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January 19 - January 26, 2020
Most opposed Assad rule, as do the majority of Syrian refugees as of this writing. While the drivers of forced migration have evolved over time, the majority of those who fled during the first years of the conflict were escaping aerial bombardment and other mortal punishments levied by the regime against individuals and areas challenging its rule.
In December 2010, when a self-immolation sparked demonstrations in rural Tunisia and security forces responded with repression. Outraged citizens spread protest throughout the country, forcing the much-loathed President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali to flee in mid-January 2011. Egyptians then took to the streets and, defying police violence during eighteen days of far-reaching mobilization, pushed the long-ruling Hosni Mubarak to resign as well.
Many Syrians insist that had he offered remorse for the bloodshed, as well as indications of meaningful change, they would have cheered his leadership. Instead, by denouncing unarmed protestors as terrorists and traitors to be crushed, he brought more people out into the streets.
I don’t believe in prayer, but I believe in the emotional charge that prayer carries.
I have no problem entering any place in the world with a car strapped with explosives. Because no country in the world is paying attention to me. Not a single one is doing anything to protect any fraction of the rights that I should have as a human being living on earth. I’m not saying that the conscience of the international community is asleep. I’m saying that conscience doesn’t exist at all.
This man had come from abroad to treat injured people. If that’s infidel, let us all be infidels like him.
I would die on Syrian land with pride. The rest of the world would know that we’re not terrorists.
I once photographed a barrel bomb that killed three kids. I was photographing the father as he sobbed. He kept saying, “I left them for one hour to look for a safer place to take them. I came back and they were gone.” I have four kids, and the whole purpose of my future is to guarantee their future. So I imagine this man who loses his kids—the thing that defines his future. I completely understand if he turns into a monster. But even a monster has hope. He hopes that someday he’ll go back to being a normal human being.
No one supported us. Instead the U.S.-led Coalition started bombing. Two months ago, twenty-seven people in my village were killed while waiting in line for bread. Coalition planes killed them. It’s airstrikes that have destroyed the country. Planes do the most damage, and ISIS doesn’t have planes.
I swear, in Syria nobody used to ask whether you’re Muslim or Christian. We had no idea what religion our friends were.
There’s nothing to protect us. No state, no government, no law, no human rights. Animals have more rights than we do.
They found a place in the desert where not even a tree or an animal can live, and they put the Syrian people there. The other day we saw a butterfly in the camp. Everyone got so excited, we were all shouting at each other to come and look at it. It must have really lost its way if it wound up here.
On the boat we found ourselves to be Syrians, loving each other and caring for each other, even though we’re all from different parts of the country. I’m from Suwayda and I was sitting next to a mother and her three kids from Zabadani. The father got stuck on the other end of the boat and there was no way he could move closer to us. I held the kids during the journey and was responsible for their safety. We were all Syrians; all one family.
The dinghy arrived. Getting on was like throwing yourself into a deep, dark hole. My husband looked at me and said, “Should we go back?” I responded, “To where?”
Once while I was waiting for an appointment in one of the state agencies here I met a journalist. She told me, “The most important thing is that now you’re safe.” I told her, “But we haven’t come looking for safety. We’re not afraid of death.” And it’s true. We don’t have a problem with death. Our problem is life without dignity. If we’d known what was in store for us, we never would have come. But we did come, and now we can’t just return. There’s no way back.
That’s one of a dictator’s strategies: to keep the population in ignorance. A library means people will read, which means they’ll think, which means they’ll know their rights.
Many people aren’t happy with the refugees coming to their country. Maybe we came illegally, but every other door was shut in our faces. What do they expect us to do? Isn’t it enough our government destroyed us and we lost everything? We would prefer to stay in our country. If you don’t want refugees, help us make peace in Syria.
If we change the regime but don’t change our broader culture, the same regime will come back, just with different people.
I don’t want to be only a political thing. I want to be able to laugh, tell jokes, enjoy music. To be a person with dreams, hopes, love. I have a lot of anger at the world and I want space to heal. I want to find the space to be me.
The process of finding out what a country needs is never clean. Of course, when you’re in a stable country with functioning institutions it’s easy to have a moral code. But just keep in mind that these values are only made possible for you because other people did dirty things to put that system in place. People don’t want to know about that dirty work because it doesn’t fit with their idea of who they are.
As a country, we need somebody to do the wrong thing in order for future generations to have a life that is morally stable and functioning. That way, they won’t have to compromise on morality all the time in small ways, like we had to do in Syria.
That’s what I’ve learned from this whole thing called the Syrian war. For us, people who are not privileged enough to have the freedom to be good people, we have to make some bad choices and do some evil things. That’s shitty, but it is what it is. Ironically, we went out in demonstrations to eradicate corruption and criminal behavior and evil and hurting people. And we’ve ended up with results that hurt many more people.
