AMUDE, Northeastern Syria – Mohammed Rashid Fateh was 12 when he first went to the cinema on November 13, 1960.

“I was so excited I can’t tell you. I was wearing my clothes the day before and couldn’t wait until tomorrow, ”Fateh recalls on a recent afternoon in the predominantly Kurdish town of Amude in northeastern Syria. His joy was short-lived. Halfway through the screening of the Egyptian horror film “The Midnight Phantom”, “there was a loud explosion and the screen went blank.” Smoke filled the theater hall amid cries of “fire!” “

Fateh jumped from the balcony where he was sitting and survived the fire that ravaged the wooden and clay structure built to accommodate no more than 200 people. About 500 children were crammed there that day as per government orders, raising funds for Algeria’s struggle for independence from France. Pan-Arab solidarity was one of the tenets of Syria’s brief marriage to Egypt. The union, called the United Arab Republic, was forged in 1958 and ended with the withdrawal from Syria in 1961.

Estimates vary, but at least 200 children, mostly under the age of 14 and mostly Kurds, perished in the blaze, likely caused by an overheated projector. A frenzied scramble ensued as the children made their way to a pair of narrow exit doors that opened inward. The children huddled against them, forming a human bonfire.

The stench of charred flesh lingered for days as the anxious parents pounded their chests in agony. The fear of cinemas has lasted for decades, passed down from generation to generation. “If you go to the movies, you will die,” the mothers would warn.

“It is the fate of the Kurds, that every pleasure turns into a nightmare,” Fateh said.

Mohammed Rashid Fateh, who survived the Amude fire in 1960, calls himself “a Superman”. Amude, Syria, November 5, 2021 (Amberin Zaman / Al-Monitor)

Educational consultant Alaa Abdulfatah and her husband Gernas Haj Shekhmous, entertainer, have decided to give up their life in Europe and relocate to their hometown this year even as thousands of other Syrians continue to flee the country by illegal means.

Shekhmous opened a small cultural center in early 2021 in the heart of Amude. Housed in an old-style Syrian house with high ceilings and a spacious interior courtyard which is now covered for use in winter, the place is called “Kulturvan”. It’s a play on words, which roughly translated from the main Kurdish dialect Kurmanji means “creator of culture”.

Abdulfatah joined the project in the spring and opened a cinema there in September, the city’s first since the tragedy.

“Everyone fought here; we want to cultivate, ”Shekhmous told Al-Monitor.

“The children were playing war games in the streets. One group would say “We are Jabhat al-Nosra”, the other “We are the YPG. “I became very upset,” Shekhmous said. He was referring to the powerful Idlib-based jihadist militia now known as Hayat Tahrir al Sham and the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units, which helped the US-led coalition defeat the Islamic State.

“I was determined to rebuild the link between Amude and cinema. Above all, I wanted to do this for the children, ”said Abdulfatah.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Amude was a cultural center with three cinemas for a population of 3,000 inhabitants, many of whom are Christians, as evidenced by several old churches dotted around the city. Author Agatha Christie is said to have been there with her archaeologist husband Max Mallowan. French colonization and the oppressive rule of the Baaths, followed by the decade-old Syrian civil conflict and the violent siege of the Islamic State, dulled Amude’s soul, but she is returning.

On an unusually warm evening in mid-November, children holding paper cones filled with popcorn crept into a room with rows of black plastic chairs arranged in a half-moon around a large screen. The offering of the night was the “Smurfs”. Shekhmous and Abdulfatah had downloaded it from an online streaming platform, like all the other films shown in Kulturvan.

Children watch a film at the Kulturvan cinema on November 5, 2021 (Alaa Abdulfatah)

Overcoming the locals’ fear of cinema was not easy. But the couple’s families are well respected in the city, giving them a head start. Kulturvan started out by offering free music lessons to children. Shekmous teaches the daf, a large frame drum that has been played for centuries across the Middle East and Central Asia and used in Sufi chanting rites. The trust between the couple and the local families grows. Painting, writing and storytelling classes were added, attracting an ever-increasing number of students.

“People thought I was crazy when I told them I was leaving Brussels to live in Amude,” Shekhmous said with a laugh. It is not a surprise. Just months before Shekhmous began preparing for his return, Turkish troops invaded much of Kurdish-controlled northeastern Syria, displacing more than 200,000 civilians as their Sunni rebel allies embarked on an orgy. abuses qualified as war crimes by the United Nations. But then, Shekhmous was no stranger to risk. He traveled to Europe illegally in 1994 after Baath Party officials in Damascus, where he attended university, tried to force him to perform at the Baath Youth Center. “They said to me, ‘If you don’t agree, you will never be allowed to act again,’” he said.

The Turkish invasion only strengthened Shekhmous’ resolve. But love was the biggest motivator of all. Shekmous, 40, was first attracted to Abdulfatah, 45, when she was a girl in Amude. He watched her on the way to school, her silky black hair falling behind her back as she passed the house that would become Kulturvan, then owned by a Christian family. She seemed haughty and unapproachable, he said.

Their paths crossed again at the start of the Syrian uprising. Abdulfatah, then living in the Netherlands, decided to drive a minibus from Delft to Damascus, collecting letters from ordinary people to give to Syrians struggling for freedom back home. She got to Milan when reality set in and she turned around.

Gernas Haj Shekhmous plays daf in Amude, Syria. (Amberin Zaman / Al-Monitor)

Abdulfatah traveled to Brussels for a rally of Syrian activists. Shekhmous, her long hair in a ponytail, was there. “He looked at me and it was love at first sight for him,” she said. He started writing to her to express his interest. “I was scared and I was confused,” she said.

In March of this year, Abdulfatah returned to Amude to visit his parents for the first time since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. With a childhood girlfriend, she retraced her steps to school. As they passed Kulturvan, still in the germination stage, her friend urged her to take a look inside. “The minute I walked in I saw Gernas sitting on a chair by the fireplace. He stood up and said, “It’s you. You came, ”she recalls. The couple married in Cuba in June.

Abdulfatah’s uncle was among the survivors of the Amude fire. She grew up hearing heartbreaking stories from that night. Her parents’ old house where she grew up adjoined the now abandoned cinema field. Real estate prices on the street remain below average. “A lot of people believe the streets are cursed,” she explained.

Many Kurds also continue to believe that the government deliberately sent the children to their deaths, as part of a campaign to eradicate Kurdish identity. The government’s refusal to investigate the fire, followed by the ban on commemorations, heightened suspicion. In 1963, the Baath Party launched its infamous “Arab Belt” campaign, attracting thousands of Arabs to reduce the predominantly Kurdish population along the Turkish border, where Syria’s richest farmland is found.

Fateh, the 73-year-old survivor turned electronics technician, maintains that this story is just a rumor. “The projectionist was behind me. The projector – it was [an-Italian made] Victoria – overheated and caught fire. His hands and body were completely burned, ”said Fateh.

Fateh escaped with burns to his feet. Is he still traumatized? “No, I’m Superman,” he replied with a toothy smile.

Whatever the truth, local authorities do little to discourage long-held beliefs about the reasons for hell and the Amude tragedy has become a rallying point in the Kurdish nationalist tradition.

With the withdrawal of the Syrian government from predominantly Kurdish areas in 2012, commemorative events took place for the first time in predominantly Kurdish areas in Syria and beyond. A memorial was erected at the site of the fire.

Alaa Abdulfatah poses in the courtyard of the Kulturvan restaurant, November 5, 2022 (Amberin Zaman / Al-Monitor)

Moving away from the center of politics is one of the many challenges Shekhmous and Abdulfatah face. “If you log in on one side, you can’t log in on the other side,” she said.

The other big challenge is funding. The couple’s savings are running out. In order to cover the costs, they opened a restaurant in the courtyard where delicious Syrian mezzes and kebabs are served with hot flatbreads. The warm atmosphere – and the variety of beers – is attracting a growing number of foreign aid workers as news of Kulturvan spreads.

The couple hope to raise enough funds to host Amude’s first international film festival.

“This is our biggest dream,” said Abdulfatah. What if the Syrian regime regains control of Amude? “We don’t live our lives in fear,” Shekhmous said. “What must happen will happen.”