A Woman in the Crossfire

by Samar Yazbek

  Today it is cloudy; this is enough to change my mood. Imagining that at any moment while I am out somebody could break into the house and take my daughter just like they threatened to do, I decide not to tarry too long at my friend’s while recording his testimony.

  Even in the middle of the afternoon Damascus looks miserable. Security forces are still deployed out in the streets, at military checkpoints on the bridges and intersections, all around government buildings. Hesitation and caution is inscribed on people’s faces, and something indicates that everyone is in a hurry: they just want to get home or wherever they are going. After hearing sporadic gunfire elsewhere in the city we get scared that cars carrying armed men who would open fire on us might pass by at any moment, randomly shoot people and then disappear as if nothing had happened.

  We sit there in the one-room apartment. It is a painful meeting, and my exhausted friend is not able to tell me much, but I write down enough of what he says to make some sense of how the events in Baniyas got started.

  I.H. says: “The demonstrators set out from the al-Rahman mosque in Baniyas. It was 8 March after Friday prayer when A.S. called on the people to go out of the mosque against tyranny and in order to demand freedom. As about 200 to 300 men came out of the mosque, three were detained by criminal security and taken to the police station over by the bus terminal. The demonstrators followed them in order to demand their release, and on their way down there people poured out into the streets, heading for the garage and smashing up the buses. The demonstrators tried to prevent any vandalism but those thugs got in their faces, and so they immediately started collecting donations to repay the bus owners. They managed to raise some money that they gave to those who had sustained damage. Those thugs were Sunnis who smashed up Alawite buses, but the damage in that initial demonstration stopped there.

  “At that point Alawite security forces started stirring up sectarian sentiment. Regime goons and shabbiha known for their sectarianism started coming out and chanting that the Sunnis had attacked the Alawite businesses in Baniyas and that they were going to burn everything in sight, especially in the al-Qusoor neighbourhood. Then phone calls were made to the thugs up in the Alawite mountains. A whole bunch of them arrived at the political security branch that was located along the border between the Alawite and Sunni neighbourhoods, and they started making some provocations and threats, until a decision was taken by the political security forbidding clashes between Alawites and Sunnis so they withdrew to the Alawite neighbourhoods, but the provocation by the security forces and the regime shabbiha continued.

  “The next day those who called themselves the Voice of the Alawites started mobilizing and communicating with one another. With a directive from political security they came together and tried to get in touch with Shaykh A.I., a Sunni shaykh they called ‘the voice of truth’ in Baniyas. It’s important to note that throughout the demonstration and the assemblies the security would roll out some prominent Sunni personalities in order to contain the crisis and convince the demonstrators to go home, so this one time they brought the mayor, but the demonstrators chanted, Get out, get out you thief, get out! They say the mayor paid millions of liras to get that position, that he paid off a group of Ba‘thists13 and security agents. Then they brought Shaykh I.H. and another imam, who received the same shouts from the demonstrators: Get out of here, you liars! They were also corrupt men.

  “At this point the demonstrators asked the security forces to bring Shaykh A.I., because he could be trusted and because he was a Sufi. The people of Baniyas gave them a handwritten letter with their demands for Shaykh A., which he read. Their demands included: the release of prisoners, including Tal al-Malluhi, the abrogation of the emergency laws, the return to work of women who wear the niqab, the re-opening of the shari‘a high school, forbidding the mixing of the sexes as in every other Syrian governorate, complete freedoms, the replacement of the head of the port of Baniyas because he behaved like a security officer and imposed taxes on poor fishermen who could barely make ends meet…”

  At this point I.H. stops talking and I receive a news bulletin from Damascus about more killings:

  Internal source in the army: Under a total media blackout an army hearse delivered the bodies of at least 42 civilians from the village of Tafas outside Dar‘a who were killed near the housing bloc of the Fifth Division as well as the body of a soldier from the Fifth Division Housing Bloc who is believed to hail from the coastal region. The bodies were delivered to the Tishreen military hospital at approximately 3 p.m. The 43 bodies had been shot in the head or in the chest by a single sniper firing from a great distance (the sniper’s bullet was small both upon entry and exit). Another bit of news to add to the chain of news stories about killing. My friend stops talking and his wife remains silent, frightened. I am stunned. It takes a few minutes for the conversation to start up once again. We flip through channels as night starts to fall. My daughter starts to call. She is scared. I tell her I will be home soon, that she should lock the door well and not open it for anyone. Then I ask I.H. quickly to finish his story.

  “After these events,” he says, “and with both direct and indirect orders from the security, rumours started whipping around the Alawite street to the effect that those who came out to demonstrate were sectarians and Islamic fundamentalists who had no other goal than to strike at the Alawites. The proof was what they had said about the women in niqabs and the shari‘a colleges, or even the issue of gender mixing, all of that helped to exacerbate the sectarian mood between Sunnis and Alawites, and caused the Alawite sect in Baniyas to further cling to and wrap themselves around the regime and the security.

  “The next Friday,” I.H. continues, “there was a demonstration of approximately one thousand people, and a group of Alawite individuals were there. A young Alawite woman named A.I. got up and made a politically pointed speech in front of the demonstrators that confronted the regime head-on, and she received a warm welcome from the demonstrators as all the slogans were patriotic and decried sectarianism. Until that moment there hadn’t been any slogans calling for the fall of the regime. It was 15 March.”

  Exhaustion written all over his face, I.H. says, “Maybe we can pick this up again some other time.”

  “First I want some news about al-Baida,” I respond. “State television is reporting a massacre never took place there.”

  “But it did,” he says, “and what you saw on that video is real. They completely occupied al-Baida, they killed and arrested and insulted people, and what appeared on that video is just one small fraction of what actually happened.”

  “What about you?” I ask.

  “Every person who isn’t sectarian at this point is accused of treason. I know that the Sunni neighbourhoods in Baniyas were shelled for more than four hours, while relief supplies were smuggled into the mosques without anyone knowing who was shooting. There were snipers.”

  “Do you know who the snipers were?” I ask.

  “Everybody knows that the snipers are drawn from the regime’s shabbiha. It did turn out that some Sunnis brought weapons to defend themselves, but they were never aimed at the chest of a single Alawite. They were only for self-defence. We should bear in mind that the worst sectarian rancour in Syria is centred in Baniyas, the situation there is dangerous, but not a single sectarian incident has taken place yet. The Sunnis in Baniyas later insisted upon announcing that Baniyas has no Salafis, that the people of Baniyas never fought against the army, and that it was the security forces and the shabbiha who went to the Alawite villages and told them that if they wanted weapons, they would bring them some.”

  “But who shot at the bus transporting officers and soldiers? Who blew it up?” I ask.

  “They say terrorists blew up the bus that was transporting army personnel, but it had been mobilized under such strange and incomprehensible circumstances. The real question is, why was that bus there in the first place? Who had given them orders to pass through? And why had it changed course? Hi
gh-ranking officers were involved in bringing that bus there and, besides, someone had to order the personnel to get off. Who’s capable of ordering military men to go and die like that?

  “Do you know that five agents carried out an investigation in Baniyas about this matter? With officers and soldiers from a unit in the 23rd Brigade, which is part of the air force that is primarily stationed in Baniyas in order to protect the oil refinery and the thermal power plant. Everything they said points to an officer working on behalf of Maher al-Assad14, who used to work in the very same military division as the soldiers who took part in the fighting. They think he was the one who gave the orders to deploy, and that it was the shabbiha who carried out the assassination.”

  It is getting late, and I must hurry home in order to sort out all the details of the past two days.

  Today a broad arrest campaign has swept up even a moderate group in the opposition as well as hundreds of young men. Al- Zabadani is besieged. Dar‘a is still buried. Over the past two days there have been demonstrations in all the cities of Syria, including Damascus, Aleppo, Dayr al-Zur, Homs, Hama, Latakia, Qamishli, Amuda and Daraya. Government websites have been hacked, including that of the People’s Assembly and the government-run Tishreen newspaper, in order to leave a message – Ba‘thist Crimes Exposed! – or else to upload pictures calling on the people to demonstrate. The arteries of Damascus are cut off and checkpoints are set up all around them and between the surrounding suburbs. Four soldiers are killed in Dar‘a and the security forces storm a private clinic in order to arrest the wounded, many of whom are in critical condition. The situation in the al-Qala‘a and al-‘Aweyna neighbourhoods of Latakia is very bad: arrests, shots are fired directly at people, a little girl is killed by her window in the al-Saliba neighbourhood. In the town of al-Tall the women call for a sit-in in the public square until their incarcerated sons are released. In al-Zabadani thousands go out to demonstrate despite the ongoing siege of the town by security forces and the cuts in electricity, water and communications. There is an intense siege all over Jableh even as demonstrations continue; a heavy siege upon the neighbourhoods of al-Dariba and al-Saliba, and massive gunfire and fire trucks at the entrances alongside the demonstration. In Salamiyah security forces break up the power of the demonstration using electric prods. And news keeps pouring in: a massacre in al- Rastan, in which three people are martyred and scores wounded.

  The residents of Baniyas are demonstrating with flowers as Syrian television broadcasts images of saboteurs in Jableh. The al- Rastan martyrs are simple young men. The first, Y.H., supported his mother and his sisters by working in a roastery on Jirkis Street because his father was dead; he worked from morning until night and everybody knows him and knows he isn’t a terrorist or a Salafi or anything like that. The second, Y.M., sold vegetables from a street cart; and the third I.K. was also a vegetable seller; they were poor and made just enough money to feed their children. There is no end to the news of gunfire everywhere, as I sit here biting my nails. Ten youths are martyred on the Sidon bridge in the Break the Siege massacre, which the security forces carry out against peaceful protesters who pour out to support the people of Dar‘a. In Hama, there are two security agents disguised as ordinary citizens at a demonstration, who suddenly try to open fire. The men of Hama pounce on them and beat them up until a political security patrol comes around to save them.

  In the end there are 83 martyrs, including women and children in Dar‘a, where dozens of houses are bombarded.

  Is there any other news left? Is there anywhere else left in my heart for death?

  Now I am home at last, my daughter is upset, and I can’t feel anything but upset either.

  A moving corpse, I smell rusty odours, and my eyes never stop watering. The taste of rust is in my mouth. I remember I have an important appointment tomorrow with the journalist who managed to break the siege of Dar‘a.

  And so, in utter despair, I fold in on myself and sit down, to sleep for an hour right where I am. I open my eyes some time after midnight, sitting there until dawn smoking cigarettes, stoking my anxiety in anticipation of imminent death.

  4 May 2011

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  I begin my day with this headline: “From a reliable medical source: Security forces transported 182 civilian bodies from Dar‘a to Tishreen hospital in Damascus on Saturday, and 62 bodies on Sunday; 242 bodies in all. In addition, 81 bodies from the army arrived at the same hospital, most of them were shot in the back.”

  That’s how things are in this country…

  Sheets of agony are the dividing lines between the sea and the desert, between the mountains and the valley, hung on thin threadlike ropes supported by poles in the sky that vanish into thin air.

  That’s how things are in this country…

  Every bit of territory is separated from every other and tethered to the abode of the Lord’s blessings. The mountains are suspended over the open veins of the earth. Beyond the veil of death is the screen of prayers and pleas for relief. Eyes accumulate like soap bubbles floating behind the windows; unafraid, they have lost all their fear. Eyes open onto the void, hunger and anger; they cannot make out anything but a dreary wall blocking their sight. The veil – we live according to the roots and branches of that magical word. The veil grows and grows until it becomes an entire country.

  A few days ago, before becoming a creature besieged by the death of my loved ones, I had been in the city and at the seaside. I had thought about getting closer to the body of a tank. I say ‘the body’ because when I was a little girl and would see them in pictures or on television I liked imagining they were giant amphibians, which would disappear as soon as we filled the bathtub with water and plunged in. Children have such a vivid imagination. I try as hard as I can never to give it up. I am always struck with wonder, which is why my childhood remains a witness to all this pain. It was an odd military checkpoint. We might have expected it near a border, for example, or in a movie when two enemy countries are at war. But what a sight to see their artillery aimed right at domestic windows.

  It never occurred to the miserable soldiers hovering around the body of the tank that I might approach them. Soldiers are also waiting for unfathomable death, just like all the unarmed people, who want to know the answer to one question: Where are all these murderers coming from?

  One of the soldiers told me he was sure he was going to be killed by a sniper’s bullet.

  “You’ll find out someday,” I told him, a painful lump in my throat. Should I have said instead, You’re a sitting duck, you and everyone else in this country, everyone who fails to obey the orders of the security forces and the ruling family?

  I wanted to touch the metal. I placed my hand against the tank, closed my eyes and listened to an exquisite wet hissing. I touched it a second time; my fingers trembled as the coldness of the metal transferred to me. I jumped with a start and opened my eyes: the soldier was standing right there in front of me, watching in bewilderment. I didn’t budge; just let my hand rest there on the metal. The soldier laughed. Backing away a little bit, I glanced over at the artillery turret aiming at the houses. The mountain looked down silently in the distance. Greenery enfolded the place. A green mountain with reddish earth against the blue sea – had it not been for the cold chill of the metal I could have been looking down on a gorgeous painting. Tell me, what kind of dialogue is supposed to take place between an artillery turret and an unarmed house? Hmmm, let’s see… No dialogue!

  As I reached out my hand once more, the soldier seemed to be getting annoyed with me. I tried to strike up a conversation with him, but he was exhausted. What if I spun a spider’s web just then and picked up the tank like a toy? What if the whole thing was just a game? What if… and what if?

  We have never got used to the sight of those metal bodies among us, here where time allows us to hide in thinking up questions or in the idiocy of a response. Here where I must shut my eyes against all the measures likely to be t
aken by monsters that multiply and divide like cancerous cells that thrive upon the death of others, like life and its cruel natural law of evolution. This is another morning, and still we fly through a country with clogged arteries, paved over with the capacity to invent bullets and love, the capacity for anything from this moment forward… anything except silence.

  The details of this country have imprisoned me, with deceptive rays of sunlight or the rustling of cinchona leaves as I pass underneath those gargantuan trees and head out into the streets of Damascus. Suddenly a white Suzuki rolls by with three masked men in its open trunk, two of them carrying machine guns and erratically firing into the air. Yesterday there was heavy gunfire near the house, and two men were wounded on the opposite side of the airport road. Today the white car zooms past, and it isn’t inappropriate for it to be white, the colour of a death shroud. It isn’t strange for me to try to hear the rustling sound of cinchona leaves after the deafening silence, when people on the street suddenly disappear, turning the scene into a silent painting – the armed men disappear and the silence and the void remains.

  That’s how things are in this country…

  Like debris we float through the rays that split away from one another, soaring like fire sprites, disappearing and then reappearing all of a sudden, burning up and plummeting without asking any questions.

  Today legal activists release a report saying that the daily average number of arrests is at least five hundred people. Students are arrested for demonstrating outside the business school in Damascus. Telephone lines are cut off in the city of al-Tall after the security forces move in and arrest eight hundred people. 30 tanks and six troop convoys are on the move from the Ya‘foor region, heading toward Damascus. House raids and detentions continue in Daraya, while in Baniyas thousands of demonstrators have come out demanding an end to the military siege of Dar‘a.