MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Syria has reached an uneasy ceasefire between armed Bedouin clans and fighters from the Druze religious minority in the country's south. At least for now, that halts a wave of deadly sectarian violence in the country. The unrest had strained Syria's fragile interim government. It was further complicated by Israeli military intervention. And the conflict didn't just expose deep divisions within Syria. It also tested the loyalties of Druze living just across the border in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, which is where we find NPR's Emily Feng.
EMILY FENG, BYLINE: For all 37 years of his life, Jalaa Ayoub could see Syria, but he could not freely go there.
JALAA AYOUB: (Non-English language spoken).
FENG: Syria was just a few dozen yards away from the eastern edge of his town in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Ayoub is part of a tight-knit majority community of Druze, a religious minority who live in Syria and across the Middle East.
AYOUB: (Non-English language spoken).
FENG: This July, as deadly fighting broke out in southern Syria between Druze and Sunni Bedouin militias, Ayoub decided to walk across the border to Syria to help protect relatives who live there.
AYOUB: (Non-English language spoken).
FENG: "We have total allegiance to Syria," he says. "To me, it is my motherland, and therefore, I wanted to go there." His town of Majdal Shams in the Golan is so close to Syria, other residents like Haniye Abuzaid come to the Shouting Hill - so named because family members standing on opposite sides are close enough to see and hear each other.
HANIYE ABUZAID: (Non-English language spoken).
FENG: Abuzaid said she was sitting at home watching television in July when her daughter called with unbelievable news. Her niece and her niece's daughter had crossed the Shouting Hill from Syria into Majdal Shams.
ABUZAID: (Non-English language spoken).
FENG: "I was so happy to see her," Abuzaid said of her niece. "I had not seen her in 40 years." They were escaping fighting in Sweida in southern Syria. More than 1,000 people - many civilians - have been killed in clashes between some Sunni Bedouin tribes, Syrian government forces and some factions of the Druze. There have been reports of atrocities, like the executions of civilians, on all sides. The fighting has tested the strong loyalties the Druze of the Golan Heights have to Syria.
SAYYID AHMAD: Syria first. Syria first, Syria first.
FENG: That's Sayyid Ahmad, a baker in the town of Majdal Shams. He says he is Syrian first, Druze second. But as patriotic as Ahmed is to Syria, he feels disillusioned, even betrayed, by Syria's interim government.
AHMAD: Because he's Julani - he's terrorist - terrorist.
FENG: Like most Druze, Ahmed sees Syria's current leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa - whom he calls by his nom de guerre Julani - as a terrorist because the Syrian leader is a former militant once affiliated with al-Qaida. And Sharaa has struggled to convince various armed factions like the Kurds and the Druze across Syria to lay down their weapons and reunite a Syria fractured by years of civil war.
(SOUNDBITE OF FOOD FRYING)
FENG: In Majdal Shams, restaurant owner Mu'thad Shaar fries the morning's falafel while pondering the fighting. He says Syria's leader, Sharaa, needs to convince ethnic minorities like the Druze that they are safe.
MU'THAD SHAAR: (Non-English language spoken).
FENG: He says Sharaa, the leader, needs to establish security and stability but do that in a more gentle way. "He could not disarm the Druze factions by force," he says.
AHLAM GARAIRREH: (Non-English language spoken).
FENG: Druze cook Ahlam Garairreh shakes with anger as she makes lunch and excoriates al-Sharaa, Syria's interim president.
GARAIRREH: (Non-English language spoken).
FENG: She says six of her relatives have been killed in the last weeks of fighting - deaths that fuel further distrust among the Druze here of Sharaa and inflame sectarian identities once again.
AHMAD: (Non-English language spoken).
FENG: Sayyid Ahmad, the baker, says, with tears in his eyes, that even though he's been secular for years, after seeing his fellow Druze killed in Syria, he has decided to practice the Druze religion again. And he now prays daily. Emily Feng, NPR News, Majdal Shams in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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