In Kafranbel, an exodus occurs every day.  Residents leave the town each morning and return at night when the planes stop flying over the town. Dr. Mohammad stays with the wounded, conducting 4-8 daily operations as 50 new patients arrive per day. In another time, it was a small hospital in the countryside only sometimes treating injuries and the rare complication. Now, under the most difficult of circumstances, Dr. Mohammad treats war wounds without essential equipment and medicine.
“One time I had to send a patient to Turkey only because I didn’t have methylprednisolone, a medicine given to people with spine injuries,” he says.
Kafranbel has become famous for its funny slogans and banners but humor provides only temporary reprieve from the siege.

The graffiti says: ” The regime has fallen. Jerablous, the town of freedom”

In another town, Jerablous, on the border crossing from Turkey, cars are filled with goods, mostly for the winter: electric and kerosene heaters, blankets. The drivers are not humanitarian aid workers. These are merchants who were self sufficient before the crisis.
“We never came to Turkey to buy goods. It was cheaper to buy them in Syria. But now because of the war, roads are cut off and we need to get them there and sell them back home,” says Abu Ahmed, a driver who crosses the border every day with commodities.
Jarabulus, a small border town of about 25,000, now hosts 20,000 refugees from all over the country, from Homs to Idlib. No humanitarian agencies or aid are here. The people crammed into two schools are left on their own.

Children play war, pretending to be soldiers from either the opposition or the government. A woman from Homs tells her story of displacement, moving from town to town. She says she receives tiny portions of rice and oil. An older man gets upset.
“We have our dignity. We are not used to ask for help. We never did. I don’t like the fact that others are telling you how bad it is. It’s humiliating,” he says.
As many times before, I walk away without knowing how to respond. In Jerablous, electricity is cut off for most of the day, except for about four hours. It seems that the government is punishing areas that decided not to bow to its pressure.

I travel to Azaz, a town I visited for the first time in August, when it was nearly deserted. People fled after the regime dropped two bombs killed 60 people, many of them children. Now, life is coming back slowly. Restaurants, shops and schools are open. School children scurry home in blue uniforms. People are in the streets, but so are piles of garbage. With no salaries, no one is collecting them.
There are ups and downs in this new reality. Mostly, there is sadness for the dead and missing. The price of freedom is high and blood is cheap. There’s a new reality, but a new Syria is still on hold.

Rima Marrouch
Edits: Andrew Bossone

“Writings on Syrian walls” – Follow Rima Marrouch’s et Razan Ghazzawi’s blog for ARTE

Rima Marrouch is a Syrian-Polish freelance reporter. She was brought up in Homs in the 90s, when Homs was a happier place. She has reported from Libya and Syria for the LA Times. She also worked for the “Committee to Protect Journalists/Middle East and North Africa Program”. Today, she is based in Lebanon, in Beirut.

You can follow Rima on Twitter and write her under @RimaMarr.

© Photo Rima Marrouch: Everyday Rebellion, a cross-media project on nonviolent struggle all over the world; Supported by ARTE

Rima Marrouch

“Wait a minute please, the potatoes are almost done now.” Tarek told me through Skype voice call. Deir Ezzor has been besieged for the past five months and there isn’t much food left as a consequence except what the farmers of Der Ezzor grow; potatoes and grain.

Tarek is still a university student, he left school to commit himself to the revolution. He created this page from his dorm room when the revolution began in Daraa:

“There weren’t demonstrations in Syria at the time but in Daraa, but we were in coordination with Daraa activists and we helped them upload their videos since internet was cut in their city.”

Deir Ezzor revolutionaries took the street for the first time calling for freedom and the downfall of the Syrian regime in 1-5-2011 and the regime’s response was severe. Tarek comments:

“The regime raided the houses of all key activists, detained them, threatened their families and used live ammunition against protesters. The revolutionaries of Deir Ezzor kept a low profile for few weeks till they took the streets again, but this time in huge numbers. Crackdown of activists and revolutionaries continued and escalated gradually until June 2012. Massacres were committed, residents fled their homes, That’s when the Free Syrian Army decided to take the streets and protect the city from regime army and thugs. Starting from 22-6-2012 till now, the Free Syrian Army has taken control of almost 70% of the city.”

I asked Tarek how he would describe FSA’s role in the city, especially that some have been critical of FSA’s operations against thugs and pro-regime intelligence. His comment was:

“As a media activist, I don’t work with FSA revolutionaries, but many of my friends are volunteering to join them. Who are the FSA in Deir Ezzor but my neighbors and people you’ve always seen in the streets of your city. These people have experienced much violence in the past 19 months that they believe they should protect their homes and loved ones. Mistakes? Well how can you expect otherwise? They’re not trained nor given high tech weapons, they’re using primitive and simple weapons to defend our lives, our lives, which many media channels have turned them to numbers. My life is a number to you, I might be dead tomorrow, but my friends have joined FSA to save my life and others’. Over 2630 have been killed in Deir Ezzor since the start of the revolution. ”

Tarek has spoken of the water crisis that has been escalating in Deir Ezzor after the city rose up against the Assad regime. Deir Ezzor always had a water crisis, but during the revolution, the regime shelled chlorine storage containers in the city, which is causing health problems in residents in Deir Ezzor (10% of residents have not fled the city until now. Total number of population in Deir Ezzor before the revolution was 900,000.) After the bombing of the chlorine containers, around 13 or 14 peoples are being hospitalized each week as a consequence.

Deir Ezzor is one of the revolutionary Syrian cities that has a satellite channel which broadcasts from within the city but its studio is located in Egypt.

Razan Ghazzawi

*All names mentioned in this article are pseudonyms.

Photo: Deir Ezzor Press Network on 14 November 2012. It reflects the water crisis in Deir Ezzor.

“Writings on Syrian walls” – Follow Rima Marrouch’s et Razan Ghazzawi’s blog for ARTE

Razan Ghazzawi is a 32 year-old Syrian blogger based in Damascus, defending human rights, not only in her native Syria but throughout the Arab world and beyond.

 She has been detained twice by the Assad regime and is now under military trial. Razan is an English Literature graduate and got a Master degree  in Comparative Literature from Balamand University in 2011. She started blogging under the name of „Golaniya 7“ years ago, but chose to write under her real name 5 years ago. She recently won the Front Line Defender’s prize for Human Rights Defenders 2012.

You can follow Razan on Twitter and write her under @RedRazan or follow her on her blog: razanghazzawi.org

“The problem is not between me and my people,” said Assad, blaming the West for creating him as the new enemy after Communism and Saddam Hussein. “I can see myself in this country, in a safe country, a more prosperous country,” said Assad only a day before as 9,000 people fled the border town of Ras al-Ayn due to shelling and fighting.

“I am not a puppet…. I am Syrian and I must live and die in Syria.” Some young Syrians immediately mocked him. The political puppet show, Masasit Mati, posted a photo in an article with his quote as its caption on Facebook.

Syrians also recently heard another president, Ahmed Moaz al-Khatib, the former sheikh of the Great Mosque of Damascus, the Ummayad Mosque, who is now the head of the new opposition bloc, the Syrian National Coalition. In contrast to Assad, Khatib’s first speech was inclusive and emotional.

No Syrian has really mocked Khatib or his speech. Khatib has called the international community to fulfill its promises to Syrian people and to provide political, humanitarian, and economically assistance. The new body Khatib heads is trying to unite the Syrian opposition to create an interim government.

“If you found good in me, then help me. If I was not good, then judge me,” he said.

Khatib was banned from preaching for not following government lines in Friday sermons. Khatib is a symbol of modern Islam and has been particularly concerned about Syrian sectarian divisions. He has been detained at least twice since the beginning of the Syrian uprising. Al-Khatib has been welcomed both by conservative and religious factions as well as by secularists and liberals.

For many months, Syrians have been losing hope, a hope that the nightmare will be over. After 19 months many are afraid of even dreaming again about stability and returning to their country. The National Coalition is not the first attempt at forming a united opposition. The Syrian National Council, an opposition umbrella group created in August 2011, has been divided and ineffective, despite logistical and financial support from the West.

But with the formation of the National Coalition, maybe a light in the tunnel appeared. Many are optimistically cautious. As one of my friends wrote, “I’m afraid to be optimistic.”

Rima Marrouch
Edits: Andrew Bossone

Foto: Free Mouaz al-Khatib, Facebookpage, published when Ahmed Moaz al-Khatib has been arrested.

“Writings on Syrian walls” – Follow Rima Marrouch’s et Razan Ghazzawi’s blog for ARTE

Rima Marrouch is a Syrian-Polish freelance reporter. She was brought up in Homs in the 90s, when Homs was a happier place. She has reported from Libya and Syria for the LA Times. She also worked for the “Committee to Protect Journalists/Middle East and North Africa Program”. Today, she is based in Lebanon, in Beirut.

You can follow Rima on Twitter and write her under @RimaMarr.

© Photo Rima Marrouch: Everyday Rebellion, a cross-media project on nonviolent struggle all over the world; Supported by ARTE

Rima Marrouch

Edits: Andrew Bossone

“We are four anonymous artists in this page, not all of us know each other personally or even know each others’ names. We work voluntarily to create another form of expression telling some of what the people are going through today in Syria”, Sanaa* says.

Sanaa is one of the artists contributing to this prominent page on Facebook and who’s been active in the revolution from the beginning:

“We try as much as possible to be active on the page. You know the economic and security situations in Syria are not exactly great, and since we’re volunteers and small in number, I think we’re doing our best.”

Comic4 Syria was first noticed by tens of Syrian users on Facebook after the page published the below comic about the cruelty of the Syrian journalist who was interviewing a child lying next to her dead mother and siblings right after regime army shelled and raided Darayya city**.

 Reporter to child: “Who did this to your mother, darling?”
The report’s cruelty in interviewing the child caused a lot of anger among revolutionary Syrians and the brilliantly-made comic came timely to unleash that anger. Sanaa comments:

“Yes, at the beginning our work mainly showed the cruelty of the Syrian regime, and the extraordinary reality the people of Syria are living, but then we shifted our line of work to show some hope. We’re now documenting true stories that happened to some revolutionaries and hence we’re the first group in Syria to produce that kind of documentation using comic art.”

Comic4 Syria comics do not only try to express the Syrian anger and frustration under regime violence, but the art also carries political messages to the world as well as towards Syrian opposition and FSA groups:

“We try as well to make a statement concerning many controversial issues that are discussed by Syrians. We are against Jabhat Al-Nasra – which many revolutionaries oppose and think they’re rather regime agents – and we are critical of FSA but we are also against those who judge in the dark in their safe havens and try to dictate the Syrian revolutionaries on how they should run their revolution. We are against freedom of speech censorship but at the same time we are critical of Al-Arabiya channel’s coverage of the Syrian revolution. We are very critical of the so-called “international support to Syrian people.”

I asked Sanaa how can this page be influential if it’s mainly virtual, and since it addresses what can be called “Facebookers,” unlike TV channels, whose discourse reaches every home. Her answer came as follows:

“It’s true that we are only a Facebook page, which might be problematic because not all revolutionaries have access to internet, but still, the admins of revolutionary pages, even FSA pages, have access to our page and we hope our reading to the Syrian reality be noticed by some of them. In fact, a group of activists in Aleppo has printed out some of our work and distributed it to some of the FSA fighters there. Also, there will be an exhibition in Copenhagen of our work soon, it will be announced once it’s arranged. But I think that’s our primary goal, to produce thoughts in this artistic form and the people around the world can decide what to make of it.”

Sanaa finally mentions that they cannot do all the work, they cannot sit and make art under war circumstances, and borrow money to print out the comics, get smuggled to shelled neighborhoods and cities, and distribute the flyers. Sanaa and the group of this page hope that we, living abroad in our safe houses, would do something about it and circulate their art and let their voices be heard.

Razan Ghazzawi

* All names mentioned in this text are pseudonames.

**The report was broadcasted on a pro-regime channel in Syria saying that regime army cleansed the city from “terrorists” and “gangs,” referring to FSA fighters. Regime army committed a massacre there that left more than 600 civilians dead according to Violation Documentation Center (VDC).

Razan Ghazzawi is a 32 year-old Syrian blogger based in Damascus, defending human rights, not only inher native Syria but throughout the Arab world and beyond.

 She has been detained twice by the Assad regime and is now under military trial. Razan is an English Literature graduate and got a Master degree  in Comparative Literature from Balamand University in 2011. She started blogging under the name of „Golaniya 7“ years ago, but chose to write under her real name 5 years ago. She recently won the Front Line Defender’s prize for Human Rights Defenders 2012.

You can follow Razan on Twitter and write her under @RedRazan or follow her on her blog: razanghazzawi.org

Olive trees providing shade from the sun and the rain have turned into a shelter from bombs.
Two kilometers inside Syria in Qah, a city of tents has sprung up among olive groves as hundreds of families have waited for passage to Turkey.

“I came to the border area about a month and a half ago with some aid,” said Omar Abdel Karim Rahmoun, manager of the project. “I was expecting to see 100, maybe 200 people. I didn’t expect to see an enormous amount of people under olive trees and without tents.” Rahmoun and other Syrians decided to organize a camp in a nearby town of Qah.

Rahmoun contacted few potential groups to help. Yusr, a Libyan charity, gave $23,000. With recent heavy rains in the winter, projects like this that deliver shelter for thousands of families are a priority. The UN has estimated that by the end of the year there will be 700,000 Syrian refugees.

“I also contacted the Syrian National Council and others but so far there are only promises to help,” Rahmoun says. “The Libyan charity is the only one who helped financially. Some others have provided food, and others blankets.”

Locals donated part of land, part of it is rented, and part has been purchased. It can hold as many as 800 tents. For now there are approximately 220 tents hosting about 1,500 Syrians, mostly families from Idlib, and towns and villages like Atareb, Tal Rifaat, Mareaa.

“It is far from the Turkish border,” Ramoun says. “It is also far from regime’s artillery. It is almost a buffer zone,” he says.

But many women in the camp still do not feel safe. Um Khaled, 33, of Kafar Zeita, lost nine members of her family in the morning of September 11, when a plane fired upon her home.

“We managed to overcome everything except bombs,” she says. She took her three children and left. They wandered for a month until they made it to Qah.

“They shelled Turkish territory so you think they will not shell this place?” says Ahlam, a mother of six from Atareb. “I want to go to Turkey. I feel we will be safer there but my husband objected to the idea after we waited for weeks under the olive trees. We will stay here.”

She named her youngest daughter, four-months-old, Raheel, which means Departure, because she was born during their constant search for refuge. They departed four times, escaping farther north from the bombs.

Before I leave Qah, an 18-year-old mother stops me. A few months ago, she gave a birth to her first baby. She asks me if I’m married and if I have children. I tell her I’m not.
“You are right,” she says. “It is better this way. When the shelling starts you can escape faster when you are alone.”

Rima Marrouch
Edits: Andrew Bossone

Photo : Rima Marrouch

“Writings on Syrian walls” – Follow Rima Marrouch’s et Razan Ghazzawi’s blog for ARTE

Rima Marrouch is a Syrian-Polish freelance reporter. She was brought up in Homs in the 90s, when Homs was a happier place. She has reported from Libya and Syria for the LA Times. She also worked for the “Committee to Protect Journalists/Middle East and North Africa Program”. Today, she is based in Lebanon, in Beirut.

You can follow Rima on Twitter and write her under @RimaMarr.

© Photo Rima Marrouch: Everyday Rebellion, a cross-media project on nonviolent struggle all over the world; Supported by ARTE

Setting: Daraa, household.
Time: Early October 2012
Characters: Women escaping regime violence, moving from one place to another after their house was burned during regime army raid to their village couple of months ago.

We were sitting in the household yard drinking coffee, the place owned by family that left to Jordan due to regime shelling. It was empty, yet water and electricity were available. We stayed in this house for five days.

Woman 1: “Where are you from?”
Me: “Well, I live in Damascus, but I am not Damascene, and I have Palestinian origins.”
Woman 2: “So are you Palestinian? Do you have the Palestinian passport?”
Me: “No, when the Israelis did not allow my grandfather to return to Palestine, he was granted a Syrian citizenship, which was right after Syria got its independence. I have the Syrian citizenship but I was just pointing out the history of my family.”
Woman 1: “Are you Muslim?”
Me: “My parents are.”

The women looked at each other then on the floor.

Woman 3: “So you’re not Muslim?”
I replied with a shy smile on my face: “My relationship with God is between me and him only.”

I expected silence and uncomfortable reaction coming from them, but I was surprised with the question that followed:

Woman 1: “You’re a Sunni?”
Me: “Well, my parents are.”
Woman 2: “So you’re a Muslim and Sunni.”
Me: “No, I don’t identify myself as Sunni; religion to me is a personal matter, I normally don’t like to talk about.”

Here, I felt, where I should have stopped, I could not t discuss how I view “God,” because I was sure that thiss would offend them.

Woman 3 (laughs): “Well, no matter what you say, I am glad you’re a Sunni.”

This was a sentence I couldn’t get out of my head for weeks, literally, for whole weeks. She was glad that I was a Sunni? I throught that I have just told her I was not, and I even almost told her  that I was not a Muslim, still she was glad I am a Sunni?
I, then, change the position of how I was sitting on the floor.

Me (laughing hysterically): “But I am not a Sunni. I don’t think we should identify ourselves in these forms. Your reading of Islam is your own approach to religion, you’re free to call yourself whatever you want and so do I, and I am not a Sunni.”

The woman continued laughing at me, while other women were listening carefully, as if they heard such statement for the first time in their lives. This is when I felt that I did the right thing, I was messing it horribly, but I know Iwas doing the right thing.

Woman 2 (with a cynical smile): “Yes, yes, still, I am glad.”
Me: “Why? Are you saying that you are happy that I am not an Alawite or Durzi?”

Let’s do it, I told myself.

Woman 3: “Yes, I am happy you’re not Shiaa too.”

I was surprised she mentioned Shiaa because they were  hardly visible in the revolution, I was talking about Syrian Shiaa at least.

Me: “Why?”
Woman 2: “Because they are pro regime, and they are Kuffar*.”

I expected her to pull out the Iran and Hezbolla card but she actually said the word “Kuffar?”

Me: “Shiaa, who pray five time a day, whose women wear the veil, and who read the same Quran, are Kuffar?”

I thought I lost it at this point.

Me: “And I know many people from minorities who are revolutionaries, some of them are in FSA, and others were detained  and killed.”

I know that when I engage in uncomfortable discussion, my face starts to look weird or rather scary. I tried to control myself as I was very self-conscious about this golden discussion, and how it should have end without causing any fights.

Woman 3: “But they’re very few. I am from Houla and  Shiaa men attacked our village and killed our women and children. And the only right approach to Islam is Sunna. Shiaa don’t pray for God nor do they respect Muhammad, they pray for Ali instead.”
Me: “Shiaa don’t pray for God and don’t respect Mohammad??! Shiaa are Muslims, they just have a different approach to Islam, and they have the right to do so, as you. We should not force people to follow our own reading of any text, there isn’t one right path. What you’re saying is sectarianism.”

I brought up the word rather fast, but I guess I couldn’t have waited any longer.

Me: “If you are saying that Shiaa killed families of Houla village, does that mean the Shiaa as a whole are the revolutionaries’ enemy and the killers of the Syrian people? This is sectarianism. You realize that, don’t you?”

I never thought they would be really sensitive about the word “sectarianism”.

Woman 3 (very fast): “I was not sectarian before, we weren’t. The regime forced us, the Shiaa are killing us, forced us to leave our homes, if it wasn’t for Iran and Hezbolla we would have won this revolution. I wasn’t sectarian before.

*Kuffar literally means non-believers but is used as an insult.

                                              ————————————————

When woman 3 said “I wasn’t sectarian before”, only then I realized that this is exactly what I should work on, to see it like some kind of revolutionary duty: to work on people who are becoming sectarian because they’re under regime violence and because they don’t meet revolutionaries who don’t share their line of thinking

It is true, the more we exist in these places and situations where people have to face what these women are living right now, the more we actually live with them, the more these discussions l occur and we might be able to change many assumptions.
I left this family letting them know that there is a girl in Syria who doesn’t think she’s Sunni, who doesn’t say much about religion or God, yet she’s against the regime. They called me a week ago checking on me, they like me and I like them a lot, and I like to believe that I was able to change some of their ideas. (or believes)

Razan Ghazzawi
Editor: Nayrouz Abu Hatoum

Photo: Shaam News Network, Showing two protesters in Daraa carrying crosses to support and call for national unity and to condemn sectarianism in 2011 .

“Writings on Syrian walls” – Follow Rima Marrouch’s et Razan Ghazzawi’s blog for ARTE

Razan Ghazzawi is a 32 year-old Syrian blogger based in Damascus, defending human rights, not only in her native Syria but throughout the Arab world and beyond.

 She has been detained twice by the Assad regime and is now under military trial. Razan is an English Literature graduate and got a Master degree  in Comparative Literature from Balamand University in 2011. She started blogging under the name of „Golaniya 7“ years ago, but chose to write under her real name 5 years ago. She recently won the Front Line Defender’s prize for Human Rights Defenders 2012.

You can follow Razan on Twitter and write her under @RedRazan or follow her on her blog: razanghazzawi.org

Many young Syrians appreciate Juan’s caricatures not only because they are up to date with political, social, and cultural realities on the ground, but also because he equally critiques the Syrian regime and the opposition, the status quo and the revolution.

“He criticizes mistakes whether they are by the regime or protesters,” says Alaa, a Syrian activist. “He tries to repair, what we call, ‘the track of the revolution.’ He is criticizing the revolution and breaking the air of infallibility of some of the opposition individuals and the Free Syrian Army.”

One of the characters found in Juan’s work is the military recruit who is caught between two sides: officers loyal to the government and rebels fighting against it. The world through the eyes of an impoverished army soldier is not a perspective often found in Syria. And although the soldier holds a gun and Juan holds a pen, he finds common ground because even his own position of non-violence is conflicted.

“During the war it is difficult to differentiate between the good people and the evil ones,” he says. “I’m simply with the voice of reason.”
“In the beginning I would be very harsh on pro-government supporters or people with the government, but my views have changed. I started believing that there should be communication between us, that we should send a message. At the end [government supporters] have Syrian citizenship too and they will remain.”

I came across his work a few months ago and immediately became a fan. Recently, I finally met the man behind the work. With a shaved head, wearing a red t-shirt and the black backpack he carries everywhere with him, Juan comes across as humble; unlike many other artists I’ve met. In his previous life Juan was a graphic designer. But with the start of the uprising he began drawing caricatures.

“[My first caricature] showed the Syrian president as if he was committing suicide,” he recalls. “In the background there was a hand, dressed in military clothes, pushing him for a military solution. I believed and still believe that cracking down militarily on your own people is suicide.”

The next drawing had a different target: a man crossing one leg into Syria and taking a photo of himself, mocking what many call “political tourism” to Syria, where activists and politicians visit for a short time just to say they have been inside the country. Juan himself left Syria on December 14, 2011 after plain-clothes intelligence started asking about him in his favorite coffee house in the Rawda neighborhood of Damascus, where many artists writers and intellectuals gather. Now he also finds common ground with the Syrians from all backgrounds who have fled the country and long to return to their homeland.

“Everyone is ready to go back,” he says.

But of course everyone can’t go back. In a recent post in Arabcartoon, Juan spread news of the arrest of his colleague Akram Raslan by military intelligence at the Al-Fidaa newspaper in Damascus where he works. He published caricatures of the Syrian president on social media and Al Jazeera’s website.

Being a caricaturist is still a dangerous job inside Syria.

Caption: “Syrian border”

Caption: ” Sir, Turkey is shelling us what we shall we do? Hello, hello …” (no answer)

Caption: The recruit is telling the officer: “Sir, I told you not to go to Aleppo” in reference to the battle in Aleppo.

Caption: It reads: Free Syrian army and it mocks that Syrians don’t want thugs and thieves as rebels

Edits: Andrew Bossone

“Writings on Syrian walls” – Follow Rima Marrouch’s et Razan Ghazzawi’s blog for ARTE

Rima Marrouch is a Syrian-Polish freelance reporter. She was brought up in Homs in the 90s, when Homs was a happier place. She has reported from Libya and Syria for the LA Times. She also worked for the “Committee to Protect Journalists/Middle East and North Africa Program”. Today, she is based in Lebanon, in Beirut.

You can follow Rima on Twitter and write her under @RimaMarr.

© Photo Rima Marrouch: Everyday Rebellion, a cross-media project on nonviolent struggle all over the world; Supported by ARTE

The biggest talk now on the streets in Syria is that everyone is leaving, families, business people, and most importantly, activists. This problem has reached to a point where many in Syria are getting angry at their friends who left or considering leaving the revolution at this difficult stage, some even consider such a thought of leaving as betrayal to Syria.

“Let’s not kid ourselves, those who are leaving Syria are either well-connected or come from well-off families. Syrian economy is deteriorating, so if you can buy a ticket and spend money in some other country, it really means nowadays that you’re rich enough to do so,” said Somayya whose friends are leaving one after another, escaping regime detention campaigns.

“The regime is deliberately pushing the youth to leave, some activists’ names were on the wanted lists on the borders but now they’re not. The regime is leaking lists of thousands of wanted activists so they’ll get scared and think of escaping. It’s precisely because the regime wants us to leave that I believe we should stay. I think our mere staying in itself is resistance,” Sumayya affirms quietly: “to leave is to be defeated.”

Maya, Sumayya’s friend, also refuses to leave Syria at this critical moment: “I am not even considering to leaving, why should I? Yes it’s dangerous and the situation will get even worse, but that’s exactly why I should stay. I have to be careful, watch my back closely, use a nickname all the time and anonymity softwares, I should be fine, and if something goes bad, well I guess then that’s what is meant to be.”

Ismail is a 20 year-old activist who fled to Lebanon ten months ago after his name was mentioned by security forces during his imprisoned friends’ investigations. I asked him how does it feel to be a revolutionary and away from home? He replies with the following:

“Every time I get drunk I dream of coming back, once I get sober I find reasonable reasons I why shouldn’t. I feel guilty;, the more violent this regime becomes, the more I feel guilty towards the martyrs. I think plight  units people, if you’re under the shelling, you’re constantly reminded of why this revolution started in the first place. The absence of witnessing such violence, or experiencing it, reminds you of who you are: a runaway revolutionary.”

I asked Ismail why he feels guilty if his escape was only to protect himself, he replies: “I called for this revolution, I believed in it long time before it started, and I left, I left the working class to die.”

To leave or not to leave, remains to be the question for many activists inside, most of them struggle to come up with a resolution. Am I allowed to go on with my life while tens are dying daily? Am I allowed to have a job, a new life, a future, when many young people were killed for daring to build a future in their home? Is there a home elsewhere?

With these questions I end this article with Mahmoud Darwish’s following verses:

I gave my picture to my beloved:
“If I die, hang it up on the wall.”
She asked: “Is there a wall for it?”
I answered: “We will build a wall.”
“Where, in what house?”
“We will build a house.”
“Where, on which spot of exile?”
(Mahmoud Darwish)

Photo: anonymous graffiti in Syria that says: “A country is not a hotel to be abandoned when the service gets bad – we will persevere.”

“Writings on Syrian walls” – Follow Rima Marrouch’s et Razan Ghazzawi’s blog for ARTE

Razan Ghazzawi is a 32 year-old Syrian blogger based in Damascus, defending human rights, not only in her native Syria but throughout the Arab world and beyond.

 She has been detained twice by the Assad regime and is now under military trial. Razan is an English Literature graduate and got a Master degree  in Comparative Literature from Balamand University in 2011. She started blogging under the name of „Golaniya 7“ years ago, but chose to write under her real name 5 years ago. She recently won the Front Line Defender’s prize for Human Rights Defenders 2012.

You can follow Razan on Twitter and write her under @RedRazan or follow her on her blog: razanghazzawi.org

It became clear she was in personal danger when her father, a high-ranking official in the air force intelligence, issued an arrest warrant for her. She received a phone call from her mother, “Leave immediately, your name will be soon on all checkpoints,” she heard.

In August, her mother disappeared. Mrie believes that after a video of her with Syrian rebel fighters circulated online, Syrian security forces detained her mother.

She succeed to reach her mother by telephone once after many attempts.

“She told me, ‘I need an operation; come back home.’ It is very weird because my mom was the one who insisted that I leave the country.”

Despite her roots as an Alawite from a wealthy and powerful family, Mrie joined the protestors, becoming an outcast in her hometown and her family.  She left the capital city to continue protesting in Barzeh, one of the centers of the anti-government protests in the Damascus suburbs.

“Soon I discovered that people from my own sect could open fire on me,” she says. “It was November 9, 2011. We were protesting in Barzeh when shabiha from a nearby Alawite town came and opened fire. Nine young men were killed, one in front of my eyes. I found a place to hide. I kept asking myself ‘If they would have known that I’m an Alawite would they also try to kill me?’”

In increasingly polarized society, Mrie believes that sectarianism in Syria comes from silence about it. When Mrie held the megaphone during demonstrations in Syria, she always introduced herself to the crowd as an Alawite. The crowd would usually respond with a well-known chant that says the Syrian people are one.

“Hafez al-Assad’s policies got us here,” she says. “We were living in a disillusion that we should not talk about sects. People keep on saying ‘We are all Syrians, you should emphasize this fact instead of your sect.’ Great, fantastic, but minorities need to join the street.”

Just as she believes Syria’s children should not be punished for the legacies of its past, Mrie doesn’t think her mother should be held responsible for her ideas. She started a campaign to release her mother and spoken with press about it.

“She doesn’t deserve to be taken away just because she brought me up on the ideas of social justice and empathy to people,” she says.

Edits: Andrew Bossone

Photo: The picture was taken in April 2012 in Amuda, Qameshli, before heading to a Friday demonstration. Mrie is carrying also the Kurdish flag on her shoulders.

“Writings on Syrian walls” – Follow Rima Marrouch’s et Razan Ghazzawi’s blog for ARTE

Rima Marrouch is a Syrian-Polish freelance reporter. She was brought up in Homs in the 90s, when Homs was a happier place. She has reported from Libya and Syria for the LA Times. She also worked for the “Committee to Protect Journalists/Middle East and North Africa Program”. Today, she is based in Lebanon, in Beirut.

You can follow Rima on Twitter and write her under @RimaMarr.

© Photo Rima Marrouch: Everyday Rebellion, a cross-media project on nonviolent struggle all over the world; Supported by ARTE

There are families in Douma, a suburb of Damascus, living on 20USD a month, 20USD! Assad speaks of concessions, fine, these are Syrian citizens who are now homeless, isn’t this the state’s responsibility? The Syrian government has resigned all its responsibilities towards its citizens. Instead, the government is waging war against them.”

Ruba*, a relief NGO employee in Syria, explains how the urgency of the growing tragedy of forced migrants has forced many peaceful revolutionaries to work as relief activists:

“The regime is purposely creating a humanitarian crisis and forcing activists to deal with it.”

According to international relief officials, two million people in Syria are not getting the help they desperately need. A United Nations mission to Homs recently found that more than half a million people need aid, including health care, food and water. LCC relief report on July 2012 showed that donations come from Syrian citizens, which raises many questions on whether the promises of international relief groups or the so-called “Friends of Syria” are truly consistent with their actions.
Ruba donates part of her monthly salary, but still feels helpless due to the large amount of families in need of urgent aid. We spoke about how revolutionary roles are becoming more clearly affected by social status, where relief activists are mostly from middle class, while revolutionaries are mostly from a working class.

“We, the middle class, flourished during Assad’s era. We enjoyed new services, and we knew that our economic situation has gotten better, but only at the expense of the working class. The very people who are now leading the revolution are the ones who were neglected by the state. They lost their jobs and homes are scattered in gardens and schools depending on our aid: middle class aid. Our role in this revolution is completely different from theirs, we have privileges and a lot to lose; they don’t. We’re bunch of hypocrites.” Ruba leans her head back against the sofa and stares as water drops from the air-conditioning on her living room floor.

Omar used to be active in demonstrations and in revolutionary committees, became a relief activist when the revolution reached its armed phase. Omar was recently released from Air Force Intelligence where he was tortured and kept incommunicado for almost two and a half months.

“It took me some time to understand that now the security situation escalates every week, especially after Crisis Management Cell attack. Checkpoints became unbearable, raids and arrests are increasing, detention has become life-threatening. I used to be able to buy rice and sugar in bulk to help migrant families and no one would have been suspicious, but now I can’t.” Omar inhaled a smoke from his cigarette and rubbed his forehead, “I stopped my work because I won’t let them arrest me again; not for buying rice.”

A large number of peaceful activists feel that working as relief activists is exactly what the regime wants in order to distract them from their revolutionary work. It has become evident to Ruba, Omar and many others that relief activism is not an individual volunteer work anymore, but rather institutional. Syrians are fighting against the most vicious military dictatorship in the region on their own. Perhaps the world, especially countries and individuals who fear FSA, can pitch in and contain this humanitarian crisis; this will definitely revive the peaceful side of the revolution.

*All the names mentioned in this article are pseudonymous for the interviewed people’s safety.

Photo: A group of Syrians fleeing violence in their country, walk towards the Turkish border, near Reyhanli. (AP)

Razan Ghazzawi is a 32 year-old Syrian blogger based in Damascus, defending human rights, not only in her native Syria but throughout the Arab world and beyond.

 She has been detained twice by the Assad regime and is now under military trial. Razan is an English Literature graduate and got a Master degree  in Comparative Literature from Balamand University in 2011. She started blogging under the name of „Golaniya 7“ years ago, but chose to write under her real name 5 years ago. She recently won the Front Line Defender’s prize for Human Rights Defenders 2012.

You can follow Razan on Twitter and write her under @RedRazan or follow her on her blog: razanghazzawi.org