A Woman in the Crossfire

by Samar Yazbek

  Women and girls of all different ages started meeting ten days ago in order to come up with a program that would unite the uprising. As far as we were concerned the priority was getting more involved with the demonstrators on the ground. I was getting tired of the gatherings of well-known figures from the opposition. I believed that what they were doing wasn’t moving things forward or back or really helping at all; maybe it was creating an illusion. As far as I was concerned, it was more important to go out with the young people in order to extend the uprising as much support and strength as possible.

  Our first step was to place doctors wherever demonstrations were happening, which meant we had to come to an agreement with courageous and trustworthy doctors who would be placed in those areas the day before. That was no simple task, because as soon as the security services discovered a doctor treating the wounded, they would arrest and torture him immediately. In addition, we would provide bandages and first aid materials, which allowed me to meet some young doctors who were working to set up the Damascus doctors’ coordination committee to help out with the uprising.

  The second step was to create a support fund for the uprising, to collect donations on behalf of prisoners and their families, on behalf of the young men and women who were forced to quit their jobs and go into hiding and live underground in order to work on behalf of the uprising. Those were our first projects and my first experience working with them. I tenaciously met with a number of people and learned where the political mobilization in Syria was headed. Syria truly was boiling. People were coming together and trying to do something, affinity groups were formed, the opposition pieced itself together, everybody wanted to chip in to the process of change. Even now, though, they still haven’t formed a strong unified current, I know that everyone is doing something. That’s a good sign.

  Tomorrow will be a busy day. I am going to meet with a number of the coordination committees in Damascus and the suburbs. That in itself will be a prelude to more serious work on the ground. Now it is the evening of 15 June, and after meeting with a secular youth group, I come home to wait for my daughter. She is returning from a long journey and I feel extra scared for her, but when she arrives she makes fun of my concern, telling me how happy she was in Baniyas and how she feels much more nervous in Damascus. I sit down on the balcony. There is a total lunar eclipse tonight. I smoke and talk with my daughter. The night sky is perfectly blue, and the eclipse turns red before becoming full. My heart still hurts and I still feel like the tanks occupying the cities and annihilating the people are never going to let up. The tanks are heading for al-Bukamal and Dayr al-Zur. Ma‘arat al-Nu‘man is emptied of its people and more than 8,500 Syrian refugees are fleeing their homes in villages and cities. Who does this to his own people? Our murderous president. Has the sweep of History ever witnessed this sort of killing? I cannot be sure, maybe not since the days of Tamerlane. I must go back to the history books in order to find out more about the most infamous butchers and horrendous massacres that have been carried out in this region.

  Now they are not only invading the cities, they have also occupied our hearing and our sight. Our hearing with voices that never cease chanting through bullhorns every day, Our Spirit, Our Blood, We’ll Sacrifice for You O Bashar! Our sight on al-Hamra and al- Salihiyyeh, the two venerable streets in the heart of Damascus that have become a deadly joke, as security forces are deployed as clothing merchants, corn-on-the-cob hawkers, purveyors of everything imaginable, a ridiculous situation. The vendors lay out their wares on the sidewalks and people crowd around. The number of people swells because the goods are cheap. The security services deploy their men out on the streets; they are everywhere. The owners of elegant and old-fashioned shops on those two venerable streets stand with their arms folded across their chests.

  The people of Ma‘arat al-Nu‘man run away as the army inches its way forward. Jisr al-Shughur is a ghost town and people are fleeing. Hama is demonstrating once again. The border with Jordan is opened today after being closed for two months. Two hundred metres: the length of the flag unfurled by regime supporters. All along the Turkish border refugees call for the fall of the regime. The refugees are shouting on the television screens: We asked for a little bit of freedom, they killed half the Syrian people! The revolutionaries decide to name this Friday after Shaykh Saleh al-’Ali, the rebel who refused a French proposal to establish an Alawite state and who remained committed to Syrian unity. Today another officer, Captain Ibrahim Munayyer, also defected, “because we swore to point our weapons at the face of the enemy and not at our own people.” He announced his defection, citing the following reasons: army involvement in invading secure cities in order to kill civilians and intimidate the people and army involvement in providing cover for the shabbiha. Today there is a call to convene a national salvation conference. The women of Dar‘a go out to demonstrate in spite of the siege, repeating: Anyone who kills his own people is a traitor! The people of Hama tear down a statue of the president and throw it down on the ground. Statues are falling in the cities. Statue after statue.

  16 June 2011

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  It was a gray morning. My nightmare came back, and from three until nine a.m. I tried to fight off that horrifying dream. I decided to take a break from listening to these stories and go out where the demonstrations were happening. I must calm down a little bit. Yesterday during a meeting with one of the young people from the coordination committee I met a film director who told me about his time in prison and how the worst thing to happen to him wasn’t the torture he himself endured but rather seeing an old man and his three children tortured. They would take one of them away to be tortured, disappearing with him for hours while the other brothers and the father waited. When they returned, he would be unconscious, his body mutilated as blood oozed out of him. This poor old man and his children would wait for him to wake up, crying all day and all night as they watched their torments pile up on top each other. The second thing that was especially hard for the young director was how they made them walk all over each other. The prison corridor was packed with prisoners who paved it like cobblestones. They would force other prisoners to walk all over them. The director found that really difficult for him to do, but anyone who didn’t walk over the prisoners would be beaten and fall down on top of them, which hurt even worse. It got so bad that one of the prisoners splayed out in the hallway implored him, ‘I’m begging you, just walk on top of me, it’s easier than to have you crash down on us’.

  In the nightmare I see myself walking through a fountain of blood. There are elderly people, deformed bodies, and colours like brass. I am not sure whether that was a nightmare or my recollection of what I was hearing every day, but it made me bolt up in bed at three a.m. to wait for the approaching dawn. My daily routine is to wake up at four, but everything changed when the uprising began. My sleep has become conditional on sleeping pills, and when I resist by not taking them, I can only sleep for maybe an hour before I wake up, falling back asleep for a little while only to awaken again right away. My days are long. It is important to schedule some meetings in order to get the women’s association up and running in a serious manner. I had been thinking we should institutionalize our efforts in order to be effective on the ground. I got word that the Islamists were quite active on the ground and that their financial strength was quite formidable but that meant very little to me.

  I have three meetings this morning with young people from the coordination committees, with the young women who will take over responsibility for the fund in support of the uprising. Then I have a meeting with the young physician who is going to set up a doctor’s coordination committee, which points up our need to unify the efforts of all the doctors in order to make a common coordination committee; they are the ones who will be depended upon to treat the wounded and save whoever can be saved in the besieged cities, neighbourhoods and suburbs. Despite the fact that any doctor who helps or treats demonstrators faces nothi
ng less than the punishment of imprisonment or death, both male and female doctors volunteer in large numbers. They need to be connected with the women’s group. The most important demands the coordination committees make is for the creation of a support fund that can secure medical supplies and care for the prisoners and their families, and the launching of popular mutual aid campaigns. What this means is that we are working to establish civil society institutions as quickly as possible in order to join the uprising and support it in a serious way. I am more afraid than anything of not being able to carry out the work we have been asked to do.

  I come home and nearly collapse from exhaustion. Without even washing my face, I get right into bed. Additional sorrow washes over me. My heart is black, and news from my family hurts me more than anything. Yesterday in Jableh a schoolteacher scolded my niece in front of all her friends, telling her she and a lot of other teachers from Jableh were going to come after her and come after me, that I had to start reforming myself and that there wasn’t a single Alawite in all of Jableh as insolent as me, that I was a traitor, a whore, that I was this and I was that…and that all the Alawites had disowned me. The phone threats have abated somewhat. It has been ten days since the senior officer stopped following me.

  17 June 2011

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  Shaykh Saleh al-‘Ali Friday

  Some residents of Jisr al-Shughur return home. There are instances of rape, assault and beating. An entire family is killed. In Hama they unfurl a humongous flag as part of a movement opposing the flag the regime brought out yesterday. Syrian cities continue their demonstrations. 29 people are killed on this Friday; eight of them and one police officer are in Homs. It is the fourth month in which demonstrators are going out and the regime’s killing and arrests do not slacken. In Damascus they are coming out in huge numbers and there is a demonstration in Aleppo. Dar‘a, the besieged and gutted city is going out to demonstrate. The lying regime media still says it’s fighting terrorism and armed gangs. The dying doesn’t stop. Fighting between Syrian regime supporters and its opponents reaches Lebanon. Six people are killed and scores are wounded. Once again the regime sends Lebanon a message: as long as Syria isn’t safe neither will they be. Each Friday more Syrians go out than the Friday before and more blood is spilled. The number of refugees exceeds ten thousand and today the army is trying to stem their exodus to Turkey after besieging the villages that lead there. Apparently the regime has decided to surround them and even prevent them from leaving their homes. But coming back is out of the question because there is such awful news about those who do come back getting killed and having their families tortured. Where will the Syrians go? I fret. They appear in refugee camps on satellite channels and declare there were no armed gangs and that it was the army who did all the killing, that they would not come back until the collapse and fall of the regime. Some refugees could not get across the border and are living out in the wild, sleeping under trees; they face a catastrophic situation with inhumane conditions. I think about children getting tucked in under the open sky. I notice their weary eyes as they gaze into the camera. My head is going to explode from this news. I need to take a sleeping pill just to shut my eyes.

  19 June 2011

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  Today we learn that the president is going to make a speech tomorrow. I don’t expect him to say anything important. As far as I am concerned he is nothing but a murderer and needs to be tried as such.

  Every day that passes in this place makes me feel like my skin is turning into scales. The phone threats have started up again and the senior officer summons me one more time. He is curt with me, which tells me they knew what I have been up to. I thought that remaining silent and not publishing articles would make me invisible, I thought I was through with them, but apparently something has happened, something I do not understand, as though word got out about the ‘Syrian Women in Support of the Syrian Uprising’ initiative or that I had been meeting and working with the coordination committees. One thing is certain: they have informers. It is inconceivable that they would track me with this level of precision. I voice my concerns to the young men and ask them to be more cautious. I really feel like the young men and women are in danger, to the point that I meet with one woman coordinating the group in our ‘Syrian Women in Support of the Uprising’ initiative just to tell her I can not meet with them anymore, for their own protection. I am more than just disappointed. There are supposed to be three meetings but nothing ever comes of them.

  I think once again about how much passion is necessary in order to carry out actions like these in such troubled times. I am dissatisfied. I really don’t feel like I can work at such a slow collective pace. The meetings continue but the outcome is unsatisfying. I know a number of women think me impatient, but the truth of the matter is that I am fed up. I knew that time is no longer on our side and that the people going out to demand their freedom move more quickly than the sluggish movement of the elite. I am convinced that the morality based on religious foundations that had existed for centuries, not only here but all over the world, must be recreated with theories of morality based on a different concept, one which the people were demonstrably fond of. The essence of the Syrian uprising is moral first and foremost.

  Returning to the details of reality… Today I concluded that the security services were not going to just leave me alone, they were following me outright. Actually, the senior officer seemed to be the only one who believed that my stand on the uprising was directed against him personally as an Alawite. My patience with him was starting to run out. He told me he knew each and every person I met with. I thought he was lying but they have intelligence indicating I kept silent only in order to work in secret. I don’t think they have any more details than that. Or maybe they know something about our night-time meetings with women in support of the uprising. I believe that my involvement with any group at this point would put them in danger.

  I can’t write.

  I can’t work on the ground with the young people from the coordination committees.

  I can’t do anything.

  All I can do is hurt now.

  I know that my breaths are numbered, each inhalation is numbered. My movements. My steps. Everything is numbered and watched. There’s a prison inside me. They won’t have to arrest me. That much is certain. But they will drive me to madness, they would have known that I won’t be able to go on like this, they would have wanted to tell me they were even monitoring the air I breathe. I thought about going underground once and for all but the existence of my daughter held me back. It would be hard for her to go into hiding with me.

  Today Angelina Jolie appears on television, visiting the Syrian refugees. My heart skips a beat. Syrians are now displaced persons; celebrities adorn themselves with them. Turkish politicians kiss Syrian babies in photo-ops as the filthy game of politics extends further and further.

  I hear there is a national council being formed to confront the regime, presenting itself as a representative of political forces inside the country as well as abroad. As the army reinforces its presence along the Turkish border, the village of Khirbet al-Jouz is surrounded and its people are hunted down and detained for helping the refugees from Jisr al-Shughur. Still, army defections continue, only this time it is in the naval forces where the officer Mahmoud Habib appears to announce his defection; Sergeant Ismail al-Shaykh Salih from the air force mukhabarat proclaims his defection as well. My day ends with a young man appearing on al-Jazeera as a representative of the local coordination committees. I feel a small satisfaction. At least something good is happening today.

  20 June 2011

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  A lifeless mind.

  A lifeless heart.

  It’s time for all of you to get out of here so I can start dancing to music once again, my only life amidst this oblivion.

  I want to reclaim my passion for words, for the rhythm of Arabic letter
s, how I thrill at the letter “Jeem” as it plunges into a deep resting place, the letter “Alif” as it soars through an endless space, the breaking “Ya” as it rises toward forming the whispered whys and y’s, the letter “Noon” in its tender womb.

  I want to regain the warmth in my fingertips as they flutter like reeds in the wind, sniping words and painting images upon images in a world made of air. The world I belong to. I want to return to my passion for abstaining from the realistic details of human life, to get back to disdaining appointments and interviews and meetings and the ringing of telephones, back to my own private conversation that unites me with a cup of coffee.

  I want to reclaim my ability to obliterate real circumstances. I want one night of deep sleep without a fiery needle piercing my heart and ricocheting out of my eyes like an echo. I want the luxury of choosing the faces I will lavishly bestow upon my intimate life. Just like that, to put it simply, I want to go back to my solitude that is crowded with novel characters. They’re all waiting for me there, somewhere in my mind that is sick with them, that is sure with them. They’re waiting for you to get out of here, you idiots. I want a few simple things, like for my eyes not to tear up every hour, or not to jump whenever I hear a loud noise, not to bolt up like a crazy woman whenever my elderly neighbour who lives alone with her old husband screams. I expect that one of them is going to pass away at any moment now. I have been a bundle of raw nerves, how could I not be, falling asleep to news of killing and waking up to the stench of bloodshed and stories of imprisonment and torture.