A Woman in the Crossfire (12 page)

“When did the army first cooperate and make contact with security and the
shabbiha
?”

“I don't know the exact date but it could have been the first Saturday in April. Before they moved into al-Baida, before the communications were cut and the people started getting themselves ready and getting scared. We started setting up roadblocks before dawn. There were threats but no police, no security, no protection for anybody; it was just political security. The women were scared and carried sticks to defend themselves. After dawn prayers people were coming out of the mosque and I was in the garden when I heard the sound of heavy gunfire. I saw someone shooting from a car, bullets were raining down everywhere and I heard from the guys that somebody named A.S. had been wounded in the al-Qubayat neighbourhood. Four others and I tried to treat him, but he died. The guys followed after the car that had been shooting, when suddenly the driver jumped out and left behind the car, which the guys set on fire. We took the car registration. It was owned by
shabbiha
of the Assads, from the family of S. and the family of H. One of them was named I.S., and we were informed that those guys weren't just
shabbiha
, they were very close to the security services. We took pictures of the security agents under the al-Qawz bridge and pictures of some
shabbiha
pointing out certain locations to the security forces. The shabbiha were armed the whole time, even after this assault.”

“Where was the shooting at the army coming from?”

“From behind. All the soldiers who were killed were shot in the back. The shooting came from the house of a well-known man named F. H. He was close to the
shabbiha
and the security forces. Baniyas had been shut down for a month. There was a lot of recrimination among the people, who were now ready to die after all this killing and injustice. I mean, in the al-Baida incident, people were subjected to a lot of injustices and humiliation. You wouldn't believe how many bullets were fired. The army assaulted them and said they were out searching for weapons. Where were the weapons, though? During their search of al-Baida, the only person who got killed was a Christian man named Hatem. Where were the Salafis they were talking about? One of the guys told me that before he was killed the man had said, ‘I swear to God I'm a Christian.' He had nothing to do with what has going on yet they shot him on the spot! I personally recorded some footage of a 60-year-old woman. I filmed her house and the pictures spread everywhere; it later appeared on the internet. There were hundreds of bullet holes. They demolished her son's house and hers. I filmed a man sitting in a wheelchair, they broke his chair, broke his cane and stole what little money he had; it also got circulated on the internet. The people who did all of this weren't from the army, this was the security forces and agents who they say were loyal to Hafiz Makhlouf
¹⁶
.

“I also videotaped three meetings with three girls who were twelve, thirteen, and fourteen, who all told me how the security forces had brutally tortured them. What had those little girls ever done? They tortured a nineteen-year-old. He said their heads were cracked by the security forces' shoes, ‘They stamped on us,' he said, and they smashed them down on the pavement. There's another story from Baniyas about the practices of the security forces there: three visitors from Aleppo and Baniyas were quickly passing through the city. The security forces captured them, broke their ribs, stamped on them and stood on their necks and their faces. They mutilated the face of the guy from Aleppo who had just stayed with his friend from Baniyas and then he died under torture. When he arrived in Damascus his face was pummelled beyond recognition, his nose was gone, his eyes were missing. He had kids, too. The face of the guy from Baniyas who had been his host, A. S., was also pulverized, but he didn't die. Another guy from the S. family was hit by a strange bullet, which pierced him and came out leaving a gaping hole. The back of his body was torn wide open. This was an explosive bullet that the security forces were using to slaughter people; they used the same bullets in Jableh and Dar‘a and Latakia.”

His face goes slack, and I feel like there isn't any air left in my lungs. I pour him a glass of water, light a cigarette and motion to see if he is ready to continue, and he nods.

“Did all the media coverage of what happened in al-Baida play a part in preventing the region from being completely surrounded?”

“First of all there was recrimination and anger about all the practices that took place in al-Baida. The state media ignited the people's anger because it claimed the pictures were fake. We were trying to calm the situation down but the al-Dunya channel and Syrian state television played an incendiary role in stirring up hatred among the people and making them afraid of each other. We alerted the authorities to what the state media and its security appendages like al-Dunya were doing. Abd al-Halim Khaddam
¹⁷
was banned – as far as we were concerned he was a traitor – which comes through in our slogans at the demonstrations,
No Salafiyya and no Khaddam
. There were rumours propagated by the regime and if the people were left to their own devices there wouldn't be a civil war, but what the security forces and the
shabbiha
were doing was going to lead them there. They didn't use any guns. Even Nidal Junoud, who did get killed, was killed with knives. There's an unlikely story going around that the people defended themselves with sticks of dynamite.”

“How did the army search the houses?”

“They moved into al-Baida on 12 April, searching house by house but they didn't find any weapons.”

“What's with the story that some demonstrators came out wearing shrouds?”

“People got a little too excited, they began to prefer death over humiliation. I would have liked for the city of Baniyas not to carry out this kind of initiative.”

“There's a geographical divide in Baniyas between Sunni neighbourhoods and Alawite neighbourhoods. Don't the Alawites sympathize with their neighbours, didn't they stand side-by-side with them?”

“Yes, at first, but they were frightened and intimidated. Recently there was a young man who wanted to come out to the demonstrations with us but they threatened to demolish his house and kill his family.”

“How much intermarriage is there between Alawites and Sunnis in Baniyas?

“Not that much. Baniyas is divided geographically and there are a lot of ex-prisoners from the Iraqi Ba‘th, the Muslim Brotherhood, a lot of exiles and fugitives. Historically, Baniyas has been oppressed and marginalized by the state, but not in sectarian terms. What happened in Baniyas wasn't against the Alawite sect; it was against the Syrian regime. It's the practices of the state that feed sectarianism. The state is responsible for whatever sectarian strife is taking place. The Alawites in the villages around Baniyas are very poor, they suffer the same injustice. We must recognise that sectarian tension has become a reality ever since the state started nourishing it. On 18 April, I saw a gathering of young men. I asked them what was going on and they told me that the young men from the al-Qusoor neighbourhood were going to come out to kill Sunnis. I told them that someone from the J. family who was part of the
shabbiha
had told the Alawites that the Salafis were coming from Latakia to defend the Salafis in Baniyas, that they were already at the Seville restaurant and that they were going to slaughter Alawites. I ran over there to see what was happening but didn't see anything at all. When I got back and asked if anything had happened, they said the Alawite guys were coming down. So as we got ready, I pulled one of the guys aside and found out what was going to happen; the people weren't going to remain silent. Afraid there was going to be a sectarian massacre, I took a scooter and went up to al-Qusoor, an Alawite neighbourhood. Seeing the roadblocks, I asked someone, ‘What's going on?' He said, ‘Nothing.' Then I went back and Shaykh A. I. said, ‘There is no sectarian strife,' and asked the Sunni guys to go home, but they didn't. There were thousands of people hanging around but nothing happened. The ones who wanted to stir up sectarian strife were the
shabbiha
and the security. The people were smarter than that. Somebody told me that a man from the Alawite village of Barmaya rounded up the Alawite guys and asked them to go home. And that's how the rumours would grow, fed by the security and the
shabbiha
, in order to terrify the Sunnis and the Alawites at the same time.”

“Al-Marqab is known as an area for smuggling weapons. Could the people retaliate against what was happening with violence?”

“Anything's possible, violence begets violence, but you saw how they didn't retaliate. Besides, it was the people of Ra‘s al-Naba‘a in Baniyas who mobilized and not the people of al-Marqab, despite the fact that that half of the population of al-Marqab is from Baniyas. The army moved into al-Marqab. They had spent three days getting ready. Its forces were concentrated in several locations. We got news that there had been a mix-up in the orders given to the army. The army withdrew and then advanced and when they finally moved in, they came from the direction of the village of al-Zuba.

There were
shabbiha
sniping at the soldiers and one soldier got killed. The army moved in with gunfire and the people started demonstrating in the direction of the army. As usual, the army announced through bullhorns that they wouldn't harm anyone, that they just wanted to search. The army moved in, searched and arrested about 200 or 300 people. The mothers went out in order to demand the return of their sons and husbands who had been arrested even as the prisoners sat on the buses. Then the security forces sprayed gunfire chaotically. The people said that some of those who were killed were wounded from behind, which means there had to have been snipers. They arrested some of the mothers and children and four women were killed. There were four axes to the assault on Baniyas, from the thermal power station and al-Marqab. Two young men were killed and three were critically wounded. I think they're dead now, but how can you be sure when the phone lines are all cut, just like the water and the electricity? Even though there was a curfew and random arrests, the women started demonstrating and wouldn't give in to all the killing and arrests.”

Silence.

The young man stops talking. I wait. I don't push. Today Baniyas is cut off from the outside world, a chunk of earth floating in the void. Today the Syrian authorities will not let delegates from the United Nations enter Dar‘a. State media says they had gone in for hours. I remain silent out of respect for this young man. My hands are tingling from writing so much. I don't feel good about recording what he has to say so I transcribe everything. But a friend of mine videotapes and records him, and I memorize what the young man says.

I wanted to say, ‘So, in brief, Baniyas is occupied,' but I hold back, and everything inside of me retreats into a deep black pit, bigger than the black hole of existence. He does not wait long, apologising and saying we would have to finish up some other time, but I doubt we ever will. All the young men I meet with say the same thing, and then they disappear.

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

What a strange morning.

I wake up and touch my skin. I am just an idea, a character in a novel. I drink my coffee and believe that I am only thinking about a woman I'll write about one day. I am a novel.

I am living through a more realistic novel than I could ever write. Yesterday evening a few young men and women who went out to demonstrate on al-Hamra Street near my house were arrested. My friends no longer tell me the time and place of the demonstrations because they have lost faith in me and don't believe my promises that I won't participate in them anymore, that I'll be satisfied to watch from afar in order to keep writing. The last women's demonstration made them worry about me. I received quite a few reprimands. The demonstration passed nearby my house and I could hear the ambulance sirens spinning around the place. From afar I could see people pushing and running. The demonstration started in Arnous Square. When I met up with my writer friend who had participated in the demonstration she reported the following details:

“We all assembled in Arnous Square. I thought I wasn't going out into the street because we were all being watched after all. I had been thinking about working in some way other than going out for demonstrations, but I thought it was important for us to go out to demonstrate in the squares and not just inside the mosques. My girlfriend and I went out, we were all over the place, monitoring the presence of security forces. We went and sat on the steps in the square and started singing patriotic anthems. Then young men gathered around us and we all sang for the homeland, for Syria. There were about 150 men and women demonstrators, we videotaped it, we started singing the national anthem,
Guardians of the Realm, Peace be upon You,
unfurling and holding up high the banners upon which we had written,
No to the Siege, No to Violence, We Want a Civil State
. Then we started marching with our banners, singing the national anthem and heading towards al- Salihiyyeh. When passed through the middle of al-Salihiyyeh, the people in the market stopped on both sides of the street to gawk at us in amazement and fear and some in sympathy. We stayed there for about seventeen minutes singing
Guardians of the Realm Peace be Upon You
. Then the violent attack by the security forces began. They surrounded us. When they attacked we all started running, and people fell down on the ground. My girlfriend fell down too. I helped her up, and a man outside the glass storefront of one of the shops hit her. One of the al-Salihiyyeh shopkeepers rushed over and hid her inside his shop. Then a security goon broke into the shop while we were hiding inside. The shopkeeper told him, ‘There are women changing inside.' The shopkeeper came and showed us a safe route for us to escape. During the demonstration there was a young woman filming and the security forces attacked her and took away her phone. One of the young girls got arrested. They pulled out all the young demonstrators from inside the shops. Then they parked a bus outside the shop and put the young men inside. The people had all started asking what was happening and the security forces told them, ‘Nothing to see here, folks, these people are thieves.'”