RETURN OF THE JESTER

Treading red lines, testing new waters, Syria's standup comedians fly in new freedom

- ANAGHA SUBHASH NAIR

On a Saturday night, I walk into a venue near Bab Touma Square in Damascus. It is a well-lit apartment of sorts, turned to an art gallery. The walls are lined with modern art pieces, and people are queueing up, paying ten dollars to take a seat in the room inside.

The audience has gathered to watch a show by Styria, a group of Syrian comedians attempting to spread standup culture. Before the fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime in December 2024, the job of comedians-spreading laughter-could, if done 'wrong, be one that ended in tears.

There are nearly 100 people in the room. As I enter it, I see that most chairs had either been reserved or taken, and I pull up a seat for myself in the front. Many people in the audience are members of Syria's diaspora-one of the largest in the world.

Sharif Homsi, founder of Styria, kicks off the show, getting up onto the stage while loud, booming music resounds in your ears.

"I don't understand Syria without Bashar," he says, as part of a bit.

"I heard the regime fell, and I was happy, but I couldn't understand ithow did the regime fall!"

He is greeted by laughter and claps, but his jokes mask a real sentiment that a lot of Syrians harbour. As I listen to him talk, and the ones who follow, I realise how novel this experience is, not just for me, but everyone else with me. Just a few weeks prior, the mere idea of putting those thoughts to words would have been inconceivable.

Homsi has held standup comedy close to his heart since about 2012, when he decided that he wanted to be an artist in the field. He moved to Dubai in 2016, participated in multiple comedy workshops, and returned to Syria in 2021. He founded Styria a year later.

Homsi tells me how he used to have a folder named "To Lebanon" in his laptop, to save all the jokes he wrote that he couldn't say in Syria. He says that for every ten jokes he wrote, eight would go into that folder, out of fear.