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Wlād Badī‘a [Badī‘a’s Children] (2024) is a Syrian television series directed by Rashā Sharbatjī and written by Yāmin Ḥajalī and ‘Alī Wajīh. The series centres on four siblings and their often unlawful means of survival. Through flashbacks, the viewer is introduced to the siblings’ violent and competitive childhood, which has left them all deeply scarred. The present-day narrative, set in the spring of 2024, addresses life in Syria, characterised by corruption, smuggling, armed gangs, and forced migration.

I interpret the series as an artistic engagement with both personal and national trauma, seeking to interlink these experiences to find relief from the associated pain. Drawing on Tarja Laine’s (2023) work, I focus on the characteristics and experiences of traumatic memory within an aesthetic framework. Additionally, I examine the concept of ‘collapsed experiences’ (Gana, 2013) and their manifestations in nightmares and flashbacks, and how these are utilised within the series.

I contend that the merging of personal and national trauma, along with the violent depiction of both, enables the series to illustrate potential paths forward despite past adversities. Concurrently, the personal aspects explore the individual responsibilities each character bears for their own life, while the national trauma highlights how external forces wreak havoc on people’s lives. I conclude that Wlād Badī‘a offers a fictional and aesthetic exploration of various layers of trauma within Syrian society, thereby serving a somewhat therapeutic function.

 Gana, Nouri. “Trauma Ties: Chiasmus and Community in Lebanese Civil War Literature,” in The Future of Trauma Theory: Contemporary Literary Criticism, eds. Gert Buelens, Samuel Durrant and Robert Eaglestone (Routledge 2013): 77-90.

Laine, Tarja. Reframing Trauma in Contemporary Fiction Film (Lanham, Lexington Books/Fortress Academic, 2023).