By Tessa Manuello
MONTREAL, Canada - Multidisciplinary artist and performer Khadija Baker and traditional-pop singer Serbest Henif have different arts but a common past: they both moved from Syrian Kurdistan to Canada to escape persecution and find a free home.
As a musician Henif sings about his country with love, and through her art Baker tells of her harsh life back home.
Nevertheless, both have a spark in the eyes when they talk about returning to their homeland, and performing for their own people the art they have tried to preserve for so many years away from home.
After moving to Montreal in 2001, Baker completed a degree in fine arts at the University of Concordia, and ever since her work has been shown in many countries, including the Sydney 2012 Biennale in Australia.
Her art combines multimedia installations and performances that deal with identity, memory and loss. Baker says that she works like a historian by collecting real stories from people’s lives in Syria.
“I use interviews and storytelling as a departure for my work,” she says. “In one of my projects, Behind the Wall, I included voices of people who tell their stories. The project was about the stateless Kurds, who have no ID, nothing, no access to their rights. This project was based in Kurdish Syria, my region.”
Henif who moved to Canada 20 years ago, says that, though he has overcame the language barrier, he still finds it difficult to be a singer away from his own people, who understand the beauty and soul of his songs.
“I have many songs but no opportunities,” says Henif. “If only I could show people how many songs I have for them.”
Since starting singing on stage at the age of 12, he has released six albums and held numerous concerts with more than 45 musicians.
Baker is unsure whether she will ever find an audience in Canada to appreciate and show interest in her work.
(Sebest Henif)
"Canadian people like to know about our food,” she says. “They like to taste Syrian food. But our culture is not just about that.”
Baker is trying to keep a strong bond with the Kurdish community in Montreal, but she admits that living and having to make a living in a multicultural city has distanced her from her Kurdish heritage.
“We were so proud of being Kurds there,” she says. “When we move, we start to re-think about these kinds of things.”
“It’s a basic human right to belong somewhere,” says Baker, speaking of the struggle of the Kurdish people for an independent homeland. “All living creatures belong to a place.”
Despite Kurdish suffering in Syria, says Baker, one has to remain hopeful and look to the future, “Like spiders: When their home is destroyed, they move from one corner to another, like nothing happened,” she says. “The desire to survive, to live, is amazing. It is important.”
After an absence of 16 years, Henif visited his hometown in Syria in 2006, spending “the happiest time in many years” around his family and fans.
On that visit, he also managed to shoot a video for one of his songs titled ji bote, or “for you”.
Henif says that his heart is still in Syrian Kurdistan, where the majority of his fans are, and where he hopes one day to return. But with two children born and raised in Canada, he says it is unlikely he will ever return there permanently.
However, he hopes that peace will come to Syrian Kurds and that they will learn from the mistakes of their neighboring countries.
“One day, our neighbors are going to accept us like a nation,” he says. “We are going to do it differently from the independent countries that fought for so long and still do not have peace.”
In 2009, a French curator showed Baker’s art at an exhibition in Damascus. Her work, titled Coffin Nest, depicted Iraq’s mass graves. Though disappointed that her work did not receive the recognition she hoped, she was relieved by the lack of media attention that could have gotten her family in trouble with the regime.
With an eye on the revolution in Syria that might lead to the freedom of Kurds in that country, Baker envisions the day she returns home.
“It is my country and I want to have a voice there,” she says.
She is also teaching her two sons the Kurdish language.
“These boys will have a different identity,” she says. “My husband and I, we give them the best of our country and let them experience the best of this culture.”
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