Footballer, revolutionary, Assad victim. Remembering Syria's 'singer of the revolution'

In his eight years of fighting, Sarout came to embody much of Syria's revolution.

Though he was a thoroughgoing warrior by the time of his death, Sarout did not seek war. Instead, it interrupted his life and came to him.

A goalkeeper for his hometown football club in Homs, a boy and then a man who played for national youth teams, Sarout first attained a degree of prominence in protests against the Assad regime in Homs. Alongside other emerging figures of popular opposition such as Fadwa Souleimane, Sarout participated in protests against the state.

These protests quickly became less ad hoc and more organised. Syrians leapt in the air and reeled with their arms linked. They carried banners, and chanted excitably; and upon the platform Sarout began to sing.

His songs of protest and demands for freedom became more powerful and more insistent as the protests did the same. Sarout sang for his city as well as his country. And when protests gave way to fighting as the state mounted a military response, Sarout soon found himself taking up arms.

His songs of protest and demands for freedom became more powerful and more insistent as the protests did the same

What happened to Homs, and Sarout's place in that conflict, is well told in the documentary Return to Homs. It follows Sarout and his fellow fighters as they crawl through ruined houses and skirt snipers' alleys, passing through holes cut into the walls of buildings to avoid the dangers of the open street.

But more poignantly, the film also follows the path of the revolutionary figurehead as well as the fighter, including footage from the protests he led, much of which continues to have significant circulation among the Syrian diaspora.

The protests stir the heart, but other particularly moving scenes contain more private moments. They include one of Sarout slumping in a corridor, his back against a wall, experiencing exhaustion and a loss of heart. In another, Sarout tries to dig the grave of a friend, a task interrupted by the explosion of a shell nearby.

After a brutal siege in which much of Sarout's family was killed and the neighbourhoods in which he grew up were flattened, Sarout became a fixture of the national opposition. He was evacuated from Homs to Idlib in a surrender deal by which the rebels gave up his city. Sarout was never able to return.

As time passed and the situation became more desperate, his course followed that of his country's conflict. Sarout's songs became more religious, making many references to martyrdom, and as the revolution lost ground amid the rise of more extreme elements, Sarout trod a difficult path.

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Nonetheless, his consistent opposition to the Assad regime led to what some construed as an uneasy closeness with extremist groups also fighting the regime, though he vehemently denied rumours he had joined Islamic State group. His urging of continued fighting against the regime – notably the opening of new fronts to relieve rebel bastions under pressure – sat uneasily with some more willing to pause fighting and negotiate.

Living in violence took its toll. For years, Sarout evaded death. The regime attempted to end his life in Homs, and though it failed, its forces were able to kill many of his brothers and family members.

Later, Sarout was repeatedly in danger fighting both the regime and other armed groups, including the formerly al-Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front, which is now part of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).

Sarout was involved in all facets of Syria's revolution. He hymned its original hopefulness and saw its slump into the mire of grinding urban warfare and infighting.

Like many rebels, Sarout had a complex but close relationship with Turkey, spending time there, leading protests and stirring continued support for Syria's opposition before finally returning to his country to fight. His presence in Turkey did not diminish his magnetism, and his unannounced presence at protests drew rapture from crowds, something documented by Elizabeth Tsurkov during her fieldwork in the country.

It was in a Turkish hospital where Sarout would die on 8 June 2019, of wounds sustained in battle against regime forces in northern Hama.

Sarout believed in the hope of a Syria without the Assad dynasty

Sarout believed in the hope of a Syria without the Assad dynasty, and determined to give his life to make that future possible. His story is that of Syria's revolution in miniature; his death a symbol of the betrayal of that revolution.

Many Syrians, those within the country and abroad, see Sarout as a representative martyr: A golden youth whose life was interrupted by dreadful conflict.

The outpouring of grief his death has inspired appears almost unprecedented. The tributes paid to Sarout do not fail to acknowledge his ideological evolutions. Instead, noting his alliances and his actions deepens the tragic aspects of his life, amid the wider tragedy which has befallen his country.

"Some individuals celebrated as heroes make you doubt all stories of heroes in history books," said Hassan Hassan, a Syrian writer and analyst. "Others, like… Sarout," including his flaws, 'make those stories highly plausible', Hassan concluded.

A gilded youth now gone, Sarout stands for much of what his country has lost, and what, in a different light, its story can still, perhaps, contain.