Syrian Psycho

The Latin root psycho denotes a disorder of the mind. It also evokes American Psycho, the film adapted from Bret Easton Ellis’s novel that fuses pitch-black comedy with pure horror while satirising America's consumerist culture. Reality and fantasy blur throughout the story. Its protagonist appears outwardly unremarkable, yet beneath the polished surface lurks a deeply disturbed man whose emptiness and alienation propel him towards murder. Those around him notice nothing. They all look alike, dress alike, and inhabit the same carefully manicured world.

By Syrian Psycho, I do not mean to stereotype or mock a particular psychiatric condition. What follows is a series of incidents and personalities I have encountered in my own circle.

Study after study suggests that a large proportion of people living through war experience one or more of mental health conditions. These range from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety disorders and panic attacks, and dissociative disorders. Syria, however, has almost no reliable statistics. It is a devastated society with only rudimentary psychiatric services, while many people still attribute mental illness to the evil eye, black magic, or possession by jinn.

From exile, I have watched three lives unravel.

The first is Salim, a devout scientist. 

He was a gifted student and an accomplished writer of satirical short stories. Although literature was his passion, he studied science – a familiar Syrian tragedy, where university entrance scores and the prestige of professional titles often override genuine talent for the arts and humanities. He was preparing for a doctorate in cell biology.

At thirty-two, he had never known a woman beyond exchanging polite greetings at university. Intensely religious, he spent every summer at a Sufi seminary, labouring on its farm by day and devoting his nights to prayer and devotional recitation.

Then came strange attacks resembling epilepsy, accompanied by suicidal impulses. Some members of his family blamed the evil eye or demonic possession. Eventually he was taken to a psychiatrist as an emergency case. The doctor administered a sedative and reassured Salim's brother that this was not possession by the devil but the result of severe repression and accumulated psychological strain. The condition, he said, was entirely treatable – provided Salim acknowledged it and spoke openly about it.

The second case is Yassin, a hunter of jinn.

He fled to Turkey as a child with his two brothers in the early years of the revolution. While his brothers flourished at school, Yassin drifted. He persuaded his father to rent him a separate flat where he lived alone in self-imposed isolation.

The curtains remained permanently drawn. He spent his days reading Shams al-Ma'arif al-Kubra, a notorious medieval grimoire long reputed in popular folklore to drive even the wisest reader mad. He copied its occult diagrams onto his walls in the belief that they would trap supernatural beings.

His neighbours eventually complained, prompting police intervention during a period when anti-Syrian sentiment in Turkey was running high. Yassin ended up slapping a Turkish policeman and was swiftly deported to Syria, where his condition deteriorated further.

His father even hired a young man to shadow him in exchange for payment. The attempt failed spectacularly.

"He disappears like a mirage," the tracker reported. "He's a jinni himself".

Yassin later enlisted with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) before growing bored and simply walking away. According to his father, he is the only recruit who deserted without anyone bothering to pursue him.

Since then he has drifted from Syria to Indonesia and is now believed to be in Romania. He refuses to speak to his father, contacting only his mother whenever he needs money wired to him. He has neither qualifications nor a trade but dreams of becoming a fashion model because of his handsome appearance. But Europe is hardly short of handsome young men. As the Syrian saying goes, it would be like “trying to sell water in the neighbourhood of water-sellers”.

The third story concerns Yacoub, an addicted gambler. 

He was the best educated of his brothers, reaching university before the war interrupted his studies. His less educated siblings escaped to Europe, found work, married, and built stable lives.

Yacoub, meanwhile, became consumed by gambling until he was buried beneath debt, which his brothers repeatedly paid off.

The family eventually arranged his marriage. Yet on the wedding day he abruptly refused to go through with it and divorced his bride despite desperate pleas from his relatives.

The young woman was devastated. She wept bitterly. She had genuinely fallen in love with him. He left her the dowry in accordance with Islamic law, but money could not compensate for the loss of the husband she had expected.

None of these stories constitutes clinical evidence. None of the individuals was formally diagnosed for the purposes of this article. All three come from Syria's Jazira (northeast) region, one of the country's most stable areas and among those least ravaged by the war.

One day the family of Yassin called to tell me that he had become stranded and would soon arrive in Homs, where I was then living. He needed somewhere to stay for a night and enough money to continue his journey.

I telephoned a friend and asked him to help, though not without a warning. Yassin, I said, might decide to copy one of the magical diagrams from Shams al-Ma'arif onto your wall, believing it would cast a spell over you. Or he might slap you without warning. Or simply rob you.

My friend laughed.

"I've been inoculated against black magic," he said.

Then he added, almost casually:

"There are two people just like him in my own family. Frankly, I doubt there's a single family in Syria without someone like that".