We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria

by Wendy Pearlman

was struck, as I had been when carrying out the interviews, by the extent to which personal narratives coalesced into a collective narrative. Palpable overlaps revealed how many individual lives passed through the same stages and grappled with similar issues.

It is a regime based on command and obedience. If it gives to a citizen, it gives him more than he deserves. And if it punishes a citizen, it punishes him more than he deserves.

You grow up with that in the back of your head, constantly reminding you that we are living due to the grace of the Assad family.

The Egyptian revolution was only eighteen days, but some guys stopped sleeping at night. They followed the news nonstop, all day long: Egypt, Egypt, Egypt.

She shouted, “God, Syria, freedom, and nothing else!”

We had gotten used to oppression. It was part of our life, like air, sun, water. We didn’t even feel it.

I had been saving money to marry my fiancé, so I was caught in a struggle between my personal life and my desire to get a gun to protect my people.

I looked at Homs and thought, “I’m not going to see her again.” And it’s true, I’m not. She’s gone now.

This man had come from abroad to treat injured people. If that’s infidel, let us all be infidels like him.

Russian plane is able to drop phosphorus bombs on some human beings because the world has grown accustomed to their deaths.

You are in dire need for a narrative that can justify this futility.

I feel sad, but I don’t feel regret.