Syria's Secret Library

by Mike Thomson

  Not that it turned out to be quite that simple. Abdul Basit’s fiancée, Zohour, was not as compliant with her parents as he had been with his, and while she did not actually turn down the proposal from his mother and father, she did insist on at least meeting their son. Thankfully, soon after his parent’s visit, a ceasefire was agreed in neighbouring rebel-held al-Moadamyeh. This made getting Abdul Basit out of Daraya and into her town a little less difficult. On the second day of the truce, he managed to get through the checkpoints and was able to meet his prospective fiancée. ‘We sat together for about an hour. I can honestly say that from our first moment together, my flustered brain stopped functioning,’ he told me, before adding with his usual poetic flair, ‘but this didn’t really matter, because it was my heart that spoke the final word.’

  Whatever that final word was, it evidently worked wonders on Zohour. Any reservations she might have had were swept away and the two agreed to get engaged a few weeks later. Several days after that, having again managed somehow to get out of besieged Daraya, Abdul Basit and his family headed to al-Moadamyeh for the engagement ceremony but, on arriving at a checkpoint just outside the town, they were all refused entry. It was not clear why, given that the ceasefire was still holding, but they dared not argue with the soldiers and had to turn back. Not to be completely defeated, Abdul Basit came up with a plan of his own: ‘I ordered a red flower and went to great trouble to arrange to have it delivered to her door. I knew a man who had a good relationship with the regime’s soldiers on the army checkpoint. So I gave him some money to bribe them, so that they would let the flower through. Unfortunately the soldier my contact knew best was not on duty that day. The ones who were just ripped up the flower and threw it back at him in pieces. It still upsets me to think of this.’

  After telling me this story, Abdul Basit put his face in his hands. When he looked back up his eyes were brimming with tears: ‘I miss my fiancée and my family so very much. Being unable to see them is perhaps the most difficult thing of all to deal with. It’s very hard being separated for so long from the people I love.’

  Anas also had a fiancée. Asmaa was living with her family in another part of the countryside outside Damascus. Again, it was his parents who met her first, later describing Asmaa to Anas. As each of them immediately liked what they heard about the other, they began chatting over the Internet. A flurry of texts and emails soon began to flow and, within months, they, too, became engaged.

  Since many families had fled from Daraya to al-Moadamyeh during the massacre of August 2012, there were many prospective brides and grooms cut off from one another. But a string of ceasefires, negotiated with the regime by rebels in al-Moadamyeh, provided a lifeline for couples who longed to be married. During one of our WhatsApp calls, Muhammad Shihadeh–the former English teacher nicknamed ‘The Professor’–told me about the first wedding to be held in al-Moadamyeh soon after the truces were signed there, in early 2014. He recalled how it created great excitement throughout the area, two young lives being joined in a ceremony that looked to the future rather than to the horrors of the past. The groom was a health worker at a field hospital in Daraya, just like Abdul Basit, and had been an activist since the beginning of the revolution. His fiancée had fled to al-Moadamyeh, so all they could do was dream of being together, while constantly fearing that a bomb or bullet might intervene before they had had the chance. And yet, here they were, their dream had come true. ‘I vividly remember their tears of happiness,’ Muhammad told me. ‘Many of those watching were crying those same tears of joy, myself included. We cried out of happiness for our two friends, we cried at the sight of them both together at last, and we wept because of the joy we felt after so much sorrow. Many people are still separated in the same way they had been. They are engaged but can’t get married. They just have to live in hope for the future. I look back on that wedding as an act of resilience as well as love, an act of determination to celebrate life over death.’

  Sadly Muhammad’s own wait to be reunited with his wife and children continued. For some months into the siege they had all stayed together, but when the shells and barrel bombs began falling in greater numbers, he became consumed with fear for their safety. Finally, when he was so worried that he could no longer sleep at night, he decided to try to get them out. Rebel-held al-Moadamyeh next door seemed the best destination. It was not being attacked as persistently or intensely as Daraya, so Muhammad made plans to get his family there. The trip to al-Moadamyeh was dangerous because the route between the two towns was regularly shelled, but finally they managed it.

  At first Muhammad got to see his family quite regularly, by skirting regime checkpoints and braving shelling and sniper fire. But finally, about three months after his wife and children had settled in al-Moadamyeh, pro-regime forces tightened their control around the town. Daraya was now completely cut off. When he told me about this, Muhammad had yet to hold or even see his youngest child, who had not been born when he last saw his wife. ‘My wife was seven months pregnant when the route between Daraya and al-Moadamyeh was cut,’ Muhammad told me. ‘She had no access to medical staff and had to give birth with just the help of her neighbour. She now has to raise our three children on her own. I haven’t seen my newborn child. All I know is that he is a boy.’

  Clearly not one for self-pity, Muhammad pointed out that he was far from alone in this regard. Scores of his friends were also in the same position, and many had not seen their wives and children for several years. He added mournfully that some of those who had left had not been heard from again. Suddenly the man widely known for his sense of calm looked distraught: ‘I hope that I’ll get to see my wife and children one day soon. I would love to hear their voices and at least be sure that they are OK. That would give me so much relief.’

  Listening to Muhammad’s agony made me think about Sara. Although she had her husband with her in Daraya, how, I wondered, could she ever get used to being separated from her beloved family? Like so many others, her parents and siblings had left the town when it became clear that the violence would only get worse. Several of them hadn’t actually gone far from Daraya, but, given the siege, it might as well have been another country. Sara couldn’t risk trying to go there and she couldn’t even call them in case their phones were being monitored by the security services. Knowing that they would worry about her, Sara had come up with a pre-arranged signalling system: ‘Each evening I change the photo on my Facebook page,’ she told me. ‘They know this is my coded message to verify that I am still alive. I don’t know when I will see any of my family again.’

  Sara’s pain must have been all the worse for knowing how near her family was. Her husband was able to console her, though he too missed his own relatives. He felt compelled to stay in Daraya due to the work he was doing for the council, but his family had moved to a safer area. Sara appeared to take great comfort from the care and education she was able to give the children she taught, some of whom had been orphaned by the war. But at the same time she saw first-hand the grief they were enduring, watching their childhood being stolen by the war.

  Sometimes, she told me, she took refuge in thoughts of her own younger days. ‘I dream of the happy times back in my dear family’s home in Daraya. I see myself there, sleeping in my old bed, waiting for my father to come and wake me up for breakfast. In a strange way it feels like it was only yesterday, yet I’ve been married for eight years now. To help me deal with these thoughts, I’m trying to make myself believe that I never had a family. It’s just too painful thinking about them, I miss them all too much.’

  By late February 2016, events on the ground had taken a further turn for the worse for the people of Daraya. Pro-Assad forces launched a new assault on the town and managed to seize more than twenty rebel-held buildings. A nationwide ceasefire should have prevented this happening, but because the government claimed that militants from the extremist al-Nusra Front, which had ties with al-Qaeda, were among those fighting in Daraya, the town was
excluded from the deal.

  Although many in Daraya had developed ways to calm their fears over bombing and snipers, being overrun by pro-Assad forces was an even more terrifying prospect. ‘Right now Assad’s forces are trying to invade Daraya,’ Muhammad told me. ‘In addition to shelling and missile bombardments they are using ground forces backed by tanks and armoured trucks. The latter are aiming to break through the FSA’s defensive line. They are trying to capture the farmland on the western and southern edges of town. If they succeed in taking these farms, we’ll really be in trouble. How, then, can we feed ourselves?’

  Many families in Daraya were already asking themselves that same question. The one I asked myself repeatedly was, how had the people of Daraya managed to cope so far, both mentally as well as physically, when they had so little to eat each day? I heard that some mothers were giving their children virtually any food they had and then drinking large amounts of water themselves, which at least made them feel as if they had eaten. What, I constantly wondered, could they say to their starving children when they were crying with hunger and unable to sleep at night? Knowing what they needed, yet having to watch them suffer because they had nothing to give them.

  The town’s already dire shortages of food and medicine had been compounded by the pro-Assad forces’ recapture of the road to nearby al-Moadamyeh, which until recently had been the way most urgent supplies had been brought in to Daraya. Now, even if people did have the ingredients to make watery soup, which was all that most had to eat, there was very little fuel of any sort left to cook it with.

  One of the many attractions of the secret library was that reading books helped people forget about their hunger, as well as the war going on above their heads. Anyone who has missed even one meal knows how difficult it is to concentrate on anything when hunger is gnawing at your stomach. So it’s hard to imagine what it must have been like to go for months, or even years, without a proper meal. In a conversation with Ayham he told me how mothers bringing their children to his dental surgery felt forced to lie to their desperately hungry children, telling them things like: ‘Don’t worry, your father will be back soon from the market with a bag full of food.’ Or, when their father returned with nothing, ‘There will be a big meal waiting for you tomorrow.’ Such promises would, of course, be broken, the heartbreak only postponed.

  Ayham told me that he had become obsessed with thoughts about food ever since the siege began: ‘You will laugh a lot when I tell you what I dream about,’ he said. ‘I dream of drinking a large cup of tea with sugar in it. I dream of potato crisps; I dream of big pieces of chicken. We haven’t eaten chicken for more than a year now. I confess that sometimes I stare at pictures of food. I stare at them for hours and hours, I really do. I try to convince myself that I’ve just eaten the food in the photos. I hope my mind will trick my body into thinking this is true.’

  Despite the growing hunger and deprivation, many of those I talked to somehow managed to retain their sense of humour in those darkening days. Abdul Basit was certainly one of them. He told me how the previous month, he and his friends had managed to get hold of a small quantity of sheep’s liver. Almost delirious with excitement, they had rushed home with their prized meal and carefully placed the delicious-looking meat in a frying pan, before cooking it slowly, savouring the wonderful smell. ‘It smelt so good,’ he told me, ‘that we were finding it hard to resist pulling the liver out of the pan and eating it raw, there and then.’ To avoid this temptation he and his fellow diners decided to leave the room for a few minutes while the meat continued to cook.

  ‘When we came back just a few minutes later, we couldn’t believe what we saw. There, sitting by the stove, was a cat. It had scooped the liver out of the pan and was happily chewing it. One of my friends, the one who had managed to buy us the meat, was so distressed that he burst into tears. I rushed over, pulled the cat away and saved what was left of our longed-for meal. We then shared it out and started gulping it down. All of us, that is, except one of my friends. He just stood there watching us without touching his share. He suffers from OCD and is very fussy about what he eats, even when we’re all in danger of starving to death.’

  Abdul Basit said his friend had lived in fear of catching some kind of infection from the things he was eating during the siege, despite there being so little food around. So he was unwilling to risk cat-chewed liver, however much of a delicacy the meat was. His friends could not help finding this funny, because earlier that very morning he had been complaining about how terribly hungry he was. But, Abdul Basit told me, this story seemed to have a positive ending, as far as his friend’s OCD problem was concerned.

  ‘Not long after the cat incident, we found him tucking into a strange-looking salad. It was made out of the leaves from a blackberry bush which he had drenched in salted water. He did not seem to be fussy any more! In the end the siege appears to have cured him of his OCD.’

  Abdul Basit told me about another humorous incident, this time at the hospital where he worked. He was helping to treat an injured FSA fighter who kept shouting that his left leg was hurting. Blood stains covered the left leg of his trousers, so the staff got ready to take a look. Yet instead of gripping his leg he was tightly clutching his stomach. Abdul Basit and the doctor were rather confused. Why, they asked themselves, was he not holding his injured limb? Given that his stomach seemed to be causing the most distress, they ignored his leg and tried to examine his stomach. But the man would not let them. The more they tried, the tighter his hands gripped his belly. Unable to get any further they asked the fighter what was wrong with his stomach.

  ‘But he ignored our question and kept telling us to forget his stomach and check his leg. We finally discovered what the problem was. There was nothing wrong with his stomach. It was just that he was hiding a kilo of dates in the hand that he had clasped to it! He didn’t want us to see them in case we took them from him. When we looked at his leg we found he had some very worrying wounds, but he was still far more concerned about keeping hold of his dates!’

  I sat there feeling terribly guilty as I listened to these stories, humorous though the last two were. I had just had a large lunch, half of which I had left untouched on the side of my plate. In a few hours’ time, my wife and I were due to go to a friend’s house for dinner. We would doubtless spend much of the evening eating, regardless of whether we were hungry or not.

  From the start of the war, women across Syria had been flooding social media with protests about the lack of international help being given to people in Daraya and the other besieged towns. By early 2016, at least half a million people, though some believe it was double that figure, were living under siege conditions in fifteen different areas of the country. The majority were surrounded and being starved into submission by pro-Assad forces, though a few towns and villages were also besieged by rebel militia and IS jihadists. In early April 2016, forty-seven women in Daraya signed an open letter calling for the siege on their town to be lifted and aid allowed in. ‘There is no food at all in Daraya,’ they wrote. ‘There are cases of malnutrition and we have resorted to cooking soups made purely of spices in order to stave off hunger. There are signatories to this letter who have not eaten for at least two days–some longer. There is no baby milk and no breast milk due to malnutrition. Even something as simple as dishwashing liquid is unavailable. There are no cleaning supplies in order for us to ensure hygiene and keep diseases away.’

  To give their campaign visual impact the woman asked their children to stand in lines in the shape of the letters: S.O.S. In addition to highlighting how much children were suffering, they wanted to point out that the town was full of civilians and not terrorists as the government was claiming. One woman held up a protest message written on an IS-style black and white style flag as a sign that mocked the way the Western media only seemed to pay attention to stories that involved this extremist group.

  For four years, the people of Daraya had pleaded for international food aid, y
et still none had been allowed in. It had begun to look like the outside world had given up trying to help, so it came as a big surprise to many in Daraya when a fleet of white Land Cruisers, bearing the UN insignia, drove into the town on 16 April 2016. Elation soon turned to dejection, however, when it was discovered that the vehicles were carrying only UN officials, not food and medicine. The delegation, it was explained, had come to assess the needs of residents and listen to their requests. When I heard about this I couldn’t help thinking that Daraya’s needs were fairly obvious and wondered why this delegation had to drive there, empty-handed, just to find out what the town’s people had been saying year after year. Whatever the case, the people of Daraya were pleased to see international officials walking through their shattered streets. Anas wrote about the visit in his diary: ‘The delegation saw for themselves how the schools, mosques and churches had been destroyed. Local people told them about their suffering and explained how awful life is under the siege. The group then visited a field hospital before meeting some local children to hear about their pain. The delegation’s leader, Khawla Mattar, asked a child what she wanted them to bring when they came back. I expected the little girl to ask for chocolate, biscuits or strawberries… but she requested rice, flour and bread instead. I don’t think she could remember ever seeing the sort of things kids normally like.’

  By the time the convoy of UN vehicles had left the town in their dusty wake, hopes were high. Perhaps, thought the people of Daraya, the outside world was finally listening and aid would soon come, and perhaps peace with it. But with no further break in the bombing and shelling, safety was clearly a problem for any relief convoy and yet more weeks went by without any sign of aid. There were widespread reports that food might be dropped from the sky, as it had been in some other besieged areas; but all Daraya got was more missiles and barrel bombs.