A Woman in the Crossfire (35 page)

The doctors were a security front. They didn't show any mercy. They treated me as though I were a sniper or a criminal. I couldn't see out of one eye and I didn't know what the point would have been for him to lie to me by saying I wasn't going to be able to see out of it ever again. They wrote me a prescription for some medicine but before we got back on the bus they took it away and tore it up. ‘You want medicine you son of a…' I'm a bastard. I don't deserve medicine.

“They took us back to the security branch. There were more people there who looked just like us, some even worse off. There were people from Douma, from al-Hamidiyyeh, from al-Tall, from Dar al-Umawi. We go inside the room and the senior security officer tells me to cover my face when we leave the prison cell and that I am not allowed to see anyone, not the interrogator, not the torturer, not even the path. Once my eyes are covered, he asks, ‘What's your name? Your father's name? Your father's Muslim Brotherhood,' he tells me, ‘and you're with the armed Jund al-Sham organization.' I start laughing because we had absolutely no connection to religion whatsoever. I tell him, ‘Excuse me, if you're accusing me, I'd be glad to respond, but if you're informing me of something, then I simply must plead ignorance.' ‘You don't have any rights,' he tells me. I tell him about my father's regular glass of
araq
and how I'm not a believer. At this point, he gets insulted. He tells me to go back, and naturally I was beaten the whole way. Back in the cell they interrogated me like five times. Every time there was whipping and bastinado, their most famous weapons, of course, used with extreme violence. It was the worst. I sit there, a board flat on my back, and they ask me questions. As soon as the question is posed, they start beating my feet with an iron pipe, hard enough to break them. The wounds are still there, some of them have started to bruise. My eye's still black and blue, my teeth are broken, my chest still hurts.

“After five interrogation sessions I admitted I was at the demonstration. ‘Why didn't you say so at first?' they ask me. ‘You never gave me the chance, from the moment you picked me up you started beating me, you never asked, you just kept beating me, you ask me why, I'm telling you I was at the demonstration, you never gave me the chance, just kept beating me nonstop!'

“Then they left us there like that for another day. Of course the food was nasty. We went on a hunger strike anyway.

“The next day the lectures started. I like to call it ‘the intellectual
shabbiha
', those jingoistic lectures we've had to sit through ever since first grade.
His Excellency the president and the homeland and you are the future.
As soon as we went inside everything changed. Suddenly we were traitors, dogs, little boys, brats. In there, it had been just the opposite:
You are the children of the homeland, the children of this land. You are all beloved human beings. There may be some dogs among you. We know who they are, and they aren't going to get away from us. May God preserve his Excellency, the president, and keep him with us. Because he's such a great human being he's going to let you go, there's been an amnesty. Come on then, guys, with our blood, with our spirit, we'll sacrifice for you, O Bashar!
Naturally, we were all coerced – anyone who didn't chant was beaten. I had a problem, though. I couldn't even chant because they had beaten me so badly. They started saying, ‘Come on guys, we're your brothers, we only beat you to teach you a lesson.' Then the intellectual lecture begins: all the accomplishments, the democracy that was on the way, the economic liberalization, the sacrifices. ‘Just be patient with us and you'll see what we're working on.' They couldn't sleep through the night, as if we were behind them and our demonstrations wouldn't stop troubling them. And when he spoke, whenever he mentioned the name Bashar al-Assad he would raise his voice for us to cheer… but nobody did, so he would stab his finger at us. ‘Come on, do it, do it!'

“When he found out I was from Masyaf he really got pissed. I could tell how angry he was from his sarcasm. They deal with you in sectarian terms. ‘You're from Masyaf? So you're an Alawite, what's the matter with you, you jackass?!' They didn't treat us like people, more like sects.

“They ask my Christian friend – by the way, I'm sorry, we call him the Christian but he has a name and I'd shout it out to you – ‘How did you know about the demonstration?' From
al-Akhbar
newspaper, he says. ‘Whose paper is that?' they ask. ‘Hizballah.' ‘Well I'll be damned, a Christian in Douma comes out with Sunnis and a group of Shi‘a, what religion is your God, anyway?'

“After the lecture, they brought us all together and made us sign two pieces of paper with a fingerprint.
Everyone signs this, and it is the intention of everyone who does to no longer participate in any action or to take part in any demonstrations.
We were forced to sign. If you asked what the white piece of paper was, they beat you.
It's your job to sign!
We did and got back on the buses where we were forced to chant. They were all assembled in Douma waiting for us. Afterwards we learned they had formed a delegation in order to go and speak with the president. On the day we were arrested there was a massacre in which fifteen people were killed. There were two snipers, gunfire. The next day when we went out for the funeral. There was a heavy sadness, a black city, a three-day strike. When we reached the square, they unloaded us from three buses so there wouldn't be commotion in the city. They unloaded us and took off right away. As we got off, we watched the bus drive off behind us, and we gathered together to form a demonstration, all of us bloody and broken.
With our blood, with our spirit, we'll redeem you, O martyr! God, Syria, Freedom, That's It!
we shouted in response to those who forced us to repeat their slogans. There wasn't any security. The place was completely empty. There was another funeral the next day.

“The next day my friend came to see me. He had been crying. I thought it was because he believed the Alawites had beaten me up for being sectarian. I told him I wished he wouldn't talk to me like that. It wasn't the Alawites who beat me up. It was the authorities. Then he clarified that he was actually crying because the ones who beat me up were his cousins.”

 

That is the end of the testimonies I made sure to pass along in colloquial speech. I felt they would be truer that way than if they I translated them into modern standard Arabic. I have abridged this final testimony to stand in place of scores of similar ones, and written it in modern standard Arabic. It was completed through correspondence.

There is a strange mood spreading among Syrians. Someone cries when his relatives beat up a friend. It was a kind of countermood that created all this violence in the first place.

 

A Final Prisoner's Testimony

“I was arrested at a demonstration in Arnous Square on 19 May 2011, and held in jail for six days. During the demonstration we carried banners and chanted for an end to the siege of Dar‘a, shouting,
No to Sectarianism!
and
Spilling Syrian Blood is Forbidden!
We repeated the Syrian national anthem. Just as they grabbed me I was in the middle of reciting…
venerable souls and a glorious past…

“The first people to grab me were dressed in civilian clothes, all those itinerant merchants in the market were actually security forces. They grabbed us, beat us up and kicked us. They shoved us into one of the stores and cursed us.

“The shopkeepers were terrified as the security agents shouted,
Thief! Thief!
One shopkeeper helped out by hiding a girl in a fitting room. We were hit violently and furiously. A security unit arrived with the officer who started cursing us. Then they put us on a bus, hitting us the whole time with tasers and iron chains. We arrived at the security branch in al-Maysat, where they also beat us badly. We were blindfolded. If we fell down on the ground they beat us even more, stamping on us until we reached the interrogation room. In the interrogation there were simple questions about how well we knew certain people. Then they would hoist up our legs and violently bastinado us on the soles of our feet. The whole time they frightened us and cursed us. We were blindfolded the whole time. Blindfolded and with my hands tied, they took us downstairs. I walked through the darkness with someone behind me until I ran into a wall and fell down on the ground. They had been giggling all along because they knew I was about to run into it. Then their laughter rang out and they stamped on me.

It was the same deal when I came out from interrogation: beating and kicking and electric prods. We were also blindfolded while we were being taken from one security branch to another. The new branch was on Baghdad Street in the middle of Damascus, but I only learned this later. The same mechanism upon going into interrogation: beating and kicking and curses. There was a young man there with long hair. ‘Are you a faggot or what?' they demanded, laughing and making fun of him. They started making him really uncomfortable. We were a source of mirth for them. Even though there were doctors and writers and intellectuals among us, they wouldn't stop insulting us, beating us and kicking us. They stripped us completely naked inside the branch, then put our clothes back on and transferred us to a cell with drug and arms smugglers. They were nice to us for a little while. Then the interrogation began. There were political activists and ex-prisoners in there with us. It was a psychological war, they told us we'd never get out of there, and when we used the word ‘reform', they'd beat us even more savagely. I was blindfolded while an officer questioned me. I told them I was a high school student, that I was at the demonstration by coincidence and that I only went out with them because I heard people reciting the national anthem. They beat me even more because they knew I wasn't telling the truth. They wanted to know who had invited me to demonstrate but I didn't give them any names.

They made me lie down on the ground with my hands tied behind my back, my legs bent at a 90 degree angle, and they bastinadoed the soles of my feet, then they placed a tire around them. The interrogator asked me about the political parties in Syria and I pretended not to know anything; I played dumb. He asked me about Facebook and I denied knowing anything about it. After being tortured, I was sent back to the cell. The officer told the prison guard, ‘Take him back.' I thought they were going to use electricity. They marvelled at the fact that we were all leftists and secularists. They thought everyone who went out to demonstrate had to be a Salafi.

“My second interrogation was in the hallway. I was kneeling there with my eyes closed. This interrogator was less bright and he actually believed my story. I could hear other people screaming under torture in the adjacent rooms. There were three old men from Douma in there with us. One old man wanted to hand over his son because he was going to march in a funeral. People thought they had to give up their children in order to protect them. When the father handed over his son they arrested him as well. They smashed his son's head against the wall and made him look at his father coming back from violent, utterly brutal torture. Not all the interrogators were Alawites but when they shouted at us, they all spoke with an Alawite accent. Talk in the security branch was sectarian. They all said we must not go out and support the fundamentalist Salafis. They were very annoyed by the demonstration we had in Arnous Square, in the centre of Damascus. People from all different sects had come together alongside secularists.

They made us all sign testimonies, but I hadn't signed mine yet. We knew we were about to be released. They gave us back our cell phones, blindfolded us and we left. While we were leaving we were subjected to the same carnival of beating and kicking and insults. In the bus we remained blindfolded with our hands bound as well, our heads on the floor as we were subjected to the same beating. They started messing with our nerves in the bus, sharply turning corners in to knock us onto the floor. They all laughed as we tumbled down and stood back up again, over and over. When the bus stopped, one of them loaded a Russian Kalashnikov, saying loudly, ‘Sir, do we kill them all at once?' We were terrified and they all laughed, saying, ‘Get out, you motherfuckers.' As we were leaving they beat us again with unparalleled brutality. At the Kafr Sousseh branch there was a torturer who would hit us with a kind of sadistic pleasure, savagely beating us and then laughing. With each blow he would let slip a little giggle, spinning around in place, then coming back to beat us and laughing out loud all over again. He flayed us with a whip that was like the head of a snake.”

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

Say No to Dialogue Friday

 

The French ambassador enters Hama and visits a hospital in order to make sure the wounded are receiving treatment. The American ambassador visits Hama as well, and the Syrian Foreign Ministry releases a statement voicing its distress over the visit, declaring that what the ambassador has done is contrary to diplomatic protocol. Syrian television says the ambassador met with
agents provocateurs
in Hama and incited them to violence, while an American spokesman says the Syrian authorities were informed of the ambassador's visit to Hama. The Americans say they support the Syrian people in their transition to democracy. It appears that the regime has failed to find a military or a political solution and has failed to garner the approval of the great powers.

Today there are sixteen dead and scores wounded, some of them in Damascus. Washington decries the response of the Syrian authorities to the ambassador's visit even as hundreds of thousands of Syrians pour out into the city squares. Say No to Dialogue Friday affirms that the demonstrators do not want ‘dialogue'. Richard Ford drives around among the protestors. The domestic opposition and the opposition abroad agree there will be no dialogue. Hama is the epicentre of the protest movement.