(from Wednesday night: thanks Elizabeth T.!)
Hopefully not a final post (full text)
Via RSS:
This may be the last post I do for a bit. But not for any bad reason.
We’re going to move from here sometime tonight and then head to a new safe haven. We’ll still be close by … but … enough details about that!
I’m hoping that the next place will have secure internet access so I can go on posting. Maybe even I will be able to use skype …. I dunno …
If not, I really hope it has some books! Just in case, I spent a lot of time today downloading a mountain of e-books – free ones mainly – so at least if that’s the case, I can read (serious books, silly books … I downloaded all the available Edgar Rice Burroughs and H P Lovecraft as well as all of Gibbon (Bury edition) and a lot of randomly interesting titles …
(by the way, a tip to readers – a series I’ve really enjoyed (and no, I can’t download it for free!) in recent years is a thing called “The Merchant Princes” by a guy named Charlie Stross …. It’s fascinating for a lot of reasons but one for me personally was that I could strongly relate to the main character, Miriam Beckstein; she’s an ordinary middle class American professional … who at the same time is embroiled from birth in inter-clan struggles in the Kingdom of Gruinmarkt and there are wheels within wheels within wheels …
anyway, I’m babbling …
being cooped up alone with your father for days, no telephone, can’t go out … my beloved unreachable except by internet (and yes, more than a little horny and can’t do anything about it) … argh …
and scared and worried
for me, for my dad, for my country …
serious repression in Homs … and more deaths. I read over a martyrs’ list; I saw people with our surname on it. I don’t know them, but my dad knew how they were our cousins and to what degree …
I want freedom for all Syria …
I want to be somewhere that mattters … though nowhere matters more than being here, now …
I have travel plans for later on in the year: in June, I plan to be in Italy, in August in the USA and Canada, in September in the UK … before all this started I got accepted into grad school in the UK …
But all those plans may be on hold; I won’t leave Syria until I know I can come back in … and who knows when that will be …
I want this to end; I’ve waited all my life for it to end. And now I discover that the worst thing about living in a revolution is that it is like the last day before vacation in elementary school … it never ends …
Anyway, I am babbling … I hope to be back blogging soon!
13 May 2011
This is our culture
Foreigners almost always comment on the lingerie stores of the Syrian cities. But is it so strange?
I have no idea how much lingerie I have been gifted over the years by other women ...
I have no idea how much lingerie I have been gifted over the years by other women ...
Request and Apology
Blogger went off line today ... and lost one of my posts )hopefully not the last post) ... anyone happen to have copied that?
Talkin' Turkey About Intervention
As to myself, I don’t want foreign intervention; gaining our freedom from Assad at the price of losing our freedom as a nation is too high. However, I’m not everyone and many in the opposition are looking seriously in a single direction: north.
Today, in Homs, they were chanting “Erdogan, Erdogan, tell him his people don’’t love him.” It’s not a fatuous plea and makes far more sense than one addressed elsewhere. The current Turkish government is widely admired here, by both many in the opposition and many who still support the regime. Turkish flags and signs appealing to Turkey have cropped up at demonstrations here.
A decade ago, that would have seemed crazy. On our side of the border, the Syrian government gave aid and safety to Kurdish separatists from the PKK waging war against the Turkish state while, on their side of the border, the Turks signed defense agreements with Israel and did joint training exercises. We were the common foe. We even came close to blows as disputes over water and such things grew. Older issues were always in mind: to this day, official maps of Syria usually show the Hatay, the area around Antioch and Alexandretta, as being in Syria and the French cession of that territory to Turkey on the eve of World War II is sometimes still compared to Chamberlain at Munich.
But things changed. The Arabs that partition stranded north of the border and the Turks south aren’t seen as reason for wars anymore. Turkey shifted its foreign policy from one of struggling to be accepted as “European” by a club that would never accept a Muslim country to embracing that identity. The Turkish economy boomed. A working, though not perfect, democracy began to flourish in Turkey and an Islamic Party, the AKP, that didn’t reject modernity or progress came to power.
And Syria and Turkey began growing closer. Water rights were worked out. The Kurdish war wound down (and in Turkey, Kurds were beginning to be accepted as equals). Free trade between our two countries was nehotiated; trade exploded across the border. Turkish goods, TV shows, Turkish people flooded Syria … free movement without a visa was established between us … and Turkey’s foreign policy shifted from being seen as the ally of Syria’s enemies to that of a friend.
And now … well, before all this started, I knew that if a foreign army invaded, I’d gladly fight and die to defend Syria, even if it meant to defend Assad! The memory of the long struggle for independence is still too real here for many of us to look at foreign intervention as something good. But, on the other hand, I honestly cannot see the type of foreign intervention that has happened in Libya as even remotely possible here.
Looking at a map shows a problem for a ‘Libya style’ intervention. Where would they come from? NATO can’t exactly launch an invasion from Anbar province. And the image of American or British or French troops greeting the Israelis in Jaulan is something that would get every true Syrian to stand by Assad.
However, again, look at the map. There is one country and only one country that can play a decisive role here and only one country remotely capable of doing so. That is Turkey. It’s the only country that plausibly could send ground forces in and be greeted by flowers and not by IEDs. No one else could.
Both sides here really do look to Turkey as a key. Within the regime, I see a struggle between a faction that sees Turkey as both a model for reform and a true friend but that faction (the reformists) are struggling against another group that looks to Iran. Right now, that group seems to be in control.
In the opposition, we see the huge economic and political progress Turkey has made in the past few decades as a model and an inspiration. Many of the members of the Brotherhood look to the AKP as a model for what they would like to become and, honestly, that is something that heartens many of us in the opposition. One can be an Islamic party and a democratic one.
Like Turkey, we also have the legacy of strong arm secularism forced on the country. Whether or not it was a good idea, the way that it was done – by brute force in both countries – turned a lot of people off. It would be great to see secularists and Islamists compete without force and simply by persuasion.
And the Turkish government has not been silent. Erdogan claimed earlier this week that 1,000 civilians have been killed here. Inside Turkey itself, as elections near, Kurdish Turks are saying they won’t be silent if the regime cracks down on Kurdish Syrians (though the Alawis in the Hatay are apparently vowing to fight for Uncle Bashar!). Turkey’s secularists and conservatives are watching … and they have an election coming up too soon …
And they are being watched: yesterday’s al Watan (a party paper here) read: "Ever since the eruption of the events in Syria – over a month ago – the Turkish official performance seemed to be rash and improvised” and attacked the AKP government as a front for the Muslim Brotherhood.. That never bothered them before …
They fear Erdogan taking our side for they know that is the only country that matters now.
And will Turkey intervene? I don’t know.
I do know that Erdogan is nobody’s fool; if he’s meeting with Obama, Cameron and Sarkozy or the leaders of the Gulf states … be aware of big things afoot.
Today, in Homs, they were chanting “Erdogan, Erdogan, tell him his people don’’t love him.” It’s not a fatuous plea and makes far more sense than one addressed elsewhere. The current Turkish government is widely admired here, by both many in the opposition and many who still support the regime. Turkish flags and signs appealing to Turkey have cropped up at demonstrations here.
A decade ago, that would have seemed crazy. On our side of the border, the Syrian government gave aid and safety to Kurdish separatists from the PKK waging war against the Turkish state while, on their side of the border, the Turks signed defense agreements with Israel and did joint training exercises. We were the common foe. We even came close to blows as disputes over water and such things grew. Older issues were always in mind: to this day, official maps of Syria usually show the Hatay, the area around Antioch and Alexandretta, as being in Syria and the French cession of that territory to Turkey on the eve of World War II is sometimes still compared to Chamberlain at Munich.
But things changed. The Arabs that partition stranded north of the border and the Turks south aren’t seen as reason for wars anymore. Turkey shifted its foreign policy from one of struggling to be accepted as “European” by a club that would never accept a Muslim country to embracing that identity. The Turkish economy boomed. A working, though not perfect, democracy began to flourish in Turkey and an Islamic Party, the AKP, that didn’t reject modernity or progress came to power.
And Syria and Turkey began growing closer. Water rights were worked out. The Kurdish war wound down (and in Turkey, Kurds were beginning to be accepted as equals). Free trade between our two countries was nehotiated; trade exploded across the border. Turkish goods, TV shows, Turkish people flooded Syria … free movement without a visa was established between us … and Turkey’s foreign policy shifted from being seen as the ally of Syria’s enemies to that of a friend.
And now … well, before all this started, I knew that if a foreign army invaded, I’d gladly fight and die to defend Syria, even if it meant to defend Assad! The memory of the long struggle for independence is still too real here for many of us to look at foreign intervention as something good. But, on the other hand, I honestly cannot see the type of foreign intervention that has happened in Libya as even remotely possible here.
Looking at a map shows a problem for a ‘Libya style’ intervention. Where would they come from? NATO can’t exactly launch an invasion from Anbar province. And the image of American or British or French troops greeting the Israelis in Jaulan is something that would get every true Syrian to stand by Assad.
However, again, look at the map. There is one country and only one country that can play a decisive role here and only one country remotely capable of doing so. That is Turkey. It’s the only country that plausibly could send ground forces in and be greeted by flowers and not by IEDs. No one else could.
Both sides here really do look to Turkey as a key. Within the regime, I see a struggle between a faction that sees Turkey as both a model for reform and a true friend but that faction (the reformists) are struggling against another group that looks to Iran. Right now, that group seems to be in control.
In the opposition, we see the huge economic and political progress Turkey has made in the past few decades as a model and an inspiration. Many of the members of the Brotherhood look to the AKP as a model for what they would like to become and, honestly, that is something that heartens many of us in the opposition. One can be an Islamic party and a democratic one.
Like Turkey, we also have the legacy of strong arm secularism forced on the country. Whether or not it was a good idea, the way that it was done – by brute force in both countries – turned a lot of people off. It would be great to see secularists and Islamists compete without force and simply by persuasion.
And the Turkish government has not been silent. Erdogan claimed earlier this week that 1,000 civilians have been killed here. Inside Turkey itself, as elections near, Kurdish Turks are saying they won’t be silent if the regime cracks down on Kurdish Syrians (though the Alawis in the Hatay are apparently vowing to fight for Uncle Bashar!). Turkey’s secularists and conservatives are watching … and they have an election coming up too soon …
And they are being watched: yesterday’s al Watan (a party paper here) read: "Ever since the eruption of the events in Syria – over a month ago – the Turkish official performance seemed to be rash and improvised” and attacked the AKP government as a front for the Muslim Brotherhood.. That never bothered them before …
They fear Erdogan taking our side for they know that is the only country that matters now.
And will Turkey intervene? I don’t know.
I do know that Erdogan is nobody’s fool; if he’s meeting with Obama, Cameron and Sarkozy or the leaders of the Gulf states … be aware of big things afoot.
Friday Update
The regime said that they will not fire on demostrators today. But guns and tanks and snipers nests were everywhere
Today … reports trickled in … from the northeast and the south and everywhere in between …
And everywhere one cry for freedom ….
Homs, Hama, Aleppo, Idlib, Latakia, Banyas, Deraa, Qamishli, Damascus, Douma, everywhere …
Kurds and Arabs marching side by side, asserting their indivisibility. Christians and Muslims together. The regime must see the writing on the wall.
The slumbering giant of the Syrian nation is awake
Today … reports trickled in … from the northeast and the south and everywhere in between …
And everywhere one cry for freedom ….
Homs, Hama, Aleppo, Idlib, Latakia, Banyas, Deraa, Qamishli, Damascus, Douma, everywhere …
Kurds and Arabs marching side by side, asserting their indivisibility. Christians and Muslims together. The regime must see the writing on the wall.
The slumbering giant of the Syrian nation is awake
WAHAD WAHAD WAHAD
The Bloody Shirt of Sectarian Fear
Not: “Oderint Dum Metuant” but “Metuunt Quod Oderunt”
The regime and its supporters warn constantly that the alternative to them is ‘sectarian violence’. They wave the bloody shirt and claim that, if they relax repression here, the alternative is massacre of one sect by another. Waving that bloody shirt has indeed worked often in the past to rally the religious minorities around the regime and, it seems, that fear is what drives the people pulling the triggers now.
Are there sectarian tensions here? Of course there are! This has never been a religiously unified country; struggle between religious groups goes back about as long as revealed religions have existed (and likely long before that too if we simply had records). But that is to be expected in any society where multiple groups make claims of having a monopoly on correct belief.
Here, too, many groups identify strongly as closed communities, some, of course, more than others. For some sects, communal identity historically has trumped all others. And this regime has played no small part in encouraging them to do so.
There are many sects here: Sunni Muslims, Alawi, Imami and Ismaili Shia Muslims, Druze, and far too many Christians sects to name them all.
Fear of sectarian violence, fear of becoming Lebanon a generation ago or, worse, Iraq, plays a major role in the regime’s propaganda and its fear of democracy.
When the French came last century, they (even more than the British) as policy pushed a notion of ‘divide and rule’ and worked to turn divisions into ways of managing a country and making it eternally dependent on them. They expanded the territory of Mount Lebanon from being a small but overwhelmingly Christian and Druze area to Lebanon’s present size, aiming to make as large a territory as possible under majority Christian rule (51% then) and set up a system of governance there where only religious identity mattered and was stressed above all else. It worked; it created a weak state where unity was hard and political parties were based on sectarian identity.
They tried to carve out two more states from Syria: a Druze state in the south and an Alawite state along the coast. Unlike in Lebanon, though, those communities rejected further partitions: the Druze especially played a glorious role in the national movement for independence. Even so, French policy was to build an army and police that would be loyal to Paris, not to Syria. So they recruited heavily among minority religious communities and worked to keep others out of being trigger pullers. They pushed the concept that, if Syria gained independence, the Sunni majority would immediately begin massacres of all non-Sunnis. They wanted fear to keep people loyal to them.
It didn’t work: when the French finally left, there were no massacres, no communal strife, much though they might have desired it. And a country emerged that is now 74% Sunni Muslim …. a number that must be recalled … that is not a tiny segment but a supermajority. And because it is, sectarianism is the flag that must be waved to stop democracy.
The regime, after it came to power, was heavily made up of Alawis: they had been more numerous in the military under the French. And to ensure that they would retain power, the ruling clan of Assad over decades filled the officer corps and the security forces not with people chosen for ability but for whether they could be counted on as loyal when push came to shove. They placed other Alawis into those jobs and made sure that there were Alawi units who could be called on to crush any call for a democratic Syria
And to insure the loyalty of the Alawis themselves, they pushed the idea of sectarianism and waved the bloody shirt, telling Alawis that, if the regime ever fell, there’d be massacres of all Alawis. And many believed them.
And those Alawis were not stupid: they know the crimes of this regime and the oppression it has visited on everyone. It oppresses Alawi too; if one is not from the ruling clan, being Alawi only counts for so much. And it has stamped down hard on Alawi dissenters.
But the crimes done in their names makes many Alawi fear: they fear that what has been visited on the other 90% of Syrians in their names will be returned to them.
And because of that sense of guilt, they live in fear. From that fear, they act out in violence … and take part in repression and forbidding democracy.
The regime wants to present this movement as made up of ‘salafi’ radical Sunnis who are inspired by Bin Laden: I am only surprised that they are not claiming that Bin Laden lives and is in Homs or Dera’a. Surely, they’ll try inventing that. They claim that everything we want is sectarian. When Christians and Druze, Secularists and Communists march and demand the overthrow of the regime, they claim that they are being coerced … really? If the opposition is really that strong, we have already won power …
They hate us because they fear us, fear us because they know what they have done and fear that we are like them.
We are not; we do not hunger for blood. We hunger for freedom.
We want one Syria: we will have one Syria and they are Syrians too.
When we say “WAHAD WAHAD WAHAD” The People of Syria are One” we are talking about Alawis and Baathis just as much as we are speaking of Sunnis.
They need to put down their guns and join us;
That is how sectarianism must end.
Not: “Oderint Dum Metuant” but “Metuunt Quod Oderunt”
The regime and its supporters warn constantly that the alternative to them is ‘sectarian violence’. They wave the bloody shirt and claim that, if they relax repression here, the alternative is massacre of one sect by another. Waving that bloody shirt has indeed worked often in the past to rally the religious minorities around the regime and, it seems, that fear is what drives the people pulling the triggers now.
Are there sectarian tensions here? Of course there are! This has never been a religiously unified country; struggle between religious groups goes back about as long as revealed religions have existed (and likely long before that too if we simply had records). But that is to be expected in any society where multiple groups make claims of having a monopoly on correct belief.
Here, too, many groups identify strongly as closed communities, some, of course, more than others. For some sects, communal identity historically has trumped all others. And this regime has played no small part in encouraging them to do so.
There are many sects here: Sunni Muslims, Alawi, Imami and Ismaili Shia Muslims, Druze, and far too many Christians sects to name them all.
Fear of sectarian violence, fear of becoming Lebanon a generation ago or, worse, Iraq, plays a major role in the regime’s propaganda and its fear of democracy.
When the French came last century, they (even more than the British) as policy pushed a notion of ‘divide and rule’ and worked to turn divisions into ways of managing a country and making it eternally dependent on them. They expanded the territory of Mount Lebanon from being a small but overwhelmingly Christian and Druze area to Lebanon’s present size, aiming to make as large a territory as possible under majority Christian rule (51% then) and set up a system of governance there where only religious identity mattered and was stressed above all else. It worked; it created a weak state where unity was hard and political parties were based on sectarian identity.
They tried to carve out two more states from Syria: a Druze state in the south and an Alawite state along the coast. Unlike in Lebanon, though, those communities rejected further partitions: the Druze especially played a glorious role in the national movement for independence. Even so, French policy was to build an army and police that would be loyal to Paris, not to Syria. So they recruited heavily among minority religious communities and worked to keep others out of being trigger pullers. They pushed the concept that, if Syria gained independence, the Sunni majority would immediately begin massacres of all non-Sunnis. They wanted fear to keep people loyal to them.
It didn’t work: when the French finally left, there were no massacres, no communal strife, much though they might have desired it. And a country emerged that is now 74% Sunni Muslim …. a number that must be recalled … that is not a tiny segment but a supermajority. And because it is, sectarianism is the flag that must be waved to stop democracy.
The regime, after it came to power, was heavily made up of Alawis: they had been more numerous in the military under the French. And to ensure that they would retain power, the ruling clan of Assad over decades filled the officer corps and the security forces not with people chosen for ability but for whether they could be counted on as loyal when push came to shove. They placed other Alawis into those jobs and made sure that there were Alawi units who could be called on to crush any call for a democratic Syria
And to insure the loyalty of the Alawis themselves, they pushed the idea of sectarianism and waved the bloody shirt, telling Alawis that, if the regime ever fell, there’d be massacres of all Alawis. And many believed them.
And those Alawis were not stupid: they know the crimes of this regime and the oppression it has visited on everyone. It oppresses Alawi too; if one is not from the ruling clan, being Alawi only counts for so much. And it has stamped down hard on Alawi dissenters.
But the crimes done in their names makes many Alawi fear: they fear that what has been visited on the other 90% of Syrians in their names will be returned to them.
And because of that sense of guilt, they live in fear. From that fear, they act out in violence … and take part in repression and forbidding democracy.
The regime wants to present this movement as made up of ‘salafi’ radical Sunnis who are inspired by Bin Laden: I am only surprised that they are not claiming that Bin Laden lives and is in Homs or Dera’a. Surely, they’ll try inventing that. They claim that everything we want is sectarian. When Christians and Druze, Secularists and Communists march and demand the overthrow of the regime, they claim that they are being coerced … really? If the opposition is really that strong, we have already won power …
They hate us because they fear us, fear us because they know what they have done and fear that we are like them.
We are not; we do not hunger for blood. We hunger for freedom.
We want one Syria: we will have one Syria and they are Syrians too.
When we say “WAHAD WAHAD WAHAD” The People of Syria are One” we are talking about Alawis and Baathis just as much as we are speaking of Sunnis.
They need to put down their guns and join us;
That is how sectarianism must end.
Gratitude, Criticism, Questions and More
So, when I started this blog, I never expected to be read by much of anyone. My first couple of followers were people I knew and who, I presume, already had a pretty good idea of my thoughts … I was writing for myself more than anything, with a vague hope one day of getting something published. (I had a mildly disguised autobiographical novel I was working on and some lousy science fiction stories I was working on (and those that I had tried to get publish had simply gotten firm ‘noes’; I’ll be honest, most of my fiction, I fear, is hopelessly derivative or from such a skewed POV that who would want to read it anyway? (At some point, I’ll post a summary of some of them just to prove how uninteresting or unoriginal they really are!)
Anyway, I had a vague hope that someone or other might find my blog or some of the articles I’d submitted. I had hopes of making a tiny difference, a very tiny difference in terms of the situation of women, of Syrians, of sexual minorities … like maybe change one mind … and occassionally daydreaming of more (but knowing full well that real improvements and hopes for a beautiful democratic, free and prosperous Syria were probably more fantastic than some of the lousyscience fiction stories I’d begun; nothing was going to change here anytime soon. That was something you could be confident of.
Instead, I was wrong. What I had dreamed about and hoped for suddenly started seeming to be plausible: Arab people, first in Tunisia, then everywhere, were beginning to awaken and make their own history from the ground up. The world could be as amazing as I had dreamed … and like everyone else across the nation, my dreams suddenly became more realistic.
Sometime around then, I got a notification of a comment … from someone I didn’t know … I was excited … I saw a follower added who was a stranger … I was thrilled … then more and more …
And, of course, at the same time, the situation here was changing; the decades long freeze was over and things mattered once more. Now, all the ideas I have had bubbling in my head can be spilled forth and made to matter …
And as part of this, something amazing has happened: I started getting comments from all over the world, words of comfort and support, offers of help … sometimes from people I’ve long admired (my favorite novelist posted a comment … bloggers and journalists I admire have written me (though as yet I have not heard from my most favorite journalist!) … wow! I’m more than a little starry-eyed!)
But there’s also criticism … and, yeah, I read that too … one website has long comments claiming crazy things about me, one person attacks me for being anti-Alawi, another for not calling for slaughter of them …
I’m just trying to get by, y’know? Trying to explain things from one point of view and trying to make sense of what is happening … and maybe even have some small influence on events. I know what I want for my beloved bilad and maybe I can help it happen!
Anyway, I had a vague hope that someone or other might find my blog or some of the articles I’d submitted. I had hopes of making a tiny difference, a very tiny difference in terms of the situation of women, of Syrians, of sexual minorities … like maybe change one mind … and occassionally daydreaming of more (but knowing full well that real improvements and hopes for a beautiful democratic, free and prosperous Syria were probably more fantastic than some of the lousyscience fiction stories I’d begun; nothing was going to change here anytime soon. That was something you could be confident of.
Instead, I was wrong. What I had dreamed about and hoped for suddenly started seeming to be plausible: Arab people, first in Tunisia, then everywhere, were beginning to awaken and make their own history from the ground up. The world could be as amazing as I had dreamed … and like everyone else across the nation, my dreams suddenly became more realistic.
Sometime around then, I got a notification of a comment … from someone I didn’t know … I was excited … I saw a follower added who was a stranger … I was thrilled … then more and more …
And, of course, at the same time, the situation here was changing; the decades long freeze was over and things mattered once more. Now, all the ideas I have had bubbling in my head can be spilled forth and made to matter …
And as part of this, something amazing has happened: I started getting comments from all over the world, words of comfort and support, offers of help … sometimes from people I’ve long admired (my favorite novelist posted a comment … bloggers and journalists I admire have written me (though as yet I have not heard from my most favorite journalist!) … wow! I’m more than a little starry-eyed!)
But there’s also criticism … and, yeah, I read that too … one website has long comments claiming crazy things about me, one person attacks me for being anti-Alawi, another for not calling for slaughter of them …
I’m just trying to get by, y’know? Trying to explain things from one point of view and trying to make sense of what is happening … and maybe even have some small influence on events. I know what I want for my beloved bilad and maybe I can help it happen!
Thursday Update
Thusday night: What’s Happening Now
Update on myself first: last night, we left from where we had been staying and were taken elsewhere. We’re still in Syria and still close to home … but we actually left the city itself. In case anyone wonders where exactly we are or how we got here; hopefully, in the not too distant future I will be able to write about that. For now … well, suffice it to say that this movement for change is growing across many sectors! (And my homies can infer what they will from that)
But what my father and I are doing isn’t all that important. What’s much more important is what is happening in this, our beloved country. And that is so much …
Homs is being stabbed by the regime. I think back to a prediction I had made to a friend months ago: we might have demonstrations in Damascus and in the northeast but Homs and Latakia would be belwhethers. If they rose, the regime would fall, I’d said. Well, Homs has risen … and I am startled … no offense meant to any Homsis, but the ‘conventional wisdom’ I’d always heard in Damascus was that Homs was the city where people were most satisfied with Bashar and his economic reforms (and the lack of political reform that went along with it). Homsis were supposed to be the least sectarian – at least the Homsis I have known have been … but I was wrong. Homs was just sleeping and awoke; the daughters of Julia Dumna and the sons of Hashim Al Atassi hadn’t forgotten their ancestry …
The regime sent people to the Christians of Homs, telling them ‘beware the Sunnis, they want to get you’ and to the Alawi who had settled in the city; the Christians rejected it completely and Christian and Muslim in Homs joined hands to resist. And the regime has been turning to punish them, turning to punish the Communists who organized the sit-ins and the Muslims who called for resistance against the hated regime …
And Aleppo, largest of the cities of the land, a ciy that had been silent has risen up; thousands of students clashing with the regime’s forces … and finding martyrs of their own …
And now they are also preparing to attack Hama once again …
Everywhere, everywhere, the country is waking from its slumber!
I’m lucky; I’m far from all that right now. I’m watching and waiting for the time to reemerge, happy to be in a place where I can easily look after my father and where, should anything happen to him, reliable medical care is easily available (he had a far more grueling night and day than me! I’m a lot younger after all). And … it is a wonderful time to be a Syrian as the darkest hour comes before the dawn!
Update on myself first: last night, we left from where we had been staying and were taken elsewhere. We’re still in Syria and still close to home … but we actually left the city itself. In case anyone wonders where exactly we are or how we got here; hopefully, in the not too distant future I will be able to write about that. For now … well, suffice it to say that this movement for change is growing across many sectors! (And my homies can infer what they will from that)
But what my father and I are doing isn’t all that important. What’s much more important is what is happening in this, our beloved country. And that is so much …
Homs is being stabbed by the regime. I think back to a prediction I had made to a friend months ago: we might have demonstrations in Damascus and in the northeast but Homs and Latakia would be belwhethers. If they rose, the regime would fall, I’d said. Well, Homs has risen … and I am startled … no offense meant to any Homsis, but the ‘conventional wisdom’ I’d always heard in Damascus was that Homs was the city where people were most satisfied with Bashar and his economic reforms (and the lack of political reform that went along with it). Homsis were supposed to be the least sectarian – at least the Homsis I have known have been … but I was wrong. Homs was just sleeping and awoke; the daughters of Julia Dumna and the sons of Hashim Al Atassi hadn’t forgotten their ancestry …
The regime sent people to the Christians of Homs, telling them ‘beware the Sunnis, they want to get you’ and to the Alawi who had settled in the city; the Christians rejected it completely and Christian and Muslim in Homs joined hands to resist. And the regime has been turning to punish them, turning to punish the Communists who organized the sit-ins and the Muslims who called for resistance against the hated regime …
And Aleppo, largest of the cities of the land, a ciy that had been silent has risen up; thousands of students clashing with the regime’s forces … and finding martyrs of their own …
And now they are also preparing to attack Hama once again …
Everywhere, everywhere, the country is waking from its slumber!
I’m lucky; I’m far from all that right now. I’m watching and waiting for the time to reemerge, happy to be in a place where I can easily look after my father and where, should anything happen to him, reliable medical care is easily available (he had a far more grueling night and day than me! I’m a lot younger after all). And … it is a wonderful time to be a Syrian as the darkest hour comes before the dawn!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)