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AMAL.HANANO

The Land of Topless Minarets and Headless Little Girls

A requiem for Syria.

BY AMAL HANANO | DECEMBER 11, 2012

Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else.

In Italo Calvino’s novel, Invisible Cities, a world traveler named Marco Polo describes the cities of a vast but crumbling empire to its ruler, Kublai Khan. Over time, the intricate descriptions of the cities begin to overlap until the khan slowly realizes that his appointed traveler has been describing the same city, an imagined city, over and over, in fragments — each vignette exposing another perspective, unveiling yet another city, where death mirrors life and cities are named after Italian women. Each city is suspended between reality and imagination, structured on a set of absurd rules, reminding the reader that a city can only be absorbed through short glances, each glance anchored to an object, a story, or a memory.

I’ve been reading and rereading Invisible Cities for over a decade. Before the Syrian revolution, Calvino’s poetics were safely rooted in the realm of fiction. When I recently picked it up to look for a quote, I began to read it once more — this time sneaking a few pages at a time between my daily intake of endless streams of gruesome images emerging from our all-too-real Syrian cities. For the first time, Calvino’s words detached from fantasy; Syria’s cities became embedded within the lines of the Invisible Cities. I listened, along with Kublai Khan, to Marco Polo’s narrations and tried to understand how cities become invisible.

Watching death has become a pastime of the revolution. There is much to learn from it. Death is sudden; it is shorter than a short YouTube clip. Death is a man wrapped in his shroud, bloodied gauze strips tied around his head, cotton stuffed in his nostrils, and the bluish-gray tinge of his skin. Death is the camera panning over mass graves where children’s bodies are arranged in long, perfect lines, then covered with rust-colored dirt. The death of Syrians accumulated so fast it seems impossible to comprehend over 40,000 lives lost in less than two years.

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The Price of Principle: Abd al-Majid Abushala

By Amal Hanano

Well over 100,000 Syrians have cycled through the Assad regime’s dungeons since the beginning of the revolution for a variety of crimes: speaking to foreign journalists, participating or filming a protest, or looking guilty at a checkpoint. These detainees, and their families who suffer with them, are but the latest victims of a brutal police state that has shattered countless lives over four decades of totalitarian rule.

Abd al-Majid Abushala, a prominent electrical engineer from Aleppo, is just one example. In 1970 he was instructed to inspect a construction site for a mansion in Mediterranean city of Latakia. He must have felt nervous, for this was not just any standard inspection for just any mansion, this was the future Latakia palace of Syria’s new president, Hafez al-Assad, who had just taken over the country in a military coup. But Abd al-Majid was not one to shirk responsibility; he was a man of principle, known for his integrity and honesty. He would pay dearly for the crime of upholding these principles and demanding them from everyone around him, from his children to his president.

During the inspection, he discovered a plan to supply the excessive electricity needed for the palace by diverting power from a nearby, government-owned cement factory (one of two in Latakia). As Technical Director, Abd al-Majid’s signature was needed to approve this illegal rerouting, but he refused. He asked, “Is it even conceivable to close down an entire cement factory so Hafez al-Assad’s wife has her electricity? I cannot approve this inspection.” After returning home to Aleppo, he joked, “She used to ride a donkey and now she wants an electric car to ride around in her house?”

After aggravating the fresh, self-appointed tyrant, Abd al-Majid was relieved from his nine-year post and would spend the next decade being juggled across the bureaucracy. At each new job, he would discover evidence of corruption and would responsibly write up detailed reports. Finally, in 1980, he was put in jail.

Abd al-Majid was born in Aleppo, in the distinguished Jalloum neighborhood within the walls of the old city. An extremely bright student, he achieved the highest marks in the country in the Baccalaureate exams in 1946, and was granted a scholarship to study at the École Polytechnique in Lausanne, Switzerland. He returned in 1952 and married his best friend’s sister, daughter of a prominent Aleppian merchant. During his influential Switzerland years, he embraced being a modern intellectual and distanced himself from religious traditions.

He was a handsome man. His speech was polite, he never swore or used improper expressions. He treated everyone with respect and was not won over by wealth or social status. But when he witnessed intentional deception or purposeful mistakes, his hot temper flared.

From 1961-1970 he set a positive example at the directorate for all his employees, arriving to work at 7:45 every morning before the employees and leaving after everyone else had left. He expected high standards of performance from all his employees, even the janitors. Under his watchful eyes, the Industrial Directorate became known for its cleanliness and organization.

His modest government salary guaranteed Abd al-Majid would never be a wealthy man. Yet, he provided the best life possible for his family; living in a rented apartment in the respectable Muhafaza neighborhood, taking his family on summer vacations every year, and making sure his children received an excellent education. In those days, such a true middle class life was still possible in Syria. At home, he was a loving and generous, but strict father. His only unbreakable rule: lying was forbidden.

Abd al-Majid’s everyday life was rigidly structured: every morning he would exercise for ten minutes, make his breakfast, make coffee for himself and his wife, and go to work. Taking care of his wife was his first priority. While in prison, he would ask about her and become elated knowing that she was fine. The guilt he felt for his wife was a heavy burden; he worried about her being alone, mistreated, or judged by a harsh society which doesn’t look kindly upon wives of prisoners.

Politically, Abd al-Majid was not a member of a specific party. He did not trust political organizations, but he believed in the rights and freedom of the people. He disliked Abd al-Nasser and viewed the short-lived union with Egypt as an Egyptian occupation of Syria. The Ba`th Party takeover of Syria in 1963, however, left him, like many others, disappointed and disillusioned. They were struck by the viciousness of the military coup after the peaceful separation with Egypt. His daughter says, “People were dumbfounded, like now, how we are dumfounded by the crimes we are witnessing.”

Then came the war with Israel in 1967 when Syria lost the Golan Heights, what is known as the nekseh, or defeat. “Every person felt a stab to their hearts, because in the morning they told us we destroyed Israel, and by the evening we found out that we were the ones who were destroyed,” his daughter remembers. Abd al-Majid’s classification of the Ba’th Party shifted from oppressor to traitor. Political analysis began to weave itself into every conversation he had, consuming all other interests. “My whole life I never knew any conversation in our house except politics. No talk about singers or dancers, no social gossip, only politics, she said. He kept a journal from his university days to his prison years, unemotional, detailed accounts of everyday events. His daughter calls his notebooks a “documentation of history.” The next 13 years would prove to be a personal nekseh to Abd al-Majid, marking the slow decline of both his country and his career.

On Wednesday, March 26, 1980, Abd al-Majid Abushala was arrested. He was 53 years old.

This prison narrative does not compare to the nightmarish accounts of physical torture and abuse we usually hear about. Instead, it is a much more common story of the breaking of a man who endures a grossly unjust punishment for standing for what he believed. Abd al-Majid’s story exposes the pettiness, stubbornness, and calculating brutality of Hafez al-Assad. This is the story of how the best and brightest are treated in Syria. Abd al-Majid was a natural born leader, honest and incorruptible, and he, like many before him and after him, was punished for his threatening attributes: his unwavering principles.

During the turbulent political climate of 1980, Hafez al-Assad was fighting the threatening internal resistance of the Muslim Brotherhood. In an attempt to expose any other potential opposition or secular voices of dissent, he allowed rumors to spread about holding “free elections” in the naqabat, professional unions in Syria. Abd al-Majid was excited to participate in an effort to balance the Ba`th-infested union boards, where corruption, cronyism, and rigged elections reigned.

People warned him, asked him to stay silent, begged his wife to convince him that it was a trap. But he, along with other engineers, lawyers, and doctors, was convinced that the intention was sincere, that this was an olive branch from the regime to the people who were clearly not part of the Muslim Brotherhood. He disregarded all warnings and told his wife, “I am not doing anything, I am only talking.”

Abd al-Ra’uf al-Kasem, the Prime Minister, encouraged them to proceed with discussions and planning, which they did openly, for four months within the walls of the union. Al-Kasem, a close friend of Abd al-Majid, assured them that if “the president does not grant these elections, I will go out on the streets and protest with you.” Of course, he never protested. Abd al-Majid’s daughter sent him a letter, years later, accusing him of betraying the men, and asking for his resignation from his newly acquired position as Prime Minister.

The trusting Abd al-Majid never doubted his friend’s sincerity. One day, al-Kasem brought in the group to discuss the “free elections.” He recorded the meeting, handed the tape cassette to the mukhabarat, Syria’s feared intelligence agents, and prepared a report that incriminated the entire group as traitors. That day, Abd al-Majid must have felt something amiss during the meeting; he went home, packed a small suitcase and hid it in his bedroom.

The next day, the mukhabarat arrived at the union with orders to arrest Abd al-Majid. He promised to cooperate, asking to leave the building and enter the car unassisted. He also told his young relative to go home and bring his suitcase. In a strange act of politeness, the mukhabarat waited until the suitcase arrived. Then they took him away.

His family was lost, like most families who face these circumstances. When a family member vanishes, they do not know where they were taken, who has taken them, who to talk to, or even where to start looking. There is always a fear of exposing yourself to the wrong people and exacerbate an already dire situation. An uncle asked a neighbor who was a part of the intelligence’s political branch (often times the mukhabarat you know turn out to be the most helpful). He heard that he would be released in a few days and delivered extra clothes to him.

He spent the next nine years in prison.

It took two extremely connected men, his brother, an army officer and his cousin Zuheir `Aqiq, a personal secretary to Hafez al-Assad, a month to find out that Abd al-Majid, along with five other members of the union board, was in al-Sheikh Hassan prison in Damascus. In 1980, al-Sheikh Hassan had a reputation for being a mini-Tadmor, in other words, “terrifying.”

What was he accused of? “Nothing. It is exactly like what is going on today, any person who opposes the regime, they will find an accusation for him,” his daughter said. His cellmates were professionals, prisoners of conscience, but they were often mixed with alleged Muslim Brotherhood members. They were not charged, they had no trial, they had no sentence. They were just placed in a cage, “tirbayeh,” to serve as an example to everyone outside.

Two months after his arrest, his family was allowed to visit every two weeks. In the beginning, when his brother was still an officer, they were allowed to visit him in the guard’s room. But soon after they were separated by a wired barrier, and then by a double barrier of two wired partitions with one meter of space in between.

The family began their almost decade-long cyclical journey back and forth from Aleppo to Damascus, a five-hour trip by bus, scorching hot in the summer and freezing cold in the winter. Twice a month they carried food, fresh clothes, and hope, and returned with a heavy load of laundry and sadness.

The first couple of years the union prisoners slept on the floor in the overcrowded cells. Later in ‘83, after the “events” of Hama, they were upgraded to bunk beds with thin coiled mattresses. He met many of the accused young men in prison, and he sent messages and letters to their families with his family. Often, these messages were delivered to families who had no idea where their sons were or if they were even still alive.

He existed in limbo, between hope and despair, within the perpetual promises of release, promises that were never fulfilled. Because of the visitation privileges, the union men were not subjected to physical torture, but they suffered torture that did not mark their bodies, such as malnutrition (sometimes living on one egg a day or a can of sardines) and psychological abuse. They were also constantly transferred between prisons, from al-Sheikh Hassan to al-Qal’ah, to ‘Adra, revisiting al-Sheikh Hassan every time there was internal (hunger strikes) or external (political unrest) turbulence to the system.

His wife spent the years preparing his favorite Aleppian dishes for days in advance, knowing he would probably not even taste them. The guards would inspect the food to check for contrabands and weapons, slashing open the mihshi, destroying the kibbe, gleefully humiliating her as they smashed the tightly rolled grape leaves into unappetizing mush. When he would finally get what was left, it would be a fraction of what she sent, but many times, he would get nothing at all.

Shahir Arslan, a prominent Aleppian attorney, once asked Hafez al-Assad: “Our generous Leader, won’t you grant them a trial?” hoping the union men could at least receive definite sentences to serve. Hafez al-Assad responded, with his cold-blooded stare: “Would you like me to put them on trial?” The attorney understood the implied threat. If there was a trial, the punishment would be worse, executions or life sentences, so he held his tongue. “No, we don’t want a trial, we just ask for your infinite mercy.”

In March 1989, after suffering from a cold that had lingered for six months, the prison doctor discovered Abd al-Majid was already at the end stages of stomach cancer. He was moved to the prison hospital, in extreme pain, suffering from internal bleeding. His daughter remembers the next twenty days feeling “like twenty years.”

She was told her father’s only chance to survive was for her to submit a “letter of mercy” to the president, delivered by hand to the presidential palace. The first draft of her letter was harsh, and she was told to “soften” the tone and add, “We wait for your mercy because you are al-ab al-rahim, the merciful father, the father of Syria.” After days of following the letter through connections and mukhabarat channels, they heard that it was rejected. Desperate, she decided to write another one. She did not have a pen or paper at the hospital, so she went to the store and bought some stationary and stood there writing the letter, starting “Your Excellency, the President of the Syrian Arab Republic” while the shop owner looked at her as if she were mad or playing a bad practical joke. She took it to the presidential guards and said: “I am not leaving until I know that this letter is in the hand of the president. And I want the answer today!” They stared at her in shock, and decided she must be very connected to be speaking with such force and confidence. So they took it in to Hafez’s office. The next day, Abd al-Majid Abushala received a presidential pardon.

Although he was pardoned, he was still considered a “flight risk” and was heavily guarded as he was transferred from the prison hospital to a private hospital for his operation. When his son, an accomplished doctor, arrived from the U.S., he was taken immediately to the political intelligence branch and interrogated for three torturous hours, during which the mother and daughter were paralyzed with fear, thinking they had taken the son to replace his father in prison.

The operation was of no use, the cancer had metastasized. Abd al-Majid was released and the guards were finally removed. He was sent home to Aleppo to live his last days. He died on the 21st of August, 1989. Before dying, his last wish was granted: tosee his son married. At his wedding, Abd al-Majid said in his speech to the guests, “I wish for this country; a better future.”

The aftermath of Abd al-Majid’s fate still affects his family until this day. His daughter says they speak of him daily, especially now. She remembers being honored that her father was in prison for his beliefs. She emphasizes that they only felt sadness, but never despair. It is a sadness that must linger with his son, a celebrated doctor in Saudi Arabia, who saves lives every day, but could not save his father.

Most of his cellmates — the union prisoners — were released after eleven years in 1991.

In Years of Fear: The Forcibly Disappeared in Syria, Syrian human rights activist Radwan Ziadeh writes: “The story of those missing in Syrian prisons is the story of a country that has devoured its own sons.” What makes Abd al-Majid Abushala’s story remarkable, is precisely how unremarkable it really is. It represents thousands of stories of people we will never know because their stories disappeared with them. It also reveals how tolerant we became toward the regime’s blatant abuse of our people. If we feel less compassionate towards the fate of this man and his family because it is not as gruesome, not as horrifying, as other prison stories, it is because Abd al-Majid’s story became the norm, the level of cruelty we, as a people, were willing to tolerate, trading our principles for security, devouring our sons for stability.

Abd al-Majid could never forgive Hafez al-Assad because in his unflinching eyes he was a traitor to Syria. And to him, betrayal of country was unforgivable. The war between the dictator, Hafez, and the engineer, Abd al-Majid, was a war of principle. What would he think of the Syrian youth chanting and fighting on the streets for freedom today? The death and destruction in Syria would definitely sadden a man who dedicated his life to building his country, yet the pain inflicted on Assad’s army and militias must have satisfied some visceral desire for retribution.

His daughter wishes he could have been here to witness a real protest in Syria against Bashar al-Assad. She imagines him sitting in heaven, perched in the clouds, “his heart fluttering with happiness,” watching them with pride, as they fight the war of principles that he had died for.

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The Eyes of Homs

By Amal Hanano
A loyal son of Homs braves planes and tanks to capture the destruction of his city. Courtesy of Shaam News Network, Aug. 14, 2012.

Abu Mohammed is stubborn. He knows every live broadcast risks exposing his location to regime forces. Still, he starts his days at dawn, loads his handgun – which is no match for the tanks, helicopters and planes targeting him – and gathers his gear to transmit long, unedited footage of life in Homs, where the deadly thuds of shelling intersperse with moments of serenity.

In a few hours the sun will climb higher in the sky, the shelling will slow down, and Abu Mohammed will pack up his laptop, tripods, and cameras, untangle the cords, and walk to whichever safe house he currently calls home. I’ve done my part: tweeted Bambuser livestream links, chatted with him in our broken translations, commented on his homslive feed, and found some relief knowing the rest of his work will be done inside, at his desk, uploading the footage into YouTube clips and speaking to the media. For today, Homs is still in the news. For today, he is still alive.

By placing severe restrictions on foreign journalists, the Assad regime thought it could shield its crimes from the world with its propaganda machine and sell the myth of armed gangs demolishing the very neighborhoods that gave them shelter by booby-trapping buildings and bombing roads. It’s the brave amateurs like Abu Mohammed who dispelled that narrative, clip by clip, live stream by live stream. As Homs was reduced to mountains of concrete slabs folded onto themselves, the cameras of Homs exposed the wanton destruction of Syria at the hands of its ruthless military.

Over the past year, as Abu Mohammed moved from Baba Amr to al-Khalediyeh to Juret el-Shiyah, al-Hamidiyeh and Old Homs, I learned the city’s neighborhoods and skylines through his lens. I know its streets and balconies, the sounds of the birds and roosters, and the endearing, exaggerated drawl of its people’s dialect. Over the past year, I’ve spoken to dozens of activists and fighters. You never know which one you will speak to only once, which one will become a trusted source, and which one will become a brother.

******

In early February, 2012, I interviewed the well-known citizen journalist Rami al-Sayed, known by his alias “Syrian Pioneer,” who was in Baba Amr in a room filled with muffled voices. At the time, Baba Amr was surrounded by Assad’s army and the soldiers were intent on rooting out the armed opposition there. Much of the working class neighborhood would be destroyed by the end of the month.

Aboud’s live feed is used by TV stations around the world.

I became emotional at the end of the call when I heard sounds of shelling in the background as Rami patiently explained the exodus of residents of the nearby Inshaat neighborhood. I was not yet used to listening to the shelling that would eventually be Homs’ permanent soundtrack. Rami consoled me, confident everything was going to be okay. Of course both of us didn’t know that ten days later, Rami would be dead.

After a few days, Abu Mohammed messaged me. He was one of the men in the room and had overheard my conversation with Rami. He told me he was wounded from the shelling in al-Khalediyeh the week before. He had moved to Baba Amr to work at the [rebel] media office with Rami. He had read one of my articles on Homs and said he had a story for me. I asked him for details. He began to type:

My father was 52 years old. He used to work at a construction company in Homs. A few months into the revolution, he started working as a micro-bus (shared taxi) driver to support our large family of 13. One day, soldiers at a checkpoint stopped him and ordered him to transport shabiha [the regime sponsored militia] from al-Zaharaa to Fairuzeh. He was scared and obeyed them. A few days later, they asked him again and he obliged once more. The time after that he refused and told them he would be fired if he took more time off his route. They yelled at him and threatened to beat him. He ignored them and drove away. It was a Thursday. There was no work on Friday because of the protests. On Saturday, they stopped him at the checkpoint and ordered the passengers off the bus. It was 4:30 p.m. It was Ramadan and everyone was fasting. He was fasting. They took him into a nearby school they used as a base. They beat him and electrocuted him. They struck him with their rifles. He was dead within an hour. They transported his corpse to the Military Hospital that evening, and to the National Hospital after that. We received a call at 7:10 p.m. while we were breaking our fast: Come and pick up the body. It was the 27th of Ramadan.

His body was stained from the beatings. There was no place in his body that hadn’t been beaten. Even his jaw was displaced. He was trying to pray in his final moments by raising his right pointer finger to say a final shahadeh [bearing witness to God], so they burned his finger with an iron rod.

This is his body.

I filmed it.

This was his funeral.

He finished typing. But I didn’t respond.

A few minutes later he asked, “Do you have any questions?”

I replied, “I’m crying.”

He messaged back, “Me too.”

“Will you write it for my father?”

“Yes.”

His last message that first night before we separated: “I’m Aboud, son of Homs.”

Over the next days, as I watched, along with everyone else, Baba Amr slowly being destroyed by Assad’s tanks on our screens, I learned more about Aboud. Before March 15, 2011, he was a young man trying to start his own business after completing his mandatory military service. He had marched in the first protests of the revolution. Then he started filming protests with his cell phone. In the summer of 2011, he was surrounded by regime forces in the Bayada neighborhood. Soldiers were searching homes and arresting any man who was suspected to be participating in the protests against the Assad regime. He was trapped at home with a laptop, cell phone, and memory sticks filled with incriminating material. His aunt helped him cross the checkpoint, hiding his equipment within the folds of her coat. She passed easily (those days they didn’t search the women) while Aboud was searched thoroughly and found clean. After he crossed safely, he met his friend Adnan abd al-Dayem, the 27-year-old pioneer of citizen journalism in Homs. He was one of the first activists to film with a camera instead of a cell phone.  He was also one of the first Syrians to die because of his camera. Adnan was shot by a sniper in the back of his head outside a mosque a few days later on the first night of Ramadan. Aboud lost his best friend and would lose his father before the holy month was over.

Smoke fills the skies of Homs. Shaam News Network and the Syrian Revolution Memory Project, June 14, 2012.

Aboud messaged me on February 21, 2012: Rami was wounded. I was at the dentist’s office, in the chair, mouth open, phone in hand, watching my Skype screen, and praying that the message I was dreading would not appear. But it did. Rami had bled to death. It was the most painful cleaning I ever had. Aboud was grieving alone at the media center with the large revolution flag they used in the protests — which would be known after as the “Baba Amr flag” — on the wall. He sent me footage of Rami to upload onto YouTube and it became my first revolution video. Rami had been counting the days he had spent away from his toddler daughter Maryam, and although he predicted the Skype message he posted hours before dying would be his last, I know he wanted to live.

At the end of the February, Aboud said the fighters were planning to retreat from Baba Amr, shielding the remaining citizens as they exited before Assad’s army stormed the neighborhood. He told me not to worry if I didn’t hear from him for a few days. But I did worry. And I asked other activists about him. No one had any news. Three days later, I received an email from him. I opened the attachments: pictures of Aboud in a Homs covered with a blanket of fresh snow. Like postcards. He was posing and smiling. He looked much younger than I had expected. Early twenties, perhaps younger. He called me later. It took them an entire day to cross the short distance from Baba Amr to a nearby neighborhood. They walked through the outskirts of the city, hiding from the shabiha and camouflaged by the snow — a 15-minute trip under normal circumstances. He had smuggled one item inside his shirt from the abandoned media center: the Baba Amr revolution flag.

Since then, I have received many pictures from Aboud and many Skype calls. He has called just to let me hear the call to prayer at dawn from the Khaled bin al-Walid Mosque, to show me the full moon over Homs, to flip his laptop camera so I could see the fresh artillery holes in the building on his street. And he calls to talk. We talk about being far from our families, about dreams for the future in Syria, about the dangers of sectarianism, about soccer while he watched the EuroCup matches (these were one-sided conversations), about the home-cooked meals he missed. But most of the time, we talk about death.

Sometimes, when he was frustrated with lack of action by the Arab and international nations to stop the atrocities that he filmed daily, he would talk about quitting his media work and joining the Free Syrian Army on the front lines to defend Homs. Every time I would emphasize the importance of the media, of his voice, of his broadcasts, and I would remind him that hundreds of thousands of people were watching his live streams. I felt the weight of my hypocrisy as I typed the words: Don’t fight. Don’t pick up a weapon. And I would leave out what I wanted to type but knew would anger him: You are supposed to live.

One morning in July, he was back at the tower. He loved that location because it gave him a 360 degree vantage point to film shelling from two opposite sides of Homs. Because the broadcasts are picked up live by satellite television channels, these locations are eventually exposed to the regime. A tank hit the wall behind him while he was filming. In the unreleased videos, Aboud and his friend are completely covered in dust in the aftermath of the explosion. Looking like moving stone statues, they pick their laptops and cameras out of the rubble. They walk back home, filming the entire way. Men on the street salute them. He appeared to be fine. But he didn’t leave his bed for days. After getting over the initial adrenaline rush, he realized his back was injured badly and there were no doctors, no medicine. His friend could not move at all and needed to be transported to Turkey for medical care. These videos angered me. Why did he go back to the tower even though he was targeted the last time? Why was it so important to keep filming for an oblivious world? How many more people need to die for the crime of holding up a camera? Hadn’t we seen enough?

Explosion in Jouret Al Shayah, Homs. Shaam News Network and the Syrian Revolution Memory Project, July 21, 2012.

Aboud was promoted after the death of his friends and became the director of the SNN media center in Homs. The first thing Aboud requested after his promotion was a private Dropbox account to upload his pictures for his mother and sisters and aunts so they could see him. As he dictated the emails to share the folder with, he mentioned mine. The other SNN activists asked him, “Are you sure you want to include Amal? You don’t even know who she is.” He replied, “She’s family.”When we spoke after the tragedy, he messaged: “I felt was going to die.” I was numb and could focus on one thing only: I wanted him to leave Homs. “Enough. Haven’t you had enough?”  He was defensive and as usual, stubborn, “I won’t stop. I need to finish what we started. I can’t betray my friends, my brothers, my mentors. I’m going to go to be with them. They left me alone in this dirty world. Don’t say these words to me, Amal. This life is not mine. It’s for the next generation to live and stand on our bodies to free Syria and stop the bloodshed.”

*****

He asked me to write his father’s story and I said yes, but I knew the father’s story could not be told without the son’s. Yet, Aboud was adamant that his story not be told. He would ask me every few weeks, what happened to the story? I would say I’m still working on it, which was true. He would joke, are you waiting until I die so you can have two martyrs’ stories in one?

One day last spring, Aboud said there was another journalist who wanted to tell his story. I was annoyed. Who was this journalist who had convinced Aboud to tell his story? That story belonged to me. He tried to soothe me, saying, “Don’t be upset, Amal. It’s your story, but each of you can tell it in your own way. He wants to make a film about my work in the revolution and the live broadcasts.” Reluctantly, I conceded. Later I found out that the filmmaker was the beloved Syrian activist Basel Shahadeh, who had left his Fullbright scholarship in the US to document the atrocities in Homs. Basel visited Aboud to console him after his friends were killed. He held Aboud’s hand and said, “We’ll make something for their memory. I’m coming back to see you tomorrow so we can plan it.” Basel was killed by sniper fire that day on his way home.

On August 17, the SNN Homs media center suffered yet another loss, the young teenager, Abu al-Izz, whose uncle, Abu Omar, had been killed in Damascus. SNN activists had begged him to leave Homs, to not work in the media, to help the revolution from outside Syria, but he refused. He wanted to continue his uncle’s legacy, and he wanted to die in Homs. That day a rocket ripped Abu al-Izz’s body apart and killed eight others, leaving left behind a gruesome scene of torn limbs and body parts that Aboud and his friends collected in plastic bags and buried together in a mass grave. He told me, “We found his hand later, and had to go back and bury it with the other parts.” And I thought to myself, what has become of us that our normal conversations are about burying body parts? Abu al-Izz had taken pictures a few days before he died. Empty scenes of a shell-shocked Homs. We received the other pictures from that day, after he died, except he was in the frames, his red shirt, his curly, black hair, his face in profile with a straight, beautiful nose and a pensive expression that was almost identical to his uncle’s. His name was Fayyad al-Sabbagh, but he had grown into his alias, he really was Abu al-Izz, a man of integrity.

[youtube http://youtu.be/gEjnzxPiEEA?]

*****

Months have passed since February, and I became superstitious about this story as men continued to die around Aboud. In my mind, by keeping it in perpetual drafts, the story, and Aboud, remained alive. On the day the tower was shelled, I thought, what if he had died? My selfishness eventually outweighed my superstitions – I couldn’t live with yet another unfulfilled promise to a dead man. My unpublished story would not protect him from the stories he released every day. His stories were the ones that had the power to kill him.

To me, Homs was once just a place on the way from Aleppo to Damascus, a source of funny jokes and exquisite eggplant. But Homs became something else through the lens of revolution. It was resistance and determination. It was unity and loyalty. It was destruction and death. And most of all, to me, it was Aboud. When I watched his live broadcasts I was no longer mesmerized by the horrific scenes or frightening sounds, I was thinking about this young man who stood bravely facing a shooting tank with his unflinching camera.

Aboud’s folder on my Dropbox still feels like opening postcards from another world. He poses with his friends in their city, now in ruins. Many times their expressions are at odds with their grim reality. They look happy and proud; the opposite of humiliation. They are survivors and they know it.

Like most Syrians, I wasn’t prepared for this revolution or for my role in it. I wasn’t ready to experience the excruciating wait between “Rami has been injured” and “Rami is a martyr.” Not ready to recognize Abu al-Izz’s face in reverse, mentally connecting his blown-off head, frozen in a scream, to his handsome face in the photographs that were released after he was killed. Not ready to have to live with the shame of being jealous of Basel Shehadeh over a story he could have told much better than me. If he were still alive.

But Aboud was not ready either. He was not ready to film his father’s bruised corpse or pick Abu al-Izz’s body parts off the street. Not ready to protect the children playing soccer in the street with his gun, when a few months ago, he would’ve joined them for a game. Not ready to be the only one left in Homs with a camera, documenting the bloody truth. Not ready to ask a woman he’s never met, across the world, “Do you think it’s better to die a martyr or marry a girl from Homs?” And I would always reply, simply but not without pain, “It’s better to live.”

The soft-spoken young man who was wounded and listening that first night in a room of men who were older and bolder than him, has slowly emerged as one of Homs’ surviving witnesses. He refused to retreat to Lebanon and promised to never leave Homs because, as he says, if he leaves, who will continue after him? And he repeats his constant vow, “I will only leave victorious or a martyr.”

This was supposed to be the story of Aboud’s father alone. Aboud insisted he was not to be included with the real heroes, the martyrs. He wondered why he continued to be wounded but not killed. He wondered whether he was even worthy of martyrdom. But the story became larger than a murdered father and his heroic son. It became the story of Homs’ eyes behind the lenses. It’s the story that Basel didn’t have the chance to tell. The story of Abu-al-Izz and his uncle Abu Omar, of Rami al-Sayed and his cousin Basel al-Sayed, of Adnan abd al-Dayem and Abu Suleiman, of Ahmad Hamadeh who captured his own death while filming Homs, and dozens of unnamed citizen journalists, including 22 of SNN’s own men, who have fallen in Syria to tell the story of the revolution. Our lives have been entangled and implicated by their lenses.

Aboud sets up his camera to capture the destruction in his city. Courtesy of Shaam News Network and the Syrian Revolution Memory Project, July 24, 2012.

When we speak now, I no longer ask Aboud to leave Homs. I know he will never leave Homs. So we watch together as bombs fall over his city and we talk about other things, about our families, about life, and, as always, about death. But as I take in the smoky skyline in front of his lens and listen to the exploding sounds, sometimes near, sometimes far away, my refrain to Aboud silently repeats in my mind: Isn’t it enough? Haven’t you had enough? Haven’t you filmed enough?

It repeats relentlessly, thudding in my head in rhythm with the thuds inside Homs, until I no longer know who these words are for. Are they for the people behind the lens or the ones in firing in front of it, or are they directed towards the ones watching it?

Haven’t you watched enough? Haven’t you seen enough? Isn’t it enough?

Enough.

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Syrians Are War Correspondents, Too

A response to Terry Anderson’s “Running Toward Danger.”

BY AMAL HANANO | OCTOBER 30, 2012

Dear Mr. Anderson,

I read “Running Toward Danger” yesterday and I had to tell you how much it moved me. Syria is being ripped to shreds, the people are suffering, and the cities are being destroyed. We didn’t expect this degree of ruthlessness as a response to the people’s demands for freedom after 40 years of Assad tyranny, but as we know well, freedom is not free.

Your thoughts on war correspondents sacrificing everything for the truth applies not only to the brave journalists like Austin and Marie and Anthony and the dozens of journalists inside Syria now, but also to the Syrian men and women who stood behind the cameras, documenting the truth. We have lost dozens of citizen journalists in this revolution. Young men who were students, employees, fathers one day and became threatening targets the next day because of their cell phones, cameras, and laptops. They knew Syrians have been silent too long. Last year, they decided to never cover up Assad’s crimes with silence again. And they are paying a heavy price for it.

I don’t know what my dead friends would have answered your question, “Was it worth it?” But I do know what the ones who are alive and still film and photograph in Homs, Aleppo, Hama, Idleb, Daraa, and across Syria would say to the question, “Is it worth it to die for your camera?” They would say, “Yes.” Because they know for the first time in their lives, their voice matters and they are doing the most important job, to tell the truth while so many are telling lies. Telling the truth, in a way, has become even more important than freedom. It’s the road to freedom.

I’ve been writing about the revolution since the beginning. I didn’t expect to take on the role I now have when I began; telling my stories evolved into telling Syria’s stories. I only cared about one thing: telling the truth. Sometimes it seems like an impossible task. And many times the truth hurts. But we have to keep going and hope that what’s good in the people prevails over the evil.

When I read your piece, I remembered Anthony Shadid, a journalist who changed my life, and how much I miss his voice of truth. And I thought of Austin too. I pray he is safe and will return to his family soon.

Most of all, I wanted to tell you that your words made a difference to me. God bless you.

With much respect,
Amal

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The Womb of Murder

by Amal Hanano

We all like to believe that we control our destiny and that we create our futures with our choices, but there are some decisions in life that are made for you, some things you cannot be held accountable for, for instance where you are born and into which family. Will you be the child of a tyrant or the child of a future revolutionary? Will you be the son of the tortured or the daughter of the torturer? These matters are the luck of the draw, written in our books of fate long before we took our first breaths, while we were still cocooned in our mothers’ wombs. But sometimes you hear such an extraordinary account about fate that you wonder, does destiny taint us before birth to draw the trajectory of our future lives? The following is one of those accounts:

read here

 

Amal Hanano is a pseudonym for an Syrian American writer. Follow her on Twitter@AmalHanano

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Any Given Friday

How a battle over a Facebook page became a war for the soul of the Syrian revolution.

BY AMAL HANANO | APRIL 18, 2012

A woman stands in the middle of a busy Damascus street. Yellow cabs honk and weave around her. Her red dress, splattered with white paint, flows in the wind along with a red fabric banner held up above her head like a translucent shield. A group of people gathers on the sidewalk to observe as she turns side to side, for all to see. As we watch them watching her through our computer screens, we hear a new sound — not a familiar chant of the revolution, but loud claps of extended applause. When she faces the camera, we finally read her words: “Stop the killing. We want to build a country for all Syrians.”

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Dali’s action, while brave, would have been easy to disregard as a fleeting incident if it hadn’t happened again, a few days later, in front of the Palace of Justice. And again a few days after that, when more people occupied Dali’s place and even more onlookers clapped from the sidewalk.

Activists like Dali, who had a strong presence at the beginning of the uprising, are trying to rewind Syria’s clock to the early months of the revolution, when the message of selmiyeh — peaceful — dominated the streets. During the past two weeks, despite the regime’s relentless violence, Syria protested like it was 2011 again.

During the 10-day lull between the announcement of U.N. and Arab League special envoy Kofi Annan’s six-point plan for a ceasefire and its implementation on April 10, violence sharply escalated in Syria — as it usually does before every international ultimatum directed at President Bashar al-Assad. But since then, while shelling and government attacks have continued in certain flashpoints, the daily death toll has decreased significantly. Within opposition circles, another sentiment was brewing even before the ceasefire: a realization that it’s time to reclaim the revolution in order to reclaim the country.

For months, the civic and social activism of these peaceful protesters have been rendered obsolete next to the physical heroics of the Free Syrian Army’s (FSA) military operations against the regime’s brutality. Peaceful protests in city squares not only seemed impossible, but utterly useless against tanks, shells, and snipers. As armed resistance took its place within the revolution, the nonviolent activists slowly became passive pacifists. In recent days, however, that has changed.

This sea shift has been evident in the change in tenor of the names for the Friday protests. Every week, anti-Assad activists take to the Syrian Revolution 2011 Facebook page where, every Wednesday, they vote on the name of the upcoming day of protest. With more than 444,000 “likes,” the page is one of the most popular online hubs of the revolution. In fact, people use the number of common “friends” they have with the page as a badge of honor: If you are pro-revolution and only a few out of your hundreds of friends have “liked” the page, it means you need to find new friends.

On April 6 — Good Friday — the chosen (and very awkward) name for the weekly day of uprising was rooted in Islamic history: It was the Friday of “He who has equipped a fighter has himself fought.”

The name was intended as a call for Arab countries such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia to fulfill their religious duty and arm Syria’s opposition. In stark contrast, last year on Good Friday, the Friday was named just that: al-Jumaa al-Azimeh, to express the unity of the Syrian people above divisive sectarianism. This time around, many asked: Why couldn’t the same name have been repeated again this year? But the long-winded name had won — by Facebook’s version of democracy.

Last week, before the Facebook polling closed for the name of the April 13 protests — the day after the U.N. ceasefire deadline, the day in which solidarity was key — one name was in the lead: the Friday of the Armies of Islam. Yet another divisive (and completely off message) choice. This time, however, peaceful activists were ready to take action and fight back in a battle for the Friday name.

On Wednesday, April 11, media activists on Facebook and Twitter began a campaign to “rock the vote” for Friday’s name. They advocated the secular, inclusive choice, “A Revolution for all Syrians.” It was an intense campaign. Usually around 8,000 votes are cast each week, but last week there were more than 30,000. It was as much a battle between Islamic sentiment and secular inclusiveness as it was a struggle between those dedicated to solely an armed resistance, and those who still valued the power of nonviolent activism.

The gap between the two names slowly narrowed, and eventually the message of unity won by almost 2,000 votes. This small but significant victory unleashed palpable excitement among Syria’s online activists: There was a sense that they had been heard and gained control of the revolution’s message, at least for the moment. It was a needed boost of energy to a group of worn-out activists and, more importantly, it proved that a revolution within the revolution was not only possible but necessary.

Syrians’ practice of naming the Fridays of the revolution was inspired by their Yemeni counterparts, who did the same thing during their revolution. The first Fridays were named by the Revolution page’s administrators, and reflected the popular aspects and crucial demands of the revolution: Friday of Dignity, Friday of the Martyrs, Friday of Freedom for Detainees, etc. The names grew to have such influence on the street that the various opposition groups decided everyone should have a say in naming each Friday. In an exercise of online democracy, a voting system was established on Facebook with a weekly suggestion of seven potential names — two nominated from the Revolution page, two from the Local Coordination Committees within the country, two from the Revolutionary Councils inside Syria, and one from the what is called the “red rose” group representing pacifists and secular individuals.

Some weeks, the names referred to current events, while others seemed to be random and at odds with the principles of the revolution. Fridays that request some sort of intervention have become common: There has been a No-Fly Zone Friday, for example, and Buffer-Zone Friday, a reference to the idea of setting up a safe zone for anti-regime Syrians along the Turkish border. Some Fridays seek to legitimize certain opposition factions — for example, “The Syrian National Council represents me Friday” and “The Free Syrian Army protects me Friday.” In fact, the Free Syrian Army was dedicated three separate Fridays of support.

The Friday names both stem from the street and in turn influence it. Especially for the politically charged names, the process seems to work in a cycle of forced legitimization: the Revolution page suggests the names, people on Facebook vote, the name is raised on banners held up by the people, who in turn give legitimacy to the name that was given to them. The name becomes a part of the revolution’s timeline — each week, it appears in media reports and video clips as the guiding principle behind the protests.

In the last two weeks, the need for active voices of nonviolent resistance was apparent in efforts both inside and outside Syria. One instance of Syrians being inspired by the world outside their borders was a flash-mob protest in the Sham City Center Mall in Damascus, which emulated flash-mob protests that have been popular for months with university students across American and Canadian cities, though of course without the same level of danger.

Another example of youth activism occurred in the early morning hours of April 12, the first day of the Annan ceasefire, when a large group of University of Aleppo students created a human SOS formation on campus grounds. Armed regime thugs soon arrived, locking the gates to trap the students. Some were beaten and arrested in the aftermath.

Recently, the launch of the Zero Hour Internet campaign — a manifesto calling for mass protests to occupy the squares and streets across Syria — created a positive, revolutionary buzz. Video clips supporting Zero Hour came from prominent activists inside Syria as well as supporters outside. While many are skeptical whether this hour will ever come to fruition, the strong, unified reception it has garnered from activists, opposition military forces, and politicians has underscored the urgent need for this message.

These events have emerged in tandem with the U.N. ceasefire and the beginning of yet another monitoring mission, with the first five of an advance team of 30 monitors arriving in Damascus on Sunday. The creative, nonviolent resistance tactics counter the regime’s escalation of violence toward the Syrian people, despite the agreed-upon ceasefire. The FSA, for the most part, has held the truce while the regime pounded areas in Homs, Zabadani, Idleb, Douma, Taftanaz and rural Aleppo with rockets and shells. Bullets from security forces and snipers continued to target civilians protesting in many areas of the country, including the cities of Aleppo and Deraa. Despite these gross violations by the regime, the opposition continues to restrain the armed resistance and call for peaceful civilian protests.

Rima Dali’s last Facebook status before being detained was inspired by a Martin Luther King quote: “The means we use to achieve our goals must be as pure as our goals.” Her message has since become a Facebook page, and inspired a renewed campaign of nonviolence. One of Dali’s friends, activist and harpist Safana Baqleh, was detained while attempting to protect her from security forces. She is still missing. On Monday, a group of activists protested in front of the Ministry of Interior once more. Their signs focused on the injustice Syrian citizens face every day at the hands of the police: “If you must arrest me, arrest me gently”; “If you want to arrest me, let my family know where I am”; and Rima’s direct question about her detained friend Safana, “Where is the harpist?”

Using means as pure as our goals is one of the most difficult — but also the most important — principles of the Syrian revolution. To follow it in the face of increased brutality, the opposition must fine-tune and recalibrate its actions and message as the revolution moves forward. The difference between the Revolution Facebook page and Rima’s red scarf is the difference between forcing a message and being the message. It is a lesson that the Revolution page, despite its popularity, must embody if it wishes to remain relevant.

In the beginning, no one thought Syria faced an endless list of Fridays ahead, but now, 57 Fridays in, it may be time to rethink the practice of naming the weekly day of revolt. The concept, once powerful and unifying, has grown tired and divisive. The Friday with a perfect name, “A Revolution for all Syrians,” marked a rare moment of rewinding the past and perhaps capturing a glimpse of what may have been if we had not grown passive. It’s a moment worth holding on to for a while.

Let every Friday be a day dedicated to the Syrian’s people fight for freedom and dignity. And let each one be called, simply, Friday.

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