Cultural pride, and unlikely guests, at Kurdish Jewish Festival – Muslim visitors travel from Syria and Iraq to join their brethren at the annual Saharane celebration in Jerusalem | Times of Israel

It started with the sound of drums. Lorin Darwish, a Syrian Kurd born in Qamishli, stepped out of the parking garage. She could feel the percussion in her stomach as she started walking down the hill. The whine of the familiar shawm instrument swirled around her ears as she stepped onto the valley’s green lawn. Moments later, she was walking through a crowd of mustachioed men, some decked out in flowing pants and turbans, chatting excitedly in Aramaic and Kurdish as women tended to meat on the grills set up around the park.