Monday, I went to meet friends in a café. We had a lively discussion about the future. What comes after Asad and how we get there … how do we avoid a civil war. What can be done and what must be done …
You can, I am sure, imagine it.
There was wifi in the café and, when the conversation was touching on other things, I was reading news, emailing friends, and so on … I even composed a post or two for my blog.
A very, very dear (and, of course, quite gorgeous!) friend in Quebec emailed me that she was trying to call me at home and no one was answering. I was startled as my father should have been around. I’d left him at home by himself … and, well, he retired back to Damascus as his health is not what it had been. And, with my mother out of the country, I feel exceedingly responsible for him, making sure he has his pills, isn’t strainng himself and so on …
So, when she tried again and again with no response, I got worried.
As I have also been more than a little paranoid since my visit from security services, I decided to use a landline rather than my mobile. So, I went and called him from a public phone. No answer on the home number. No answer on his mobile; he’d turned it off (which isn’t that startling; he lets the battery run down all the time).
I decided to call our doorman; he told me that my dad had left, where he’d gone to and that I could call him there …
I did.
And he told me:
They came back for you. This time, there’s nothing I can do. Go somewhere and don’t tell me where you are. Be safe. I love you.
So, I didn’t go home Monday night; I stayed at a friend’s house. Yesterday, I went home for a bit. As I got close to the house, I saw that there were two of Them outside the front door.
There’s more than one way into my house and some are pretty well hidden. Not even all the family knows all of them. I used one of those and got inside. I could see that they had indeed been there (either that or my aged father had an especially wild party in my absence and failed to clean up).
I washed up, packed a bag with a few changes of clothes, spare contacts and solution, and so on. Loaded that in with my laptop after briefly checking on line. Took the sim card from my phone and left it.
I changed my clothes; without saying exactly how I’m far less recognizable as me (there are certain advantages to living here if one wants to become anonymous).
I went back the way I had come.
I wandered around the city a bit; I ended up at an old friend’s home in an area where it’s ‘safe’ (a posh suburb where lots of those who have benefitted from Assadism live) for the night.
I’m trying to figure out the next step.
If they used warrants here, there’d be one with my name on it. I believe I can evade them and still do useful work here but it makes life much less easy.
I have no desire to be a martyr, even to my own cause, so I will do what I can to stay free. It isn’t easy … but …
For now, I’ve been writing away from where I am and I will be posting things when I am erratically on line.
Meanwhile, hopefully, as grim as it may seem right now, the way to freedom has never seemed clearer! Our revolution will win; we will have a free and democratic Syria soon. I know it in my bones. Our greatest age is about to appear and we shall once more amaze the world. We will have a free Syria and a free nation; it is coming soon. The revolution will succeed and we will rise above sectarianism, despotism, sexism, and all the dead weight of these years of bitterness, of division and partition, of oppression and of tyranny. We will be free!