Khaldoun al-Mallah, a Palestinian-Syrian medical doctor and writer, journeyed south from exile in Idlib Province two days after the fall of Bashar Al-Asad. He headed for the ruins of Yarmouk, the name of a camp known as the ‘Capital of the Palestinian diaspora’. Khaldoun had survived the camp’s sieges (2012-18), during which he wrote two novels and co-founded Sard, a literary website publishing creative nonfiction on the “memory” of the camp. The camp had been razed to the ground by the Al-Asad regime after the local truce in April-May 2018. The regime’s intention had been to destroy all traces of Yarmouk, including its name, and to prevent Palestinians from returning.
In Khaldoun al-Mallah’s Facebook post on 21 January 2025, he described the visit of a rebel commander from Aleppo to the ruins of the Yarmouk Martyrs’ Cemetery:
– How did it come to this? the colonel asked.
I had to summarise the extraordinary history in a few minutes: from the two fedayeen Ali al-Kharbush and Muflih al-Salim whose graves cut the ribbon at the opening ceremony1; to the sons of Vladimir Putin who dug it up in honour of the remains of Zechariah Baumel2; passing, of course, via ISIS who saw in the gravestones polytheism and false idols worshipped instead of their creator. 3
– You will rebuild it, I am sure, just as you will rebuild Yarmouk.
– And the remains (rufāt)?
– Remains. Our martyrs are provided for by the Lord. What concerns us now is preserving the symbolism of the cemetery and restoring the names of the martyrs.
Before he left, as if finishing a sentence he’d started that had slipped my mind: …and we need a statue for Sinwar. We are indebted to him, to Gaza, to Palestine, and to the Palestinians.
Battles over truth and narrative during the war in Syria gave rise to what Lisa Wedeen (2019) called “the logic of disavowal” associated with Bashar Al-Asad’s supporters and the so-called Ramadiyin (the greys, or undecided). By contrast, this post by a young revolutionary activist exemplifies the logic of avowal, the recognition of one’s truly held beliefs, which reorders one’s perspective on the historical record.
Avowal is not simply the opposite of disavowal. Both avowal and disavowal involve partial narrations of the historical record and degrees of alienation between knowledge and belief when apprehending a painful reality. Disavowal (in Lisa Wedeen’s reading) involved an epistemic-political split: one might know that a massacre had taken place but refuse to believe it merited political consideration. As such, the suspension of judgment produced what Wedeen termed “siloed” publics, incommensurable political judgements. Avowal, by contrast, is an expression of belief that carves up knowledge of the historical record in a way that attempts to integrate painful realities across political divides.
avowal and disavowal involve partial narrations of the historical record and degrees of alienation between knowledge and belief when apprehending a painful reality
It is easy to feel uneasy about the way Bashar Al-Asad was toppled.4 First because Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) capitalised on Israeli airpower, which, while responsible for the genocidal destruction of Gaza and devastation in Lebanon, also weakened and distracted two of Al-Asad’s primary backers in the so-called Axis of Resistance: Iran and Hezbollah. Moreover, following Al-Asad’s fall, Israel exploited Syria’s disarray to extend its occupation over the Golan Heights.
In this anecdote, the commander’s avowal of faith in armed struggle determines where the historical narrative of the final campaign begins—where he makes the cut—for reasons of political difference between Syrians and Palestinian-Syrians, even when both were opponents of the Asad regime. Khaldoun reminded his readers of the historicity of revolution. He harked back to a moment when revolution as armed struggle was not only possible but desirable—and not only desirable but possible. Despite differences in historical perspective, the commander built on Khaldoun’s narration of the history of the martyrs’ cemetery. He finished a sentence that Khaldoun had forgotten he had started. The overthrow of Bashar al-Asad cracked open that horizon of desire and possibility, generating (short-lived) revolutionary enthusiasm.
In doing so, the commander re-articulated the sense of geopolitical uneasiness: the Syrian rebels didn’t (merely) exploit the evil of Israeli airpower. Upon hearing the history of the martyrs’ ceremony, he acknowledged to his Palestinian-Syrian interlocutor that the route of the Syrian revolution passed unexpectedly through Gaza, whose destruction overturned the regional status quo. The commander’s avowal attempted to integrate seemingly incommensurable regional and local histories – Palestinian, Syrian, and Palestinian-Syrian – of revolutionary armed struggle. However many “extraordinary” twists the journey has taken – however much a narrative might resemble katabasis, a descent into the underworld – revolutionary armed struggle was recuperated as a possibility in an anabasis, a circular journey of setback and eventual return. Revolution as armed struggle remained – in ruined form like the martyrs’ cemetery yet symbolically potent.
Yarmouk Cemetery, Damascus. Credit: Audrey M-G
Since 2011, it has proved easy for scholars of the Arab revolutions to approach the enthusiasms of our interlocutors with scepticism. In February 2012, during the period of Morsi rule, anthropologists published a series of short-format articles not entirely dissimilar to this series. Whilst enthusiasm remained (especially popular enthusiasm) scholars began to unpick popular concepts of revolution. What about the majority of Egyptians “who were not gathering in Tahrir Square” (Abu-Lughod 2012)? And like the famous broadcasts from Tahrir, which figures and what figurations do anthropological theorisations privilege—and whom do they exclude (Winegar 2012)? Where, in short, were anthropological theorisations of revolution “located”?
Samuli Schielke’s (2015) ethnography of life in an Egyptian village before, during, and after the revolution, framed as having no positive and only negative unifying content, is exemplary of this scholarly scepticism. From today’s vantage point, surveying the long aftermath of the Arab revolutions – which can be blamed for political instability, war, death, destruction, mass displacement, mass incarceration, mass pauperisation – such scholarly scepticism sounds wise and ages well.
. The enthusiasm was certainly bittersweet: the homes they returned to were often destroyed; most of the disappeared were declared dead; no secret underground floors were found in the vast prison complex
But as anthropologists, we might seek to protect our own – and our interlocutors’ – enthusiasm from this disciplining logic. According to Alenka Zupančič (2024), disavowal can take a “more ‘reasonable’, moderate, but also more perverse form”, that she calls a kind of “professional scepticism”: “We know better than to allow anything to really get to us.” Far from a critical strategy, she follows Nietzsche in calling this the Enlightenment’s “lulling opium of scepticism”.
In the weeks following Al-Asad’s fall, I admit to sharing in my interlocutors’ revolutionary enthusiasm. Of course, profound “local” reasons underpinned their enthusiasm. Finally and unexpectedly, displaced Syrians could return home, the detainees had been liberated, the prison complex was closed. The enthusiasm was certainly bittersweet: the homes they returned to were often destroyed; most of the disappeared were declared dead; no secret underground floors were found in the vast prison complex. But the strategy of avowing revolution persisted, and it wasn’t just a question of being blinkered or “siloed”. As in the commander’s statement, there was an effort to make the fall of Bashar al-Asad a cause for enthusiasm that stretched beyond the ruins of incommensurable localities.When I returned to Syria in April 2025—my first visit since celebrating the Egyptian revolution in Damascus in February 2011—friends and interlocutors continued to share their revolutionary enthusiasms. Much had ‘gone wrong’ in Syria: from sabotage by local, regional, and imperial powers; to the stark failure of HTS’s leader to live up to the early hype. The devastating coastal massacres and the constitutional disappointments put a decisive end to the period of popular euphoria. Reinstated authoritarian practices dampened most activists’ enthusiasm: the arrest of media activists, political prisons reopening. Ahmad al-Sharaa had dictated that “the Syrian revolution had ended with the regime’s fall.” But at Yarmouk, Khaldoun al-Mallah had co-founded Beit al-Falastin. On the ruins of the camp’s main street, the newly formed activist group raised banners for revolutionary martyrs—media activists, fighters, doctors, community leaders—killed during the siege. They had followed the commander’s advice. Rather than “locate” revolutionary enthusiasm at a site like the desecrated cemetery, they were striving through discursive strategies and media practices to extend it beyond the ruins of the camp and across entrenched political, regional, temporal, and historical divides.
Khaldoun al-Mallah standing in front of the ruins of Yarmouk’s hospital, where he spent the siege working as a doctor and surgeon. The ruins of his family home lie beyond in the Hajar al-Aswad district, April 2025. Author’s Photograph
A Martyr’s Poster made by Beit al-Falastin for Ahmad Koussa, Revolutionary Activist, on the main street in Yarmouk, April 2025. Author’s Photograph
Featured image: Yarmouk Cemetery, Damascus. Credit: Santiago Montag
Cited Works
Abu-Lughod, Lila. 2012. ‘Living the “Revolution” in an Egyptian Village: Moral Action in a National Space’. American Ethnologist 39 (1): 21–25.
Schielke, Samuli. 2015. Egypt in the Future Tense: Hope, Frustration, and Ambivalence before and after 2011. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press.
Wedeen, Lisa. 2019. ‘On Uncertainty: Fake News, Post- Truth, and the Question of Judgment’. In Authoritarian Apprehensions: Ideology, Judgment, and Mourning in Syria. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Winegar, Jessica. 2012. ‘The Privilege of Revolution: Gender, Class, Space, and Affect in Egypt’. American Ethnologist 39 (1): 67–70.
Zupančič, Alenka. 2024. Disavowal. Cambridge: Polity Press.
