Sisters of the War

by Rania Abouzeid

  A small group of defectors who had escaped to Turkey, led by a colonel, announced that they had formed a new rebel armed force called the Free Syrian Army. The Free Syrian Army leadership claimed that the armed men opposing Assad in Syria were all defectors, even though in reality the majority were civilians who picked up guns to defend their families, friends, and neighbors. These local armed men gathered into groups, and after a while each group started calling itself a battalion and using other military nomenclature such as brigades. The officers in Turkey said that the Free Syrian Army was organized like a regular army, with a central commander issuing orders that were followed by the armed men on the ground. In truth, it was disorganized, undisciplined, and decentralized, with defectors and armed civilians in Syria making and following their own orders, each battalion acting on its own or in limited coordination with the few groups around it. Like the government side (and its media minders), the rebels also had a certain narrative they wanted to tell the world—as well as things they wanted to hide. Each side in Syria accused the other of lying about death tolls, about who killed whom, about the nature of the protests and their demands, in a bid to win local and international sympathy and support.

  By April 2011, Assad had lifted the dreaded emergency law (but replaced it with a law just as severe) and given stateless Kurds Syrian citizenship. He ordered other reforms, but at the same time the blood of protesters continued to be spilled, fueling more demonstrations. The Syrian conflict had spiraled into a deadly cycle. Protests often resulted in people killed by the security forces. The funerals of the dead then became political gatherings (all it took was a few chants or anti-Assad speeches), gatherings that Assad’s forces would violently suppress, resulting in new deaths, new funerals, new demonstrations.

  Still, the revolutionary wave sweeping across Syria in 2011 didn’t wash over every part of the country or all of Syria’s fourteen provinces. It was strongest in rural areas like Ruha’s, and much weaker, almost absent, in the big cities like the capital, Damascus, and the great northern metropolis of Aleppo, Syria’s second-largest city and the economic engine of the country.

  The rich merchant class of the cities stuck with the Assad regime because they benefited from that association with power. In the same way that the regime detained anyone who was against it, regardless of their sect, also in securing power, religion mattered less than politics and interests and making money (but only for those closest to the regime and for others it wanted to woo). Naturally, family came first. Bashar al-Assad’s maternal cousins, the Makhloufs, became the richest and most powerful businessmen in Syria, with monopolies in telecommunications and other industries. Other people, including senior Sunni Muslim clerics and rich Sunni and Christian traders, were also given preferential treatment in Assad’s Syria in exchange for their support and money.

  Many other, less-influential Syrians supported Assad because they believed in the Baath Party’s secular ideology, or they benefited from it, or they feared what would replace a system that had crushed alternatives. Syria’s neighboring states of Iraq and Lebanon provided ugly historical examples of what wholesale state collapse looked like. It was violent and destructive. In 2003, the United States and its allies invaded Iraq to depose its dictator, Saddam Hussein, but the invasion also destroyed the country, plunging it into a vicious sectarian war between Iraq’s Sunnis and Shiites and other communities. More than a million Iraqi refugees fled to Syria to escape the terror in their homeland.

  Decades before the events in Iraq, from 1975 to 1990, Lebanese sectarian militias had divided and destroyed their country during a bloody civil war that pitted neighbor against neighbor. The historical memory of what had happened in Iraq and Lebanon once the leadership in those countries collapsed were not events that any Syrian (except perhaps extremists on both sides) wanted to replicate.

  Damascus was largely immune to what was happening elsewhere in the country, although there were anti-Assad protests in some neighborhoods in the capital and in outlying suburbs. Damascus was heavily protected because it housed the headquarters of all the security and intelligence services and the government. Anti-Assad opposition activists tried to get the mighty capital to rise and join their revolution. They organized tayyar (literally “flying”), or flash, protests that lasted fewer than ten minutes, allowing participants to escape before the security forces found them. “The aim is to get people to move,” one of the activists explained. “If people protest, it will encourage others. Some residents of these areas watch us from their balconies and the women [cheer] in support. Other people curse us. It doesn’t matter, it’s a psychological tactic to show the regime that these areas are not as safe as it thinks. We count on the security forces then coming to those areas, setting up checkpoints, detaining people, and generally being annoying, because that will prompt the residents to demonstrate.” It didn’t really work.

  Assad’s regime launched a psychological campaign of its own. New billboards sprouted all over Damascus, sponsored by SyriaTel, a telecom firm owned by Assad’s cousin Rami Makhlouf, declaring that Syria is fine. The message was everywhere, from talk shows on government-run television and radio stations, to billboards and food packaging. In many ways, regime-controlled parts of Syria indeed were fine. The Syrian currency, the pound, had slipped somewhat in value because of the unrest, but it was not yet a major drop. Some items were slightly more expensive in the markets, but there were no shortages and you could still buy anything you wanted if you could afford it. At the same time, large pro-Assad demonstrations were organized in the capital to counter the anti-Assad demonstrations elsewhere.

  Lojayn, Hanin, and Jawa didn’t know any protesters and didn’t see any demonstrations. Nobody was protesting in Blouta or Mezzeh 86, either for or against the government. Their school, unlike some others, didn’t bus its students into Damascus to participate in the pro-Assad rallies that were choreographed by the authorities to show support for the regime. The girls were still cocooned from the upheaval shaking Syria, and their parents didn’t feel the need to expose them to reality. Why frighten them, Talal thought, especially because he believed it would soon be over anyway. “We anticipated that the state, with all its power and weight, would not fall, and would not allow these protests to continue,” he said. Life carried on as normal for the family, although Talal began to hear disturbing sectarian, classist comments from some Sunni traders in Souq al-Hamidieh who sympathized with the anti-Assad opposition. “One told me, ‘I swear to God we will send you back to the mountains of Latakia that you came from, and on foot!’ ” Talal said. “I told him, ‘What do I have to do with anything, for you to say such a thing to me? I am not part of the regime.’ I began to sense this from some traders and feared that things might get worse in the future, but I don’t think anybody ever expected things to get as bad as they did.” He had heard whispers about the kidnappings and killings of small numbers of security men, including from Mezzeh 86. The men had been snatched in undercover operations by some of Assad’s opponents who had turned to violence, mirroring the brutal methods of Assad’s own intelligence and security forces.

  Talal kept the information, and his fears, to himself.

  Ruha didn’t tell any of her friends what was happening at home, that Baba—Maysaara—didn’t live there anymore, that she didn’t know where he was, that he’d steal back for visits when he could. She even kept it from her best friend, Serene, with whom she walked to school every day. Serene lived at the foot of Ruha’s street, at the bottom of its gentle-sloping incline.

  Ruha loved Serene, a tall, fair-skinned girl with long blond hair, but she didn’t trust her. Even children had picked sides in the conflict, and Serene was not on Ruha’s. That wasn’t the problem, because, as Ruha saw it, “everyone can have their opinion,” but she thought it safer to keep hers from Serene. “I knew that if I spoke, somebody might tell their parents and might harm us, so I didn’t say a word to anyone.”

  The blond girl was one of the many s
tudents across Syria who had participated in pro-Assad rallies. She bombarded Ruha with details of the events she’d attended. She’d recount the chants, what she wore, the route, and how much she loved the president. Ruha didn’t tell her that she and her sister Alaa had twice marched with the other side. “There were a lot of children,” Ruha said of her first protest, “but I didn’t know if there was anyone from my class because everybody had their faces covered.” Ruha, too, had covered her face with a scarf and walked with women who wore niqabs (face veils)—not because they were religiously conservative but because they wanted to conceal their identities for fear of retribution. “I knew what I was doing,” Ruha said, explaining why she kept things from Serene. “We are children. If we were to speak of these things, we’d become enemies from a young age. That’s wrong. I didn’t want enemies.”

  But on one occasion, Ruha’s anger got the better of her. She hit Serene and pulled her hair after Serene said that protesters were ruining the country. Serene went straight to Ruha’s home and complained to Ruha’s mother, Manal. “My mother apologized to her and told me off for hitting Serene. Two days later we reconciled. The problem was with the adults, not us,” Ruha said. “We quickly forgot and became friends again.”

  As a child, Ruha had everything she wanted, but she knew older people didn’t, so she marched for them. It was her decision. “When Baba participated, I decided to participate, too. Maybe if I was older, I might have been against him, on the other side, but I was young, so I walked with him.” To Ruha and her sister Alaa, the demonstrations were exciting but also tinged with fear that the security forces might arrive and break things up, arrest people, or shoot into the crowd. Ruha and Alaa would clap and sing along with everyone else (there were many new pro-revolution songs) and then return home and tell the rest of the family about it.

  Uncle Mohammad was terrified that something bad would happen to Ruha and Alaa at a protest, so he asked his nieces to stop going. “He was scared for us,” Ruha said. “I didn’t want to go to any more protests because I didn’t want to break his word, and I knew he was doing it because he was looking out for our own best interests, but I also wanted to go because I thought I was participating, helping people to get what they want.” The sisters obeyed their eldest uncle. Instead of attending protests, they would climb up to their flat roof and watch the demonstrators move through the streets. “They’d chant, ‘God, Syria, and freedom, that’s all!’ ” Ruha remembered.

  Life at home without Baba was difficult for the girls. Maysaara’s absence deeply affected all of his children, but especially his eldest daughter. Ruha’s grades dropped. She didn’t care for Arabic, her favorite subject. She couldn’t focus in class. At night, her dreams left her afraid to close her eyes. She’d wake screaming that she had to hide Baba. The nightmares were always the same—angry knocking at the door, uniformed men swarming into her home, finding Baba, then shooting him dead in front of her. Ruha was afraid to go to school in case something bad happened at home while she was away. “After our house was raided,” she said, “there were bombings in the town while we were at school.” Assad’s forces had escalated their response to the revolution. In addition to trying to quell the protests, they also fired artillery into unruly towns like Saraqeb, collectively punishing residents for rebelling against the regime, even if not everyone in town was against the president.

  In late spring, Ruha’s school was shelled during the last lesson of the day; it was English class for Ruha, math for Alaa. “It sounded like a rocket,” Ruha said. “In the beginning, there were bullets,” Alaa recounted, “then rockets.” Soon there would be helicopter gunships and warplanes and barrel bombs and chemical weapons. It was the fate of their town, Saraqeb, to be crucified at the crossroads of two key national highways: the south–north M5 and the west–east M4. It meant that Saraqeb was smack in the middle of roads that the Syrian military used to transport supplies to its men across the country, roads that the army was determined to keep even as rebel fighters were trying to seize them.

  Alaa remembered diving under her desk like all the other children the day bullets pierced the window of her classroom. She was in second grade. “Hide so you won’t be shot!” her teacher yelled. Alaa found it odd that she was shivering, even though it was warm. She didn’t realize it was her body’s response to being afraid. Her hands couldn’t blot out the ugliness of things breaking around her, even though she was pressing them as firmly as she could against her ears. Ruha and her classmates rushed to their teacher: “She hugged as many of us as she could. We were all gathered around her in a circle, screaming, standing in the corner. I was terrified. I emptied my lungs of air.”

  That was the sisters’ last day at school. After that, their mother and aunts homeschooled them. It was too dangerous to risk being shelled and dying in class. Ruha was happy to be home. It felt like an extended vacation, but it also meant she couldn’t escape household chores. In between lessons, Aunt Mariam, the schoolteacher, taught Ruha how to knit a revolutionary-flag design onto scarves and headbands. Assad’s opponents had chosen a new Syrian flag, one that had green, white, and black horizontal stripes with three red stars in the middle white stripe. (The official Syrian flag had red, white, and black horizontal stripes with two green stars in the middle white stripe.) Ruha wore the headbands around the house, especially when her father sneaked back for visits that only raised her fears that he would be captured at home.

  But when the Syrian army’s tanks stormed through Saraqeb on August 11 during the holy Muslim month of Ramadan, Maysaara was still in hiding. The government forces were looking for protesters. Like the first time, the second raid on Ruha’s home also began in the darkness before dawn, but this time, everyone in the family was awake. They had gathered to share suhoor, the predawn meal ahead of the daily Ramadan fast. (In Ramadan, Muslims don’t eat or drink anything, not even water, between sunrise and sunset.) Gunfire broke out, shattering the early morning quiet. “To the cellar!” shouted Ruha’s mother, Manal. The children ran across the courtyard and into the arched room with thick stone walls. It was the farthest place from the front door. Manal helped her mother-in-law, Zahida, into the room. They were joined by Uncle Mohammad’s wife, Noora. Uncle Mohammad wasn’t there; he had gone to the farm early that day. There was no way to warn him or Maysaara because the electricity, cell phone network, and internet were cut that morning before the raid. The cellar door was left slightly open to let in light, but it also let in sound.

  The hailstorm of bullets sounded as if it was getting closer. Ruha’s skittish aunt Noora prayed aloud, the same words over and over: “Dear God, don’t let them come in. Dear God, keep everyone safe. Dear God, protect the men.” Ruha’s mother flinched at every bullet, every bang, every scream. Ruha was frightened by the fear of the older women. “If we’re going to die,” she whispered, “at least we will die together.” She knew that the regime was detaining children to lure in their wanted fathers, to force them to surrender in a cruel deal—the father’s arrest for their children’s release. It had happened to a three-year-old cousin on her mother’s side. Let them take me, Ruha prayed, and leave my brother and sisters. Her grandmother Zahida drew her youngest grandchildren, Mohammad and Tala, into her soft belly and covered them with a blanket. “Mohammad was screaming, ‘Leave me, I want to fight them!’ ” Ruha recalled. “We all told him to shut up.”

  * * *

  Across town in her three-room apartment above the gym, Ruha’s aunt Mariam heard wailing. Her neighbor’s adult son was being dragged from his home. She sneaked to the window, parted the curtain slightly, but heard more than she could see. Her elderly neighbor was begging for his son’s release.

  “Get inside, old man! It’s none of your business!”

  Aunt Mariam crawled along the floor of her living room, afraid her silhouette would draw the men inside. She crept up the stairs to her flat roof, peered over the edge, and saw two buses in the middle of the street, soldiers moving in and out of ho
mes, as well as shabiha, the paramilitary government thugs, dressed in jeans and sneakers. She couldn’t tell what was in the buses. “I saw what I thought were pillows, they were white shapes. It took me a while to realize they were men who had their undershirts pulled over their heads.”

  She held up her cell phone and tried to film the buses, to share evidence of what was happening, but she couldn’t focus the image. Her hands were shaking. Where were her brothers? Where was Maysaara? Where were her nephews? Were they among the “pillows” in the bus? “God is with us,” she murmured, whispering the words of a famous Muslim scholar to give herself strength. “And anyone who remains silent against an injustice is a mute devil.” The least she could do was bear witness and pray for the men in the buses.

  * * *

  Back across town, Ruha froze. Banging on the front door. Her heart sank to her feet. Her mother opened the door, and uniformed soldiers swarmed in. Ruha and Alaa screamed when the men entered the cellar. They upended all the furniture and snatched from the wall a decorative 1910 musket that had belonged to Ruha’s late grandfather. “Ruha started crying and asking the men to get out,” Alaa remembered. “They were carrying guns.”

  “I breathed when they left,” Ruha said. “I felt I could breathe again.” It was only the first of two raids that day. The afternoon Muslim call to prayer was echoing from minarets when the second group of invaders, these not in uniform, stormed into Ruha’s home. They were the shabiha. Some had their faces covered. “They said ugly things to Mama that made her cry,” Ruha said. “They were very mean and nasty, they swore at me. They told me to shut up and stop crying. I don’t know how, but I stopped. I was worried about Mama. They told Mama, ‘Tell your husband to surrender to us because when we find him, we will step on his neck and break it. We will kill your brothers, too.’ Mama was crying.” They stole Manal’s jewelry, but Maysaara had once again escaped them. Ruha’s uncle Mohammad, however, was not so lucky. He was taken from the farm.