We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled

by Wendy Pearlman

  My dad never mentioned the Hama massacre. He was too afraid; maybe a government informant would find out and they’d kill the whole family. In 2006, Syria got the Internet. We read about the Hama massacre, the political prisoners . . . We, the new generation, became aware of how terrible the regime is. We wanted to know why we couldn’t have the banana and we reached the point where we just had to go for it. We thought everything would be great, but it turned out that the banana was booby-trapped. It blew up in our faces.

  After ninety days in prison, I was brought to court. Everyone there was clean and well dressed, and I looked like a caveman, with my hair grown long and wild. The judge was sympathetic and let me go. They unshackled me and I returned to life. I went downstairs, where everyone was waiting. So many people started kissing me, I couldn’t even see. The first thing I did was greet my dad and ask if my brother was still in prison. He was. That was so painful for me. Why was I released and he wasn’t?

  We drove home and my mom and aunt and little sisters were waiting for me in the street. We were all crying. I tried to hold myself together, but I couldn’t. After that, visitors every day. What happened with you? How did you get tortured? I didn’t say much, because everyone had someone in prison. I didn’t want to add to their sadness.

  Gradually, I decided that I needed to get active again. My mom was against this, so I had a battle with her. I told her that I needed to go out, for the sake of my brother.

  A lot had changed. Because of the regime crackdown, not many people were demonstrating anymore. We put a lot of effort into trying to get them moving again. We’d throw leaflets and then run away. We’d launch balloons. We’d post pictures of political prisoners around town, writing that this person was arrested because he asked for your freedom.

  One day I crossed paths with security officers again. They threw me in a car and took me to the intelligence services. They kept hitting me, saying, “You were in prison and then went back to protesting? Didn’t we teach you a lesson?”

  All the old memories started flooding back. The first time I was arrested, I had no idea what was going to happen. The second time was harder, because I knew what awaited me.

  The beatings didn’t stop for four days. And then, suddenly, an officer said, “That’s it, you can leave.” He sent me home. I couldn’t believe it.

  A few days later, I saw security cars outside my house. A friend with contacts found out that they were waiting for friends to visit me so they could get them, too. If they didn’t manage to get them, they’d come back to arrest me again.

  They were using me like bait: a worm to attract fish. I messaged my friends that they should stay away. And then I left for Lebanon. I just paid a bribe at the border and went right through.

  Billal, doctor (Harasta)

  We were underground and couldn’t see a thing. We knew it was morning when the guards switched shifts. Otherwise, we had no idea if it was night or day.

  There were eighty people in our cell. Without nutrition, we all became like skeletons. People were always sick and everyone had eye infections. As a doctor, I’d try to take care of them, but I couldn’t help much. I’d just tell everyone, “When it’s your time to go to the bathroom, try to splash your eyes with water.”

  My cellmates respected me, so they let me stay near the small gate. There I could breathe a little and also see light from the corridor. Our cell was near the women’s cell, and sometimes they’d come for a specific girl, calling out her name and the name of her town. We knew that they were raping her, because they always took her during the shift of a particular officer. From the small window I could see that she was about sixteen years old, and looked sick and miserable. She wore a headscarf, but they would rip it off.

  There was one guy in our cell named Yousef. He cried a lot, but wouldn’t say why. After three or four months, he finally told us his story. He worked as a driver for the Damascus Municipality. In the evenings, they’d take him to dig holes near the airport. Then a car would arrive filled with dead bodies. Yousef’s job was to help push them into the hole and bury them. They’d throw their ID cards in the hole so no one could know what happened to them. They simply disappeared.

  Once Yousef was pushing a girl’s body into the hole when she moved. He realized that she was still alive, and left her to the side. The officer came and told him, “Throw her in or I’ll throw you in her place.” There was nothing Yousef could do, so he pushed the girl in the hole and covered her in dirt. After that he had nightmares and tried to run away. He became a wanted person, and was eventually arrested at a checkpoint and thrown in prison.

  Yousef was in our cell for some time, but then one day they came and took him away. To where, I never knew.

  Omar, playwright (Damascus)

  I was forty-five days old when my dad was imprisoned, and ten when he got out. Our relationship was always a struggle. As a kid, I didn’t understand how prison had destroyed him, psychologically.

  Then I got arrested. Prison was hell in every sense of the word. Horror, what horror. If there’s anything ugly in this life, it is that security branch where I was imprisoned.

  It was really hot, so we’d wear only underwear. There were so many people crowded in the cell. You’d sleep and wouldn’t know who was sleeping on top of you or who was sleeping on top of him. You didn’t know where your body ended and someone else’s began.

  At least once a day I had to carry a dead body. We new prisoners still had meat on our bones. They’d look at us and say, “You, you, and you, come here.” We’d go down to the bathrooms, where corpses would be lying on their stomachs, with their faces in the basin of the squat toilet. The number of their dormitory and their files were written on their bodies. It was our job to carry the corpses and put them in a vehicle. Sometimes twelve bodies, sometimes thirteen. I once carried four myself.

  There are things that you just can’t communicate in words. Like the smell. Or the yellow color of the skin. The torture, the killing, the children—there were so many children. There was this sixteen-year-old whose back was broken on the “German Chair.”* There was a thirteen-year-old named Mohammed. Once, the guard grabbed him by his waist and pounded his head on the door. He came back to the cell crying and lay on my stomach and started calling me “Mama.” He thought I was his mother.

  The two things you feel most inside prison is despair and hopelessness. Despair because, all of a sudden, you’re cut off from everything. You feel like an animal; no longer human. Hopelessness because you can’t understand anything. You can’t do anything. You can only let things happen to you. Hopelessness is seeing someone come from interrogation covered in blood. Hopelessness is seeing someone else who has been there for eight months and hasn’t been asked a single question and is just begging to be convicted and executed already. Hopelessness is waking up in the middle of the night and hearing somebody breathing his last breaths. You bang on the door and shout that there’s somebody dying in here and they tell you, “Leave him. Tomorrow we’ll take him down to the toilets.” And you can’t find anywhere to sleep except on this dead person’s knees.

  Sometime after I was released, I was talking with my dad. I asked him how he was able to become normal again after having been in prison so long.

  He looked at me and said, “Who told you that I ever became normal?”

  Fouad, surgeon (Aleppo)

  My wife’s brother was arrested in 1982. He had joined a leftist political party and was caught reading the party newspaper. He was the eldest son, and studying to be a doctor. The whole family had been so proud of him. He was finally released in 1997. For his father, it was like a present from God.

  In prison he’d learned English and French. When he got out he became a professional translator. Given what had happened to him, his youngest son wanted to avoid anything related to politics. Instead, he worked with his dad in the translation company. He was twenty-six or so and lived in a building on the second floor. His sister lived on the first floor with
her husband and son, who was a college student.

  In August 2012, officers from Air Force Intelligence knocked on the door of the sister’s house. Her son opened the door. Without a word they pulled him outside and put him in a car. Then a group of officers went around the house, opening drawers, and taking mobile phones. They asked the woman where her brother was, and she said that he lived on the floor above them.

  Some officers went there. The commander stayed, and even sat down and starting drinking with her husband and his friend, who were there watching TV. Then they took him and his friend away. They ended up taking four men. They took the men’s cars, saying, “It’s night and they’ll spend a few hours with us. After that, they can come back home on their own.”

  The four men haven’t been seen since. They’ve disappeared. We have no idea what happened to them. We tried. We paid money. We tried . . .

  My father-in-law is eighty. He is a remnant of a person. My sister-in-law refuses to leave Damascus. We encouraged her to seek asylum elsewhere, but she said no. She will stay and wait for her husband, her brother, and her son.

  Part V

  Militarization

  Captain, FSA fighter (Aleppo)

  When demonstrations began, the security forces would come. We’d throw rocks at them, and they’d use tear gas against us. Then they started opening fire on us. We agreed that if they were going to shoot bullets, then we needed weapons, too. The situation was one of murder, and we had to attack those who attacked us.

  We were only chanting in the streets. We could have chanted for the rest of our lives without anyone even paying attention to us. But when the regime started attacking us, a lot of people who were on the sidelines started to join and protest, too. Because of the blood. Blood is what moves people. Blood is the force of the revolution.

  Aziza, school principal (Hama)

  The American and French ambassadors attended the 500,000-person demonstration in Hama. They were welcomed with enormous enthusiasm. Women and children and men took to the streets and kids carried olive branches and flowers. You can’t imagine the amount of joy and hope. People thought that Western countries supported them.

  My husband is from Homs and became a protest leader there. Violence was becoming intense in Homs, but they still had chants like “One, one, one! The Syrian people are one!” When the situation worsened, they chanted, “O Alawites, we’re your family. The house of Assad does not benefit you.” In Rastan, a town in the Homs countryside, most residents are religious Sunni Muslims. My husband went there to express condolences after a lot of people were killed. He told them, “They want to split us along religious lines. But religion is for God and the nation is for all.” The people of Rastan repeated after him, “Religion is for God and the nation is for all!”

  The more people tried to address the issue of sectarianism, the more violent the regime became. It sent shabeeha to do house raids. They’d enter and kidnap young women in front of their parents.

  The men said that they needed weapons to defend themselves. I urged against this. I said, “They’re trying to force you into killing, which is what they want.” I asked them, “Do you have tanks or planes? They have an army created to fight Israel. You don’t stand a chance.”

  They’d say, “We have been patient. We’ve endured and endured, but they have ripped our women from our hands. How can we sit by and do nothing?”

  Abu Samir, defected officer (Douma)

  I was in Douma and saw a massacre from my window. There was a demonstration and, toward the end, the regime started shooting. There are merciful ways to kill. But this was different. Unarmed people were killed in a horrific way. They smashed someone’s head on the ground. They dragged corpses in the street.

  The same day, I spoke with my brother-in-law and told him that I needed a few strong men. We formed an armed group of seven and I was the eighth. Three of us had Kalashnikovs. The rest had hunting rifles. We asked for money here and there, and went to smuggling areas in Syria and Lebanon to buy arms and ammunition.

  We started working at night. We’d go to checkpoints and military installations, carry out an operation, and come back. A lot of friends and relatives objected on the grounds that this would bring bloody consequences. I told them this is a bloody regime. It is going to slaughter us. So either we defend ourselves and our families or . . .

  Abed, defected officer (Palmyra)

  We were four officers in the Syrian army, with the credentials to prove to it. We had freedom of movement in all of Syria and used it to help the demonstrators. We distributed humanitarian aid and food and medical supplies to areas that needed it.

  Our car did not get searched. When I’d arrive at a military site or checkpoint, I’d get out my ID. The soldier would salute. “My respects, sir, please proceed!” As an officer in the Syrian army, you’re above everyone. Stand in line? Forget it! That’s how the regime worked in Syria. We understood this.

  The revolution started in March. Civilians and rebels started using arms in August. I told them from the beginning that this regime would not go except with force of arms. Like it or not, you have to use weapons. Every day there were peaceful demonstrations and five or six or ten people would die . . . We weren’t going to get anywhere. And if you wanted to wait for world public opinion to support us, forget it. We needed to forget that myth.

  By the end of 2011, things started tightening around us. It was as if the other officers suspected us. The regime’s maneuvers kept failing, so they had the feeling that people were helping the insurgents from the inside.

  At that time, my assignment was away from the base. One day the commanding officers sent a young lieutenant to tell me to report back to their offices. I was surprised. I asked him why they didn’t communicate with me directly. He said he didn’t know.

  I didn’t like the situation. I asked the lieutenant if I could use his mobile, saying that the minutes on mine had expired. This was just a pretext; I wanted to use his phone to call the commander and see what he would say. As soon as I put my hand on the phone a text message arrived. It was from the same commander who had sent for me. I opened it and read, “Keep your eyes on Abed, we’re coming to get him.”

  I replied, “Received,” and then erased the message. I returned the phone and thanked him. Then I took my bag and got out of there as fast as I could. The next month, I left the country.

  Ashraf, artist (Qamishli)

  If international powers had intervened at the beginning, it wouldn’t have reached this point. Or at least if a no fly-zone had been enforced, things wouldn’t have gotten so bad.

  The problem is not that the world did nothing. It’s that they told us, “Rise up! We are with you. Revolt!” [Turkish president Recep Tayyip] Erdoğan declared that the bombing of Homs was a red line, and President Obama said that chemical weapons were a red line. People were encouraged to stand by the revolution because they thought they had international supporters. And when the regime crossed these lines and there was no implementation of these threats, the population was left in a state of desperation. It understood that it could count only on itself.

  Abdul Rahman, engineer (Hama)

  The demonstration in Hama was like paradise. The sound of the voices was like an earthquake. Half a million free men and free women, together.

  After that, the security forces ran away. We liberated Hama with numbers, not weapons. Each neighborhood made its own checkpoints to block regime forces from reentering. We knew it was a matter of time before the army invaded, and we wanted to protect ourselves. I became a Molotov cocktail expert. We collected donations and my cousin and others smuggled weapons from north Lebanon. We got lists of weapons we could buy: An AK-47 cost 150,000 Syrian pounds. A PKC machine gun cost 175,000. A box of PKC bullets cost 15,000. We also bought ammunition from members of the regime security forces. We had spies inside the police so we kept up to date on lists of people wanted by the regime.

  I had been saving money to marry my fiancé, so I w
as caught in a struggle between my personal life and my desire to get a gun to protect my people. That was something I’d always dreamt of, to be honest. But there was a list of guys waiting to obtain a weapon, and I was not at the top. I hadn’t done military service like the others, so I lacked experience with how to handle arms.

  On July 31, the regime started to shell the city at 6:30 in the morning. You could smell gunfire and hear the shudders. People started to block the streets with rocks. In our neighborhood we had nothing but two AK-47s and three pistols. One person had a grenade—where he got it, I don’t know. We started filling Molotov cocktails, and distributing them to the other checkpoints. We thought that we were strong enough to stop anything.

  The sounds of engines came closer and closer, and then suddenly, boom! They shelled us. We were twelve people at our checkpoint; seven were killed, and five, including me, slipped away with injuries. Our neighborhood was weak and our defenses broke down. We hadn’t done a thing. We didn’t even start.

  The first day of the siege Hama showed some resistance. The second day there was no resistance. Regime forces invaded, killed 309 people, and then withdrew again. The third morning there was hard shelling. I woke up and found my sister crying and my mother reciting her will. They begged to flee Hama. I had refused up until then, but finally agreed. Everyone was running from Hama although nobody knew where.

  We made it to Damascus, where I waited fifteen days. When I returned to Hama, I found it a completely changed place. Everywhere there were army checkpoints, photos of Bashar al-Assad, and big machine guns. I walked around and saw writing on the walls, like: “There is no God but Bashar,” and “Assad, or we’ll burn down the country.”