by Mike Thomson
The following Monday felt like a very normal summer afternoon in the leafy north London suburb of East Finchley. It was warm and sunny. Traffic was light and the mood on the suburban streets relaxed. Except, that was, for the shouts of a passing motorist. Leaning out of his window he cursed a pizza delivery driver whose moped had pulled out in front of him. I was in the small terraced house of an old friend, deep in discussion about an art project she was planning. As we talked, music from a car parked nearby drifted through her open sitting-room window. U2’s ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’, a song lamenting the horrors of the troubles in Northern Ireland, briefly jolted me back to the terrors of Syria. As I tried to refocus on what my host was saying, a shrill bleep from my mobile phone signalled the arrival of a text. Concerned that fumbling for my phone might look rude mid-conversation, I ignored it. Then, around twenty minutes later, when my friend got up to make some tea, I finally took a look at the message. Three words glared out from the screen.
Omar is dead
I stared at the text, struggling to absorb what it said, before scrolling down to see if there were any more details. Any explanation, any verification, any account of how this had happened. There was nothing else. It seemed inconceivable that these three short words, these ten letters, spelled the end of a man as vibrant, warm and positive as Omar Abu Anas. He was twenty-four years old.
I tried to reach his many friends, including Anas, Saeed, Homam, and Rateb to find out what had happened to Omar. But the town seemed, yet again, to have lost all Internet connections. I turned to Facebook where, after some searching, I finally came across a heartfelt dedication, posted in Arabic by Homam, one of Omar’s closest friends:
Letter to Omar
By losing you, I have lost my soul and my heart is darkened. Without you, life is meaningless. You were my hope in the midst of sorrow. You gave me peace when my mind was full of worries. You brought life to me when death was around us.
It is with you that I spent the best moments of my life. By your side, I learned about dedication, because you were a good and determined man. By your side, I learned about the purity of friendship, because you were an honest friend. You taught me about brotherhood. Our fellow obedience to God, our goodwill and our love for education made us closer. You were a tutor, a confidant and a genuine companion, who helped me sow my future. But now, now that we are no longer together, I worry about what is coming next.
We came together to this world and now you are leaving me with a heart full of sorrow. I look forward to meeting you again. You were a role model to me. I learned so much from you. You were always polite, with exemplary ethical behaviour. You were generous, you were compassionate and you were always present during the hardest times. You never hated or held on to bitterness.
I saw you crying during emotional moments. I always admired your ability to express your feelings. Your kindness is a blessing that shows how great your soul is and how strong your relationship to God. You taught me about conscience and a sense of duty.
I eventually managed to make contact with Homam, who was clearly traumatised. His depth of feeling for a friend he loved and clearly looked up to in every way really moved me. ‘Omar was everything to me,’ he told me, ‘we spent so much time together during the last two or three years. We were born on the same day in the same year. His death was the most painful event in my life. We used to always sit together, eat together and read the same books together. I think of our time together so very often. I even see him in my dreams, and every time I think of the library, I think of him.’
The details of how Omar died were sketchy. He had been one of a group of rebel fighters who had become surrounded by advancing government forces and was being shelled repeatedly. They held out for some time, but eventually, a direct hit had finally killed them all. This had happened just a couple of hours after the broadcast of my BBC documentary, which had, so poignantly, ended on Omar’s optimistic and inspirational words: ‘Right now we are in the process of planning what comes next. We can only do that through the books we are reading. We want a free nation. We want something better than Assad, and hopefully, through reading, we can achieve this.’ Those words had stuck in my mind for days after my interview with Omar. Here was a man who had become a fighter, seen many lifelong friends killed beside him and only narrowly escaped death many times himself. Yet he knew that although guns, tanks and bombs might win wars, they don’t win peace. Peace takes research, planning and reconstruction, the secrets to which can be found in books. The very fact that he could comprehend this while embroiled in a brutal civil war astonished me. He didn’t want to replace President Assad with another ruthless, bloodthirsty tyrant, knowing that history would then soon repeat itself. He wanted something more, something better, something longer-lasting that could help heal this broken nation.
In another tribute to Omar on Facebook, Homam wrote:
He wasn’t keen on being in the spotlight and he didn’t ask for that. He never expressed borrowed opinions. His thoughts were his own. He was a free thinker. He used to research, read and discuss. He constantly sought justice. He was balanced, self-confident, patient, ambitious and working wisely towards achieving his goals. He was a loving, caring man. Today, I find myself alone, unable to see you again Omar. You left my heart riddled with sadness. But as much as I am sad to see that you’re no longer by my side, I am happy you were chosen by God.
Only a few days before his death, Omar had told me of his grief at watching his friends die each day: ‘One day I see them alive, and the next they are dead.’ Now he was gone too. Yet another death to add to the hundreds of thousands in Syria. I could only hope that his optimism during this time of war, his wish to achieve a free nation, based on a foundation of books and learning, would not die with him.
Although, sadly, many hundreds of people had been killed in Daraya by this point in the siege, Omar was the first person I knew there who had died. I shouldn’t need any reminders of the grim realities of war, having covered so many, yet I struggled to come to terms with his death. How awful it must be, I thought, for his family and friends. I have sometimes tried to imagine daily life as I know it after I have died, yet always struggle to visualise that, even though the world would obviously carry on just as before. But that was not true of Daraya after Omar’s death. As the casualties mounted, the town’s very survival hung in the balance. During the first week of August 2016, pro-Assad forces continued their advance into Daraya, taking control of a square kilometre of the town. Two days later they seized three more blocks. During the intense fighting, Ahmad Abu al-Majd, the rebels’ commander, was killed, but in the early hours of Monday, 15 August, his forces fought back. Using a secret tunnel, they launched a surprise counter-attack on government forces and recaptured several of their positions in West Daraya. This victory was short-lived, however, for that same evening the Republican Guard, an elite mechanized division also known as the Presidential Guard, launched a counter-strike and took both areas back again. I dread to think of the lives lost in vain on both sides during all this.
As had often been the case throughout Daraya’s long years under siege, the eyes of the world were mostly looking elsewhere–the opening of the 2016 Summer Olympics in Brazil; the worsening Zika epidemic; the death of hundreds in an Italian earthquake, and floods in the American state of Louisiana which had left thousands in need of rescue. But then a harrowing photo emerged taken far to the north of Daraya, in besieged, rebel-held Eastern Aleppo. It showed a bloodied and dust-covered little boy, sitting forlornly on a bright-orange chair, the suffering of so many of the shattered nation’s most innocent and vulnerable, embodied in this staring, frightened figure. The child’s face was soon staring out from television screens and the front pages of newspapers around the world. It put the international media’s attention back to the horrors of Syria. Political leaders demanded action against Assad, aid agencies pleaded for more convoys to be allowed in, and the United Nations insisted that the atrocities stop.
> Shortly after midnight on 19 August, government forces barrel-bombed the rebel’s last functioning hospital in Daraya. Videos posted on YouTube appear to show that incendiary weapons such as napalm were used in this attack, despite an international agreement forbidding this in areas with a significant civilian presence. As many as eight thousand people, the majority of whom were civilians, now had no access to medical care. Later that same day, rebel defences in southern Daraya partially collapsed as pro-regime troops captured the town’s railway crossing. Another twenty-four commercial and residential blocks then fell as the invading soldiers swept into the town’s Christian district. Over the next few days, the advance continued. After nearly four years of siege, rebel forces now faced total defeat. On the morning of Thursday, 25 August, I received a text from Sara Matar: ‘I was sitting at home planning what I would be teaching the children over the coming week when my husband stormed in. He told me we are leaving Daraya. I am absolutely shocked!’
The end had finally come. Rebel leaders had reached a deal with the government, which promised everyone safe passage out of Daraya. Early the following morning, aid convoys sent by the medical charity, Syrian Arab Red Crescent, drove into the town. All rebel fighters were to be evacuated to rebel-held Idlib province in north-west Syria, while thousands of men, women and children would be taken to reception centres and then transferred either to Idlib or Western Damascus.
Given the fear, loss, deprivation and horror that everyone had been through for so long, I expected there to be some joy or relief at this news. Yet there was little sign of that in the next message Sara sent me: ‘I’ve spent the last few hours thinking of my life here over the years and how precious it has been. But now there is just a very eerie silence. The guns have stopped firing and there are no bombs or planes in the sky. I have no children of my own to worry about, but many others here have young families to care for. Where, I wonder, are they going to go? What will they do? I really worry about them.’
Government forces were giving civilians two options. They could either go north to the rebel-held province of Idlib, which was often bombed, or west to the government-controlled area of Kiswe abutting Damascus. But the latter was only on offer for those willing to testify to the security forces that they did not support the revolution. To do so, locals told me, they needed to make official statements verifying that they accepted the authority of the regime, had never been ‘terrorists’, and were against the uprising in Daraya. I can only imagine how conflicted many of those who had braved years of siege and hardship in order to support their rebellious community must have felt. Although testifying that they were against the rebellion would have been a betrayal of all they had stood for, it would mean they could get their children to comparative safety.
Having been corralled into a tiny area of the town and cut off from any reinforcements and food reserves, it must have been obvious for many that fighting on was no longer a viable option. Among those stunned by the sudden turn of events was Abdul Basit. Hearing what he was saying amid the chaos was difficult, but we both did our best over a series of interrupted calls.
‘I was in the hospital when I heard about the agreement between our leaders and the regime,’ he told me. ‘I had been wondering if something big was about to happen because in the hours before this news there was no bombing at all. For two whole hours there was silence. Previously we’d been bombed around the clock, almost every minute. The silence felt really odd. A little earlier I’d gone upstairs to my room to see if my laptop could get online. It was then that I saw the announcement that our leaders had agreed to everyone being evacuated by the regime.’
Although that announcement was a surprise, Abdul Basit knew that life in Daraya had become impossible. He accepted that by this point the choice facing rebel leaders had been a stark one. Either they agreed to leave or everyone might die. With so many women and children among them, there was really only one option. Then, as if talking to himself as much to me, Abdul Basit added that no one should feel defeated. They had resisted the regime for nearly four whole years, held its forces at bay all that time.
I asked him if, deep down, he felt conflicted by the deal, which meant abandoning the town he had been born in, the place he loved, which so many of his friends had died trying to cling on to. Shaking his head, Abdul Basit brushed the question aside but admitted that it was hard to put his feelings into words. He saw no other realistic alternative to the decision made by his leaders, even though it meant the end of everything he’d known. To make matters worse, somebody loyal to the regime would probably be given his family’s house. The pain of it all was contorting his usually kind and pensive face. ‘I just can’t describe how all this leaves me feeling. It some ways it would have been easier if I’d been killed and buried in the ground. At least then I would be at rest.’
Abdul Basit drifted into silence, the weight of current events clearly too much to come to terms with so quickly. After a while he took a deep breath, sighed and began describing how on hearing about the evacuation, he had gone to the town’s cemetery to say goodbye to the many friends he had lost. Then he went to say farewell to the places that had meant the most to him over the years: first his family home, then his school, followed by parks and picnic spots where he had laughed, talked and reminisced with friends. Then came the most special place of all, the one he was saving until last. The place that had been the source of so much solace throughout the long and frightening siege. He began, he said, by standing outside the secret library, just staring at the damaged but much-loved entrance. He remembered the excitement and danger of collecting so many books, of finding chairs and tables and filling the shelves and then, on the day it opened, walking down the stairs and entering a completely different world. A peaceful underground sanctuary of reading, learning, friendship and hope. ‘When I tell you what I did next please don’t think that I am crazy or shell-shocked or something. But this is what happened. Knowing this might be the last time I would ever see the library, I walked over to the shelves and hugged the books. I hugged as many as I could. While I did this I cried. I cried a lot. Then I walked around reading the titles on the spines out loud, and flicking through the pages of some of them. I so wished I could take all the books with me, all of them. I feared they would be burned or destroyed in some other way. I’m sure this will happen. It would be so terrible. I believe in the books, and I believe in our secret library.’
Slowly, Abdul Basit reiterated that, in his view, no society could rebuild itself or truly grow without first being educated. For that, he insisted, you needed books and you needed a library: ‘Principles are planted in a library, and they grow into ideas,’ he told me. ‘It is a factory for thoughts and solutions. So in order for us to be educated and be more aware, we had to have a library. Libraries are the fuel of life.’ Abdul Basit admitted that even he had questioned his decision to make the library the site of his final and most important farewell, but it had become clear that this was the right thing to do. ‘I realise now,’ he said, ‘that I did this so that I could leave part of my soul there. This way I have something to go back to.’
In contrast to Abdul Basit, Muhammad wasn’t surprised by news of the evacuation deal with the government. In fact he had acknowledged the possibility of this happening as early as May that year. Back then, he had still harboured hopes that it could be avoided, but the lack of any action by the UN or foreign governments had made him see that it would only be a matter of time. From then on, he told me, he viewed every day that rebel forces were able to cling on in Daraya as a miracle. But the situation had become steadily more perilous, with civilians being pushed into an increasingly small area of the town, forcing some to sleep on the streets. Even though this had failed to break the spirit of local people, its teachers, hospital workers, farmers and fighters, there was clearly little that could be done to save the town.
As head of the council’s civil administration, Muhammad had become involved in discussions over the evacuation dea
l. He and his colleagues had tried to get government negotiators to allow those who wanted to stay in Daraya to remain behind, but this request was flatly rejected. Government forces did agree, though, to let rebel fighters leave with their light weapons, which, as Muhammad told me, was crucial because none of them completely trusted the army’s offer of a safe passage to Idlib.
Listening to Muhammad’s exhausted voice, which I could only just make out, I could tell he was under huge pressure. I had had trouble contacting him over recent days, even when the Internet there had been good, and I asked whether the strain of events lay behind his decision not to take my calls. ‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘the challenge was getting harder and harder and our response had to be right, so the pressure was growing on me and those I worked with. Everyone was very disappointed, tired and frustrated. I felt I needed to put on a happy face to reassure them, give them hope, and try to hide the turmoil and sadness I felt inside. At other times I shut myself off from the world. I told people, if it’s an absolute emergency you can call me on my phone, but otherwise, please do not contact me.’
I can imagine just how many people must have tried to contact Muhammad. Not only those wanting practical guidance due to his role with Daraya’s council, but the many who would have turned to him for personal advice. This indomitable ‘Professor’, as he was known, was everyone’s wise and responsible uncle, the sort of person who always seems rational and calm when everyone else is in turmoil. Having to constantly be this strong, supportive pillar of the community throughout such desperate times, must have been very demanding, but I sensed that amid the bitter disappointment that pulsed through his veins, lay a sense of relief. His job was nearly over. Much work needed to be done over the next couple of days, but after that all he had to do was pack his bags and board the buses, just like everyone else.