Meet Sami

 You must have seen in the news the World's and the rest of Americans outrage towards the Executive Order signed by the current President of USA banning immigration and travel from 7 Muslim countries including refugees from Syria. This is cruel, not normal and not human. Let us cast a positive light to this awful situation by meeting Sami Barsoum, he is a Syrian Orthodox Syriac Christian living in Old Jerusalem. I noticed the beautiful and colourful shawls hanging inside his shop when we passed by on our way to visit St Mark's Church. As we got in, he welcomed us with open arms and was very open and eager to share his life, culture and religion to us. As you can see here, we bought almost half his shawls on display for ourselves and gifts to some of our friends and family. Here is an example of a good man from Syria. Not all muslims and citizens from those Middle Eastern countries are bad. There are more good people from their countries that we have to meet and welcome in our world. 

Beautiful shawls made by Sami, way better than the shawls sold in the souks. 

 

 

 

Sami was a well known tailor of men suits around here. He was showed us his photos with the former Mayor Jerusalem and other prominent Israelis that were his customers. His tailoring business dwindled due to the effect of globalisation. He said more cheaper suits from China came in which affected his business. Now he makes these beautiful shawls and creates vestments for priests. 

 

 

In his shop, he gave us a copy of the Our Father prayer in Aramaic which he explained to us was the language that Jesus spoke and one of the most ancient language in civilisation. Aramaic is spoken in Syria which he explained to us is one of the most ancient people even before the Jews. After giving us the copy,  he prayed with us the Our Father in Aramaic, which was truly one of the unexpected and most memorable part of our trip to the Holy Land. We felt so blessed to have met Sami. 

 

Then Sami shared to us a lesson about the origins of ancient languages. It started with the Egyptians who learnt to communicate by sculpting animal figures into stone which eventually evolved into alphabets and then further evolved into verbal language. Egyptian is the most ancient language, followed by the Aramaic/Syriac language then Hebrew, Greek, Latin (where English, French, Spanish, Italian originated from) etc. I learnt that we, Roman Catholics are called the Latins, in the Holy Land. 

 

The Tree of Alphabets.

According to CNN's Fareed Zakaria, there have been 0 American deaths in American soil committed by any citizens from the 7 banned countries entering the US. There are no other basis for this ban except for this current administration's fear mongering and Islamophobia. 

Not all citizens from the Middle East and Africa are bad people. There are many more good people from these countries who just want what we want: to live peacefully, earn a living and love family and neighbours. We should unite worldwide and fight this in a positive way: with love, unity and justice. Stay strong and never give up.

#NoBanNoWall

P.S. You noticed that I changed my Blog title. I wanted to change my blog title to something shorter but still reflect the essence of this blog featuring style and travel. It is now Chic Delights as we continue to feature all that is beautiful from Canada and our world that will inspire, enchant, provide joy and awareness to our dear readers. Thank you very much for your encouragement, support, feedback and most of all your time.