Our Women on the Ground

by Zahra Hankir

  Breathing Fear

  Lina Sinjab

  It was the winter of 2011. Like many Syrians, I was closely watching the events that were unraveling across the Arab world. What would come to be known as the Arab Spring had sparked within us a desire for change—not only in other countries across the region, but in Syria, too.

  Organizers on Facebook came together to schedule a Day of Rage in my home country, a protest against President Bashar al-Assad that was set to take place in Damascus on February 4, 2011. I didn’t think anything would actually happen, but as a journalist, I had to be there and ready nonetheless. My suspicions proved correct: there were more security officers than people in the streets of Damascus that day.

  But there was a lot of talk in the capital. Many journalists who were close to the regime started asking locals what they thought would happen if protests were to reach Syria, sending them a clear message that the demonstrators were part of an antistate conspiracy, designed to deepen sectarian divisions and to trigger bloodshed that would ultimately leave Syria divided. That message came from the government, which was indirectly warning people through those journalists that chaos would ensue. No one thought Syrians would dare take to the streets.

  I had just come back from Yemen, where I’d been covering an antigovernment uprising in Sana’a. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Hopeful, brave, and nationalistic Yemenis were out in the squares, determined to fight for change. There was something about that determination that consistently left me speechless: the demonstrators were never afraid. They were speaking their minds fearlessly, while in another square, loyalists of President Ali Abdullah Saleh were staging support for their president. I shuffled between the two sites, speaking to people at both camps. I never, ever thought this would happen back home.

  On February 17, however, something inconceivable occurred. Rumors began to spread that children in Dara’a, a city in southwestern Syria, had been locked up in detention centers for having written graffiti on the walls of their hometown calling for change. The news was hard to believe; at the time, it felt like a thing of fiction.

  On that day, people spontaneously gathered in Harika Square in the old city of Damascus. After a businessman quarreled with a police officer, who responded by attacking him, protesters started chanting with one voice, “Al-sha’ab al-souri ma bienzal” (Syrians won’t be humiliated), and filming their surroundings with mobile phones. Hundreds gathered around the businessman, and together their voices became louder and louder. In response, the minister of the interior came to the square, where he told the protesters, “’Ayb ya shabab, hai mouzahara hai?!” (Shame on you, men, this is a protest?!) A protest, he says. Shameful, he says! The very thing the minister and his government had feared was happening before him.

  But I still wasn’t convinced anything would become of the protest. The massacre of Hama in the 1980s and the crackdown that followed remain vivid in the memory of many Syrians, including me, who had been locked in fear since then. (The forces of then-president Hafez al-Assad, Bashar al-Assad’s father, had murdered thousands of Syrians in the massacre to quell an antigovernment uprising.)

  After the protest in Harika Square, I wrote a piece for the BBC about why there hadn’t been an Egypt-style revolution in Syria. Although many Syrians were watching events unravel around the Arab world, they thought that Bashar al-Assad, the young president who had portrayed himself as a reformer, now had a golden opportunity to instigate change at home.

  News of the children of Dara’a had become real by then. They had disappeared, and reports suggested they had been tortured: their nails had been removed as punishment for having dared to challenge authority and write graffiti on school walls calling for the toppling of the regime.

  A few weeks later, in the middle of March 2011, three significant events unfolded over the course of a week. On March 15 in Hamidieh, a town on the Syrian coast, a small crowd stood under the covered market and chanted “Allah, souria, hurriye, wa bas”—a phrase that would become popular during the protests, calling for freedom in the country. The following day, women gathered in front of the interior ministry building, holding up photos of their detained relatives who had disappeared into government prisons for years. The women were beaten up; some were dragged by their hair down the streets. Two days after that, families in Dara’a took to the streets, demanding a change in government and the release of their children. I was stunned. Everything that happened during the week was like a spark. I realized that silence was breaking in Syria. And so was mine.

  * * *

  —

  Growing up in Syria in the seventies meant one thing: breathing fear. Fear was so deeply embedded in our lives that we barely even noticed it. Whenever the topic of the government came up at home, there was silence. I can’t recall ever hearing the word ra’ees, or “president,” in the house.

  I attended the same school as Bashar al-Assad and his brothers in Damascus—the school of the “business elite,” the educated middle class, and the corrupt power circle of the leadership— although we were there during different years. At school, the son of a military officer could shout at the teacher and kick him or her out of class. In such a scenario, it was more likely that the teacher would disappear than that the boy would face punishment. The wealthy boys and girls at the school were keen to befriend the sons and daughters of military personnel or security officers who were enrolled there. They all came to school in fancy Mercedes driven by chauffeurs.

  I looked at the wealthy from a small distance, but never mingled with them, mixing instead with the educated elite of the remaining middle class—we used to walk together to school. One part of the school was comprised of the rich and powerful, while the other part was fearful and helpless. A fellow student’s father, a security officer, imprisoned the socialist politician father of another student. Both students attended the same school, but never enjoyed the same power. Such was life in Damascus.

  My life was in the shadows, observing the lives of others. There had to be another way to live, I thought, but I didn’t know how to do so. I pondered life beyond the strict rules of society imposed upon women, not to mention the untold barriers of fear from the state. That fear unknowingly pushed a hidden desire within me to break free from my silence.

  * * *

  —

  I turned to journalism. I wanted to write about people and tell their stories—perhaps because I was too afraid to tell my own.

  But I knew nothing of the rules. I had to learn by doing, while always watching my surroundings carefully so I didn’t falter or make a mistake that would put me in danger. First, I started writing about culture, and then society. Soon after that, I started working for international media, reporting on “acceptable” margins of life within Syria, like the economy or minor political developments. In those early years, I never, ever dared to raise questions about what happened behind the walls of prisons in Syria. I was too scared to discuss that reality, let alone write about it. I lived within the red lines drawn by the Syrian security apparatus. The fear that they entrenched in our lives was immeasurable.

  Yet there were people who were fearless. Some had just left prison, some had family members who were still behind bars, and others were simply speaking out, calling for an end to such practices. I followed these people and their stories and started timidly reporting on them. With every report, my heart pounded; I knew I was doing the right thing, but wondered when I would be thrown into jail for my work.

  I took baby steps into journalism. After I joined the BBC in 2004, I learned to acquire international standards of journalism, but trying to maintain them while also trying to stay safe was never an easy balance to strike. A documentary about music that I worked on was reported to Syrian security as a story on Kurds in the north of the country. Soon after it aired, I was threatened with, and then faced, a three-month suspension on reporting in Syria. I couldn’t resume my job until aft
er a connection of mine helped me resolve the situation with the minister. An article I wrote about Riad Seif, a businessman who had been released from prison, was also reported to security, this time as an act of sympathy toward the opposition. (Mr. Seif had been imprisoned in 2001 and again in 2008 for having created a Damascus Spring forum, in which Syrians had gathered for the first time in thirty years to discuss reforms, democratic change, and an end to corruption.) I subsequently faced additional threats, and about three months of being blacklisted from covering Syrian affairs.

  And how dare I have questioned the success of the first lady when I interviewed her in 2010 at a conference she sponsored on nongovernmental organizations? At the time, Syria was trying to partner with NGOs, allegedly to work on “rural development, female empowerment, and the promotion of Syrian culture”—and yet many women’s rights organizations had been waiting for years to be recognized by the government. I asked representatives from several if they were able to operate comfortably without being under the umbrella of the first lady; that line of questioning was enough to anger the palace. I was summoned, threatened, and suspended from work for another three months.

  Most journalists in Damascus are vetted by security and have to show their work to their “sources” and “connections” before they file or air a single word. Everything has to be preapproved. I, on the other hand, had no sources or connections in the country’s inner security circle—it was my hard work that had gotten me into the BBC. The fact that they hired me led people to believe that I was in some way “connected.” I had a vibrant social life that brought me into powerful circles, yes, but never in a way that meant I could be ordered around by someone or needed to obtain their approval to chase a story. During coffee meetings with the members of the security apparatus who dealt with the press, I always managed to stay on the safe side, never giving anything away, and playing dumb when they said I had to “collaborate.” “If I learn of anything that might threaten the safety of the country, I will definitely alert you,” I would say. But deep down, I knew they were the ones who posed a threat to our safety.

  Still, something inside me kept me going, and I kept pushing boundaries.

  In late 2010, I worked on a documentary about corruption and state monopoly in Syria. In the story, I discussed Rami Makhlouf, a tycoon who had monopolized businesses in the country. An economist who had previously brought attention to the issue had spent seven years in jail for speaking out about what he knew. As I gathered evidence for the documentary, I became increasingly anxious, unsure of what would happen when it was broadcast to the public. When it finally aired, it was almost January 2011, and protest fever had already started spreading across the Middle East. I had thought that tapping into issues of corruption would pose a huge risk, but that type of daring reporting paled in comparison to the reporting on the death and killings in the streets of Syria that was to become the norm within weeks.

  * * *

  —

  In March 2011, during the protests in Dara’a and Hamidieh, the vibe in Syria felt different. I had never felt optimistic and happy about my country’s future before, but suddenly I was experiencing a feeling of profound connection to the place where I had grown up. The protests spread across the country, and a sense of solidarity among Syrians from all spectrums of society allowed us to feel like we were entering a new era. In that moment, we citizens felt that we belonged to a place where we could say what we thought and play a role in determining our fate.

  The first two years of the uprising were filled with hope and energy. Syrians came together, bonded, and assisted one other. Social support systems were established. Women gathered and established networks for people in areas facing regime brutality. Citizen journalists started organizing and sending the news on what was happening across the world via social media and other means.

  As Syrians broke their silence and fear, I followed suit, reporting on their bravery and sidelining my own fears from the authorities. I watched them attend protests, come face-to-face with bullets, and face incarceration.

  I saw women from Syria’s wealthy tier of society drive their Mercedes and BMWs close to the protests, circling security officers and bribing them with cash to free detained men. During one protest, I was holed up in a small area of a grocery shop with fifteen other women and men; the owner had closed the shop’s shutters to protect us from the shabiha (armed gangs loyal to the regime) and security forces who were firing gas and bullets at the protesters. In the course of my reporting, I sat in the town of Douma with women who were protesting in front of state security, asking for the release of their husbands and sons. Sometimes I found myself walking over fresh blood in the street or in a prison cell where I was being interrogated—people had just been tortured in the exact same spot where I was standing.

  * * *

  —

  But that bravery came with a price, for the protesters and for me. They faced bullets, blood, and arrests. I faced threats and an arrest and was stripped of my accreditation as a journalist.

  By early 2013, it was impossible for me to move around. I wasn’t allowed into government press conferences or prearranged interviews, and when I was blacklisted, I had to confine my reporting to behind my desk, relying on Skype and WhatsApp to communicate with sources and occasionally going on underground trips to banned areas to see for myself what was unfolding. Since many brave Syrians were determined to continue putting forth their demands, even while facing the increasing brutality of the regime, I felt determined to continue reporting despite the growing challenges.

  The anticipation and excitement of change started deteriorating as the death toll rose, cities were destroyed, and hundreds of thousands of people started fleeing their homes. I had to get used to the new normality of life during war.

  I spoke to everyone I could on both sides of the conflict: one side was filled with hope and the other was filled with hatred. Those who sided with the regime were opposed to freedom, democracy, and citizenship. I could understand how those tenets were not necessary for the powerful and privileged, but shockingly, some poor Alawite communities supported Assad, too. From the early days of the uprising, rumors had spread in Alawite villages that this was an Islamist movement and that they were the targets. The regime distributed weapons among minorities starting with the Alawites and told them to protect themselves. The authorities played the game of fear and it worked well. Many Syrians were convinced that what had come to pass in those early months was not an uprising but a Salafi radical movement whose goal was to threaten the lives of those Syrians.

  I watched dozens of friends leave the city in early 2013. My social circle grew smaller as friends died or were imprisoned and relatives were shot by government forces, and a wave of fear began to wash over everyone again.

  In the spring of that year, I, too, was forced to leave the country after enduring several arrests, multiple threats, and a twelve-month travel ban. I had dared to report the reality on the ground—going to places I shouldn’t have gone to, speaking with people I shouldn’t have spoken with. I had dared to tell the truth.

  I thought I would return just a few months later. I hadn’t quite realized that the country I had lived in for four decades of my life—my home—would never be the same again.

  I bade my farewell to my city, my people, and my life, and soon after endured a long cycle of depression, trauma, and a state of denial, not wanting to believe that I had left. By then, hope had started to fade and calls for change were replaced by the sounds of war: bombings, Scud missiles, and explosions. As I crossed the borders outside Syria, life as I knew it had started to fall apart. I helplessly watched my country disintegrate as the world stood idly by, not wanting to do anything to end the suffering of Syria and its people.

  The guilt of leaving was killing me. I hated the fact that I was privileged enough to seek safety, while hundreds of thousands of my own people were not. My personal losses—a h
ome, a job in my country, my house (which had caught the attention of a pro-regime local and was subsequently seized by security forces, who claimed I was not loyal to Syria and therefore not allowed to live there)—were nothing compared to the disasters other people experienced.

  * * *

  —

  I lived in London for three years but felt disconnected from the city. It was hard to bond with anyone or to build a new life there; while people around me chatted about normal, daily occurrences, my mind was occupied with images of death and destruction. I continued covering Syria from a distance, maintaining daily contact with people I knew who were still in the country in order to reflect the reality of what was happening on the ground. I also traveled around to report on refugees from my own country who were living in tents in Lebanon and elsewhere.

  Until 2016, I still thought there was a way out of the quagmire that Syria had fallen into. I was also convinced that my life outside of Damascus was just temporary. When a wave of refugees took to the sea to reach Europe, I made the opposite journey, leaving London for Beirut—the closest possible location to home—with the naïve idea that I would be back in Damascus within a year or so. The closer I got to home geographically, however, the further the concept of home started to feel.