He should have gone back to school on August 31, but Jean-Yves L’Hôpital is enjoying, until the end of September, an extended vacation in his house in Beg-Meil, in Finistère. Far from Charles-de-Gaulle high school in Damascus where this 77-year-old Breton has been teaching philosophy for ten years.
There is a dreadful explosion of coronavirus in Damascus, the start of the school year has been postponed, the professor quietly recounts. So I spend another month in this garden where you can hear the birds and the sound of the sea when it’s windy.
One can imagine that the bucolic tranquility of its modest Finistère residence contrasts with the tumult of a country ravaged by war. In Syria, I live in a house in the old city, it’s very quiet, he tells us again. The bombings lasted eight years, but in Damascus, things are better now.
Jean-Yves L’Hôpital agreed to receive us on one condition: that we do not talk about Politics
. Over the course of the discussion, we understand that politics, for someone who lives in Syria, encompasses a lot of subjects related to everyday life.
In Syria, I’m a bit at home
More than forty years since this Breton born in Carhaix, in a very Christian family, visits Syria
. He arrived there for the first time in 1973, at the age of 29, with a Sorbonne scholarship in his pocket to learn Arabic. The student in L Snakes O
(National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilizations) has already traveled well: license in theology, vocation to enter orders aborted by the hazards of life, three years of cooperation in Senegal, long summers with camel drivers in Mauritania … It was there that I discovered Islam, with balanced, peaceful and open Muslims. Small peasants of nothing. I am not a Muslim but I decided to learn Arabic to read the Koran in text.
In Damascus, he discovered a new life, with other ways of seeing things. I have deeply entered into the Arab-Muslim culture of Syria. I am attached to this country, I am a bit at home there.
He directs there the French Institute for the Middle East (Ifpo) from 2005 to 2008. At the time of retirement, single and childless, he moved to Damascus. I live there all year round, except the summers I spend in Brittany.
Before the war, he remembers foreign students and researchers who discovered Syria, dithyrambic
. But, in 2012, eight days after the first cannon shot, everyone was engulfed in the planes, he is offended. That, no, no and no. I stayed.
He smiles and continues: When I say that a Breton sailor does not leave the boat in a storm, people think I am joking. But not at all.
In March 2012, the French state closes its embassy, cultural center and school which until then welcomed French children, but also young Syrians. Syrian families who can afford it send their children to study abroad. Others decide to reopen the establishment.
For eight years in this country “Strongly discouraged”
by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a handful of French people, like Jean-Yves L’Hôpital, work at the French Lycée, within a mainly Syrian team. Most have lived there for years. More surprisingly, another Breton would join the establishment this year. Since the cessation of French aid, the registration fees of the 500 students enrolled in kindergarten to final and preparing for the same exams as in France, have climbed. Only well-off families can cope with it. All the teachers, Syrians and French, are employed – and paid – under local contract, therefore for derisory salaries.
“No need to talk about it”
One wonders what is holding Jean-Yves L’Hôpital back there when he could sink into a peaceful retirement in Beg-Meil. It’s not very common to find a French and philosophy teacher in the Middle East, so I’m helping. And then, at my age, being in contact with young people, that prevents me from sinking directly into senility!
Difficult to leave his students, his friends, those he helps as best he can. The man takes his time to recount with calm precision his daily life and the adventures of a life that has not been stingy, punctuating his story with: But that’s not worth talking about.
Modesty? Be careful? Surely both. We should learn more if he finds a publisher to publish his writings, entitled We have shared the daily routine these days.
In the meantime, at 77 years old, despite advice telling him to stay in France, Jean-Yves L’Hôpital is preparing to take a plane to Beirut, then a car to Syria. In times of Covid-19, the trip is not going to be easy. A last return to school, perhaps, before closing the door to his classroom once and for all.
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