A Woman in the Crossfire

by Samar Yazbek

  The news stops here. I change the channel and follow news of the bombing in Jisr al-Shughur and the conditions of the refugees in the Turkish town of Yayladağı, where Syrian refugee camps have been set up. Now I hear Muslim clerics with long beards from Lebanon and I am afraid of their presence, as one of them venomously calls on the Syrian regime to stop the massacres. I shudder at the sight. I have been terrified for days now, ever since Shaykh al-‘Ar‘ur went on one of the satellite networks with his sectarian talk. It makes no difference and there’s nothing strange about what’s happening. The fundamentalist Islamists are scary and what al-‘Ar‘ur is doing is no doubt going to do more harm to the Syrian uprising than if he were to stand side by side with us. The Syrian regime says that the people going out to demonstrate are fundamentalist Islamists and these media images will only confirm their story.

  I think I need to go out for a little bit. I have been sitting at home for three days. I go out to do one thing for the ‘Syrian Women in Support of the Uprising’ initiative, to meet a young man from the coordination committees, and then come right home. My appetite is growing. We are waiting. We have to make arrangements with doctors about ambulances for the wounded on Fridays. One of the nurses told me they would never let them use ambulances to take the wounded to the hospital, that they were killing the wounded as well and that a number of the wounded had died outside the hospitals because the security forces would not let them inside.

  Helicopters continue bombing to the east of Ma‘arat al-Nu‘man, in Wadi al-Daif, as tanks arrive in the area. Refugees flee through the farms and the regime chases them down and kills them at will. Most of them come from families that have been ripped apart; mostly there is only one man left with the women of the family as the young men stay behind to protect their homes. The women and children are in a state of panic and fear and most of the men in the camps are old. All the survivors deny the presence or entry of any armed people from outside.

  The incursions into the cities take place without any warning and they target houses indiscriminately. Some of the nearby villages, anticipating being engulfed in the fighting, start to flee in the direction of the camps where they expect large numbers of refugees to arrive tomorrow. The army takes control of Jisr al-Shughur; they discover a mass grave there and everything is burned – the security headquarters, the communications tower, commercial shops. Everything is burned. The city is completely empty.

  13 June 2011

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  We haven’t had an hour’s peace for two days. At night. During the day. In the afternoon. In the shower. In the toilet. All these noises, all the time: cars honking furiously, as sports cars and a bunch of bullhorns park in the middle of Arnous Square nearby my house, guys and girls wearing white shirts emblazoned with a picture of the president, chanting out loud, singing through the bullhorns an anthem that prattles on about their love for the president. Night and day these processions move along the streets of al-Hamra and al-Shaalan and al-Rawdeh, as the young men and women calmly march. A simple comparison between these and the demonstrations calling for the departure of the president infuriates me – the young men and women in the demonstrations don’t ride in cars and they have no bullhorns other than their throats, they barely assemble for a few minutes before human monsters storm out to swallow them up in cars and stamp on them and bloody them up in the streets. No more than a few minutes and their demonstration is over. In the beginning I would say that half the street was with the president. Now I am certain he doesn’t enjoy more than 30% support, and most of that comes from the frightened minorities.

  We no longer live safely in our own homes. Everything could fall apart. The streets have become stages for chaos and regime spectacle. Any regime supporter can show up with a tape recorder and a megaphone and camp out under my window, chanting for days on end and nobody, no matter who they are, would ever dare to tell them, “Shut up, we’re trying to sleep!” They would not shut up in any case, and then those monsters would sprout up from the earth and attack whoever spoke out. That is exactly what happened to our neighbour who asked one of them to lower his voice because his son was studying for his baccalaureate exam. One minute the man is standing there, talking calmly, and the next moment he winds up under those men’s feet. They stamped all over him as if walking on top of people was an everyday occurrence. The neighbours saved him and the scene turned into a brawl that didn’t end until the police showed up. They took the neighbour away with them, and I don’t know how the story ended.

  I can’t breathe. My lungs hurt. My skin has become rough and just being outside hurts. I follow news of death from home. I can’t move. I try to reach the besieged cities but tanks confront me. I try to see the people who got out from under the siege but I worry they might be subjected to the same security surveillance as I am. I am as powerless as an old wooden chair, abandoned in a forest long forgotten by summer tourists. I hear news of two hundred soldiers joining ranks with the defecting lieutenant colonel. It is announced on television. They say there are four officers among them and that they are protecting civilians now, helping them to escape safely. “We’re not doing anything,” he says, “we’re simply delaying the arrival of the army until the people manage to get away with their lives.” Pictures start coming out in quick succession of a man who went blind when a grenade exploded right in front of him at a demonstration. There was a funeral for someone who was wounded when he reached the Turkish border and who died as soon as he crossed over, as if it were fated for him to die on foreign soil, but that foreign soil cradled his torments and his death while his own country made him homeless and cast him out. The last time I tried to go out into the street, for a women’s demonstration, the security forces were gunning for me.

  What am I going to do? My daughter is far away from me, my mother is far away from me, I am forbidden from going to my own village and my own city. I can’t do anything. I am suspended in the air. All I do now is translate people’s agonies into words through my interviews and meetings with those escaping massacres and prisons.

  Testimony of Two Demonstrating Sweethearts

  During a meeting with a young man and woman who both got arrested during the al-Hamidiyyeh demonstration on the second Friday, 25 March, the young man said, “She was filming the demonstration when a group of young men carrying flags and pictures of the president assaulted her” – she is his girlfriend – “turning those flags into truncheons and beating her up. They were a crew from the Student Union, and they took her away, right in front of me. Then twelve of them grabbed me and dragged me along after them. Everyone around me tried to help but they got beaten up, too.”

  The girl said, “One of them fondled my chest, harassing me outright, and said, ‘You want freedom, you whore, you Jewess?!’ I told them, ‘I’m an Alawite’.”

  The young man continued talking about his girlfriend: “I started looking all over for her. They let me go but arrested her, so I asked an officer what was going to happen to her. He said, ‘We’re going to teach every last one of you dogs a lesson’, then pulled me along and threw me on a bus with her. They started hitting us in the face and on top of our heads. When we reached the military security branch in Kafr Sousseh, they were still beating us even as we got off the bus. She went into solitary.”

  The young woman cut him off: “Two of them dragged me along with them.”

  Then the young man continued: “We went inside. The prisoners who were captured at the demonstrations came from al-Merjeh and al-Bohsa and al-Hamidiyyeh. There were three boys under the age of eighteen, two elderly men and a doctor from al-Mujtahid hospital. One of the prisoners started shivering. The doctor told them, ‘Because of the blows to his head, this man has sustained a concussion’.”

  The young man was taken away, thrown in jail, and his only crime was having seen his girlfriend getting beaten up and wanting to help her. He wasn’t even at the demonstration!

  The young man said: “They threw us dow
n on the ground, walked on top of me, stamped on all of us. We were pounded for a long time. Then they made us crouch as if we were sitting on chairs but the only thing supporting us was our toes, there was nothing but air underneath us. The entire weight of our bodies was centred on our toes, and at that point our toes started digging into flesh. They were beating us the whole time and when they learned that I was the one who had hit a security agent, they took me into a solitary room and hit me with electric prods. I passed out. They woke me up. The doctor told them I was unable to talk. They wanted me to say that one of the demonstrators was chanting in support of Israel, that he had been holding up a picture of Ariel Sharon during the demonstration and that there had been sectarian slogans. They threatened to rape my girlfriend if I refused. At that moment I told the interrogator, ‘I was brought here because I saw her getting beaten up, so beware, if a single one of you so much as lays a finger on her, just try me, you’ll see what happens! They were interrogating her at that very moment. They didn’t let us drink any water. Palestinians in particular were subjected to additional beating. The officers placed their boots on our necks and demanded that we amend our statements however they wanted them; all the while we were beaten and stepped on. A lot of young men lost their facial features because of the intensity of the beating and the swelling. They kept moving back and forth between her and me, telling me, ‘We’re going to let you go, but she stays here’. They would take me out and bring me back into the cell, talking about a conspiracy and fear of the Salafis if the regime were to fall.”

  The girl says, “I could hear my boyfriend being whipped.”

  He pushes back by saying, “Well, they wanted me to scream loud enough for her to hear me. While he was beating me he would say, ‘Scream! Scream!’ Some of the agents took pity on me…”

  The girl interjects here: “The beating went on for five hours and the interrogator was making fun of me, about how young I was, sarcastically provoking me, ‘You want freedom, huh?’ The security forces were crowded all around me, so I looked up at them all and then said to him, ‘What do you think?’”

  The young man continues, “While we were being beaten someone came into the cell and shouted, ‘Beating is forbidden!’ Just then somebody else came in to beat us. An elegant and handsome young man from the Republican Palace showed up and told us, ‘I’m here to listen to the demonstrators’ demands’. None of the prisoners responded and the security agent barked, ‘Speak up, you animals!’ Another minute passed, and everyone was silent until the security agent repeated, ‘Speak up, you bastards!’ This guy had his face split open, dripping with blood, and he rose to his feet to tell him, ‘Sir, nobody beat us. We have no demands’. Then he sat down.”

  The young man who told me that story was friendlier than his girlfriend – she pulsed with rage the whole time, while he was more sarcastic and droll.

  Today al-Arabiya enters Jisr al-Shughur, reporting that there are armed men killing security forces and that the protestors and the regime had reached a turning point. Something odd is going on. I start to worry there is going to be international coverage of what the regime is up to. It was only after the regime allowed the news media inside Jisr al-Shughur that they brought up the issue of mass graves. I always knew it was a ridiculous fabrication because during the first two months I followed the demonstrations and listened to everything the state media said in order to compare it to what I witnessed on the ground. Besides, a trustworthy officer told me that the ones found in the mass grave were actually men from Dar‘a who the security forces had brought there, tearing apart their bodies and throwing them into a pit, before claiming armed gangs were killing people. The second mass grave was not filled with security forces but prisoners who had been executed and whose bodies the security forces had refused to hand over to their families. The danger now is that the regime is pushing hard on the media, opening up whenever they want to leak some news. Syrian blood is being spilled amid the media circus orchestrated by the regime, amid the strategies of foreign policy and the balance of power. Still, the burning and destruction of Jisr al-Shughur continues apace and they only allow Syrian television to enter and film in order to say that the armed gangs are the ones carrying out the burning and destruction and killing. Today passes without any arrests, the city is empty of its inhabitants and the army bombards the hills where the residents have fled, as some of their relatives are killed along the way.

  15 June 2011

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  Now, in the middle of the afternoon, I return from the streets of Damascus, the city that is polluted with people. How can a city be polluted with people? I feel a sudden disgust and my stomach spasms start up again. The streets are crowded and sports cars carry flags and giant pictures of the president. We haven’t been able to get a good night’s sleep for days now because of this obnoxious presence of the president’s partisans. But are they really partisans? Earlier today I saw public employees forced out of government offices in droves heading for the al-Mezzeh neighbourhood where the regime and its supporters decided to unfurl the largest flag of all time. They continue hammering away with the propaganda that they are strong, forcing the employees and workers to come out and making it seem like they are all regime supporters. Anyone who refused to come out would be subject to punishment and prosecution.

  I wove through a few streets, passed by a few government buildings. It was all the same: the roads were almost completely clogged, suffocating crowdedness and a burning sun. I was coming back from a café outside the Palais de Justice when I ran into a girlfriend of mine. Her husband had been detained and she was waiting there for him to be released; she had been arrested before and now she was wanted for further questioning – it was something like madness. We sat at a table waiting for some news with two lawyers who defended prisoners; one of them had been arrested previously for defending prisoners. He was telling me about the difficulties he faced in defending them and about their financial straits when his phone rang. He looked me in the eyes. We were sitting in a coffee shop entirely filled with men, with the exception of my girlfriend and me. I was smoking, as usual, which had become as normal as breathing for me. He looked at me and then at the men all around who were watching me. ‘Just let me take this call, and then I’ll tell you the story of M.’ He said that so mysteriously that I started getting excited to hear the story of M. The place was gloomy and because I love colours so much I felt out of place. He wrapped up his conversation and I immediately asked, ‘What’s M’s story?’ He smiled and told me:

  “Two and a half months ago, that is, just after the start of the protest movement in Syria, M., who is from al-Hujayra, a suburb of Damascus, smashes a chisel against a bust of the president, lopping off his ear and shouting for him to step down. He would have finished the job if some street vendors hadn’t stopped him. You know, almost everybody knows those guys are security agents and that the security apparatus sends out street vendors among the people in order to monitor their activities. So the merchants pounce, grabbing him and then detaining him at one of the security stations. He was mercilessly beaten there until he lost his mind. Now he has a personality disorder. His father couldn’t find anyone to defend him until he met me, and I gladly took on the case. In prison he was subjected to vicious beatings despite his condition. We tried to file a suit arguing that the security services were to blame for his medical condition, and after some effort we managed to secure his release, but there was another charge in store for him. He had violated public decency, as they call it. He had taken off all his clothes in prison and called for the fall of the regime, which was considered an indecent act that injured public morality!”

  That is the story of M. who cut off the ear of the president.

  I said goodbye to the two lawyers and my girlfriend, who had gone inside the Palais de Justice in order to find out some news about her husband. Every day she would go there and wait. Another girlfriend passed along news about the lawyer who was going to gi
ve us the names of the prisoners and their families so we would be able to find out their financial circumstances and offer them monetary support now that we had followed her suggestion and set up our “Syrian Women in Support of the Uprising” initiative. I had to walk through a few different neighbourhoods on my way to see the public employees who had come out of the government buildings in order to participate in a pro-regime march, but she wasn’t home. In spite of the suffocating heat I was feeling confident because I had started working with the young men and women of the uprising ever since the foundation of the initiative. I chose fieldwork, meeting with the coordination committees of the revolution in order to support them directly and act alongside them.