A Woman in the Crossfire (17 page)

The second sign came at dawn two days after the previous incident. At 4:30 in the morning I was out on the balcony watching dawn break across from my house over Mount Qassioun and the slums stretching up above the al-Muhajireen neighbourhood. I was cold but took pleasure from the captivating silence and peace. Nobody could take that moment away from me. I went inside and made a pot of coffee. A moment later I walked across the living room to enter the bathroom and wash my face. I would look out of the back window at the dilapidated buildings with their details that amazed me: old Damascene houses, shacks scattered between the tumble-down earth buildings, roofs paved with old decorative stones, half-collapsed – these were the backs of commercial establishments. The view from inside them would cause some unhappiness, especially the Damascene plaster of Paris house being eaten away, decaying, left to rot. Looking down at those houses I would strain to hear the raspy sounds they made. I turned my head away from the bathroom window to pick up the towel and saw myself in the mirror. I saw myself clearly. I was standing there in front of myself, looking at her, feeling frightened. I didn't scream and I didn't move, it was just a moment. I stared into the depths of myself, and I stared into my eyes for a long time but she wasn't angry, I mean I wasn't angry as I looked at myself. It was just a harsh, blind stare. Then I ran into the living room… and she/I disappeared.

The third sign came yesterday. I had been upset by all the messages that were pouring in for me: some people in the opposition sent me letters in which they accused me of disappointing them by remaining silent but in reality I hadn't been silent. I found those letters so strange. Letters from Alawites, accusing me of treason. There were death threats from regime supporters. I even received a bizarre letter that read, “Dear unveiled infidel, the Syrian revolution doesn't want an Alawite apostate like you in its ranks.”

Letters pour in from all directions. I am caught in the crossfire. The third sign was harsh. I was home alone, screaming, kicking stuff around and cursing the clock that forced me to live here inside such narrow horizons, pacing back and forth between the balcony and the sitting room. I could see myself sitting there in anger. As I watched myself, that woman who was me opened her mouth and whispered. It was less a whisper than a hiss, and she watched me with a devilish expression. I was me, but for a few seconds I didn't realize I was not myself. At that moment, the woman tried to get up. She was holding something in her hand, trying to turn towards my chest, and my hand was holding my heart. It didn't last for more than a few seconds. I closed my eyes and it disappeared at once. I thought that when I opened my eyes again I would be dead. She didn't kill me, I didn't kill me, but piercing sirens rang out in my head.

 

Today the dead reach as far as Lebanon. A picture of a boy screaming and a woman being killed, another woman wounded. Bullets are fired from the Syrian side: a Lebanese soldier is killed. Human beings running, streaming, escaping across the border, women carrying simple things on their heads, crossing over to Lebanon. The Red Cross asks for assistance and the refugees who arrive await the unknown. Tanks assault the wide town, pulling out of one city only to encircle another. The president says that the dialogue with the opposition is about to begin, the opposition stipulates from the outset that the killing and the siege of cities must stop and all prisoners of conscience must be released before any dialogue can begin, but the killing continues and the siege moves from one city to another. Confirmed reports arrive that the president has given orders to halt the military solution on the fifteenth of this month and that the reformist option has commenced. Yesterday, state television announced they had defeated the armed men; this news had to have come from general security itself.

Wasn't the president supposed to form a dialogue committee with the opposition? They were painting a Surrealist picture these days, but I knew that in reality it was all coiling like a snake around the uprising in the Syrian cities and towns. I know all too well that the real reforms being demanded by the demonstrators mean one thing and one thing only: the fall of the regime. The difference is that this fall would be peaceful, if they actually carried out their promises to hold democratic elections. But I don't believe they will simply relinquish the spoils they have come to expect from this country, they're going to fight to their last breath, even if they have to turn Syria into one big grave, for them and for the people.

Right now, at exactly nine a.m., sirens squeal in Arnous Square and the intersections connecting the al-Rawda, al-Shaalan, al-Hamra and al-Salihiyyeh neighbourhoods. Stepping out onto the balcony, I look for the source of those sounds, thinking they must have been ambulances but discover instead that they came from yellow cabs. People are scared, in retreat and the cars typically have a few men inside. Looking out from the balcony, I spot another yellow taxi with a group of men making ambulance siren sounds, zooming past stoplights, as people in front of them jump out of the way. We all come out onto our balconies; people in the street cower in fear. In reality, those are security forces doing that. Everyone in Damascus knows that most taxi drivers are hired to serve in the security apparatus. On the one hand, these actions are meant to be intimidation; on the other hand, they actually do arrest and kidnap young people in the street. I witnessed many such incidents with my own eyes, particularly during demonstrations. They would hunt down young men one by one, throw them into taxis and speed away, as the shrieking sounds of their cars resume.

With every sound I hear in Damascus, I imagine Syria being stripped of its freedom once again. Now, too, I can imagine what it means when cars shriek like that.

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

Today the bombardment of Talkalakh continues. The images of refugees in Lebanon kept me up all night. The testimonies I hear from people who were at the heart of the action make me even more nervous. I can barely keep my cool or focus on a single thing. It's going to be hard for me to carry on like this. I have been trying to relax for the last two days, but I can't. The only solution is sleeping pills, but they turn me into a zombie who sleeps and wakes up, then wanders around the house like a vagrant only to go back to bed.

It is now 5:30 p.m. Stepping out onto the balcony, I look into the street to see whether the two agents are still outside my house. Maybe I am just imagining things. I don't see anyone. I haven't been out for two days. Today is day number three. I amuse the agents who are watching me, who oversee my surveillance. I am special. Thinking it's tragicomic for me to be besieged like this, I try to focus on what has happened over the past two days. Video clips on YouTube stress me out, so much news coming from all directions. My appointments with witnesses from various cities have been cancelled out of fear and I have started becoming afraid even to meet up with my friends because my presence could cause problems for them. The hate mail still rains down on me from all sides. Today I received a letter asking me to return to what I was doing before and not to disappoint them, not to leave the Syrian people to their inquisition because of my fear; the author says he had thought I was a free Syrian woman but now it seems the regime has been able to intimidate me, or perhaps that was because I am an Alawite.

Silent in the face of the letter, I am not going to reply. What could I say to him and his kind about courage anyway? Should I tell him how I have struggled just to stay alive? That they asked me to write an article of support or appear on state television in order to proclaim my loyalty? What should I say about the mail I get from Alawites asking me to stand side by side with my people and my family? Should I tell him that high-level officials in the regime want me to work for them? What do I say to the mail that keeps pouring in from the people of my city, threatening me with death and announcing that I am disowned by the people of Jableh? Indeed, what do I say to the mail asking me to return to the true path of Islam? I ignore all the mail. I don't reply to any of it. I try to get back to the testimony I took down from an anaesthesiologist who managed to get into Dar‘a.

The man was so broken up that he was barely able to give me any information. Getting to see him wasn't easy. I had to change taxis three times, weaving through neighbouring districts in a town just south of Damascus as a precaution against being followed by security. It would have been hard for me to deal with someone getting arrested on my account; I would never forgive myself if something like that ever happened. I got into one last taxi before arriving for my meeting with the young friend who was going to take me over to the doctor's house.

The idea was for me to get in and out of that town quickly. I wasn't going to be able to live like that for very long. Every day I woke up there feeling as though my heart was about to stop, that I had reached the brink of madness, with bouts of headaches that could only be stopped with tranquilizers. The place was normal. Damascus and its suburbs and a lot of places seem normal, as if nothing is happening, but everything is poised to explode at a moment's notice. This morning I met up with a writer from Suwayda who told me about the collective punishment wreaked on the people of his village and his relatives because he had gone out to demonstrate and how one of his neighbours said she was going to hand him over to the security forces for being a traitor. He told me how in Suwayda they felt an unbelievable kind of
schadenfreude
and rancour towards the people of Dar‘a, which only intensified my sadness and anxiety. He left his house and came to the capital, fleeing the collective punishment. He said he was going to write down everything that had happened to him in order to be a witness for posterity. Thinking about what he said, the first thing I am going to do is send these memoirs to a group of friends abroad in the event that they arrest me or kill me as I heard they were preparing to do, or in the event that something else happens or a war breaks out. Anything is liable to happen here, but all the possibilities are black and don't bode well. We were living in anxiety, protecting it and nourishing it, dying in it. I return to my notebook and begin to transfer my conversation with the doctor from Dar‘a.

“We founded a secret medical centre to treat the wounded,” he says. “We did the same thing here in Damascus, when it was necessary, and in Bosra there's an entire hospital controlled by the youth of the uprising. We founded the medical centre during the first week, on 21 March. Previously I went three times per week to a medical centre to work as an anaesthesiologist, but when the events started, we founded this centre.”

“What did you do at the centre?”

He is silent for a bit when I ask him that, he steps back and sighs. More agitated than at first, he says, “In Dar‘a there were atrocities that never happened in Musrata or even Gaza, the only difference is… (raising his voice) there was phosphorus in Musrata. In Dar‘a the killing was direct, we saw various cases of murder but most of them were killed with bullets in the head or in the chest. Do you know what I heard from security as I passed through the checkpoints? They said they were going to teach all of Syria a lesson in Dar‘a. That's why they focused the killing and collective punishment there. One thing I found out about recently was the mass grave of the Abu Zayd family. Do you know their story?”

He continues, “This family had a beautiful house, security wanted to take it over but the owner resisted and wouldn't leave, so they killed him along with his children and took the house, not only the Abu Zayd house but many houses in Dar‘a. Every neighbourhood was cut off from every other by tanks and military checkpoints. There was a Palestinian woman bringing in medicine and food to those neighbourhoods from the Palestinian camp. The people were helping each other.”

“How many patients was the centre seeing daily?”

“There were several other centres besides ours. The young men were always working, the women who were still alive and the men over 50. Everyone else I swear to you was either locked up or had fled or was dead. Imagine that; for fifteen days, anyone who stuck their head out of the window of their house would be killed. They turned Dar‘a into a giant prison, the electricity and water and communications were cut off twenty hours a day. I saw a vegetable refrigerator that the young men had put corpses in just to preserve them in preparation for burial because of the curfew. I asked the young men where all the corpses were. They said that they were in the vegetable fridge so that the security forces wouldn't steal them. As for our centre, there were about 80 dead bodies and approximately 250 patients. We had about four different centres there.”

“How did you get through that military and security siege?”

“We would sneak in through Bosra.”

I can sense that he doesn't want to give me any more information, so I stop there, asking him, “Were there women and children among the dead and wounded?”

“90% of the dead were young men and the killing was done with regular bullets, I was impressed by all the young boys between 15 and 16 years old. I felt sorry for them. Their moustaches were just starting to grow, it was like fuzz. They were just children and they were shot in the head or in the chest.”

He stops talking. Swallowing hard, I light a cigarette as I always do whenever I am on the verge of tears. A hissing sound sneaks out of my throat as I hold back my tears, Oh God this is so hard for me. For the thousandth time I tell myself, I am not ready for all of this, I am going to die soon, as in one of these stories. He stares at me and I tremble. I imagine the young boys laid out on the ground, the soft fuzz on tender lips, shaking even more as I think about how I was a mother of one myself. I am going to cry as soon as I get out of here, as I return to the taxi all alone I will cry for all the Syrian boys being killed by Syrian men. My eyes will be all red when I get home and my daughter will look at me and say, “You were listening to a story.” She'll bring me a glass of water and grumble, “Oh God, Mama, everything upsets you!” I'll pull her close to my chest and cry. She'll stroke my hair without understanding what I am feeling, but she'll hold me for a long time before making me a cup of tea.