I spent so long today trying to find a way to get online; the regime is doing everything it can to shut us down and have the world think that there is nothing happening in this country. If no one knows what is happening here, they think, it will not have happened.
I’m not so sure.
Sometimes, I look around at what is happening here and I think I must have fallen asleep and fallen into some sort of dream. I came back to Syria to escape a crazy life, to escape conflicts and sinking economies. I thought, when I arrived, that I’d be able to relax and enjoy life more easily than in the US. I had vague plans to finally finish the autobiographical novel that I’ve been steadily working on, maybe to finish a few of the science fiction and fantasy stories I had plotted. I’d reconnect myself to my roots and the price seemed low.
All I’d have to do was not be too public about my own opinions and everything would be fine. Back last summer, a time that now seems a lifetime ago, it made sense. The Syrian economy was doing relatively well; the world economic crisis hadn’t struck as harshly here as some places. New economic freedoms were beginning to pay off; free trade and free movement with more and more of the neighboring countries had begun to have effect … and Syria was safe, Syria was stable. Politics hadn’t changed in my lifetime and gave no sign of doing so.
Then everything started changing. Tunisia woke up, Egypt woke up, we began to wonder whether something similar might happen here. But even that didn’t seem to likely.
And then it did. Syria woke up. And at first the government looked like it might stay ahead of the wave of change and reform itself. But it didn’t. Then bullets started flying, tear gas and batons appeared, mass detention …
Now, at least 1100 have died. New martyrs appear every day. And every day, new places wake up. The whole country is rising.
The government wants you to believe that they are winning; they want you to believe that there are only a few fanatics, foreigners and Islamic extremists … but that is not the case. I’ve been in several cities here and seen what is happening on the ground. This is the whole country waking up from its long slumber ….
And it is not the CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN scenario that the regime and its lackeys portray it as being. They promote sectarianism and violence and hate … and then claim that it is our doing. They use ugly violence and say that we are the awful ones.
Our message is simple. We want freedom,
Hurriyah, Azadi, Freedom.
We want democracy. We want an END to a society where one is judged by one’s sectarian origin, we want an END to rule by fear, we want an END to torture, we want an END to intimidation, we want an END to killing …
No, we don’t want to bring on the Doom Time; we want to bring an END to this endless situation … we want to be able to wake up from this nightmare we have been living in for all of our lives.
Is that so wrong?