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!
1 comments:
Good luck to you, and stay safe! The courage you have shown in maintaining this blog so all us non-Syrians can get a since of what is going on is very inspiring. If all you Syrians can really get rid of Assad, I can assure you everyone in the US will be thrilled!
Should you ever come to Columbia, dinner is one me.
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