Decoding the political allegory in the Syrian comedy al-Kherba

Introduction

In early 2011, just months before Syria erupted into civil war, the television series-long sitcom al-Kherba (literally meaning ‘the Ruin’), produced by the Syrian Art Production International, was aired on different Arabic screens, including Syria One TV, Musawa Channel and Roya TV (2011-present). It was a seemingly innocuous rural sitcom, ¹ musalsal in Salamandra’s terms (2011), about two feuding families in a deteriorating southern village in Syria. On the surface, the musalsal presents comedic portrayals of petty rivalries, eccentric characters and generational conflicts. Yet beneath its lighthearted veneer, al-Kherba can be understood as a multilayered critique of authoritarian governance, ideological decay and the social fragmentation that defined al-Assad’s Syria. Inspired by the premises that ‘television and film can actually give us a deeper understanding about world politics’ (Sachleben, 2014: 1) and that ‘since the advent of Syrian television drama in the 1960s, musalsalat have been highly didactic in nature and offered sharp criticism of official political discourse’ (Joubin, 2020: 4), the article explicates how al-Kherba allows for an allegorical reading of the national condition of al-Assad’s Syria where societal sectarianism, performative loyalty, infrastructural neglect and social stagnation, along with institutionalising poverty and illiteracy, have been deployed to maintain and support the Ba’th regime’s oppressive status quo.

This objective aligns with the historical consensus that ‘the nihilistic structure of the [Ba’th] regime and the basic agenda guiding its policy’ have often deployed ‘sectarianism [as …] a tool for governing and a strategy for control’ (al-Haj Saleh, 2017: 14; 23). ² It also aligns with the belief that several Syrian social realist musalsalat, such as Maraya (Mirrors, 1982-2013), Buq‘at Daw’ (Spotlight, 2001-2022), and al-Kherba, can be viewed ‘as an ongoing reminder of what should not remain: that which the regime promised to change, but still remains to be changed’ (Salamandra and Stenberg, 2015: 9). Thus, the paper provides a close textual and visual reading of selected scenes and recurring patterns across the sitcom’s 30 episodes, considering that each episode may seem to resolve a local conflict, but the underlying structure of authority throughout the work remains unchanged. Relying on this sitcom structure that enables each scene or episode to reflect the essence of the whole work, I argue that Al-Kherba allows for an allegorical reading of the sociopolitical ills of al-Assad’s Syria, even though the production of the musalsal in 2011, before the eruption of the Syrian Revolution, may complicate the idea that the musalsal is simply either critique or co-optation. The comedy, produced by the Syrian Art Production International owned by Mohammad Hamsho, ‘a Syrian businessman sanctioned by the US Treasury Department for his role in supporting the Assad regime economically’ (Abdulghany, 2026: para. 1), may have been part of the Ba’th regime’s ‘safety-valve strategy’ (Wedeen, 1999), a strategy used by the regime to diffuse public opposition through giving dissenters some space to vent out societal oppression on the screen. ³ Nonetheless, it is hard to disregard the possibility that its cadre may have successfully manoeuvred the sensors and strategies of the Ba’th radar. Al-Kherba’s director, Laith Hajjo, who repeatedly highlighted the rigorous censorship of Ba’th authorities on Syrian TV stations and products, ⁴ declared on 19 December 2024 that al-Kherba was originally named ‘Riyah al-Huriya’ (Winds of Freedom), but Ba’th authorities at that time demanded the name be changed, which resulted in naming the comedy ‘al-Kherba’ (Hajjo, 2024). The Facebook post, though brief, can be viewed as a retrospective paratext that helps illuminate the series’ later political memory and its relationship to censorship.

Linking al-Kherba with the Ba’thist ‘safety-valve strategy’, ‘commissioned criticism’ (Cooke, 2007: 65–80), or ‘whisper strategy’ (Ratta, 2015: 53–76) may suggest that the comedy is merely a form of fabricated freedom permitted or commissioned by authorities ‘to appear liberal, and at the same time remind viewers that resistance is futile’ (Salamandra, 2011: 165). Yet, it is noteworthy that several Syrian TV series produced to empower and promote ‘the message of unity and shared identity’ among Syrians have sometimes been ‘transformed into, at the same time, a pro-regime and an anti-regime work’ (Ratta, 2018: 191). It is true that when a Syrian TV product, like Bab al-Hara (Neighborhood Gate, 2006–2017) or al-Kherba, engages with ‘taboo issues such as religion, gender relations, government officials’ abuse of power, and even corruption, in a country that had been under authoritarian rule for decades’ (Ratta, 2018: 10), such discussions can still be part of the ‘whisper strategy’ between the regime and actors. Concurrently, it is true that despite the regime’s strict censorship, some Syrian TV products, like al-Kherba, have maintained their intellectual agency and resisted the restrictions of al-Assad radar (Joubin, 2014).

In fact, some Syrian drama creators, like Laith Hajjo, believe ‘in the power of their mass medium to transform Arab society, and often see themselves at the vanguard of a modernizing process’ (Salamandra, 2013a: 86), and have been able to manoeuvre the censorship of ‘the ossified security apparatus standing in [their] way’ (Salamandra, 2015: 39). Relying on the broad directives of Bashar al-Assad concerning social reformation and freedom of expression, they have successfully mitigated the rigorous influence of the Ba’th censorship to the inclusion of their own intellectual agency and artistic integrity. Hajjo reports that Syrian TV creators have ‘buttressed their risk-taking with the president’s 2000 inaugural address, which called for a new era of transparency and a campaign against corruption’ (Salamandra, 2013a: 87). ⁵ When challenged by Ba’th censors, Syrian TV creators, Hajjo reports, used to tell censors, ‘look, the president said X, so we’re following that policy’ (quoted in Salamandra, 2011: 157). Thus, it is through Bab al-Hara, al-Kherba, and other Syrian TV series, whether viewed as critique or co-optation, that we are introduced to the nature and problems of the Syrian community, considering that Syrian TV products like Buq‘at Daw’, ‘Syria’s most popular television sketch comedy’ (Dick, 2007: 2), and al-Kherba depict the reality of the Syrian society through combining ‘what might be termed revolutionary innovations in comedy form with more daring reformist content. It is this that has enabled [such programmes] to make [their] mark both on a production industry fast learning to assert [themselves] across the wider Middle East and on audiences desperate for new avenues of satirical critique’ (Dick, 2007: 2).

This is not to say, however, that without watching Syrian TV drama, people, especially non-Syrians, cannot get a glimpse into the Syrian community or culture, but that TV series have made that culture accessible by shedding light on ‘issues difficult to broach in non-fiction media, hoping to spark discussion and, ultimately, social and political transformation’ (Salamandra, 2013a: 86). This view accords with the belief that ‘Whatever we know about our society, or indeed about the world in which we live, we know through the mass media’ (Luhmann, 2000: 1). I am not denouncing the value of reading books and magazines in providing people with information, but want to highlight that ‘television and other electronic media can be regarded as important resources for social and political change in pursuit of banishing social inequalities’ (Laughey, 2007: 85). Through their visual realism and dark sensibility, represented by their ability to reflect ‘the dilemmas facing those who live amid authoritarian repression, rigid class hierarchy, and entrenched patriarchy’ (Salamandra, 2015: 45), several Syrian TV musalsalat, including al-Kherba, invite an allegorical reading of the repressive conditions of Ba‘thist Syria. Thus, this paper explicates how al-Kherba, through its symbolic characters and on-location village-setting, can be viewed as a dramatisation of the repressive conditions of Ba’thist Syria.

However, due to the scarcity of academic studies on the musalsal under discussion, ⁶ the paper’s theoretical framework integrates insights from studies on the history and nature of both al-Assad regime and Syrian TV drama. It relies, for instance, on Salamandra’s view that on-location settings ‘lend a gritty texture that distinguishes Syrian works from their studio-based Egyptian [and other Arab] counterparts’ (2015: 45). In this context, al-Kherba’s village can be viewed as a character, rather than merely a physical backdrop, that contributes to shaping the comedy’s ‘visual realism’ and ‘dark sensibility’ (2015: 45). It also draws on Lisa Wedeen’s belief that ‘comedies, cartoons, and films are among the forms taken by everyday political contests in Syria, no doubt in part because direct political engagement is generally discouraged by the fear of punishment or material deprivation’ (1999: 87). Here, al-Kherba emerges as a sitcom – with ‘a political dimension’ (Mills, 2009: 6) – dramatising the strategies deployed by al-Assad regime to protect and reinforce authoritarianism through silencing Syrians and politicising their ‘ethno-sectarian divisions’ (Phillips, 2015: 358). This view associates al-Kherba with other Syrian TV products, such as the comedic plays Day‘at Tishreen (The October Village, 1974) and Kasak Ya Watan (Cheers! O Homeland, 1979), the political film al-Taqrir (The Report, 1986), the comedic television series Maraya, Buq‘at Daw’ and Fawq al-Saqf (Above the Ceiling, 2011), which are known for their use of humour and irony to make available an allegorical reading of the Ba’th regime. ⁷ In total, the paper contributes to broader discussions in screen studies and Middle Eastern cultural critique regarding the ways in which comedic television series mediate ideology, negotiate censorship and articulate dissent within authoritarian contexts.

Overview of al-Kherba

Al-Kherba (2011) is a widely watched Syrian sitcom shot on location in the fictional village of al-Kherba, ⁸ which potentially represents a Druze community near the Suwayda Governorate. Written by Mamdouh Hamadah and directed by Laith Hajjo, with artistic direction by Nidal Sejari, the series presents a comedic portrait of a rural Syrian community trapped between tradition and change. The work emphasises the long-standing rivalry between two village patriarchs (mukhtars): Abu Nimer, played by Duraid Lahham, a short-tempered and prideful elder of Abu Qa’qour family, and Abu Nayef, played by Rasheed Assaf, the equally proud and experienced counterpart of Abu Nimer from Abu Malha family. The endless quarrels of both family heads, marked by generational ego and a refusal to compromise, form the backbone of the musalsal’s humour, considering that ‘the settings, the dialect, and the problems addressed are, in fact, characteristic of Syria, which is why Syrians [and by extension Arabs in general] find the scenarios so funny’ (Wedeen, 1999: 100). However, the mukhtars’ authority is characterised through their interactions with a wide spectrum of characters representing different social positions and ideological contradictions. For example, Jawhar (Mohammad Khair al-Jarrah) is a sycophantic figure from Abu Malha family, who manipulates proximity to power for personal gain. Tawfeeq (Basem Yakhour) is Abu Nimer’s son-in-law whose suffering stems from his unwavering obedience to his wife and her father. There is also Fayadh Abu Qa’qour (Mohammad Hadaki), a socially invisible cattle-herder marginalised from the village’s collective life, representing the undercurrent of economic struggle beneath the village’s surface.

Furthermore, Sayyah Abu Qa’qour (Jamal al-Ali) is the village school principal, a character whose internal conflict between family loyalty and professional ethics reflects one of the comedy’s most compelling tensions. Jameel Abu Qa’qour (Mamdouh al-Atrash) is a more ideological figure whose political orientation and societal gravitas contrast with the comedic chaos around him. Milhem Abu Malha (Mashhour Khayzoran) is a caricature of the ideologically rigid leftist. Ghattas Abu Malha (Marwan Abu Shahin) is the pseudo-rebel who resists norms only rhetorically, reflecting the political vacuity among segments of the younger generation. Abboud al-Kaziyyeh (Mohannad Qatesh) represents the merchant class that remains politically neutral to preserve its economic interests. Besides, there is a cast of female characters like Itirshan Abu Malha (Jawhar’s wife, played by Shukran Mortja), Nufajeh Abu Qa’qour (Tawfeeq’s wife, played by Dhoha al-Dibes), Rahmah Abu Qa’qour (Jameel’s wife, played by Iman Ballan), and Nada Abu Qa’qour (Sayyah’s daughter, played by Roba al-Halaby), to name a few. These female characters enrich the musalsal’s humour by fluctuating between complying with patriarchs’ expectations and challenging certain social norms. Other characters, such as Dr Fawzi Abu Malha (Rafi Wahbi), the disoriented young dentist caught between rebellion and conformity, Sam’aan Abu Qa’qour (Ahmad al-Ahmad), the young garbage collector who sometimes moves beyond the traditionalism entrenched in certain aspects of the village’s social fabric, and the mute returnee Na’man Abu Malha (guest-star Nidal Seijari), who pretends to be a successful expatriate, further enrich the sitcom’s satirical commentary on identity, mobility and social aspiration. Together, these characters animate a village that can be viewed as a microcosm for wider Syrian social dynamics explored with both comedic sharpness and dramatic nuance.

Each of the show’s 30 episodes revolves around a standalone scenario, for example, a love affair gone awry, a bureaucratic dilemma or a rumour that spirals out of control, typically sparked by the stubbornness, pride or paranoia of one or more villagers. These conflicts, injected with straightforward humour, may seem shallow or culture-sensitive; nonetheless, it is wrong to assume that the sitcom’s frank entertainment ‘doesn’t require us to think’ (Mills, 2009: 5). Each episode has the power ‘to establish the framework of [political] discussions, to inform people, and to create a narrative’ about Ba’thist authoritarianism (Sachleben, 2014: 175). Thus, I argue that al-Kherba, maintaining a tone that is playful and sharply observant, allows for an allegorical reading of the several aspects of the sociopolitical corruption and stagnation ingrained by al-Assad regime in Syrian culture. By balancing sincere human moments with absurdist comedy, al-Kherba captures the charm, contradictions, and cultural richness of a village, and by extension a nation, struggling to reconcile its heritage with a rapidly changing world, which makes the sitcom worthy of further research and explication. To this end, the discussion unfolds through two interrelated subsections: the first views the comedy’s village-setting as a spatiotemporal metaphor reflecting the paralysis of Ba’thist Syria; the second discusses conflicts engineered by the mukhtars among characters to reinforce their control over the village, which potentially allegorises the divide-and-rule strategy used by the Ba’th regime to control Syria.

The political allegory of the village

The view that al-Kherba can be approached as an allegory of the state of sectarianism and sociopolitical as well as economic corruption suffered by al-Assad Syria is inspired by Mills’s belief that the value of ‘the sitcom genre’ stems from its ability to ‘interlace comedy and entertainment with a depiction of contemporary society infused with “a naturalism of language, characterization and location allowing for almost-believable story lines and audience identification”’ (2015: 453). These elements, I believe, are utilised in al-Kherba to produce what Ratta calls ‘real-time drama’ (2018: 60), a form of televisual realism that represents and mirrors reality without interpreting it. Through this televisual formula, al-Kherba emerges as a sitcom that entertains viewers through humour while pointing to ‘a range of social problems […], including gender inequality, generational conflict, class struggle, regional tensions, emigration, mental illness, child abuse, and domestic violence’ (Salamandra, 2015: 45). Al-Kherba depicts such social realism through its on-location village-setting, which brings ‘drama makers and their audiences into intimate contact with what are, for most middle-class Syrians, dangerous nether regions on the margins of consciousness’ (Salamandra, 2011: 164). This implies that placing al-Kherba in a Druze village near Suwayda Governorate can be understood as both a socially specific Druze setting and as a broader allegorical space for thinking about the whole Syrian society under al-Assad rule. Either way, it is hard to overlook that the time when al-Kherba was produced had been dominated by ‘increased violence’, which had caused a decrease in the number of Syrian miniseries and musalsalat, due to ‘poor access to historical sites, and the exodus of important figures from Syrian drama’, along with confining the setting of Syrian TV products ‘to calmer areas like Tartous and Suwayda or relocated outside Syria’ (Joubin, 2020: 5). Thus, in the process of deciphering the symbolic meaning of al-Kherba, its political, religious, historical, architectural, cultural or economic aspects can be viewed as a representation of power dynamics dominating al-Assad Syria represented by the Druze village.

In light of this theoretical framework, al-Kherba village, where the series’ 30 episodes unfold, is viewed as a rich, multilayered metaphor for the broader national condition in Syria under decades of the Ba’th rule (1971–2024), considering that the ‘use of informal settlements like [al-Kherba] to evoke marginality—real and metaphoric—is a longstanding visual realist convention’ used in Syrian TV drama (Salamandra, 2015: 46). Both visually and structurally, al-Kherba appears frozen in time: its crumbling stone houses, dust-laden narrow roads and precariously strung power lines reflect a long-standing neglect of basic infrastructure. Public transportation is virtually nonexistent. It is limited to a single ageing van, Jameel’s taxi, and Tareq’s motorcycle. Besides, the village’s central gathering space, al-saha, is stark and utilitarian, devoid of modern civic amenities: no seating, no public restrooms, no café and no bus stop, just two worn-out wooden chairs and a few large stones outside Abboud al-Kaziyyeh’s shop that double as makeshift seats. Even more telling is the near-total absence of information and communication infrastructure: no internet, satellite channels or newspapers, aside from a tattered old clipping that Sayyah frequently mentions, a lone public microphone fixed in Abboud’s shop, and Ghattas’s Facebook page. This near-total lack of modern communication media serves as a narrative shorthand that allegorises the sociopolitical paralysis engineered and enforced by a repressive regime, known for having ‘little respect for human rights or freedom of speech’ (Kastrinou, 2016: 165), to distance Syrians from each other and blind them to phases of modernisation in other countries.

This reading is substantiated by the comedy’s gloomy mise-en-scène, in which there is no mosque, church, hospital, library, functioning school building or community hall. This mise-en-scène, dominated by dilapidated structures, absent infrastructure and anachronistic technologies, probably ridicules al-Assad regime’s failure to develop the country or improve its infrastructure. In his article written for The Guardian, Ammar Abdulhamid (2011) writes:

Syria is still suffering from the isolation it has experienced since the 1980s. […] Consequently, there are really no independent civil society institutions to speak of: no free unions, no independent student bodies, no active political opposition parties in short, no structures that could enable people to organize themselves and rally others.

This suggests that the village’s dire conditions in transportation, communication, education and healthcare create a realistic mise-en-scène ‘from which [the comedy] drew its conventions, its codes of realism, and definitions of family life’ (Haralovich, 2003: 85). It also supports the view that the state of poverty, illiteracy and infrastructural neglect depicted in the musalsal’s mise-en-scène can be viewed as a dramatisation of Syrians’ suffering from state-enforced deprivation, isolation and political abandonment under a rule whose power lies not merely in repression but in shaping the symbolic environment in which daily life unfolds (Wedeen, 1999: 49). Accordingly, al-Kherba village, whose name literally means ‘the ruin’, which evokes a sense of purposeful decay mirroring the Ba’th authorities’ systematic dismantling of institutions and public trust, does not merely serve as a static on-location setting for the comedy but can be understood as a dramatised allegory of a crumbling nation stalled and sealed off from the liberating currents of the modern world.

In this political context, the mukhtars’ madhafat (guest rooms) may be viewed as the symbolic remnants of both state authority and social cohesion. They function as micro-sites for both familial solidarity and quasi-official authority, which reveals the blurred boundaries between state, kinship and performative governance. Each of the series’ 30 episodes includes a scene or more in which madhafat are introduced as the place where family members gather to seek the mukhtars’ help and guidance or where the mukhtars manage and intervene in the affairs of their people. For instance, it is in Abu Nimer’s madhafa that the failing grades of Haitham, Fayadh’s son, and the Abu Qa’qour family’s reaction against Sayyah, who refused to falsify Haitham’s certificate, are discussed (ep. 1). In that same madhafa, the Abu Qa’qour family’s preparations for the return of Dr Atef, Tawfeeq’s son, and his marriage to Nada, Sayyah’s daughter, are decided (ep. 4; 5; 6; 11; 12). Also, that madhafa is where other returnee villagers and visitors are received (ep. 7; 21; 25), and where all plots and attacks against Abu Malha family are orchestrated (ep. 4; 21; 29). Similarly, Abu Nayef’s madhafa is where all decisions related to Dr Fawzi’s dental clinic and his marriage to a girl from the village, that never took place, are made (ep. 2). It is also there where the problems of the Abu Malha family members are discussed and sometimes resolved (ep. 9; 15). In that same place, rumours and attacks against Abu Qa’qour family are decided and designed (ep. 21; 25; 29). In brief, the madhafat of both mukhtars function as the central control hub in forming and influencing villagers’ perception of life, culture and social relations. Thus, al-Kherba, with the absence of any official alternative for the mukhtars’ madhafat, can be viewed as a stage for authoritarian dramaturgy: a space where the performance of normalcy replaces actual political engagement and where the regime’s power is maintained not just through violence or surveillance, but through an aesthetic of decline that renders alternative futures unimaginable.

Temporal stasis further intensifies this atmosphere, considering that the cyclical and repetitive temporality portrayed in al-Kherba, where history appears suspended and political conflicts endlessly recur without resolution, dramatises the way the Ba’th regime used to manipulate people’s subjectivities, environments and time. None of the comedy’s 30 episodes include a scene in which any villager expresses any concern about time, as if it has no value for them. Even when talking about the future of their children, for example, Husam Abu Qa’qour and Haitham Abu Malha, villagers appear careless about what may happen tomorrow. Responding to Sayyah’s remark that Husam is ‘smart and therefore should be taken care of, as he may become a lawyer or doctor’, Jawhar, Husam’s father, declares: ‘I do not care […]. All I am concerned about is whether or not he is a liar’ (ep. 1, 37:40–38:02). This short dialogue, which may seem occasional, reveals villagers’ implicit belief that no meaningful change is possible, a static state reflected in their unchanging lifestyle, that is, dresses, social relations, furniture, transportation means, communications, house designs, streets, etc. The social and cultural landscape suspends time by foreclosing meaningful change and sociopolitical reform and obscuring villagers’ hopes and future plans at different levels, thus embedding citizens within a historical moment that seems unchanging and inescapable. This implies that Al-Kherba’s televisual realism, represented by its on-location’s stagnation, gloomy structure and suppressing atmosphere, can be seen as a critique of how Ba’thist authoritarianism manipulates not only space and social relations but also the very experience of time. Its spatiotemporal stagnation expresses how Ba’thist Syria emerges as a political power whose promise of reform is perpetually deferred and whose power is maintained through the continuous reproduction of spectacle and control.

In short, al-Kherba can be viewed as a socially produced space, where the regime’s contradictions, failures and mechanisms of control are vividly embodied. Rather than serving as a mere backdrop or setting, the village serves as a diegetic world, a meticulously constructed space that reflects the sociopolitical realities it represents. Its physical, gloomy environment mirrors the reality of the political system that produced it. This reading, highlighting al-Kherba’s power in transcending the physicality of place while broadening the boundaries of ambiguous expressions permitted by the Ba’th regime, concurs with Salamandra’s view that ‘much of Syrian social drama is best described as social realism, although it also incorporates melodramatic elements’ (2015: 44). Thus, al-Kherba is a character in its own right, embodying stasis, decay, and deliberate marginalisation. From a dramaturgical standpoint, its visual language, such as cracked stone walls, unpaved roads and obsolete wiring evokes a temporal dislocation, creating a chronotope of arrested development. This sociopolitical state is amplified, as explained in the following subsection, through ‘the divide-and-rule strategy’ used by Abu Nayef and Abu Nimer to maintain their own supremacy by undermining familial cohesion and societal harmony.

Allegorical engineered conflicts

Beyond physical ruin, the village’s social dynamics allows for an allegorical reading of the Ba’th regime’s strategic manipulation of social fragmentation as a means of maintaining control over society. The mukhtars plunge the village into internal conflicts, external rivalries and fragmentations, mirroring the ‘divide and rule policy’ that most Syrians ‘fell under’ (Salamandra, 2013b: 304), considering that the ‘goal of such “divide and rule” strategies is to increase the elite’s power and limit the threat from groups uniting against the elite’ (Alder and Wang, 2022: 2). The mukhtars, the comedy’s authoritarian elite, deploy this strategy to reinforce their grip on power through the normalisation of mistrust and division among other characters, including educated figures like Sayyah, Dr Fawzi and Dr Atef, political activists like Jameel, Milhem, Tareq and Ghattas, and some submissive villagers like Tawfeeq, Fayadh and Sam’aan. Drawing on Salamandra’s belief that Syrian television comedies ‘play a pivotal role in ongoing debates over representations of local and national culture [… and] exacerbate regional and sectarian tensions, provoking resentment and hostility rather than kinship and fraternity’ (1998: 227), we can say that the interactions among those villagers allegorise the cultural lifestyle designed by the Ba’th regime to control Syrians’ minds, relationships, behaviours and aspirations. The different conflicts initiated by Abu Nimer against some of his family members and those engineered by Abu Nayef against his family members represent the divide-and-rule strategy used by the Ba’th regime to ‘de-constitute’ Syrians and keep them under control, considering that films and other screen products are better ‘understood not just in terms of aesthetics but through its articulation with politics and ideology’ (Drake, 2016: 13).

As evident in comedy, Abu Nayef and Abu Nimer spare no means to manipulate and control members of their families. Both, for instance, view educated individuals as a threat to the village’s status quo; therefore, they disrespect education, slander educated villagers in public and sometimes isolate them from other family members. In the first episode, for example, the seemingly local dispute between Abu Nimer and Sayyah Abu Qa’qour unfolds as a layered allegory for the broader corruption of authoritarianism entrenched in al-Assad Syria. The conflict begins when Fayadh, the uneducated herder, appeals to his family mukhtar, Abu Nimer, to pressure Sayyah, the school principal, to alter his son’s, sixth-grader Haitham, failing grades. Supporting his appeal, Fayadh complaints that Sayyah favours another family, the Abu Malha, over their own, which stresses how tribal and familial affiliations often override fairness in such systems. Abu Nimer’s immediate promise to ‘handle it’ feasibly reflects his belief that authority alone, not truth, law or ethics, should dictate outcomes. However, Sayyah refuses to comply with Abu Nimer’s decree, which marks him as a rare figure of moral resistance standing against the authoritarian expectation that education should serve power. For Abu Nimer, this defiance is not a matter of academic ethics or educational integrity, but a direct challenge to his dominance, which he equates with loyalty to the family and by extension the system he embodies. In retaliation, he declares Sayyah an outcast, forbidding the family from acknowledging his role or even speaking to him.

Abu Nimer’s move can be viewed as a representation of the divide-and-rule policy deployed by authoritarian regimes to isolate and delegitimise intellectuals who resist the regime’s control, considering that Sayyah’s crime lies not in breaking rules but in refusing to break them. For Abu Nimer, the educated Sayyah is equal to the uneducated Fayadh in the context of ‘national family’, where ‘Fathers tend to expect obedience and are expected to ensure the family’s material well-being’ (Wedeen, 1999: 51). In this context, Abu Nimer, like al-Assad, is the ‘national father’ whose role ‘positions him symbolically as the dominant figure in a hierarchical national community; citizen-children owe him their obedience’ (ibid.). He represents the authoritarian father whose word supersedes law, demanding absolute compliance under the pretense of family honour and social cohesion. Sayyah, on the contrary, represents a rare voice of institutional integrity and moral resistance, and his refusal to falsify Haitham’s grades highlights the fundamental tension between ethical professionalism and the oppressive demands of nepotistic power. This confrontation makes available an allegorical clue to how dissent, even if principled and apolitical, is treated as a subversive threat within authoritarian systems. It also points to the Ba’th ‘system’s personalized character or the blending of a leader’s personality with a state’s institutions’ (Stacher, 2011: 199), a dynamism in which personal loyalty and tribal allegiance override legality, merit and institutional integrity. Bilal Salaymeh calls this state ‘neopatrimonialism’, which ‘implies the personalization of the regime and the state’s apparatus altogether […] with the constructing of Assad’s personal cult, through cultish rituals, which have been regarded as a proof of loyalty to the patron’ (2018: 143). In this context, Abu Nimer’s decision to exile Sayyah from the family and strip him of his professional identity hints at the Ba’th regime’s methods of ostracising those who challenge the oppressive hierarchy, whereas Sayyah’s social isolation points to the silencing of whistleblowers or reformists in authoritarian regimes, where structures of loyalty and fear can enforce conformity.

Substantiating this image, the second episode of the comedy depicts the clash between Abu Nayef, the traditionalist and opportunistic mukhtar of Abu Malha family, and Dr Fawzi, the professional, city-educated dentist who has returned to the village with modern ideals. The conflict arises when Dr Fawzi refuses to offer free dental care for some villagers, as decreed by Abu Nayef, who has made such a decision to support his status and fame. Dr Fawzi explains that he cannot afford the clinic’s costs, ignoring that challenging Abu Nayef’s orders, at any level, is an act of antagonising authorities and social hierarchy. Feeling that his hierarchal status quo is undermined and his authority is threatened, Abu Nayef automatically accuses Dr Fawzi of creating excessive problems and stirring social unrest. He then brands him a social outcast, instructs Abu Malha family to sever all ties with him, and demands that the father of Dr Fawzi’s fiancée call off the engagement and divorce his daughter. Dr Fawzi becomes a passively secluded individual and eventually decides to flee the village, a move that may represent a state of resistance or protest against Abu Nayef’s authoritarianism. However, the subsequent actions rendered Dr Fawzi’s move both pointless and meaningless, given that leaving the village fails to prevent Abu Nayef’s intervention in the clinic business, as he starts sending written directives or dispatching Jawhar to Dr Fawzi as his envoy (ep. 19).

This sequence of actions, alluding to how ‘power is exposed, resisted, but not overcome, in drama, as in Arab daily life’ (Salamandra, 2011: 165), dramatises al-Assad Syria’s policy that any political or social propositions for change or improvement, if not commissioned by the regime itself, is a potential threat to the regime’s existence, progress and prosperity (al-Haj Saleh, 2017; Perthes, 1995: 188). It also evokes the concept of ‘patriarchal connectivity’, through which ‘“persons feel a part of significant others” […] while senior members of the family address younger members as extensions of themselves’ (Wedeen, 1999: 52). Abu Nayef expects Dr Fawzi to define himself as a subordinate dedicating his knowledge and expertise to support the family’s status quo. In short, through its sharp dialogue and ironic situations, the comedy’s second episode reveals how authoritarian figures like Abu Nayef fiercely use the divide-and-rule strategy to preserve their sociopolitical status, while voices of social development like Dr Fawzi are viewed as intruders than contributors. In this sense, the episode allows for an allegorical reading of the moral decay produced by authoritarianism, where reason is expendable and power is upheld not by justice, but by coercion and collective complicity. Thus, al-Kherba can be viewed as a satirical commentary on the animosity between the Ba’th regime and human rights, especially citizens’ freedom of action and speech, a viewpoint that aligns with the consensus that Ba’th autocrats ‘not only underestimate its people, but deny them the mere ability to have and exercise any kind of agency’ (Kastrinou, 2016: 190).

Set side by side, Abu Nimer-Sayyah conflict and Abu Nayef-Dr. Fawzi conflict carry deep symbolic weight in illustrating the long-standing tension between uneducated authoritarian elites and principled intellectuals. These conflicts potentially display how the Ba’th regime has opposed education and enlightenment unless they serve the regime’s ‘project of complete political and intellectual homogenization that [… is to] create uniformity among all Syrians and to position Ba’thism as their profound truth, [and] the Ba’th party as the carrier of their eternal message as Arabs’ (al-Haj Saleh, 2017: 93–94). This explains why Abu Nimer prefers Fayadh, the illiterate herder, to Jameel, the political activist, and Abu Nayef prefers Jawhar, the uneducated sycophantic, to Dr Fawzi and Ghattas. The mukhtars believe that educated intellectuals can show less ethnic and national/regional bias than their uneducated counterparts, which conveys the reliance of al-Assad regime on filling state positions that require some academic certificates and skills by ‘lowborn, uneducated’ individuals whose ‘fetishistic submission to their leaders’ supersedes any other qualifications (al-Haj Saleh, 2017: 63–64). Instead of seeking advice from educated individuals to resolve the village’s problems or achieve development, the mukhtars trust uneducated assistants/consultants like Tawfeeq and Jawhar to wield unchecked power through inherited status and patriarchal authority. This suggests that the comedy can be understood as a piece of audiovisual realism that reveals how al-Assad regime has historically marginalised intellectuals and introduced them as enemies than assets to society, which underscores the tragedy of a system that empowers ignorance and punishes knowledge. Al-Kherba thus becomes more than a satire; it is a bitter commentary on the intellectual suffocation under authoritarian rule.

A comparable existential clash emerges between Abu Nimer and his son-in-law, Jameel, an enthusiastic, political activist who has returned to al-Kherba with aspirations of mobilising the rural community against imperialist forces and bourgeois values, advocating instead for the empowerment of the proletariat. This ideological orientation becomes evident in episode 7, where Abu Nimer starts a symbolic emasculation of Jameel upon his return to the village. In accordance with customary Arab traditions, Jameel and his wife Rahmah, Abu Nimer’s daughter, pay a familial visit to her father, who formally welcomes them with an invitation to dinner. During the visit, Jameel introduces imperialism as the oppressive enemy that drove him back from the city; then he proudly reports that his daughter, a university student, is arriving that day, accompanied by the son of his comrade Milhem Abu Malha. Rather than celebrating his granddaughter’s academic success, Abu Nimer reacts with hostility upon learning that the girl is being accompanied by a young man from the rival Abu Malha family. His immediate demand that Jameel prevent such an association, labelling it as a reckless and irresponsible act, suggests not only the lingering animosity between Abu Qa’qour and Abu Malha families, but also reflects Abu Nimer’s deeply authoritarian tendencies against any political reforms. However, Jameel’s attempts to assert his manliness and defend his position within his own family (wife and daughter) are ultimately ineffective, as Abu Nimer denounces him and expels him from Abu Qa’qour’s family. This rejection drives Jameel to seek refuge with the other ostracised figure in the family, Sayyah.

In the same episode, Abu Nayef receives a visit from Milhem and his wife, who, like Jameel, have returned to the village with ambitions to raise political consciousness among villagers. Abu Nayef greets them hospitably and extends a dinner invitation. During their conversation, Milhem introduces a range of political concepts, including imperialism, bourgeois hegemony and proletarian struggle, in an effort to engage Abu Nayef in critical dialogue. In return, Abu Nayef remains indifferent, choosing instead to focus on his meal and digress into complaints about Akram (who is notably absent), criticising him for purchasing substandard batteries for his hearing aid. Feigning a lack of comprehension while blaming his faulty hearing aid for missing Milhem’s discourse, Abu Nayef effectively dismisses the political discussion and, in doing so, publicly undermines Milhem in front of his wife and their relative, Akram’s mother. This scene illustrates Abu Nayef’s resistance to any intellectual and ideological reform, emblematic of a broader reluctance within the Abu Malha family to accept progressive or enlightening perspectives. Later in the episode, Milhem departs from Abu Nayef’s household and heads to Sayyah’s home where he reunites with his comrade Jameel. Together with Sayyah, they form a small collective of dissenters determined to initiate social reform.

The dissenters’ primary project is the establishment of a literacy school for adults, hosted in Sayyah’s residence, an initiative that represents a symbolic challenge to entrenched power structures and a practical step toward the enlightenment of villagers. However, their effort is swiftly and decisively thwarted by the mukhtars who perceive the project as a threat to their authority. Although many villagers initially express interest and pledge to attend the school, they ultimately withdraw after the mukhtars deliver a severe public warning: any adult who participates in the literacy lessons will be declared an outcast (ep. 7). This scene reflects how the Ba’th regime, represented by the mukhtars, ‘the left-over relics of a peasant and uncivilised past’ (Kastrinou, 2018: 273), has been intolerant of ‘people or groups perceived as threatening to the regime’s monopoly over the institutions of the state, including those state-controlled institutions (the press, radio, television, schools) charged with symbolic production’ (Wedeen, 1999: 26). The mukhtars’s persistence to suppress any developments and outcast educated reforms thus can serve as an allegory for al-Assad regime’s institutionalisation of sociopolitical stagnation, sectarianism and illiteracy. Their rejection of the literacy school and political reformation is not simply a local dispute, but a dramatised reflection of a national pattern in which grassroots initiatives are perceived as existential threats. It reveals their fear that even modest educational or ideological shifts might destabilise their long-held authority and undermine the structural inequalities and social stagnation that have been normalised under their leadership. This allegory, underscoring the ideological tension between the illiterate elites of the Ba’th party and Syrian literate reformists, shows that al-Kherba is not merely a sitcom screened for laughter but a veiled commentary on the way authoritarian regimes sustain themselves by politicising sectarianism, marginalising the educated and denying reformists access to the very instruments that might liberate them.

This interpretation becomes more meaningful given that none of the uneducated villagers, such as Jawhar, Tawfeeq and Fayadh, is targeted by the mukhtars’ severe attacks. They have been, instead, entrusted with the honour of serving their families by executing their mukhtars’ strategies, noting that their obedience to the mukhtars represents a form of ‘as-if politics’, not inanity or ignorance. Wedeen explains, in Ba’thist Syria, ‘people are not required to believe the “mystifications” the [authoritarian] regime puts forth, and they do not. They are required to act as if they did’ (1999: 76). In this sense, villagers’ apparent obedience and passive complicity make explicit a survival tactic widely adopted by most Syrians under al-Assad regime. The comedy clearly shows that uneducated villagers serve the mukhtars not due to stupidity or ignorance, but drawing on their lifelong experience that opposing the mukhtars has always resulted in dissenters’ exile and defamation. In episode 29, Jawhar states, ‘each one who opened his mouth [saying ‘no’ to them] was slandered and exiled outside al-Kherba’ (44: 47–54). Jawhar’s words reveal villagers’ ‘vulnerability in the face of [authoritarian] power’ (Joubin, 2013: 26), suggesting that their lifelong obedience to the mukhtars has nothing to do with tribal loyalty or belonging. It is rather their fear of the avenging nature of authoritarianism that contextualises their passivity and complicity.

However, this is not to exonerate villagers from responsibility for their involvement in the mukhtars’ authoritarian tactics and plots given that complicity is sometimes imposed on both uneducated and educated villagers alike and that accomplices ‘confirm the system, fulfill the system, make the system, are the system’ (Havel, 1986: 45). In episode 29, the penultimate chapter of the series, Abu Nayef and Abu Nimer agree to stage a reciprocal, fabricated assault by pretending that each of them was attacked at night by the other’s men. This plotting can be attributed to the mukhtars’ implicit belief that it is only through spreading antagonism and fostering distrust among people that authorities can ‘consolidate, re-invigorate and probably […] rationalize [their] control and legitimacy’ (Perthes, 1995: 258). Eventually, the village erupts in tension, and several characters, including Jameel, Milhem, Sayyah, Ghattas, Jawhar, Tawfeeq, Sam’aan, Fayadh, and Dr Fawzi, among others, suffer bloody wounds and broken body parts. Thinking that only Abu Nayef and Abu Nimer are wise enough to resolve the conflict, the villagers beg their two elders to meet and negotiate a truce. A series of negotiations takes place, and the mukhtars finally decided to resolve the conflict by dividing the village into two cantons, one ruled by Abu Nayef; the other by Abu Nimer. Although this solution is not implemented as accomplice villagers discover the conspiracy and finally decide to overthrow both mukhtars and abolish their authoritarian system, the conspiracy-like plot, incited by the mukhtars, ridicules al-Assad regime’s rhetoric whose ‘power resides in its ability to impose national fictions and to make people say and do what they otherwise would not’ (Wedeen, 1999: 83–84).

Conclusion

The sitcom structure of Al-Kherba, integrating repetitive patterns, circular structure and episodic reset, can be understood as a televised comical display of the internal contradictions that underpin authoritarian governance in al-Assad Syria. Using its metaphorical village-setting, symbolic characters, and dynamic interplay between as-if politics and passive complicity, the musalsal allegorises al-Assad regime’s tactics in manipulating social dynamics to maintain power. This finding aligns with Wedeen’s assertion that ‘Syrian popular culture, from editorial cartoons to televised political comedies, depicts the ways in which official rhetoric and orchestrated spectacles depoliticize people’ (1999: 81). It also ascertains Laith Hajjo’s view that ‘[TV] drama has a responsibility on all levels: social, political and economic. It doesn’t solve problems; it exposes them […] so that people will begin to ask why, and try to solve them’ (quoted in Salamandra, 2011: 166). By allowing viewers to spectate the absurdity and futility of social divisions, the musalsal provides them with a space to recognise the coercive logic of the regime and criticise the social conditions it engenders. This does not necessarily mean that al-Kherba aims at subverting authoritarianism or generating any collective actions against it, but that it may be viewed as both a compass steering people ‘to recognize [their] shared circumstances of unbelief’ (Wedeen, 1999: 90) and a valve venting out their ‘anguish’ for embedded complicity in authoritarianism. ⁹ Moreover, the musalsal dramatises how authoritarianism maintains power not solely through overt repression but through mediated forms of loyalty and the normalisation of opportunism, which complicates simplistic binaries of victim and oppressor. In doing so, the musalsal provides an invaluable cultural lens for understanding the multilayered nature of life under authoritarianism and the subtle ways in which critique and complicity are negotiated within it.

By embedding its critique within humour and allegory, al-Kherba allows for an allegorical reading of the ambiguous and multifaceted form of political resistance that can operate beneath the radar of overt repression, considering that ‘ambiguous references to contemporary politics and society encoded in [such …] narratives can be ignored by censors and denied by producers’ (Salamandra, 2008: 186). In the sense, the comedy resists al-Assad authoritarianism not through direct, confrontational activism but through symbolic subversion and cultural critique, illuminating the paradoxes that sustain hegemonic power while simultaneously carving out fragile spaces for collective reflection, critical awareness, and potential dissent. Through its intricate construction, the musalasal illuminates the psychological and social toll of ideological fanaticism, the moral ambiguities of survival strategies, and the fragile spaces where dissent persists beneath authoritarian domination. Al-Kherba thus stands as a testament to the enduring power of satire and allegory as modes of survival and resistance in authoritarian contexts, where open opposition is often impossible, yet the impulse to critique and challenge power persists resiliently beneath the surface.