Another sister complained about the flour shortages. “My granddaughter keeps asking for cake, she’s used to me baking cakes. Where am I going to get flour?” She’d asked a relative in Turkey to send her four kilos. “I don’t care how much it costs,” she said, “and I paid for transportation, too.” The women reminisced about missing the little things they had all once taken for granted, like flicking a light switch and knowing there’d be electricity, or having enough water to take a shower.
The room was dim, lit by a thin LED strip hooked to a car battery, which bathed the women in a grayish hue, just enough to see one another. Their nightly gatherings had become a ritual—air strikes permitting—like an informal therapy session. One night, they recounted the new revolution-inspired baby names in town. An Arab child was named Azadi, a Kurdish/Iranian word for freedom. A baby girl was called Thawra, Arabic for revolution. Two of the younger women, Mariam’s nieces, said their friends were marrying foreign fighters from Jabhat al-Nusra.
“Why are they doing this?” one of the younger women asked. “We haven’t run out of Syrian men yet. Bashar is trying his best, but we still have young men.”
One of Maysaara’s sisters said a foreign fighter told two of her sons to put out their cigarettes because smoking was a sin. “They just ignored him,” their mother said. One of her sons told the fighter, “Who are you to tell me what to do? You are a guest in my country.”
“They’re fighting here for us,” Mariam said. “I won’t cover my face for anyone, but who else is helping? At this point, I don’t care if the devil intervenes.” It was one of her most commonly used phrases. “We just want to finish this. Enough.”
Desperation had driven some Syrians to embrace the Islamists, who grew in strength and numbers until they were powerful enough to try and impose their ideas on others. To ultraconservative Islamists like Jabhat al-Nusra, smoking was a sin and alcohol was strictly forbidden. The group expected women to be covered from head to toe, dressed in a loose black cloak called an abaya, in headscarves and face veils that left nothing except the eyes exposed. That’s not how Syrian Muslim women dressed. Many, like those in Ruha’s family, covered their hair, but they also wore jeans and tight shirts, long belted jackets, or colorful long-sleeved ankle-length dresses embellished with diamanté and other adornments.
Many people in the Syrian opposition, including some armed factions of the Free Syrian Army, opposed these strict Islamist ideas and sometimes voiced their disapproval. They eyed the increasing clout of conservative Islamists and feared what they might turn Syria into. “We’ll deal with them later,” some rebels would often say of the extremists, but for now, the disciplined Islamist fighters were needed to help bring down Bashar al-Assad—the bigger, more immediate common enemy. Beyond that common goal, the various types of Islamists and other rebels didn’t agree on much else. Although they were all technically on the same side against Assad, they competed with each other for foreign funding and supplies of weapons and ammunition, for the egos of certain commanders, and for prestige. Battalions like Jabhat al-Nusra and others like it were more organized and disciplined than the often ragtag groups that identified as Free Syrian Army, and frequently seized the upper hand in battles against the regime—as well as other rebel battalions that occasionally took them on—snatching the lion’s share of any war spoils after battle.
In 2013, Jabhat al-Nusra, which until then had kept its ties to the global terrorist organization Al-Qaeda hidden, was exposed as an Al-Qaeda group. The secret was publicly revealed because of an internal feud within the militia that split the group. Some members stayed with Jabhat al-Nusra while others joined a new faction, a group known in the West by its acronym ISIS. ISIS and its Iraqi leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, would soon demonstrate with grisly brutality just how violent and oppressive they were, clashing with rebel groups in the Free Syrian Army, snatching territory from them, and imprisoning and killing their fighters.
Both extremist groups—Jabhat al-Nusra and ISIS—wanted to create a conservative Islamic state in Syria, one where religious minorities like Christians were second-class citizens, and Alawites and others who weren’t considered “People of the Book” were even less than that. (The People of the Book are followers of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.) Some other rebel groups also wanted an Islamic state, but their vision was very different. Islamism is an umbrella term that represents a spectrum of views. Some Islamists, including battalions within the Free Syrian Army, wanted Syria to resemble Turkey, a state where religion was important in the private lives of many citizens but wasn’t imposed or forced on people. Groups like ISIS, on the other hand, wanted to force their extremist ideas on all Syrians, even on Muslims whose practice of the religion differed from their own. For groups like ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra, the enemy wasn’t just Assad and Syria’s religious minorities, it was any Sunni Muslim who disagreed with their views—whether on the rebel side or the regime’s—and that included women like Aunt Mariam, who refused to cover their faces and obey the extremists’ dress code.
Aunt Mariam’s niece Mayada, seated alongside her relatives in Grandmother Zahida’s living room one night, said that in her heart she wanted an Islamic state—but not the kind the extremist Islamists talked about. Mayada, a young, strong-willed English literature major, recognized that in Syria, a multiethnic and multisectarian society, any type of Islamic state was unlikely. She believed that an Islamic state would be “more just.” Her aunt Sarea, who was just a few years older, snickered at her remarks. She wouldn’t live in an Islamic state, Sarea said. Unless that state was modeled on Turkey, it would be an excuse to lock women in their homes.
The women debated the issue for hours. The Muslim holy book, the Quran, was clear on the rights of women and minorities, said Mayada. “Clerics will find a thousand Hadiths [sayings of the Prophet Mohammad] to counter it,” Sarea replied. In the end, both women agreed that an Islamic state was not the best option—not because Islam doesn’t grant rights to women (it does), but because the male clerics who interpret the religion could not be trusted.
Another of Maysaara’s sisters retold the story of how her home and car were damaged when two rockets landed nearby at lunchtime one day. “It felt like the sky was raining fire,” she said. A neighbor’s young daughter died. A displaced family living a few doors down lost a child, while another of its children was left without upper limbs. “I didn’t know where to go,” Maysaara’s sister said. “To the basement? The glass was shattering. To the bathroom? I could hear the yelling outside and the announcements from the mosque, then my daughter called and said, ‘Mama, a [bomb] has landed on my in-laws’ house.’ I put on my headscarf and ran out to see if I could help. What could I do? Their house was on top of them. People screamed, ‘The warplane is coming!’ I ran back home. Smoke was everywhere. They retrieved my daughter’s in-laws in clumps.”
“We’re sick of it, we’re so sick of it,” she said. “My grandson, my darling, he hemorrhaged so much when their front door was blown to pieces. We’re scared about his eyes. They’re still pulling out shrapnel from his body. Every day, it seems they find something new, he’s peppered with it. The warplanes just won’t stop! They’re always in the air. Don’t they take breaks?”
Blouta was boring, but at least it was safer than Damascus, where car bombs were occasionally exploding and rockets were indiscriminately landing on homes and schools as well as military positions. Hanin and Jawa knew the rebels weren’t far from them, that they were congregated in the nearby villages of Salma and Doreen. They’d heard the adults discussing rumors that many of the armed rebels there weren’t even Syrians, that they were mainly hard-core Islamists with Jabhat al-Nusra, ISIS, and other groups. That they were Islamists was frightening enough to the girls, but that there were a large number of foreigners among them, fighting and killing Syrians inside Syria, was even worse. What gave them the right to be in a country that wasn’t theirs, and to impose their ideas on Syrians? It was a view that Ruha’s f
amily, and others on the rebel side, agreed with.
What the Alawite sisters didn’t know—and what would have terrified them if they did—was that many of the foreign fighters were drawn to the area by the prospect of killing Alawites. In Doreen alone, seventy-five men had signed up to be suicide bombers to help push rebel forces deeper into the Alawite heartland, the Sahel. There were foreigners fighting on Assad’s side, too: Lebanese from the Hizballah group, Iraqi Shiite militias, Afghan mercenaries, Iranian and Russian military advisers, and later, Russian pilots, but those fighters didn’t view Alawites and religious minorities as the enemy. The foreign fighters on the rebel side waited with Syrian fighters in Salma and Doreen, facing the sleepy Alawite villages until August 4, 2013, when, in a predawn raid, they seized eleven Alawite villages—and 106 Alawite women and children.
* * *
Jawa couldn’t sleep the night she was kidnapped. An odd smell drew the eight-year-old out of her bedroom sometime after 3 a.m. She wasn’t sure what it was; it smelled scorched, and she wondered why anyone would burn something outdoors at such an hour.
Jawa watched cartoons in the living room. Her sister Lojayn, also roused by the unidentified smell, joined her after shutting off the gas canister in the kitchen, thinking it had leaked. Their mother, Awatif, woke to drink a glass of water and urged her daughters to go to bed. She was still in the living room when the lights went out, the television darkened, and gunfire erupted outside. “Hurry, gather in the corridor!” Awatif told her children as she scooped up her sleeping son. Hanin was also still asleep, so her mother carried her into the corridor.
Men knocked on the gate outside.
“Who are you?” Awatif asked. Nobody answered. She repeated the question. Again, no answer.
“It was dark, we couldn’t see much,” Jawa said. The men outside “grabbed something, it sounded like metal, and smashed it against the gate. It opened. They came into the garden.” The children heard rustling.
“Mama, let’s escape!” Jawa whispered. There was just one window, a small one in a bedroom, that wasn’t covered in metal security grills. “Mama, let’s go through that window,” Jawa said.
Her mother shook her head. “I can’t fit, and your older sisters can’t fit through it. I don’t want to lose you. What if they take you?” Awatif and her children, including Hanin, who was now wide awake, waited in the corridor, terrified, wondering what to do and what would happen next.
The front door burst open, and armed men with scarves covering their faces barged in. Awatif fell to the floor, covering her baby son with her body. Lojayn locked herself in a bathroom, Jawa dove under her bed, while Hanin hid under her parents’ bed. The men were in the corridor.
“Kill me but don’t harm my children!” Awatif told them.
“If there are children, bring them to me,” a man replied.
She didn’t respond. It was dark and hard to tell how many men there were. The rebel fighters spread out through the house, shooting at shadows. Awatif panicked. “Okay! Okay! Stop shooting!” she yelled. She called her children to her.
The family was marched onto the verandah. Hanin struggled to walk—she’d been shot and was bleeding. She could feel her warm blood streaking down her leg but couldn’t tell exactly where she’d been hit; her whole body seemed to hurt. A rebel tank was outside their home. Gunfire and screaming in the streets. Jawa’s mother asked her to go back into the house and get their shoes. She didn’t want her children stepping on empty bullet cartridges. Jawa returned with shoes for everyone except her mother.
The men with the guns told the family to join the neighbors and relatives walking in their nightgowns and pajamas toward one of the larger houses in the village. Jawa was terrified of the armed strangers, of the gunfire, of Hanin dying because she was bleeding. She felt guilty that her mother was walking barefoot because she hadn’t been able to find her slippers.
They entered a house crowded with neighbors, relatives, and screaming, crying children. The house shook from explosions, and Jawa shook with it. Windows shattered. Jawa could hear gunshots and shelling. A neighbor who was a nurse began treating the wounded, but she had little more than cotton wool and disinfectant. Jawa saw the woman cover a young girl’s bloody face with a blanket. She didn’t understand that the child was dead. Jawa hid behind her eldest sister, Lojayn. Some rebels had shot children like Hanin while other armed rebels distributed boxes of cookies to quiet the children. A rebel asked Lojayn for coffee.
“How do you take your coffee?” Lojayn asked him.
“It’s not to drink,” the fighter said, “it’s to put on wounds. Bring me the container.”
The fighter poured coffee grounds on Hanin’s thigh to stem the bleeding. Hanin was too scared and weak to resist before she realized that he was trying to help her. He wrapped the wound with fabric he tore from a curtain. His face was covered. Only two or three of the armed rebels revealed their faces, with bushy beards.
One of the bushy beards stepped out onto the balcony of the house and in a loud, strong voice began proclaiming, “Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!” to a shower of gunfire.
A rebel with a walkie-talkie and a Kalashnikov rifle walked into the house. He seemed to be in charge. He told the children to go outside, the women to stay. Jawa walked behind Lojayn, who carried their baby brother.
“Put him down and stay with the women,” an armed man told Lojayn.
“He won’t be quiet except with me and his eldest sister,” Awatif said. “Leave him with me.”
“No,” the armed man said.
It was left to Jawa to carry her crying baby brother outside and help her sister Hanin, who was leaning on her. She heard the man with the walkie-talkie ask what he should do next. “Keep the women, take the children out,” came the screechy response.
“And after that?” the man asked.
“I’ll tell you later.”
The children were directed toward an Alawite religious shrine not far from the house. It was desecrated. Rebels were still inside, smashing images and wiping their dirty boots on religious texts. Other rebels brought the children jam, chocolate, and cookies before herding them into a truck. Jawa’s baby brother sat in her lap, her sister Hanin behind her with several of their cousins. There were bags of bullets at Jawa’s feet. She was scared to step on them.
Two girls told the two armed men in the truck that they wanted to say goodbye to their mothers. “Go and see them for a minute,” one man said.
The girls came back crying, their faces blood red. “They’re all dead!” screamed Zahra, one of the girls.
“Liar!” Jawa yelled.
“Jawa and Hanin, your mother was shot in the mouth and heart and stomach.”
Jawa didn’t believe her. “The armed men said they’d let our mothers follow us,” she said. “I thought maybe Zahra was saying that just to frighten us. I didn’t think it was true, but I wasn’t sure.” The truck started moving. Hanin, an asthmatic, faded in and out of consciousness. The children whispered among themselves. Whatever happens, they told each other, wherever they take us, we’ll stick together.
* * *
Talal’s life changed with a single sentence. He was asleep in Mezzeh 86, unaware of what had happened in Blouta and the surrounding Alawite villages. His cell phone was set to silent, so he didn’t hear the eighteen missed calls attempting to rouse him in the early hours of August 4, 2013. He woke at a quarter to six, just as his brother’s wife was calling. She lived in a village near Blouta that the rebels hadn’t invaded.
“She said that armed men had entered my village and killed my wife and children and everyone in it,” Talal said. “That was how the information first reached me.”
Talal’s wife, Awatif, had called him just the night before. She had told him that she was worried, that something didn’t feel right.
“Don’t be scared,” Talal had told her, “they’ve been saying they’re going to attack our villages for years now; it’s just talk, it’s just to scare
you. The army is on the top of the hills around us. They won’t dare come.”
Now he frantically dialed Awatif’s cell phone. Somebody answered but didn’t speak. Talal heard screams, cries of Allahu Akbar, and then the line went dead. He dialed and redialed. The calls were unanswered. He sent text messages. For God’s sake, answer, he wrote. Tell me what’s going on. No response. He drove toward his village of Blouta, one of the eleven villages seized by rebels that morning, but he could get no closer than a military checkpoint three kilometers away (not quite two miles). The Syrian army was shelling his hometown, backed by air support from warplanes and helicopter gunships. So much gray smoke that it looked like vertical clouds obscuring the houses.
Talal’s panic deepened. He remembered what Awatif had told him: If there was trouble—and she had time—she would hide their children in an attic-like storage space above the kitchen. He pleaded with a soldier at the checkpoint. “ ‘Please, sir, don’t let the planes hit my house, there’s a 99.99 percent chance my children are still in it,’ ” Talal recalled telling him. “I don’t know if he listened.”
* * *
The truck stopped; the children were ordered into a nearby house. It was small and dirty. “The injured were on the floor,” Jawa said. “There were a lot of injured.” Jawa felt the responsibility of caring for Hanin, who was wounded, as well as her baby brother. She wondered whether she’d ever see her father again, and whether her mother and Lojayn really were dead, as those girls had told her. Soon after all of the kidnapped Alawite women and children were transported to that dirty two-room house, Hanin was whisked away by their rebel captors. Jawa wasn’t sure where her sister was, or whether she’d return.
Sisters of the War Page 10