We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled

by Wendy Pearlman

  Sometimes when people arrived they were already dead. Sometimes people would die in front of us, and we couldn’t do anything because we didn’t have bandages to stop the bleeding. Sometimes someone died at night and we couldn’t bury him until the morning. Because of the electricity cuts, we might not have ice to put on his body. The smell would be terrible.

  There was a man called Jaber and his mission was to go around and find ice from other people in the city. He had a motorcycle and sometimes would travel long distances, searching for ice. And then Jaber was killed, and we couldn’t find any ice for him.

  Beshr, student (Damascus)

  We formed our neighborhood coordination committee. They cut the Internet at that time, and we started to get satellite Internet. I was asked to hide the satellite phone for our neighborhood. That was so dangerous that I couldn’t take that decision alone, so I asked every member of my family if they agreed to have the phone in our house. Everyone agreed.

  Twice, activists sent me satellite phones to deliver to other activists. I didn’t know the real names of the person who was giving me the phone or the person to whom I delivered the phone. They didn’t know my real name, either. The guy who gave me phones was supposed to email me anytime before he called me. Once he called me without prior notification and told me to meet him in ten minutes. I wasn’t sure what to do. I phoned an activist friend, but she didn’t answer. I decided to go and was just stepping out when she called back. She said, “Be careful, this man was detained a week ago—they might be using his phone to trap you.” I asked another friend to go check on the meeting place. He went and found six security guards waiting.

  My mom had always been really rigid about our studies. Once I overheard her talking to my grandma. Grandma said, “Your son isn’t focusing. He’s a senior in high school now, and exams are coming up.” Mom said, “I understand, but I can’t let him down. I keep remembering how his father went to prison. We need to continue the struggle.” I felt so supported. I was like, “Wow! I love you, Mom!”

  Some time after that, the security forces came looking for me. I hid in a back room. My mom opened the door a crack and said, “I can’t let you in because I’m alone and not wearing a headscarf.” I panicked, trying to think about how I could climb out a window or something. But my mom just coolly told them that I was studying at a friend’s house and that she could not allow them inside. The officers said that I should call them, and then went away. Mom was so calm the whole time. I have no idea how.

  Ayham, web developer (Damascus)

  There was a systematic effort to give the movement a bad image. Every time a demonstration passed by a street, the police would run after it and break windows and lights, or sometimes spray paint graffiti. On YouTube you can find a lot of videos of them doing this. At the same time, the regime would show these images of destroyed property on TV and say, “This is the freedom they want. The freedom to destroy the country, the freedom to disrespect religions, etcetera.”

  We always faced this question: “What is the freedom you’re calling for?” So we tried to define freedom. Slowly, individual efforts came together. My brother was in a coordination committee at his university and they were very creative with computer stuff. They started some YouTube channels where they produced videos about the main things that people wanted. They said: We wanted freedom of speech. We wanted release of political prisoners because we knew that they were potential leaders. We wanted to get rid of the Eighth Amendment to the constitution, which says that the Baath Party is the ruling party of the state. Because the freedom to form political parties wouldn’t mean much if the Baath Party always controlled the presidency and a majority in the parliament.

  We faced other questions, like: “What’s the alternative to the regime? If not Assad, who can take his place?” They’re stupid questions. Everybody who opened their mouths to talk about what was happening in the country was shoved in prison. The regime puts all the movement leaders in prison, and then comes and says that the movement has no leaders. Well, how do you expect there to be leaders when you arrest them all?

  Mustafa, barber (Salamiyah)

  I’m from Salamiyah and a member of the Ismaili sect, which is a branch of Shiite Islam. Ismailis have been persecuted across history. Personally, I’m an atheist and a Marxist. But as a barber, I deal with people with all sorts of different opinions.

  We started establishing local coordination committees. These put the appropriate people in the appropriate places. Age and education and social class weren’t important. This is a major indicator that the Syrian people are not backward. They’re ready for democratic life. As Marxists, we always dreamed about this situation when people would govern themselves, from the bottom up, without hierarchy.

  The regime didn’t want to admit that they were fighting any sort of secular entity. So when we started having big demonstrations, it drove the regime crazy. Salamiyah had a big effect on all of Syria. It raised people’s awareness that government propaganda wasn’t true. Daraa, a predominantly Sunni city, was demonstrating. And Baniyas, a mixed city, was demonstrating. And Salamiyah, a city of minorities known for its leftist tendencies, was demonstrating. Everyone had the same slogans, the same political principles, the same demands for freedom. It wasn’t Salafis or foreign agents challenging the regime. It was a revolution.

  For forty years the regime had been working on segregating people by religion. People from Salamiyah are from a minority and people from Hama are from the majority religion, so they’re supposed to hate each other. But when Hama was bombarded, people started fleeing by the thousands, and we welcomed them into our homes.

  After months, the regime launched a big raid on Salamiyah. People were arrested from the streets and from their homes. Fifteen of us escaped to the areas around Damascus. These areas have a strong Islamic culture. People are religious, but they opened their doors to us from minority communities. The respect they showed was unbelievable. We’d go to demonstrations, and local people would put us in the middle of the crowd so we’d be safer when security forces started shooting.

  Musa, professor (Aleppo)

  In general, the regime focused on the cities and created a huge security presence that made it very difficult to protest. It was also easy to recruit people there to work as spies. For example, there were suddenly street vendors all over Aleppo. They were paid shabeeha, especially the watermelon vendors. They were armed with knives and their role was to attack protests as soon as they broke out. The result was that sometimes there would be hundreds of protesters followed by hundreds of arrests. Or sometimes the regime would learn about an upcoming protest and let it happen, just so they could gather information about who was involved.

  Also, in big cities, not everyone knows each other. Young guys would be chased by the police, and they’d be afraid to escape into just any shop, because the owner might be a regime agent. In the countryside, everyone knows everyone else. People could flee more easily. And they could organize by word of mouth and protest for an hour or two before the security forces even got there.

  Ghayth, former student (Aleppo)

  During the peak of demonstrations at the University of Aleppo, women played a huge role. Women who wore headscarves would hide papers and signs in their long coats, because they wouldn’t get searched. The male dorms had so many demonstrations that the authorities closed them down. Only female dorms remained open, so women took charge of organizing, and then would pass information on to the guys. If the security forces attacked male demonstrators, women would stand in their way; at that time, security officers saw touching women as a red line. A lot of women really came to the rescue.

  So many people were imprisoned, we thought about doing something for their families. Even simple things, like buying milk for children. We considered prisoners’ families to be like our own families; it was our duty to help them. My brother got active in this. Once someone saw him make a delivery and then reported him to the intelligence services. He
was brought in for interrogation twice—and this after he’d already spent a month in prison for demonstrating. So he took his wife and children and left the country.

  Ayham, web developer (Damascus)

  Damascus was extremely controlled. You could see secret police everywhere. It was like that guy on Game of Thrones who has those birds, as he calls them. But the beautiful thing for us, the mesmerizing thing, was that at some point we stopped giving a shit. We were afraid, but we were just too excited. You’ve been suppressed for so long and suddenly the lid comes off. The idea of being able to speak was captivating.

  Everybody said that the regime would collapse during the month of Ramadan, because instead of gathering at the mosque for prayer only on Fridays, people gathered every night. The atmosphere was pumped with energy.

  The twenty-seventh of Ramadan is a holy day, and people stay up all night praying and reading the Quran. Every year over five thousand people gathered at the mosque near our house. Volunteers from the neighborhood helped prepare a meal for people to eat before sunrise. I don’t pray, but I always participated in preparing the meal, because I thought it was a beautiful social event.

  People started arriving. There were a lot of old people, but also guys with body piercings and strange haircuts. You could see that they had no idea what to do. Some guys were wearing shorts, which you aren’t supposed to do in a mosque. Out of respect, they were trying to pull their shorts down toward their ankles. But that exposed their backsides. It was a beautiful scene of the complex social fabric that we had in Damascus.

  Thousands of security officers surrounded the mosque. It looked like a scene from King Arthur. They were just standing there with sticks and shields and angry faces. We were arranging the food and had a long argument about whether to bring meals to the officers outside. A lot of people said no, they don’t deserve it. Others said it was a gesture to show we meant no harm. They were young soldiers. People like us, basically, doing their military service.

  Three or four brave guys took boxes filled with meals to the commanding officer. They said, “We come in peace. This is for you because you’re standing here all night.” The officer responded, “Take this back inside or I’ll kill you.”

  The prayers started and the imam said, “God protect us from those who harm us.” People started shouting, “Amen! Amen!” It’s a religious word and the majority of people there knew nothing about religion. But you could see them crying and shivering. I don’t believe in prayer, but I believe in the emotional charge that prayer carries. You know what it’s like, when you believe in a cause and you’re standing with people who also believe in it? And you’re surrounded by threat and you can feel the fear?

  Prayer ended. Silence. Then one person shouted, “Freedom!” Others stood up and started shouting their lungs out. Old people grabbed their shoes and fled.

  And then: chaos. Everything turned into a battle. The soldiers started throwing rocks. And that’s when we realized our big mistake: Someone had donated juice for the meal, and it was in glass bottles. People started throwing bottles at the officers. You could hear glass shattering.

  The regime had snipers all around and one guy in the courtyard got shot in the head. People rushed back inside and police ran in behind them. Some people were on the second-floor balcony. If they got caught they were going to get arrested or killed. So they started jumping down or hanging on to the curtains. Everything got destroyed.

  Inside, we got word that Damascus’s big imams were negotiating with the chief of police. The sun came up and eventually they said it was safe to leave. We opened the door and saw policemen chanting, “Assad! Assad!” They told us that the area in front of the mosque was secure. But the moment we crossed the street, the officers started chasing us. I ran like I’d never run before.

  Abu Firas, fighter (rural Idlib)

  My brother was kidnapped by the shabeeha. After eighteen days, they sent him back to us, killed under torture.

  You can’t imagine how he died. His toenails were ripped out. His bones had been pierced with a drill. There were marks from being beaten and burned. His nose was beaten so severely that it was flat.

  We buried him. And about three months later, some guys who were released from prison contacted us and told us that my brother was actually still alive. They’d been with him in prison. The body we’d buried belonged to a different person; he was so disfigured that we couldn’t tell he was someone else.

  Shafiq, graduate (Daraya)

  Twenty-two of us were in charge of organizing demonstrations in Daraya. Of them, only three are still around today. We’d all contribute about $20 to buy flags or materials to make posters. We’d plan on Wednesdays and Thursdays, and protest on Fridays.

  In late May, the security forces attacked Daraya. They cut off phone lines, cell phone service, and Internet. They raided houses, taking all the young men they found. So it became absolutely necessary for my brothers and me to leave our house. We started hiding in agricultural fields.

  We stopped protesting on Fridays to avoid clashing with the security forces. At the end of the day, security officers are our brothers; we didn’t want bloodshed. Instead of demonstrations, we organized other peaceful activities to show the government that we were still there. We’d write on the walls. One night we held a candlelight vigil.

  Then the regime besieged the city again. They charged into our house at three in the morning. Officers wrecked the house and cursed my mom and dad, saying that they were looking for their terrorist sons.

  We went back to planning. One night after a meeting my brother went back home. Security forces were waiting there and arrested him. After that, they started calling my dad and telling him that they’d let my brother go if he turned me in. I stopped going home as much as possible.

  A guy I knew let me stay at his house. One morning, there was a knock at the door. It was the security forces. I ran out the backdoor and tried to hide, but one of the officers spotted me. Until then I’d been really proud that I’d never been captured. I was devastated that I got caught.

  They took me to be interrogated, beating me every step of the way. At the interrogation center, they made us take off all our clothes. They mocked us and spat on us, but it was actually more dignifying than humiliating. You didn’t do anything but say, “Freedom,” and that was enough to rattle the entire regime and make them panic. For me, that was victory.

  Later I was thrown in a cell. I kept telling myself to be strong, that I was doing this for a cause and that God would be with my mother, who now had two sons in prison. To the general public, whoever is arrested is considered dead until he’s released.

  In the cell, you’d hear the sounds of other people being tortured. People screaming and screaming. Interrogators used three different bells for the torture rooms, and we were there long enough to recognize each of them. One bell was for the room with “the tire.”* Another was for the room with electric cables. The third bell was for the room with the most extreme form of torture, where they don’t kill you but almost do and leave you wishing you were dead.

  The door to the corridor was metal and it made this loud noise you know from the movies. Every time you heard it, you thought, “It must be my turn.” And all the others thought, “It must be my turn.” Everyone was scared. The noises were harder than the torture itself. Sound enters you in a different way. It felt like the sounds themselves were killing you.

  One day the bell rang for the worst kind of torture, and that time they came for me. The sixty seconds it took to drag me down the hallway were the hardest part of my entire imprisonment. It felt like a year before they threw me into a room. I was blindfolded, but heard the tap of shoes circling me. The interrogator didn’t utter a word. After about fifteen minutes, I couldn’t take it anymore. I said, “I’ll confess to whatever you want. Just ask me something!” Then I collapsed on the floor.

  That’s when the interrogator started beating me. I felt relieved to hear him, finally. He stuffed m
e into a car tire and was counting lashes until like fifty-seven. Then he counted “sixty” instead of “fifty-eight,” and said, “Oh no, we messed up, we need to start over.” He started hitting me with the electric cable, emptying the whole cable into my body from my toenails to my chest. Sensitive areas, too. I was beyond feeling. At that point, you lose your mind.

  After interrogation, I was transferred to a group cell. Fifty-two prisoners were in a space two by four meters. It was too crowded for all of us to lie down at the same time, so we’d take turns sleeping and standing. Everyone was afraid of everyone else: Someone might go in for torture and spill everything you told him. It turned out that one of the guys in our cell was planted there to gather information.

  Life became routine. One beating in the morning and another in the evening. You go, you get beaten, you return. We got to use the bathroom twice a day. You had until the count of ten to run in and out; if you didn’t finish in time, you got hit. We worked together to share food, because there was never enough. Everyone in the cell was equal: the engineer, the doctor, whoever. It was beautiful, in a way. But also sad. We young guys would try to take beatings for the older ones.

  At some point I forgot what my parents looked like.

  Sometimes I’d start thinking about all those people who had disappeared over the years and we didn’t even notice. Sometimes I cursed everyone over fifty. Why were you quiet and let them rule us? Once I’d seen a program on National Geographic about a monkey. Every time he climbed a tree to get a banana, they’d hit him and he’d go back down. They kept doing it, again and again. The other monkeys saw and none even dared to climb the tree. They started eating dirt, even though the banana tree was right there. After a month, just seeing the banana was enough to make the monkey terrified.