Maliki Mardinalli
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
Too conservative.
Too many ways it could go wrong.
This is the place where in 1982 Hafez al-Assad, Bashar's father, crushed the Muslim Brotherhood uprising.
Thousands were killed.
Many disappeared.
People there still carry that history.
It shapes what you can say in a room.
But then a fan of the group DMs Sharif, begging him to come.
We like you here.
We want you here.
We want to change the conservative stereotype of our city.
So Sharif said, OK, fuck it.
Let's do Hammer.
They figured if they could play Hammer, it could open the doors to other conservative cities too.
And they sold out the Hammer show.
230 tickets.
It's Wednesday.
The Hama show is supposed to happen Monday.
So Maliki calls the guy in charge of culture in Hama, a local bureaucrat he calls the Sheikh, to convince the Sheikh to not cancel the show.
That night, they still have a show to do.