Freedom Square” Unavoidably A Necessity. Our Reunion is There
Only two months ago, I was still on travel. The pain had eaten me up till I lost the ability to deal with it unless I chose to leave to a different world. The irony is that at that age I had become “Alice in Wonderland” but it was my only hope to survive an incontestable breakdown. Many of my friends had actually left the country or became detainees. The movement has almost approached a still point. The Syrian regime colonel and his “heroic” detectives were making sure that my days passed by as worse and darker as they could. Others have not stopped advising me to stay at distance from the “law cases” I was dealing with everyday so that I could maintain my psychological health and to prevent my self from falling into the abyss of depression and darkness; something I was never good at. For instance, I could not keep a distance from “Om Mohammad” while she was sitting in front of me, nervously hitting her legs, looking to my eyes and insistently asking if her son was dead or alive. I couldn’t even stand at distance from “Abo Basel” when he was almost daily calling me, talking till his voice quavered and disappear and asking: “My daughter what should we do, is my son dead or alive?” I have not heard from Om Mohammad or Abo Basel since the beginning of the revolution, but I think about them everyday. The truth is in the past few weeks thousands were detained; including the closest friends and loved ones. Hundreds were martyred; many were filmed in their last moments which made us feel that death is so close and we could even feel the breaths of the martyr on our own skins. Maybe, despite the bitterness of pain, that sharing the videos this way, others acknowledging the martyrs and expressing it out and loud, it conveys some sort of paid consideration to the victims and those who cared for them. This might be the first accomplishment of the revolution: Sharing the pain and acknowledging it, no one knows what this means except for those who were burned inside from pain alone for so many years. I bow with respect to your pains Om Mohammad and Abo Basel, the latter who kept on asking me if it was beneficial going out in demonstrations to demand freedom for the detainees, via a phone monitored by security members on both ends, while I’m saying good bye to him and giving him empty promises and false hopes. Then, thinking to myself: A demonstration? I hope the investigator would pass out this suggestion in the next interrogation session. The Egyptian Regime was Toppled, I Went into a Mourning Process, Our Turn is Next Supposedly The day the the Tunisian regime was toppled was a great day, we congratulated each other, friends and activists, we danced and celebrated till the early morning. When the Egyptian regime was toppled, I felt that I had collapsed with it. I blew up with tears and went into a mourning process, a situation of jealous and anger that I could not explain with any rationale. The pages of social networks became a virtual revolution and the fever of meetings, appointments and preparations gave me headaches. At the same time, the Syrians approach towards each other by then, and many non-Syrians towards us, was a combination of villain, “villain” and revilement. I did not need more feelings of oppression. As if my anger could talk, it would have said: It’s our turn supposedly! Now, I feel embarrassed from those feelings, I smile and look down! However, I excuse myself a little especially when looking to Faris’s face at the hospital, he went to another world with signs of a shy smile and lots of reproach were on his face, I felt completely overwhelmed in those crucial moments. On March 2009, Faris Murad died alone in his cold home in one of Damascus far away suburbs. Faris was dying slowly since he was released from detention after 29 years. I liked him a lot.. I assumed myself playing the role of a mediator between Earth and heaven, I tried with other friends to give him better days or to push the ghost of death a little further from him but it went all in vain. That was the first time I felt the bitterness of injustice in a case that directly matters to me. I felt how little I was in a country that does not hesitate to kill Faris everyday with a great deal of silence and conspiracy. This country had started to throttle me with its streets, cities, districts, restaurants and everything in it. To “escape” out side the country was certainly not an option for being obstinate and bearer more than being hopeful.. Continuing that way means at the same time eating my self up. I packed my bags and virtually traveled after working and active hours, and I only felt myself coming back, in one place that is in “liberated Douma.” The first feelings and tears that I do not remember right now, as if I was reborn in the midst of demonstrations. Also for the first time, I genuinely felt what Faris continuously repeated that his 30 years in prison were not counted of his life, that there is a new life begins in specific times though it will be loaded with burdens from a previous life. It is amazing indeed how that heavy relationship, between the place and the human being, that I on my soul and then slowly taking off the way I am still feeling up until now. I had lived in Damascus Suburbs, Harasta and Douma, several years ago before I moved again to Damascus city; and I had not carried any friendliness to those suburbs. Living in the Suburbs means using public transportation which means, in turn, a daily problem with a driver or passengers using it. Also, it means that you are going to pass by the most visually and scenically deformed areas everyday and on top of all it means an indefinite suffering for a woman that does not cover her head and has a different life style from the extremely conservative and surrounding environment. The gods of revolution did not forgot my snobbish aptitude though it was the result of suffering not any thing else; for them to make my first stop, after coming abroad, in Douma city a little while after the demonstrations have sparkled there. I don’t know, if those crowds of youth and men happily and enthusiastically chanting for freedom were the same crowds I used to meet to-and-from home, and they were the ones who caused a bitter feeling of loneliness, violating the sacredness of my body with their looks and words. Or is it a matter of fact that the people who exist in revolutions squares we have never met before in our daily lives? Among those rebels you cannot feel strange unless you were a demon, and I was not that at all when I slipped among them chanting with a voice interrupted with laughters that I could not stop. No one seemed to mind my real-self existence here, some have shown a manly and nice care that my diluted feminism did not seem to mind! The overwhelming feeling of safety was beautiful, not only being safe from a security member who is watching over my head, but also being safe from my loneliness that I have felt in the same place for so long. I want to recall those moments as much as I can especially in my loneliness hours at present when so many of my friends have become in prisons.
