A note from Willem Bruls

About Aleppo

In our imaginations, Aleppo has always been there; in our memory, not much, if at all. William Shakespeare mentions the city twice: in “Macbeth” in the witch scene and in “Othello” when the title character stabs himself to death at the end after killing his beloved Desdemona out of jealousy. Not a pretty setting for such a beautiful city. Doom, however, seems to be ingrained in the materials used to build Aleppo.

Hardly anyone knew the city when I first came there a quarter century ago. Perhaps the name evoked an association somewhere. Syria yes, Damascus yes, but Aleppo…? I discovered on that first trip the magic of a historic oriental city, but also of a multicultural melting pot, and the magic of that which is called the capital of Arabic music.

In 2000, I walked through the medieval Christian quarter. It was a coincidence that it was almost Easter. Even if I had already planned to do so, I would have been overtaken by a layered reality: for the Orthodox Easter falls on different days than Western Catholic. In the old Armenian church, I attend Mass and listen with fascination to the choral songs. A little further on is the Syrian Orthodox Church, which sings a music that sounds even more archaic. The roots of this choral singing reach back to the third century of our era.

Back in the Islamic city center, I pass the citadel perched on a high hill, inescapably dominating everything. In the maze of alleys around it lies the souk, the covered market with its countless stores and stalls. The scents of herbs wafted toward me. A vendor tells me that everything comes together in Aleppo: from the Silk Road, the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa and Europe.

As I walk further into the labyrinth of the neighborhood, I hear rhythmic chanting, sonorous and repetitive. A friendly neighbor guesses my curiosity and trots me inside. Without realizing it, I entered the Friday afternoon meeting of a Sufi fraternity. Sufism is the friendly, humanistic face of all Islamic movements combined. Inside, men sit in a small room and they recite the name of Allah in endless repetition, faster and faster and more intensely. In the process, they obsessively move the upper body. Solo singers and a few choristers sing lyrical poetry over that. It becomes one big polyphonic sound field.

The sheikh of the fraternity tells me that this is the oldest Arabic music notated in notes. This is another reason why Aleppo is the capital of music.

Nearly twenty-five years later, I walk again through the now-damaged downtown. It took multiple catastrophes – poverty, civil war, earthquake – for Aleppo to return to our collective memory. I wish she had been forgotten forever.