It’s all too easy to criticise television these days as being little more than a diet of suet pudding that’s stodgy and unappetising but fills a hole. Generally it’s true, but it’s not all a lost cause. There are gems; you just have to look a little harder to find them. Syrian Schools is certainly not your usual stodge. On the contrary, it’s a little pearl of a series about Syrian schools. Now you might think that a five-part series about Syrian schools is hardly the recipe for enthralling television but what this series does is to encapsulate so many issues, from the Palestinian cause, to feminism, to Westernisation, to Syrian nationalism.
It’s hard to believe that more than 750,000 refugees still remain exiled following the 1948 war in Israel. One hundred thousand of those live in a two square mile suburb of Damascus in Syria, called Yarmouk. The Syrians lease the suburb out to the United Nations, although they still refuse to give Syrian nationality to any of its inhabitants, despite lambasting them with a daily diet of anthems. And it’s in a secondary school here, where 95 per cent of the girls are Palestinian, that teenagers are approaching the Palestinian question from different perspectives.
The girls are ambitious. Their head teacher wants them to aim high, to become teachers, doctors, IT experts but while their fathers pay lip service to this, they privately argue that their rightful place will always be in the kitchen. Feminism may come down the pecking order but the Palestinian issue remains at the top of everyone’s agenda. How they deal with this question remains the focus for much debate. Indeed, everyone has a different approach.
The school orchestra take a fairly restrained attitude to their heritage by performing traditional Palestinian songs believing that this will maintain their links with the past. The orchestra is accomplished and popular, even travelling to Latakia, on the Syrian coast, in their UN-marked buses, to perform a concert that is televised for Syrian television. Some of the girls practice at home in front of their parents and grandparents in a typical show of family unity. That may be one approach, but other teenagers in the school have a different take on their heritage.
Safha is a young athlete, a discus-thrower, who argues that if she can become a school champion, she can represent Palestine, thereby bringing its problems to the fore. She sees this as her way of identifying with the Palestinian cause. Her father does not approve and has banned her from competing mainly because it involves her going out alone. Grandmother, however, has other ideas and smuggles her out to training sessions. At least this way she is being chaperoned and in the end father is forced to accept the situation.
Shaza and her friend, Rahaf, have an even more radical approach. They’re typical young teenage girls, influenced by Western music and the likes of Eminem. They’re into rap and want to record a rap song they have composed and play it in front of the school at the annual prize-giving ceremony. But their rapping is not about boys and love; rather they talk of revenge, guns, despair and the struggle against Zionism. The lyrics are strong and powerful and the head teacher does not approve. The girls argue that this is the way modern girls will learn. Finally they are allowed to sing their songs to a cluster of students. Their friends love it but their Syrian head teacher remains unmoved. Glee this is not.
While Glee may not be the kind of programme Tribune readers regularly tune in to, it is a good old knees-up, 1950s song and dance romp that has an infectious joy about it. It’s the latest offering from America and is another school, another bunch of kids trying to make the most out of their own troubled lives.
Palestine may not be on their minds but there are other issues; sex, marriage, disabilities, homophobia, body image, race, and winning the regional music and dance competition. Plus there is a genius of a character: Sue. She’s an overbearing, obnoxious, scheming gym teacher who you’d consign to the gallows without a moment’s hesitation. Margaret Thatcher with fangs.
