A Woman in the Crossfire

by Samar Yazbek

  In Jableh, too, the women have started coming out to demonstrate now that the houses are emptied of their men; sons and husbands are in prison and women have taken over the task of demonstrating.

  I expect more violence. The number of people killed has now actually risen to six, and it is not yet nine o’clock in the morning on the seventh of May.

  I write down the most important things that have happened since the beginning of the uprising. Two months in and the protest movement is growing. It started in February in a small way. In March it spread, and then there were the events in Dar‘a. 25 March was the Friday of Dignity, when the first person was killed in Damascus, and many were killed in Dar‘a. Then there was the president’s first speech and his talk about a conspiracy against Syria. On the Friday of Steadfastness 37 people were killed. The students in Damascus started to mobilize, then the students of Aleppo.

  The Friday of Perseverance took place in the middle of April, and Good Friday saw the largest harvest of victims; then there was the Friday of Defiance and the organizers were punished. Thoughts I try to put in order: eight hundred civilians killed by the security forces, a large number of army officers among the dead. The rhetorical posture of the protest movement in Syria is growing and growing. There are so many details about pain and subjugation and death, about fear and the consecutive breaths of life… the life that is slowly expiring here before the eyes of the entire world.

  8 May 2011

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  I didn’t wake up as early as usual today. Now that I am addicted to Xanax, I sleep more deeply these days, missing the sunrise I was once accustomed to watching. It’s 9 a.m. as I sit high up on the fifth floor balcony across from Arnous Square, looking out on al-Hamra Street and the districts of al-Shaalan and al-Rawda. From my new home I can see in all directions; besides the safety, this is its main virtue. I try to reconstruct my memory, which has been fraying ever since the protests broke out, and ever since killing became an everyday occurrence in this country.

  Today I need to be more focused, but there is news from Homs, where the electricity has been turned off in some neighbourhoods, a siege tactic the regime depends upon, and news about heavy gunfire there causes me to lose my focus again. What drives me even crazier is the internet disruption. I have to do something, the problem requires a quick fix or I won’t be able to find out any news from the protests. The siege of Baniyas is surely ongoing, the electricity and water and communications lines are still interrupted, but there is no news yet about any more dead. The arrests continue. I am extremely irritated. I am headed, quite possibly, for a major depression. My fingers tremble. I have no desire to see anyone or anything, to follow the news or even to write. I am shaking.

  This morning my bad luck seems to be getting worse because the first scene I see on television is a sniper action against a young man running down an empty street – the image is shot from far away, there are trees on both sides of the street, the sound of gunfire, and suddenly the young man drops after being shot from behind, in his back, falling down like a scrap of paper. I shake even more. That young man has a family, friends, a name. I don’t know who he is, but I know he had a life, and that he is a Syrian citizen, killed by another Syrian citizen.

  How has the blood of this united country’s people become so worthless?

  How did the security services make people so savage?

  Memories of the first protests come rushing back, when I was able to move around more easily. I wasn’t prepared for all this violence, and I don’t just mean the metaphorical violence that came crashing down when I was accused of being a traitor and other kinds of defamation, but violence in its material and tangible senses, real violence. I never thought that murderers could just sprout up out of the streets like trees. Even Baniyas, that magical city, is now besieged by tanks and bullets, the city I know street by street, tree by tree, and house by house, the city whose beautiful imperfections I know by heart, Baniyas, where I can roll all the way down from the peak of the al-Marqab Castle to the edge of the sea without my body getting shaken up because of the soft slope that nature has made between the mountains and the sea, where I can hear the cicadas humming at the end of alleys that connect all the houses, and where I could sit for a hundred years and write novels without getting tired of the sight of that city’s beauty. Now Baniyas has been turned into a series of military checkpoints, which separate the neighbourhoods, Sunni from Alawite, where the army and the security forces arrest people and kill. Now the connecting arteries of Baniyas have been cut, just like the rest of the country, occupied by soldiers and security forces and murderers. I can no longer conjure up the shape of the Baniyas coast or its inhabitants or the sounds of the vegetable sellers. Now the only imagination I have left is bullets and killing and images of people being killed and beaten and arrested, the women who were killed. I can’t laugh or do anything at all. Syrian cities are besieged one after another – Dar‘a, Baniyas, Homs.

  Just before going out to meet a female journalist, I call her number, but her line is out of service. At the same moment a friend calls to tell me that she has been arrested by the security forces and that I need to be more careful. I stop for a moment in front of al-Hamra Street, thinking about how I had just seen her yesterday and how we had talked for a long time. She is getting ready to write an article about me. I feel all shrivelled up. A shouting Chinese woman snaps me out of it, as she spreads her wares out on the sidewalk. Al-Hamra Street is funny: the elegant shops open and their owners sit down outside them, while Chinese merchants display their cheap products along the edge of the sidewalk. Everyone is heading towards the Chinese goods. I laugh at the sight: a market inside a market, goods of all different kinds – clothes and shoes and wallets and accessories – and the funny Chinese women who chat with their customers in broken Arabic and move around vigorously. I walk back a little bit and look at my house right in front of me. That young journalist is now in jail. I tell myself it is a good thing she doesn’t know where I live. Her arrest must have had something to do with me. Every day somebody who I have been with or who I am going to meet gets arrested. Thinking about the journalist who had scheduled two different appointments with me, and how I didn’t show up for either one, I call him impulsively; the phone rings and he picks up, we talk for a little, and I feel a small happiness. The arrest campaign is ongoing, and there are more deaths and a slew of arrests in Homs today.

  The meaning of death and the meaning of fear change by the day. The fundamental meanings of our lives were changing with every passing moment. I need to focus and think about what I am going to do with no internet, unable to move around. It’s like they’re amputating our limbs while we’re still alive.

  On my way home, imaginary funerals swirl in my head, and I long to hear just one bit of good news amidst everything that is happening, just one bit, however small, that might make me less anxious, maybe even a bit of news that would give me the strength to go on living, to sleep like a normal human being, without Xanax. The only news I heard was of army tanks invading the town of Tafas near Dar‘a and the death of twelve civilians; the army’s assault on Homs on the Friday of Defiance in which nineteen people were martyred; and, finally, an eleven-year-old boy among those arrested today in Baniyas.

  The dead and the funerals become new funerals: every time the Syrians mourn a martyr another martyr falls, and that’s the way funerals drag along behind them… more funerals.

  I get a call from a broadcaster friend, and I ask her if we can meet.

  The brutality of the regime knows no bounds. It does not remain neutral towards the people here; it creates beasts in its own image out of ordinary people who might have been neighbours instead. Even more dangerous was the fact that the fundamentals of humanity and the ABCs of life have been eviscerated from the hearts of many people here. State television destroys human compassion, the sort of fundamental empathy that is not contingent upon a political or even a cultural orientation, an
d through which one human being can relate to another. The al-Dunya channel stirs up hatred, broadcasts false news and maligns any opposing viewpoint. I wasn’t the only one subjected to internet attacks by the security services and the Ba‘thists, even if the campaign against me may be fiercer because I come from the Alawite community and have a lot of family connections to them – because I am a woman and it’s supposedly easier to break me with rumours and character assassination and insults. Some of my actress friends who expressed sympathy for the children of Dar‘a and called for an end to the siege of the city were subjected to a campaign of character assassination and called traitors, then forced to appear on state television in order to clarify their position. Friends who expressed sympathy for the families of the martyrs would get insulted, they would be called traitors and accused of being foreign spies. People became afraid to show even a little bit of sympathy for one another, going against the basic facts of life, the slightest element of what could be called the laws of human nature – that is, if we indeed agree that sympathy is part of human nature in the first place.

  Moral and metaphorical murder is being carried out as part of a foolproof plan, idiotic but targeted, stupid yet leaving a mark on people’s souls. I recorded an interview with one of my friends who used to work for Syrian state television. The poor girl had been conducting a kind of schizophrenic life, torn between what she saw with her own eyes and what she was involved in disseminating on television. She agreed to grant me an interview as long as I do not mention her name, no matter what, not now, not ever, and I agreed. Here is her testimony:

  “Official media discourse has divided the Syrian people into two camps: with or against. This means that even if you’re a demonstrator who hasn’t been accused of being involved with the armed gangs then you’re a traitor. For example, when news is reported of people being martyred ‘by the monstrous hands of treachery,’ we in the media know that such expressions are only used when we’re talking about Israel/Palestine. The last time was in Gaza. When a son is forced to publicly disown his father on the al-Dunya network for being in the opposition, this hits the core of human feelings. Meeting with the families of the martyrs, all the weeping and wailing, the horrifying and soul-destroying pictures of the military dead, without showing comparable images of dead civilians, all of this creates awful hatred among the people, and people everywhere have started saying, ‘May God never forgive them.’

  “State media gives voice to these emotions, then militarizes them. There is the focus on militaristic, jingoistic anthems and love for the homeland, which only ever means love for the president. Unfortunately, most calls in from the people are love poems to the president. One time, a little girl recited a love poem for the president live on air. I asked her, ‘Sweetie, why do you love the president?’ The little girl was silent for a few moments. She didn’t respond so the guests we had on, who were regulars, filled the dead air. With the outbreak of the protest movement they had been transformed into superstars on the Arab satellite channels and the Syrian satellite channel as well, and they served as mouthpieces for the regime.

  “Following recent events the media discourse has become more ideological and more didactic. Practically speaking, on the media side of things, I can’t say there has been any reform. On the contrary, the first news we always had to report in our broadcasts was about the president’s ongoing meetings with the people; the second most important story was always the continuing pursuit of the armed gangs; this would be followed by statements from the Interior Ministry and international news. There has been only one significant change in the official media discourse, in that the focus on Palestine has taken a backseat to the Syrian situation. We as journalists asked to go out into the streets alongside the security forces and the demonstrators in order to find out the truth, but our request was denied for safety reasons. We asked because we couldn’t tell true from false, and we were flatly denied. Besides, what we were reporting and broadcasting was nothing other than whatever SANA15 was telling us. Reuters was absolutely banned, as was every international and Arab news agency, but only concerning the Syrian situation. SANA is an outlet for the Republican Palace, and from the beginning of the events until now we wanted an official to meet with us, as journalists, in order to discuss a media strategy given the exceptional circumstances. Orders came over the phone because everyone was afraid. During this crisis some Lebanese spokesmen for the Syrian regime contributed by making visits to the radio and television station in order to talk about what was going on inside Syria, to take part in political discussions. One time one of the Lebanese guests even asked, ‘Why is there no voice opposed to the regime here with us?’

  “The fact of the matter is that, as a government media organization, our discussions were always muted by a unified perspective, and careerists couldn’t reconcile two different voices, because the news was dictated from on high. We were merely employees earning a wage, not journalists. For example, a broadcaster can’t be hired for television without security connections or a recommendation from the Regional Command of the Ba‘th Party. The interesting thing now is that they are relying upon radio broadcasters who have been transferred to television, and they have a religious outlook, coming from old Damascus families and the old neighbourhoods. I think that was done in order to attract the residents of Damascus over to the side of the regime, and in order to deny the overwhelming presence of Alawites on Syrian television. Lately they want to create balance in the media image, just as they have done in allocating seats in the administrations of the television, radio and media.

  “News would come to us printed and ready to go. Even when we had a question concerning the shape the news was going to take, the answer was always ready for us: Here is what SANA or the news bureau is reporting.

  “Our media isn’t real journalism, it’s an instrument that adheres to classical and harsh strictures. From the shape of the news to the selection of guests, everything is subject to security censorship. The hosts of political talk shows must be cooperative with the administration and the security first and foremost, even at networks such as al-Dunya that call themselves private, but which are owned by pro-regime businessmen and do even more of a disservice than state media by distorting the reputation of the opposition and inciting people to hate others based on their position vis-.-vis the regime, making up rumours and poisoning the atmosphere. Or, for example, over the last two months or so, we have a new device in the radio and television building that takes fingerprints from anyone who enters the building, under the pretence of keeping track of who keeps regular office hours and who is playing hooky, knowing full well that there are radio and television employees on the security forces’ payroll earning their salaries by staying at home. The television reports are produced by regime supporters, by those who are very close to the regime and the decision-makers. For example, the person who now conducts local reportage about the protest movement is the nephew of the minister, and we all know there is a directive regarding what people have to say in order to make it on camera.”

  The broadcaster’s testimony ends here.

  I check in to see what has happened today: there is extensive security deployment in the town of Saqba; troops have moved in. Tanks in Dar‘a remain where they are as the security and the army are deployed and snipers are posted on top of the buildings. The minarets ascend above them even as the arrest campaign continues.

  9 May 2011

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  I have finally been able to catch hold of the threads leading back to where the protest movement began; its simultaneous origins in more than one city, how the protests surged out with simple demands for a dignified life using various protest tactics, how all those threads came together around one essential thing: the dignity of Syrian women and men confronting the injustice and humiliation practiced by the security services.

  Every city began with the same demands, and when the security forces and the shabbiha started arresting and killin
g people, the protest movement started changing and simple quality-of-life issues were transformed into a single demand: the fall of the regime. As I met with people day after day, the view became clearer. Today I am going to finish up with Baniyas. One of the young men who had been at the heart of the events when they all came out of the mosque is coming over to my house with a lawyer friend of mine from Baniyas. Maybe it’s dangerous for me to tell them where I live but it would have been impossible to find somewhere outside where we could meet, so I opted to get together in private. My friend promises me this young man is trustworthy but there is no room for trust here, because imprisonment and torture can tear a person away from himself.

  The young man shows up. He is in his twenties, skinny and of medium-height. He won’t shake my hand but he is polite, well-spoken, calm and measured. After five minutes I can tell his belief in fate was unwavering, but his mind seems inclined towards reason, which makes me feel better. In addition, he ends up talking to me freely, without getting flustered and without my feeling like he is talking at a woman inside a frame, as would many fundamentalist Muslims. Maybe this is what they call moderate Islam. He tells me his name is Abed and without any further introduction I ask him to talk about what happened in Baniyas, or about what happened afterwards, about the first and the third Fridays I had already written about. He says: