A famine, a ship and a folk song that spanned borders | SyriaUntold
The New Arab and others. This is how one story goes. It was the early 20th century, maybe 1915, amid Lebanon’s vicious famine. Ottoman authorities were enforcing safar barlik, mandatory conscription of Lebanese, Palestinian, Syrian and Kurdish men to fight for them during the Great War. They say these were some of the worst years for Bilad el-Sham, that Beirut and its surrounding mountains were like shriveled fruit, wrinkled and helpless. Locusts had destroyed everything—the olive trees, the fruits, the vegetables, the maize. People were starving, dying on the streets from deadly diseas...
Source: syriauntold.com