MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Millions around the world are celebrating Nowruz this week. It's a 13-day secular festival, sometimes called Persian New Year. In Syria, it's celebrated mostly by Kurdish people. Many did so in secret until the Assad regime fell in December. Now they're throwing their biggest Nowruz party in decades. NPR's Lauren Frayer takes us there.
(SOUNDBITE OF ENGINES RUMBLING)
LAUREN FRAYER, BYLINE: The traffic on the road to this lake in northern Syria stretches for miles. And then when you get to this turquoise lake surrounded by sort of arid hills, there are people doing conga lines, drum circles and people playing wooden flutes.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
FRAYER: These revelers are Kurdish. They make up about 10% of Syria and live mostly in this northern region, which saw some of the fiercest battles and mass killings of the Civil War. Many residents of this city of Afrin fled north to Turkey or east to the protection of Kurdish militias or even to Europe. Shayar Hassan fled to Germany, but he's now come home.
SHAYAR HASSAN: (Through interpreter) When I was coming and I was on the road, I was taking a video, and, you know, my eyes were tearing and - talking about 12 years that I haven't been here.
FRAYER: There's one thing, though, that he can't get used to - the presence in the crowd here of Syrian government security forces protecting Kurdish people. This month, the new government signed a peace deal with the biggest Kurdish militia to try to form one united Syrian army. That would have been unthinkable under ex-President Bashar al-Assad, he says.
HASSAN: (Through interpreter) At the time of Bashar al-Assad, if were coming to celebrate Nowruz and we see security forces, we would feel terrified. And now it's completely different. So it's very nice.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL ARTIST #1: (Singing in non-English language).
FRAYER: On Nowruz, people picnic in nature. They cut flowers, light bonfires. Horo Osman is a local Kurdish politician who organized this lakeside gathering. He grew up during the presidency of Bashar's father, Hafez al-Assad, and he remembers being beaten in school for celebrating Nowruz.
HORO OSMAN: (Non-English language spoken).
FRAYER: But it got worse, he says, when hard-line Islamist groups took control of this region during Syria's Civil War. Some of them considered Nowruz pagan, and they killed four people for celebrating nearby two years ago. Those groups are loosely affiliated with the Sunni Arab fighters who now govern Syria. And so Osman says he worries...
OSMAN: (Non-English language spoken).
FRAYER: ...That Syria's new rulers might not always keep their hard-line allies in check. Those same groups have been blamed for the killings of other minorities, Alawites, on Syria's coast in recent weeks.
SIHAM ALOU: (Non-English language spoken).
FRAYER: "Even in grief, you can celebrate just this one happy day," says Siham Alou, a mother of nine children and what she says are too many grandchildren to count. One of them, a little boy, clings to her skirt as Alou describes how decades of repression and conflict have changed her.
ALOU: (Non-English language spoken).
FRAYER: She says 20 years ago, she felt Syrian and Kurdish, but now she's Kurdish first. Lots of other people at this Nowruz celebration say they feel both.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL ARTIST #2: (Singing in non-English language).
FRAYER: But Alou poses a challenge for Syria's new rulers. On top of rebuilding this country and preventing violence from armed groups that are still here, they'll also need to convince this mother of nine to embrace, once again, her Syrian identity.
Lauren Frayer, NPR News, in Afrin, Syria.
(SOUNDBITE OF SIX ORGANS OF ADMITTANCE'S "LISBOA") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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