put on it as a Muslim
girl,” he says.
Out of respect and for safety causes I take my headband
and canopy part of my hair just like how I might put on it in Iran.
“If you convey it additional and canopy all, it should [be] a lot
higher,” Hammam provides.
We’ll have extra on Nafiseh’s response to the trade shortly.
