On the eve of the second anniversary of the Syrian Revolution, I watched a single video: footage of an early expression of resistance recorded in central Damascus on March 15, 2011. After watching thousands of videos for the last two years — protests, funerals, destruction, bombs, and countless corpses — I was surprised that this video was as difficult to watch as the horrific ones. It’s a video that accidentally recorded an act of unparalleled bravery: one voice that pierced 41 years of a nation’s voluntary silence.
The scene opens in the bustling Hamidiyeh commercial center. In the background, men’s robotic voices thud like war drums, “With souls. With blood. We sacrifice for you, ya Bashar.” With each moment, the deafening beats grow louder. Another crowd forms out of what had appeared to be random pedestrians. Their words “silmiyeh, silmiyeh” (peaceful, peaceful) mesh with the men’s chant. The demonstrators arrive to our vantage point and as the new crowd joins in, they replace Bashar’s name with “Souriya". With souls. With blood. We sacrifice for you, ya Souriya.
One woman appears in the frame. She yells, “It’s coming nearer to your Abu Hafez,” referencing the season of revolutions that had ignited in the region. Syria’s flag is proudly draped over her shoulders like a cape. The bright red pops in the muted sea of black, brown, and gray. She carries the only flag in this demonstration. This is not surprising, as the mob is chanting for a person and not a country. The mob’s chant represents the typical fear, submission, and humiliation of Assad’s Syria.
Moments later, the crowd breaks apart and she slips off the incriminating flag and slips on her sunglasses as a few thugs surround her, pulling her out of the march. She screams, “I don’t want to. I don’t want to,” walking away from them back into the demonstration. But they pull her out again. She screams, as a few women try to hold her back, try to save her from her own voice, “Freedom, in spite of your Bashar.” The people around her begin to chant “peaceful, peaceful” once more. She walks away, waving her flag in defiance, calling “Where are the men? Where are the men?” Then, “peaceful, peaceful” switches to “freedom, freedom.”
We are left at the intersection where the two groups have split into different directions. But as the video ends, only one chant can be heard, a chant that has become a roar, “Allah, Souriya, hurriyeh w bess!”
People reference multiple starting dates for the revolution: February 17, March 6, March 15, March 18. But all of them began with a moment like this one. All of them began with a voice.
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The day after this event, Suheir Atassi and a group of protesters stood in front of the courthouse in Damascus demanding for the release of political prisoners. They were in turn imprisoned for their dissent. Two days after that, on a Friday, a protest emerged from the Hamzah and Abbas mosque in Daraa demanding that their tortured children be released from prison. Two men, Mahmoud Jawabrah and Hussam Ayyash were shot dead by security forces. The day after that, more men were killed while burying the revolution’s first martyrs. And the day after that, there was a protest to protest the funeral deaths. And the day after that there was a funeral for the people who were killed in the protest the day before.
More violence and more deaths. More deaths and more violence. And here we are, two years later with over 70,000 dead, over a million Syrian refugees, and a country that has become a landscape of destruction.
Some people talk about the heavy price of the revolution. Some people talk about their fears of the future as if a viable, secure future under Assad’s rule is even possible. And some people ask, “Was it worth it?”
We have all lost. Sometimes it seems we have gained nothing but loss. Sometimes, even we watch the bloody videos and silently wonder, “Was it worth it?” It is the weakest question to ask; the question of despair.
Would you dare ask that woman “Was it worth it?” or “Is this the freedom you want?”rEA
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