A Woman in the Crossfire

by Samar Yazbek

  I try to find one woman, someone to speak with more easily, but there are no women in the street. When I hear women screaming and the distant sounds of gunfire I head back to the car. By the end of the day, I am going home with documents. Documents of flesh and blood, of wailing and bullets and the faces of murderers who don’t know where they’re going.

  Feeling the need for a cigarette, I roll down the window and inhale smoke into my lungs. Harasta and Douma are behind me, my back hurts, the wailing and blood fill my head, the eyes of the young man sleeping like a gazelle. Suddenly I hear a groan and look up at the driver in the mirror, the day’s final surprise: the young man, tears pouring from his face, silent, unable to speak. In that moment I hear nothing but the grinding of my own teeth.

  15 April 2011

  ..............................

  Oh spinning world, if my little heart, as small as a lump of coal, is wider than your borders, I know how narrow you are!

  As the car rattles along I think about how narrow the world is. My chest is pounding. I can hardly breathe. The images that appear on television today of men taken from their homes in the village of al-Baida, which is still besieged by army forces and security personnel, those men who are gathered together in the square, with their stomachs on the ground, their hands tied together with thin plastic twist-ties that become knives digging into their skin, their heads buried in the asphalt and their backs to the sky – those images haven’t left my mind. The scene reminds me of the film Kafr Qasim9 by Burhan Alaouie.

  Those men are forbidden from lifting their heads, they are kicked and stamped on and beaten mercilessly, they are forced to repeat slogans in support of the president before being taken away to the trucks, which drive them to some unknown location where they disappear.

  State television news reports that they are traitors, that they have weapons in their possession, but when a video clip surfaces they say the images are fabricated. A few days later my friend from Baniyas would tell me that what really happened wasn’t anything like what they said, but that some men had gone out to demonstrate, chanting peacefully about freedom without any sectarian slogans, when some groups showed up and started shooting, killing a number of them even as the rest were carted off to prison and the whole town was surrounded.

  I cannot get into Baniyas in order to see what is actually going on today. I try a number of roads to get there, but it is impossible. Even when we try to pass through a few buildings in order to enter the city and the old souq, there are checkpoints that kept us out – for our own safety, of course. I rely on stories from people I meet and from my friends, on the pictures I took. Here is one of them: Men on their stomachs in handcuffs, humiliated and insulted. That is the title of a Dostoevsky novel. I approach these stories like an investigator. They are my unrivalled passion. This isn’t the only way men get arrested, though. Houses are broken into and scores of children are taken off to prison. The army and the security forces are combing al-Baida, there hasn’t been any electricity for days, no supplies, entry and exit is forbidden. Men and children have been arrested, and I am later able to confirm that women and children staged a sit-in along the international road demanding the release of their men. Yes, this much is certain, and state television cannot falsify it, because I go to confirm it myself.

  Scores of trucks block the road. There is news about ambulances being disabled. Women shout alongside their children. One woman appears on television the next day, screaming at the top of her lungs, We are the people of Baniyas and we are the people of freedom! as women behind her shout, Freedom, Freedom! All the women were veiled. When I ask someone from the army what is going on, he responds confidently but without any explanation; he seems distracted, preoccupied by something. A man in his forties approaches me at the checkpoint connecting the city of Baniyas with the mountain villages, where the international road splits off. After a while he tells me he is a police officer – he really is wearing a black police uniform – adding that the people are scared of the armed fighters. He makes no comment when I tell him, “I doubt that the men of al-Baida have any weapons.” Then I add, “Wasn’t arresting and killing them a barbaric thing to do?” He doesn’t reply, just motions for me to move along. The car is close, so he opens the door and says with the utmost propriety, “I beg you, ma’am, please get out of here.” He turns his back. Anger is obviously written all over his face; I can tell because I am angry too. A man sitting not too far away tells us that the officer’s brother had been killed in the bus the army targeted two days before, in which a group of officers and soldiers were also killed.

  “But some people say the ones who killed the army and the people and some of the security forces were operating like gangs. Do people in Baniyas know who they are?”

  “Yes,” he says. “But who’s saying that?”

  I tell him I read it somewhere. He is tall, thin, and has a scruffy beard, and adds, “Everybody knows who they are, but everyone is afraid.”

  “Of what?” I ask.

  He says the Alawites are afraid of the rumours being spread amongst them. “My house is in an Alawite neighbourhood and I’m afraid to go home. There are some neighbourhoods where Alawites and Sunnis live together, but things could explode at any moment.”

  “Someone is terrorizing people and stirring up sectarian strife,” I say.

  “Yes, there are some who are frightening people. The problem is they’ve succeeded.” He mentions a few family names of people who are taking up arms and frightening people, who work for one of the president’s relatives. I had already read some of their names on the net, seen their pictures too, and he adds two more names. “Everybody knows who they are,” he says, “but who would dare to expose them?”

  Even though I find it strange for him to be so bold with me, I know why: he’s about to leave the country. Soon a car pulls up, and suddenly I notice it has parked beside a large suitcase. I thank him.

  “You’re not going to find anyone who will tell you anything,” he says. “The people have nothing but fear to tell, and besides, many of them actually believe the story about infiltrators and traitors.” He is silent for a few minutes, and then introduces himself to me. He is an Arabic teacher, travelling from Baniyas to Greece.

  “Everybody knows these stories from the net,” I say.

  “And what makes you think that people here ever see the net?” he asks with great despair.

  He gets in the car and disappears. I turn to the fidgety driver and tell him we have to try a different way. Maybe we can still reach the women at the sit-in. He shouts he is going to leave me there if I don’t get in because there are snipers stationed up by the Marqab Castle, and all over the place really, that they had already shot and killed a lot of civilians as well as security forces and army officers. The sad angry officer is panicked and annoyed to see me so he heads towards us and barks, “Come on, get out of here!”

  “Why are you shouting?” I ask.

  “Because people are dying here,” he says, “and the next bullet might be aimed at you.”

  “Who are those snipers?” I ask.

  “How should I know? They’re killing ordinary people, security forces and army personnel.”

  “Aren’t the snipers actually a bunch of shabbiha?”

  “What shabbiha?”

  “Who doesn’t know about the shabbiha?!” I say, and then, too frightened to continue, leave him to stand there watching me, as anger spreads through him.

  We head back towards the international road, preparing to head for Jableh. Baniyas is behind us.

  Twenty-four hours before, we were near Baniyas, and things were very different. During that first crossing over the mountains we had to loop around the city because the road was closed, and the army had it surrounded from within and from without. We got in by way of the mountain villages, and I wasn’t convinced by what they told us at the police checkpoint, that it was too dangerous to cross on the international road.

  “Why’s that?�
� I asked.

  He said there were snipers inside the Marqab Castle and that the army was there to protect the people.

  “All right, then, if they army’s there to protect us…”

  “The road’s closed,” he said. “Go back to Damascus, or cross over the mountains.”

  On the other side of the mountains, there was a timorous joy awaiting us: an explosion of green in the mountains and the valleys, and when we got past the green an exposed earth with overlapping layers of red. Beneath the villages inhabited by Christians and Alawites were the Sunni villages, closer to the sea. Once we passed through the villages of Daher Safra and Qarqafti, the village of al-Baida was directly below us: the thermal power station, the refinery, the deep valleys. Popular committees formed by leaders of the Ba‘th party factions were being deployed along with security forces and soldiers. A five-year-old boy carrying a wooden stick on his back like a rifle stood there; his skin was scorched, his eyes shone, and a long honey-coloured beauty mark covered his forehead. He looked like a painting. I smiled and handed him my ID. After scrutinizing it, he handed it back to me and motioned for me to continue. Fighting back a smile, I asked him, “Who are you with?”

  “I’m with you!” he replied.

  It was the first time I had laughed in the many days since the bloodshed had started in the cities and the villages. I laughed out loud and winked at him as the car rolled past.

  The checkpoints reflecting the people’s fear aren’t too much of a burden for me, because I understand their fear and actually believed what they told me about armed gangs that frighten them by opening fire in their valleys and from their mountaintops, but the question remains: “Who are those gangs?” I ask one of the villagers, most of whom are simple and poor and panicky.

  “I think the story is not the way they say it is,” I tell him. He looks at me with bewildered eyes and offers me a cup of mat. after I step out of the car to sit down on a bench with him outside his house.

  “No, my dear, you don’t understand. They want to kill us. The army’s here for protection.”

  “But you can protect yourselves,” I say.

  “It’s all right, the army’s on the front lines and we cover the rear.”

  “Where are all the women, and why is there no life in the village?”

  Leaning on his bruised hand, he says, “We protect the village here and we take care of our women.”

  “I heard it’s the shabbiha who are killing people and intimidating them,” I say, and then fall silent.

  He pauses before saying, “Whoever they are, by God they’ll only get near our houses over our dead bodies.”

  The people of the village are anxious and on high alert, and with so many search checkpoints, the mountains seem to be in a state of war. Nowhere did this seem clearer than the area surrounding Baniyas, where the popular committees from the coastal villages come out at night in order to protect the villages from the feared gangs. The checkpoints – comprised of several varieties of security, military, the people and the popular committees –respectfully and carefully search people. There is a car behind us in which I saw a young man fingering a pistol. As we had already passed through several checkpoints, I ask the officer why there needed to be so many additional searches; he asks me to wait at the side of the road so the car that has been behind us since the start of the mountain road can pass. Four young men are inside, a type I recognize because they have begun appearing lately in Damascus, the faces of killers I know all too well. They are all playing with guns. The officer stops them and asks them to step out. The driver does not respond at first, nearly running over a soldier, but the officer stops him and they all get out, affronted – doesn’t he know who they are? I have a sixth sense about this; I never fail to recognize these men who deploy in the streets of Damascus and Latakia: puffed-up muscles, tattoos, broad chests, an arrogant gaze, death. The officer speaks as the soldiers search them; one of them angrily scowls at me. I am scared. They seem to know I already informed two checkpoints about them. When the officer permits them to go on, I am shocked, shouting, “You even search my computer files and my bags, but you just let those armed men go!”

  “Please, be on your way, Madame,” the officer says calmly. “They have a security assignment.”

  I hear their screeching tires, like a scream, and a cloud of dust is kicked up as their car speeds away like a shot, with people jumping out of the way to avoid getting hit.

  “But they’re criminals!” I insist. “And they have three guns.”

  He turns his back, leaving me with his soldiers. The soldier who was nearly run over seems upset, but he approaches me and says, “Calm down, sister. We can’t do anything about things like that.”

  Things in al-Baida are becoming clearer. After enough time passes, history will record how human beings here were carted off to prison like cattle, how women came out to defend their husbands and their children, how children shouted even as they were being arrested, how blood was spilled in the streets, and how bodies were left out in the open air.

  I gaze longingly at the place. Al-Baida is directly below us. Plastic houses extend all along the coast, obscuring Baniyas and polluting the air and the sea. I can imagine what happened: The people got scared. They panicked. They no longer thought about what was happening. The security that the army could provide them with became their only concern. Events blended together. Stories and rumours swirled around. Fear of the ancient humiliation long endured by the Alawites, fear of homelessness and oppression brought them closer to the regime narrative, forcing them behind it with all they possessed. They were poor, believing whatever they were told, and even after many decades they had not got used to this horror. A small number of them were against the violence and killing that were taking place. They started telling the people in Baniyas that the whole thing did not just concern the Sunni community alone. When the Islamists came out to demonstrate, they were peaceful; they did not open fire on anyone. Even some Alawites joined them. Some of those Alawites were subjected to additional oppression by the security forces, as a means of intimidation; their reputations would be smeared. Some of them were arrested; others would be warned against creating moral scandals. The greatest tragedy was excommunication from the sect, being called a traitor. Some of them were compelled to leave Baniyas under pressure.

  People from Baniyas tried to find out who the armed fighters shooting at them were, those who spread out along the rooftops as snipers, intervening and arresting people from al-Baida. They were the ones who made the people believe that the ones being arrested were traitors and infiltrators who wanted to slaughter the Alawites. But that was not the case. Maybe it is true that what happened inflamed sectarian sentiment in Baniyas, turning the place into hell, but it all started with those shabbiha; they were the ones who shot at the minaret. A number of Alawites in Baniyas related these events to me, about how they left their houses behind, fleeing collective punishment.

  Today is the Friday of Perseverance. Fifteen people are killed in Latakia. In Damascus the security forces cut the arteries connecting streets and squares with security and military checkpoints, especially around Abbasiyeen Square. The security opens fire on demonstrators coming from Jawbar after being joined by people from Douma and Harasta; they are prevented from reaching Abbasiyeen Square. Despite the demonstration of hundreds of thousands of people, security does not open fire on demonstrators in Dar‘a. The people of al-Rastan fell a statue of Hafiz al-Assad10, who remains the greatest figure in Syria. In Latakia security forces try to infiltrate the demonstrators; when the demonstrators oppose the presence of weapons, the infiltrators tell them they only carried them for self-defence, but the young men seize them when it becomes clear that they are from the security forces. They wanted to make it look like an armed demonstration. The security and the army would loot businesses. The city of al-Dumayr is surrounded; security is heavily deployed throughout. The suburb of Douma is still surrounded, and the daily toll of arrests is nonsto
p.

  Now Baniyas is empty. The streets are deserted; the shops are closed and many have been looted; city hall and the post office have been torched. Tomorrow the people will call for the army to be sent in and for the security to leave; tanks will remain stationed throughout the city; soldiers will deploy in the streets. There is fear that sectarian clashes may break out at any moment. They have succeeded in framing what happened, as if it marks the beginning of a sectarian civil war that it is incumbent upon the regime to prevent. But many city residents know that this is not the case, that there were invisible hands behind what took place that would like to turn the peaceful demonstrations that came out of the mosques into treasonous activity by armed men who are conspiring with foreign elements. Perhaps that was the only reason the regime could come up with to justify killing the people of Baniyas. But who was killing the army and the security forces? And the snipers, who were those snipers? Maybe figuring out who was behind these actions will be simple enough, but how they managed to pull it off is still unclear. All these thoughts come and go as I enter Jableh, intensifying my anger, my pain and bitterness, but the small happiness I acquire from arriving safely after such a nightmarish journey over the mountains makes me think the time has come to take a break. I do not know this will be my last visit to Jableh.

  Now that I have crossed paths with death, I am prepared to see more of it.

  29 April 2011

  ..............................

  In besieged Dar‘a falling hailstones get mixed up with the sound of bullets whizzing past. Not far from this calamity, land is being surrounded, buried, all alone and drifting beneath the darkened sky, as if in a painting by Dal.; its wounded people slowly die while their mothers watch, mothers whose bloody trembling fingers are wrapped with perforated bed sheets. Before the martyrs’ eyelids are closed, the mothers moisten their throats with a few drops of water. People watch the young bodies strewn all around the square disintegrate from behind their windows. After the electricity has been cut off, stenches rise from the dead in the darkness. All people can do is stare at those bodies, which were once beloved and beating with warmth, as they turn to dust.