“Syrians are f**king satirist as f**k,” Hassan Akkad is saying.
The 37-year-old writer and director is sitting in the popular Mazbouta cafe in the Al-Shaalan area of Damascus, on his second visit back to his country since the shock fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime last year.
Like millions of his countryfolk, Akkad was forced out of Syria in 2012. He gained widespread acclaim for filming his 2015 journey to the UK for the BBC’s Bafta-winning documentary Exodus.
Akkad is now a British citizen. In 2021, he released a book, Hope Not Fear, which documented the uprisings in Syria and his journey to safety, as well as his job working as a cleaner in a Covid-19 hospital ward in London.
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Since the Assad regime fell, Akkad has transitioned into posting social media videos listing “reasons to visit Syria,” while declaring himself as Syria’s new so-called minister of tourism.
His videos – which feature droll narration, his head floating in front of a green screen – are widely shared both inside and outside the country, racking up hundreds of thousands of likes and millions of views.
While Akkad felt compelled to tell stories about Syria, “I didn’t want it to be trauma porn, because Syria, for the last 13 years, has been associated with blood, destruction, displacement, black flags, barrel bombs ... chemical weapons ... How do I tell stories about Syria that are not associated with all of that?”
Akkad came back to Syria for the first time in June, “and I had just taken a really good sh*t ... Then I went on my balcony, and Damascus is in front of me, and I’m just still thinking about how good of a sh*t I took ... and I just picked up my phone and started filming, describing the shishme,” or Syrian squat toilet, “and saying how good the shishme is for your guts”.
“I didn’t even think about it. And then I put it on Instagram, and it surprisingly did really well.”
After he left Syria again, Akkad kept making videos, talking about everything from Syrian circumcision clinics to lingerie, shawarma, “Syria’s Eiffel tower,” pest control, chaotic driving and the area near Damascus where “lovers go to do some things that are not halal”.
“The reason why I’m talking about these things is because I want Syrians to remember what Syria is actually about. And it’s not about just the negative.”
Akkad feels he is doing “PR and reputation management” for his country. Yet “I got push back in the beginning, because people were like, ‘Oh, you’re shaming us.’”
But as he continued posting, he said: “The criticism went down and the praise went up because Syrians started using my videos to send them to their European and American friends, to invite them to Syria. And seeing my success, I was like, ‘you know what? I’m doing this. I’m platforming Syria. I’m changing the narrative’.”
He said everyone should visit Syria, both because it’s a cradle of history and civilisation, rich with culture, but also “because they’ve heard about Syria a lot for the last decade. It’s time for them to see it with their own eyes”. Tourism can also help rebuild the economy, he said.
Akkad, who was imprisoned after participating in early protests against the Assad regime, said he had settled into a life of exile and made his peace with the fact that he would never return home.
“I had absolutely zero hope, zero,” he says. Akkad even asked a journalist friend to bring him soil from Syria which could be thrown on his body when he died in exile.
These days many Syrians in Europe are having identity crises, wondering who they are, he said. “It took a lot of therapy and a lot of work to make peace with the idea that we’re not going back to Syria again. And then suddenly Syria is open. You’re like sh*t, if I stay in Europe, then who is going to rebuild? And if I go back, what happens to the life that I built in Europe?”
Yet “after Syrians liberated Syria, it gave me back my sense of belonging ... There was a hole inside my heart – literally, like this gap, this void that was filled by liberating Syria. At least now, whatever happens in the world, I’ve got a home I can go back to”.
Since the Assad regime fell more than a year ago, there have been a spate of crises including sectarian killings, wildfires, Israeli air strikes and incursions and widespread economic struggles, while questions remain about how Syria’s new leadership will govern and develop. Yet Akkad said he feels hopeful for his country. “We completely hit rock bottom. So after rock bottom, the only way is up.”
Despite tagging the Syrian ministry of tourism and “bullying them on Instagram”, Akkad said he has had no communication with the ministry itself.
“I have to caveat that I’m quite controversial, and I’m using a medium and a language that is not the norm here. I’m introducing it. I’m hoping that ... more Syrians will use it. So I don’t think I am the ministry of tourism’s favourite ambassador for Syrian tourism, but I actually think that I have the backing of my fellow Syrians, which is more important to me.”
