A Woman in the Crossfire (30 page)

They woke me up in the afternoon and took me to the office of a major who was nice. He tried talking to me about the opposition even though I told him I wasn't in the opposition. He apologized for my being in jail and said he wished there didn't have to be any female prisoners at all. He told me I had to eat, that I should not refuse food, because in the evening I was going to open my Facebook page for them. In the evening I opened my Facebook page.

I would go out into the prison courtyard without eating anything, but some agents from the political security were sympathetic towards me and one of them gave me an orange. I couldn't eat the filthy prison food. One of them was an Alawite from the coast, he was very nice and brought his own food and forced me to eat. We had human conversations and one time he told me, ‘You put yourself in this situation.' I told him, ‘So have you.' When I told him I felt lonely in there, he said he did too.

“Then a different kind of pressure started. They wanted to take my statement again and started interrogating me. There was an officer who was constantly screaming, he seemed very angry and impolite. I would answer him curtly. The whole time they kept bringing others and comparing what I said with what they had said, they talked about treason and a food convoy that was headed for Dar‘a, but I insisted I was only trying to provide humanitarian assistance. On that day I cried from the cold. I was hurting from the cold and they took my statement again in which I affirmed to them that I hadn't intended to be in touch with the media and that all I wanted was to deliver humanitarian assistance and put out a statement about the siege of Dar‘a.

The next day they took me to the
Palais de Justice
, but the case didn't stop there and we went to the lodging house in Kafr Sousseh, which was where unclaimed foreign workers, Filipinas and Ethiopians and others were taken. It was inhuman, and I couldn't believe such a place existed in Syria. The people's circumstances were horrendous; the conditions were harsh, some female servants had been there for a year or even two because they couldn't find anyone to cover their travel costs. One of the servants was silent; she wouldn't talk and looked like a frightened animal; she was feral. A woman in the next room wanted to kill herself; in another room there was a woman who had lost her mind. One servant told me about the horrifying things the people she used to work for would do, awful things I can't even talk about. Another woman approached me. I had a sandwich and she asked me for half so I gave it to her. She then broke that half in half and gave it to another woman, who broke that into even smaller pieces and started handing them out to the other women. There were more than 30 women in a single cell. The room was small and we were crammed on top of each other.

The next day we went to the
Palais de Justice
, where the judge questioned me while I was bound in chains along with the other young people, like common criminals. As we waited for a while in the dock at the
Palais de Justice
, I noticed my brother was locked up there as well. He shouted my name and I shouted back his. We saw each other before we were both taken away. I don't know anything more about him.”

This story was told to me by a woman, an engineer from an educated and wealthy family, her body was slender, her skin was as soft as a baby's, her voice only barely came out and she was always laughing. After she had finished her story I couldn't believe such a delicate young woman had ever been in prison. When I said goodbye to her I felt like I was suffocating. After we left, I asked my friend who was driving the car to pull over so I could go on alone. She stopped the car and I got out. The sun was blazing and I felt like I was about to collapse in the middle of the street. I decided I had to stop meeting female and male prisoners, and that I needed to be alone for a few days. My soul was clenched. A taxi pulled up and as I got in I thought about how many people were fated to die between morning and afternoon in this land. I was getting ready to leave the country and I was more than a little afraid of not being able to return.

In the evening I attended a mourning ceremony. How could I walk through those neighbourhoods? How was I able to confront the madness all around me? I would avoid looking directly into people's eyes, I was afraid of eyes. I wasn't afraid of talking, only eyes confounded me.

The house where I went to pay my respects was right in front of me and the mother of the young martyr was standing at the end of the hallway that leads directly to the front door. There were three of us and I wanted to avoid any confrontation. I didn't want to look into that mother's eyes. I didn't want to cry either. Who ever said that language isn't impotent? I didn't dare look into her eyes, and even though I wanted to tell her,
We are all your children
, I kept silent. As a mother I understand just how ridiculous it would have been for me to say something like that. I remained silent and sat there for a while. The silence was solemn until a woman got up and started talking about the martyr. The women all ululated and I felt a knot in my heart. The women all talked about the martyr and another woman commented on it all. They were all talking about him as if he were still alive. I had spent my days listening to the stories of prisoners and meeting with people who had just got out of jail, following the news of bloodshed and people who were killed, running through the streets from place to place. My blood was turning into vapour, it really felt like my skin was a cover for continuous evaporation. Trying to look that silent, dignified mother in the face, I could see red rings around her eyes. Suddenly my daughter's face appeared right there in front of me. As the mother turned to stare right back at me, I gazed into her eyes. It was only a moment, no more than a fleeting second, but it was enough for us to share that piercing sadness. Round crystal balls scattered in an existential void out in front of me, that lovesickness nobody will ever know, but which I noticed in the eyes of that 50-year-old mother. I felt like my throat was about to cave in, like I was a cloud of fumes set to explode.

I ran out of the gathering, out into the street. My girlfriend caught up with me and asked, “What's the matter?” At that point I burst into tears, crying out loud. I could hear the sound of my own crying, which I never heard from the cool and collected mother. The voice of the bereaved mother who had lost her son a few days ago in last Friday's demonstration sprang from my throat. I knew, my entire being was certain, that she would be able to guess why a panicked woman like me might have run out of there. I sat down sobbing. She must have known that I saw my daughter's face in her son's. The rules were for us not to stay at mourning ceremonies for more than five minutes as a precaution against raids by the security forces, who broke up such occasions on a regular basis. Thus my girlfriend took my hand and turned me around. As we walked down the street, she told me, “I think you need a nice long rest.” I had heard so many stories about sons dying in front of their fathers, about a young man's head rolling down dead in front of his family and siblings, his blood and guts going everywhere and his brains spilling out of his head that was separated from his body as his skull came to rest between his legs. Women whose children were killed right in front of them. Houses ruined and demolished and burned as their owners watched. And most important of all, I had heard women tell unending stories about how Syrians had been helping one another, as if they were one big family, against the practices of the security forces and the
shabbiha
. Stories I will come back to one day.

..............................

This morning I sit down to write up what I recorded about Hama, while I wait for the coming afternoon, which has become like a curfew in Damascus. A young woman from Hama told me the story of a female doctor. A man brought seven bodies to the morgue in order to store them there until they could be buried. This doctor said the man seemed half-crazy as he tried to convince her there was nowhere else to store the bodies until the burial. Thinking he was deranged, she told him she only had enough space for two bodies, which was the truth. The man left, and the doctor would later find out he was telling the truth and that there were dead people without anyone to bury them or to protect them until they could be buried.

I write down the testimony of a journalist who stayed in Hama for a few days. He was in hiding and we met in his safe house:

“As soon as I arrived in the city I saw twenty thousand demonstrators chanting,
Peaceful, Peaceful, No Salafis and No Infiltrators, We are all Syrians
, chanting for freedom,
We're Muslims, We're Alawites, We're Christians
. I saw women riding in a big car that trailed behind a demonstration. My girlfriend was at the demonstration with me, and we saw women demonstrating everywhere, out on the balconies and in the streets, every particle in the air was demonstrating in Hama. It was obvious we weren't from around there. Someone came up and asked if I spoke Arabic. They thought I was a foreigner. We were afraid of getting arrested so we walked right in the middle of everything. At the head of every group there was a small truck with a loudspeaker. We climbed up on the Suzuki and started filming. The people were cooperative and nice to us. We were really afraid of the security forces. We didn't know at the time that Hama was a city that had been liberated from them. That was the first time in my life I felt such feelings, the feeling of freedom. After filming for about half an hour, we wanted to leave. It was just my girlfriend and I. Starting to leave, we grew more certain that we were about to be arrested. I held my friend's hand as we walked in a group and got in a taxi. We told the driver, ‘Take us anywhere.' He took us to the al-Hadir neighbourhood, near the Umar Ibn al-Khattab Mosque. Our friends came to pick us up.

“The next day we met with the doctor and did a television interview with her. She told me how she was treated when they arrested her and put her in with the whores, insulting and cursing her and how the people guarded the al-Hawrani hospital by forming a human shield around the building so that the security forces couldn't get in and take away the wounded. Then we met a woman whose husband and son were killed in 1982. She wouldn't let us film her, so we only recorded her voice.

She said, ‘In 1982 I was at home with my husband. I didn't know what was happening inside the city. Everyone was a prisoner in their homes. On 2 February the security forces invaded my home. My husband was holding a radio, listening to the news. He wanted the whole world to know what was happening in Hama. The security forces used the radio to beat my husband over the head until they killed him right there in front of me. My son was twelve. The officer said, ‘Kill him.' I threw myself at the officer's feet, begging him to let my son live. On the officer's jacket pocket I could see the words, ‘Death Squad'. They killed my son in front of me and I stayed in the house with my two small daughters and my youngest son. The officer and the security forces stayed for about two weeks. Every two hours they would raid the house with a new patrol, not just my house but everyone's. They would beat people up in their own homes. The electricity was disconnected and there was no water. People were starving.

They would come to inquire about the girls, pulling them out of the houses either to rape them or kill them. Sometimes the girls would be raped and then killed. Some girls would pour gasoline all over themselves so they could set themselves on fire before the troops and the officers would be able to come and rape them. There was a beautiful pregnant woman, the officers raped her and then set her on fire. There weren't any men around, in one week anywhere between thirty and forty thousand people were killed in Hama. I lived in a wooden house. The whole neighbourhood was made of wood. They set the whole neighbourhood on fire and we started throwing ourselves from the balconies. I lived on the third floor and threw my five-month-old son and myself from the building. Some women tossed out their furniture. Before that the army and the security had mined the buildings in order to destroy the al-Kaylani neighbourhood, which was one of the most beautiful neighbourhoods in the Middle East.'”

After an emotional pause, this journalist friend continues. As he tells me about the incident according to the mother he had met in Hama, I feel as if I am inside that mother's heart. I think about the horror that envelops me whenever I recall the officer threatening to rape my daughter. He didn't come right out and say it but he hinted at it. When I think about that mother, a salty sting washes over my eyes and I feel like I am on the verge of exploding, but I ask him to go on.

He says: “I went up to the building the woman had directed me to, and I saw a demonstration. I stood where the mines she had told me about had been placed in order to bomb the al-Kaylani neighbourhood in 1982. Right now in Hama there is neither electricity nor water, including in the al-Kaylaniyya neighbourhood that had once been a mass grave where they buried the people from the Hama massacre under their own homes, which had been destroyed by the bombs of Hafiz al-Assad and Rifaat al-Assad.

“Anyone who travels to Hama will feel as though they are entering a giant wound. That was the first time I had ever visited the city. Fate had brought me there in order to investigate atrocities; the city itself was one big atrocity. There wasn't anyone in Hama who hadn't lost somebody. They had all lost fathers or mothers or uncles. All the details of Hama have something to do with death and murder. I lived inside that atrocity for four days. I saw Hama heading in the opposite direction. We stayed there from 29 June until 2 July. Every single day there were demonstrations against the regime, even the children were coming out to say,
The People Want to Topple the Regime!
It was there that I met the leadership of the blocs and the coordination committees. The people were protecting them. On Thursday, 30 June, I met the leadership of the Liberal Bloc of Hama, and we agreed to broadcast live from Hama. They were prepared for anything, and they were working to make a national flag that was 2,900 metres long. They printed the words,
Get Out or The People Want to Topple the Regime
, on umbrellas and hats. They worked together to bring the demonstrators water. They were simple, ordinary young people. They didn't have any extremist religious views and I saw secularists among them. That's what I saw with my own two eyes.