Every time one of my close friends wants to leave for Europe, I don’t try to stop him. But it makes me very sad. When someone sells all his belongings and puts his family’s lives in danger to travel by sea to Europe, he’s unlikely to come back. And if everyone who participated in the dream of a free Syria leaves or gets killed, who is going to build Syria later?
I have hope there are still people inside Syria who want to build it. Half of those living under regime control don’t even support the regime. But the conflict doesn’t belong to us anymore. Political money and weapons entered the country. Syria has become an arena for other countries to settle scores. Bashar is a puppet in Russia’s hands and we are puppets in the other sides’ hands. We never expected that these dark groups would come into Syria—the ones that have taken over the game now.
We sometimes ask ourselves, did we help cause all this chaos in Syria? I think that we could have been more organized and better prepared for what was coming. We could have been more careful about timing. I feel sad, but I don’t feel regret. I’m proud that I was one of the people who chose change. I believe that we were able to destroy the foundations of tyranny.
Some so-called intellectuals and old politicians stood on the sidelines, waiting to see what was going to happen before they chose a side. Some of them are now gloating. I say to them, “When we joined the revolution, we were strong. If you had stood with us then, we wouldn’t be weak now.” Other people fighting the regime want an Islamic state. I know that they want to control my life. But we can argue about that later. First we need to bring down the regime.
Our dreams have changed in stages. Our dream before the revolution was different than during the revolution, and it’s different now. We’ve accepted the fact that we need to make our dreams smaller if that’s what it takes to keep dreaming.
Acknowledgments
While many books include long lists of people to thank, this is even more the case for a book of this type. Every word between these covers got here because someone generously shared his or her story with me and someone else kindly introduced me to him or her in the first place. This makes me atypically indebted but also unusually fortunate, as the writing of this book allowed me to meet countless amazing people, many of whom have become lifelong friends.
My greatest debt is to the hundreds of Syrians who selflessly welcomed me into their lives and spoke to me about their thoughts, feelings, and experiences. They taught me the meaning of dignity, commitment, and resilience. Though they are too many to name, I hold each of them in my heart. I am forever changed, and will be forever humbled, by the privilege of having met them.
I am especially grateful to those who went above and beyond connecting me to people to interview, namely Shafiq Abdel-Aziz, Ghaidaa al-Haj, Ahmed Al-Masri, Salma al-Shami, Maha Atassi, Abdalsamad Awida, Firas Diba, Wa’el Elamam, Hamzah Ghadban, Cherin Hamdoche, Suha Ma’ayeh, the late Tayseer Masalma, Noman Sarhan, Rana Sweis, Hadia Zarzour, the Awida family, Ghadban family, al-Haj family, Sarhan family, Darwazah family, Alobid family, and Radio Shebab team. Their commitment to their ideals is an inspiration and their trust in me nothing less than an honor.
Had I had to transcribe and translate all interviews myself, this book would have taken a decade to finish. Thankfully, I met with skilled assistance from more than twenty translators-transcribers over the years. I give special thanks to Lina Abdelaziz, Jamal Abuzant, Ameer Al-Khudari, Serene Darwish, Nada Sneige Fuleihan, Nadia Mantabli, and Jude Wafai for their work on a heroic number of transcripts. I am grateful to Clara Clymer and Alli Divine for research assistance across different stages of this work and to Rana Khoury, and Ameer Al-Khudari, for reading the manuscript in full.
This book is one harvest from a larger research project on Syria made possible by support from the Project on Middle East Political Science, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, and several programs at Northwestern University, namely the Buffett Institute for Global Studies’ Equality Development and Globalization Studies Program and Keyman the Modern Turkish Studies Program, the Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities, and the Crown Family’s support for Middle East Studies. Over four years and four continents, I delivered presentations of this and other works-in-progress on Syria, during the course of which I benefited tremendously from astute feedback. These exchanges directly or indirectly shaped the thinking that went into crafting this book, and for that I owe particular thanks to Marc Lynch, Ellen Lust, Hamisch Cultural Center-Istanbul, the American University of Beirut, Boğaziçi University, George Washington University, Lund University, NYU-Abu Dhabi, Sabancı University, the University of Copenhagen, the University of Denver, the University of Michigan, the University of Washington, and colleagues in the Political Science Department and Middle East and North Africa Studies Program at Northwestern University.
This book would not have come to be without the encouragement, literary vision, and hard work of my agent Ayesha Pande and editor Geoff Shandler. They not only made this a better book, but made me a better writer, as well. The journey was not always easy, and I have been fortunate to count on emotional support from friends and family such as Theo Christov, Raja Halwani, Jana Lipman, Karen Kice, Jen Marlowe, Almas Sayeed, Suzanne Travers, and Marc VanOverbeke, Judith Schwab, Judy Kolker, Alicia Pearlman, and Charlie Pearlman. My partner, Peter Cole, kept me going with his wisdom, humor, patience, and rock-star vegan cooking, all while he was busy writing his own book, too. I cannot express my love and appreciation for him. My father, Michael Pearlman, has always had my back; I am more grateful for him than he will ever know. My grandmother, Margaret Pearlman, remains my light and moral compass. Her tireless political activism, now well into her nineties, has taught me that there is no higher calling than solidarity with those struggling for freedom and justice.
About the Author
Wendy Pearlman is a professor and award-winning teacher at Northwestern University, specializing in Middle East politics. Educated at Harvard, Georgetown, and Brown, Pearlman speaks Arabic and has spent more than twenty years studying and living in the Arab World. She is the author of numerous articles and two books, Occupied Voices: Stories of Everyday Life from the Second Intifada (Nation Books, 2003) and Violence, Nonviolence, and the Palestinian National Movement (Cambridge University Press, 2011). She lives in Chicago.
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Also by Wendy Pearlman
Occupied Voices: Stories of Everyday Life from the Second Intifada
Violence, Nonviolence, and the Palestinian National Movement
Copyright
we crossed a bridge and it trembled. Copyright © 2017 by Wendy Pearlman. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
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* Hamza al-Khatib was a thirteen-year-old who was killed in regime custody. After videos and photographs of his mutilated body circulated widely online and in the media, he became regarded as a symbol of the Syrian revolution.
* By late 2011, the protest movement had distanced itself from the Assad regime by adopting the flag that Syria had used after independence. The opposition flag, which had a green band and red stars, stood in contrast to the state flag, which had a red band and green stars.
* A form of torture in which a person is bent at the waist, forced to stick his torso and legs through a car tire, and beaten.
* A torture method in which a detainee’s arms and legs are strapped to a chair, the back of which is pulled to the ground, causing acute pain and sometimes permanent damage to the spine.
* The Nakba, or “Catastrophe,” is the term Palestinians use to refer to the 1948 War that led to the establishment of the state of Israel and the displacement of more than half of the Palestinian Arab population as refugees.
* The LaGeSo is the State Office for Health and Social Affairs, where new refugees are required to register upon arrival in Berlin.
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