A Woman in the Crossfire

by Samar Yazbek

  None of these trips and actions over the past few days has amounted to anything at all. As we expected, the outcome is weak. Just forming the women’s initiative in support of the uprising makes me feel hollow, powerless, as I watch Syrians being transformed into refugees, as the people of Jisr al-Shughur fearfully flee the military siege and the massacres carried out in their city. Turkey takes them in, setting up tents along the border. Syrians are refugees in Turkey. During the invasion and bombardment of Talkalakh, Syrians are also transformed into refugees in Lebanon, but the Syrian regime is more present in Lebanon than anywhere else. The Lebanese government hands over two refugees and the Syrians become increasingly alarmed, because fleeing to Lebanon means fleeing right back to Syria. It makes no difference what we do now.

  Turkey announces its disapproval of the regime and its barbaric tactics: repressing demonstrators, killing and mutilating people, making them homeless and refugees. How can the regime kill its own people? How can planes fly through the Syrian skies to bomb their own people? It’s something incomprehensible to Syrians, that these massacres can be repeated day in, day out. The cities are annihilated one after another and the whole world is watching, criticizing and calling for reform while the Syrians die, quite simply. What matters now is that defections in the army ranks have begun. A lieutenant colonel in the Syrian Arab Army appears on the satellite networks and announces his defection from the army, claiming responsibility for killing security agents who killed civilians, refusing to follow army orders, calling out through bullhorns for them not to kill the innocent. This is something very serious in and of itself. I have not seen very much that is worth taking seriously.

  I am frustrated, I won’t deny it, a subtle sorrow has started to seep into my diaries, not regular everyday sorrow, but overlapping strands of everyday inability, total intellectual paralysis. Daily news of killing in the cities gives me barely any time to reflect. I am still lost. Last night I decided to go out shopping for a few things, not far from my new temporary home. I only intended to go out for a few hours. I just wanted to clear my head and think about what needed to be done regarding several things I was working on. As I strolled through al-Shaalan neighbourhood, in the spice market, I saw young women running away. People were running in all directions. At once I knew there was a demonstration. The panic in people’s eyes told me what was happening. I ran forward and saw scores of young men and women gathered together and chanting for freedom. The security forces ran at them and pounced. They were singing the national anthem and shouting: No to Killing! No to Violence! My vision blurred and I could no longer distinguish the shabbiha all over the place, even though the shabbiha are generally the ones behaving the most savagely.

  They jumped on the demonstrators and called on pedestrians in the street to join in beating them as well. I saw them crowd around a young man. More than ten of them were pummelling and kicking him. Just then I saw a young lady on the ground as one of the security agents beat her and called her the most vulgar names; when a man who wasn’t taking part in the demonstration tried to help her, the security beat him mercilessly. Many more agents crowded around him and started beating him as well. Then they arrested him. I was standing right there, listening and watching, my heart pounding. I stood there with those people, trying to be inconspicuous, thinking that if they captured me, not even God Himself would be able to convince them I hadn’t been part of the demonstration. But I couldn’t bring myself to leave. My feet were frozen as people surged forward, running away from the security forces. Some shopkeepers came out, yelling at the demonstrators, cooperating with the security forces and the shabbiha, and when one of them tried to give shelter to a young woman, the security forces and some other shopkeepers beat him up and smashed his store.

  There was beating everywhere you looked, and everyone they beat would later be taken away and would disappear. I saw them throw a young man into a bus, then rush back out looking for more. The people watched all of this in terror since this was the first time such a demonstration had taken place in the al-Shaalan neighbourhood. Some young women who had been watching how the shabbiha mercilessly stamped on the young men’s bodies started sobbing and ran away. All of a sudden I saw scores of young men and women approaching from the direction of Abu Rummaneh, holding up pictures of the president, clapping and chanting, Abu Hafiz, Abu Hafiz. They were all wearing white cotton T-shirts with a picture of the president and the slogan We Love You emblazoned on them. Once the security forces had broken up the demonstration, they calmed down and stood on either side of the street in order to protect the pro-regime demonstrators. The march continued all the way to the end of al-Hamra Street. They were calm, nobody tried to stop them and they kept chanting in unison, Abu Hafiz, Abu Hafiz. I watched for half an hour, pretending to shop. The security forces were still trying to read people’s faces even though the demonstration had been broken up. The shabbiha of al-Shaalan strolled through the shops, watching. I noticed how different the shabbiha of al-Shaalan were from the shabbiha of Harasta and Douma and al-Merjeh Square; they were more elegant, cleaner, they wore gold chains on their wrists, they seemed to have been sculpted, with slender waists and puffed-up chests, like cartoon characters. But they kept their beards closely cropped. What they had in common with all the shabbiha I had ever seen in any other city was their eyes; the same dry, cold stare. No eyelids, no eyelashes. They were the same people who beat up one guy until he was covered in blood, even though it turned out later he was part of the security forces. They were the same people who attacked young men who refused to join them in beating up demonstrators. And so I had to go back home again yesterday without even thinking about buying my daily vegetables, without thinking about anything at all. I was running away from the internet and television news, from the killing, but all I found in the street was beatings and arrests and fear. What city is this that I now live in? With every step we take there is humiliation in store for everyone.

  The paper woman in my fingertips told me, “Bloodshed or humiliation, it’s either one or the other.” I told her to shut up and just leave me alone for a little while, like a corpse calmly fighting against its own decomposition.

  How can Syrian intellectuals remain silent in the face of all this? When the protest movement first started I felt sympathetic to the silent ones. I understood human weakness and because in a democracy mercy is one of those religious virtues that must be made up as we go along, I was silent towards them. But today, after the invasion and siege of the cities, now that the Syrian people are homeless and refugees, now that they have been killed and tortured and terrorized, I can no longer be merciful towards them. Today, those who remain silent are accomplices to the crime.

  Demonstrations continue in Latakia and Damascus today, in Homs and Aleppo. What is new in Aleppo is that the security forces surrounded the University City after a demonstration there, and the shabbiha stormed on campus, shooting teargas canisters and live rounds into the air. Over the past 24 hours the number of Syrian refugees in Turkey has climbed to 2,400 people, and Jisr al-Shughur remains shrouded in obscurity.

  Today a powerful video clip appeared: Demonstrators in the al-Qaboun neighbourhood of Damascus are burning a picture of Bashar al-Assad, the video isn’t clear, darkness and gloom. The fire starts in the middle of the president’s face; the demonstrators hold it right in front of the camera as they shout until their voices get hoarse The People Want to Topple the Regime! then throw what remains of the scorched picture down on the ground. That’s a portrait of anger and revolution against humiliation and poverty. I feel added anxiety. Burning that picture means there will be house invasions by the shabbiha and the security forces in al-Qaboun, which will also mean more killing and arrests.

  10 June 2011

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  Friday of the Tribes

  Today is different.

  The defecting lieutenant colonel explains how the army uses people as human shields. The lieutenant colonel says ther
e are criminal groups chosen by the security forces to carry out the killing. He appears on television and shouts it at the top of his voice. Clearly the ones doing the killing are with the regime. The lieutenant colonel who defected from the army and joined the ranks of the uprising says the Syrian army had assaulted his village in Jabal al-Zawiya and was going to detain his family and siblings in order to put pressure on him. The other shocking thing he says is that they relied on manpower from Hizballah and Iran. Lieutenant Colonel Hussein Harmoush goes on to say, “The security forces control the media.” He calls upon the Syrian people and the free officers to stand up in the face of the regime in order to hold aloft the banner of freedom.

  Signs of fundamental change appear today. On the Friday of the Tribes, unconcealed names openly speaking in the name of the coordination committees of the Syrian revolution begin to appear, and the name of the protest movement changes from the uprising to the revolution. And with the wave of army defections, the uprising enters a new phase. I follow what is happening on television. The situation in Damascus is calm. A demonstration goes out in al-Maydan, and outside my house Damascus looks like it is living under curfew. In the middle of the day there is nobody on the street. Last Friday was the Friday of the Children of Freedom, in which more than 60 people were killed in Hama, reminding people of the massacre that took place in the eighties under President Hafiz al-Assad, when the entire city was decimated and approximately 30,000 people were killed. How ironic that today happens to be the anniversary of the death of Hafiz al-Assad, passing by unnoticed for the first time ever in this country.

  Death has enshrouded the cities for 90 days, and every day seems worse than the last. Every Friday there are more demonstrations. The number of dead varies from one city to another. The options available to the regime appear to have narrowed, because if the situation goes on like this, the demonstrations are going to grow into a state of total civil revolt. The Turks are hinting at a military option. Things are getting more and more tense, and the military response to the uprising continues apace. As far as the outside world is concerned, the situation seems different from Egypt and Libya and Tunisia. In Syria the promulgation of resolutions is postponed so the blood can continue to flow. The whole world is in agreement: Syrians must die alone. The regime knows how powerful it is, holding Lebanon in one hand and Iraq in the other. And so the regime justifies this violent repression to itself, arrogantly and stubbornly shooting people, and to the West, which is worried about Israel and its security.

  Today on the Friday of the Tribes, 39 people are killed and one hundred are wounded. There are demonstrations in 185 different places – in Damascus, in its countryside and its suburbs, in Aleppo and its countryside, Homs and Hama and the governorate of Idlib, al-Hassakeh and the Euphrates region, the coast and the Hawran. Today for the first time since the beginning of the protest movement, I hear the sound of heavy gunfire at 1:30 in the morning, coming from the al-Rawdeh neighbourhood in the middle of Damascus. This is something new, because this neighbourhood is located at the intersection of Abu Rummaneh and al-Shaalan and al-Hamra and al-Salihiyyeh, that is, right in the heart of Damascus. This means danger could be anywhere, even in one of the wealthy neighbourhoods.

  I cannot just change myself into a character on paper. Whenever I have to shut my eyes I open them as wide as I can inside my heart. Shutting my eyes is the same thing as the world all around me being hidden away so I can be transported somewhere else. The noises outside are making me nervous – punctuated gunfire. I step out onto the balcony. It might be three o’clock in the morning; the streets are empty. Arnous Square and al-Hamra Street. The shooting stops, and as I become a human being once again, fear does its work. I am more arbitrary than the dictators. I can erase the entire world just by closing my eyes. I stare out onto the empty square, which had been a stage for a number of ‘flying demonstrations’: How is it transformed overnight?

  These places are beautiful, until the presence of human beings is contaminated by murderers who sprout up in the streets of Damascus. Then they become savage and terrifying spaces.

  12 June 2011

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  My day begins with news about another defection within the army.

  The army bombed Ma‘arat al-Nu‘man and the military security branch that defected from the regime. The bombardment of Ma‘arat al-Nu‘man is ongoing, paratroopers are dropped and the shabbiha have moved in to pound the city, where 150,000 people demonstrated against the regime. The security forces killed six demonstrators. After the electricity was cut, people fled in the middle of the night for Aleppo and nearby villages.

  I scan for news of killing and death in other cities.

  Jisr al-Shughur can still remember the massacre of 1980, during the term of al-Assad père; they have a new massacre in 2011. In the first massacre more than 97 martyrs were killed. During the popular demonstrations they chanted slogans against the regime and they were met with bullets. Meanwhile the events in Jisr al- Shughur were overshadowed by the size of the massacre that took place in Hama, the city of norias, two years later. No fewer than 70 people have been killed by the security forces’ bullets in the massacre that is happening right now. Defection from the army has left in its wake a lot of dead soldiers and security agents. Jisr al-Shughur is surrounded, as helicopter gunships hover over it and security forces occupy the city. Conflicting reports are coming out of the besieged city. In other news, the number of refugees to cross the border into Turkey climbs to 4,300 today. The army forces stand at the entrance to Jisr al-Shughur, without moving in, waiting for the number of refugees to reach ten thousand. There is a video clip on television and YouTube of Syrians fleeing for their lives from Jisr al-Shughur. I feel as if I am shrinking, my fingers become sharp knives that scratch my skin. In images I have never seen before, I recognize the Syrians afresh, like pictures of Palestinian refugees we were shown when we were children: families searching for somewhere to live under the trees, families living out in the open, a family packing its kitchenware in a plastic box and staring at the camera in grief. Children huddle around their mothers, who curse the president, saying, “Bashar chased us out of our homes.” The refugees look markedly exhausted and the tents people made for those who could find no space in the refugee camp look tattered. The scene is like a fantasy movie about people who are displaced and lost, stranded and hungry, eating out in the open, sleeping out in the open, in the forest, like prehistoric man who lived millions of years ago. Soldiers appear with the refugees, talking about how the security forces would kill them if they failed to carry out orders to kill civilians. Women appear, screaming how the tanks rolled in during the middle of the night, how the soldiers and the security and the shabbiha killed all the livestock and set their land on fire, how they even threw away powdered milk for children. I can’t believe these atrocities. Even though I know they are true I just want to go back to my game of hiding. I know this is happening even as I sit here, panicked and perplexed. How can the regime kill its own people? How can this murderous president sign people’s death warrants? Is he going to force his entire people to flee? Will Syrians all become refugees now that the army has invaded Jisr al-Shughur in the middle of the night and swept through the surrounding villages, burning down the crops and killing all the livestock?

  I switch over to news from the other cities, without leaving the computer. Homs is tense. Military reinforcements arrive in Latakia. It is midday and news is still coming in that a violent assault is taking place right now in Jisr al-Shughur. Once the army moved in, the regime must have decided to teach the army defectors a harsh lesson. I wait for news of a ceasefire. The internet is blocked now, so I can’t know what is happening all around me. The internet was blocked for most of yesterday as well. More and more I have to live without the internet. In addition to blocking the internet, they also block the roads and annihilate the cities. A never-ending nightmare.

  I try to transcribe an interview I had conducted w
ith a young woman and her boyfriend who were both detained for a few hours after a demonstration in the Souq al-Hamidiyyeh, but my head isn’t clear. It is now plain to see that they may resort to annihilating every Syrian city one by one before they even consider stepping down, or regime change, and for the first time I think about how they would do exactly what they are doing in Jisr al-Shughur to Damascus if it ever decided to rise up against them. Today for the first time I realize how hard it is to talk about any other scenario than that of devastation. It is now plain to see that the president is not going to step down without a fight and the people will not go back to the pre-15 March period. The people no longer want the regime at all, even as the regime sets the sights of its war machine on its own people. There has been too much bloodshed now.

  The number of people killed in Latakia rises to sixteen. The regime still insists that it is combating armed gangs. But the story of the troops who managed to escape along with the refugees to the Turkish border betrays the regime narrative. The soldier Taha Alloush showed his military identification on camera and declared that people would have killed them if they refused to carry out the orders to kill civilians. This was something we had started hearing on a daily basis on television and from the people we meet. Four soldiers who had fled from al-Rastan testified the same thing in no uncertain terms to a French news agency. Taha Alloush talked about the operation that cleansed the city of al-Rastan, a city of 50,000 in the governorate of Homs. He said he escaped from the army three days later, having thought that he and his friends were going to confront armed gangs, but discovering instead that the people were unarmed and simple folk. Muhammad Marwan Khalaf was also called up to a unit in Idlib, near the Turkish border and he is still struck dumb by the horror of this war against unarmed people. This young recruit attested to a French newspaper, “When they started to open fire on the people, I threw down my rifle and ran away.” He specified that this massacre of 20 to 25 people took place on 7 June; this bloodshot and wide-eyed army runaway also attested that he and his friends had considered rebelling but they thought better of the idea because their lives would have been in danger. “They put snipers up in high places,” he added. “Police officers were in civilian clothes, and when the soldiers refused to shoot the protestors, they were killed.” Walid Khalaf attested to the dangers of disobeying orders by saying, “Before us there were six people who wanted to go AWOL, and our superiors killed them.” Along with fifteen other armed friends, this recruit chose to run rather than invade Homs last Thursday. “I knew,” he said, “that if we entered the city we were going to kill a large number of people.” That news was reported by a French news agency and al-Arabiya, and I can confirm the names of the people and their families.