How I Accidently Got Involved with the Syrian Opposition

Posted by JC

During the chilly spring of 2013 I was a humanitarian aid worker waiting for my next mission. Didn’t yet know where I was going but I was busy preparing to lease my flat for the upcoming departure. As I spent my days carrying books to the basement and cleaning out wardrobes – I did this regularly, then carrying everything back up a few months or a year later – I was suddenly accompanied by a newly made friend of mine. A young Syrian woman who decided to drop out of the human rights program she had been brought to Sweden to attend, and apply for asylum.

“I’m leaving this place tonight,” she said on the phone in a hushed voice. We hung out quite a lot, and had known each other since the year before.

“Where are you going to stay?”

“I don’t know.”

“Come here.”

My friend was a beautiful young woman, intelligent and charismatic. But that evening when she showed up with a hastily packed suitcase, other adjectives would have to be used to describe her appearance.

I did what I usually do when someone moves in with me with short notice; made tea, brought out blankets and a towel. My living room couch was used to hosting people, it actually never complained once, but it had never served someone with so many raw emotions, energy and anxiety at the same time.

“You’re safe here”, I tried to comfort my friend that very first night, not knowing if I meant safe at my place or in Sweden.

Fear was nothing new to her. She had after all one of the most dangerous jobs a person can possibly have – the one of being a journalist in Syria. But neither she nor I had thought that the threat of the regime could exist in the form of individuals in Sweden.

I too was uncomfortable being around this individual, and we agreed not to let anyone know that she was staying with me. Now 11 years have passed, and it’s safe to tell the story.

As we spent most of our time together in my small flat during that chilly month in spring, we started to get to know each other better, and quickly resumed some kind of schedule.

“What are we watching tonight?” she would ask, as she was preparing plates of fruits, biscuits, cheese – much needed plates since we always stayed up late. Sometimes the snacks were accompanied by a bottle of wine if we could afford it; her monthly grant as an asylum seeker had yet to be started.

As we worked our way through seasons of Girls, she started to share more about herself. Her stories were incredible, but she had no idea:

She had been on a journalistic assignment covering the war, when she and the cameraman had to flee by car from people sent out to arrest them. In a hospital they had been able to take cover. She remembered her mouth being so dry that she couldn’t speak.

When her blog where she wrote about the war crimes committed by the regime became famous, she was arrested with her baby, and it was someone close to her who had snitched, letting the regime know where she was staying.

During her arrest protests had been organized to demand her release. She showed the online posters with her name and photo – this later became useful evidence in her asylum case.

Listening to her stories of amazing courage became a crash course in the Syrian uprising and taught me how to recognize common patterns – phrasing, reasoning – of Syrian activists trying to bring down the regime. These skills would turn out to be useful later on. I could be accused of many things but not that one of being a bad listener. Or writer.

I had been to Syria before the war and I could relate to her description of her beloved country. Have you ever smelled the jasmine flowers of Damascus in summer? Have you watched the water pass by in the water wheels of Hama? Those are beautiful sights. I would say it’s impossible to visit Damascus and not fall in love with the city and the people. The beauty infiltrated, though, by the underlying threats of violence – a violence not only directed towards political opponents.

One story I was told by a pro-regime friend said how the ruling family had a part in organizing kidnappings of young, Syrian girls for wealthy men; their mutilated bodies dumped afterwards in lakes, attached to weights.

“I want to go home”, my friend often said.

I thought that she would if only she was patient. Much like the people that I got to know in those early years of the revolution, I believed that the Syrian opposition had the strength to overturn a sadistic regime.

Sure, the opposition was fragmented, without a clear hierarchy, and there was worrying news about extremist groups funded from the outside. But the Arab spring was hopeful. Areas in Northern Syria were taken over by the opposition; the Kurds had support from the other Kurdish regions. The activists I knew were intellectual, reflecting, with a deep longing for freedom and the right to live a life without fear. They must be able to do the change, right?

It wasn’t always easy to host my friend, but I dealt with enough traumatized people to have some tools and boundaries. To help her cope we went out, went to my friends’ parties, cooked dinners.

Did I mention that she was beautiful? Her looks were actually amazing. Going with her somewhere, people stopped and stared; men kept calling and asking her out. One man was stupid enough to message me on Facebook, asking to wire me money so I could buy her flowers. I agreed, cashed out, we spent the money on ourselves.

We also loved watching silly movies. One favorite was Crash – when the main character in a rehab center wrote a letter of apology, admitting he was alcoholist and didn’t want to be anymore, we changed the lines to the certain individual she had fled from:

“I’m sorry I pretended to be your friend so I could spy on you for the mukhabarat!” she exclaimed.

“I don’t wanna be an undercover agent for the Assad regime no more!” I latched on, and we laughed hysterically.

So why did I do what I did a few months later? Why did I write the articles that I did? Syria is not my country. I lost friends, pro-regime Syrians, because of it. They saw me as a traitor, someone interfering in an issue that wasn’t mine.

It was not planned in advance. My friend was, of course, an influence. But also because of her many compatriots that I connected with, my love for them and the country. Syria did not deserve the terror that was brought onto them because they demanded what some take for granted: a system not deflated by corruption; wages enough to live and not only survive on; the right to live a life free of fear.

And we believed in change, I believed in change. If enough stories came out about the war and the crimes against humanity being committed there would be little chance for the Assad family to stay in power. They would sooner or later leave the country on a private jet heading to Riyadh and never come back, finally giving up a power that was never given to them by the public.

The day came when I got the call about my assignment. In the evening, my friend asked where I was going.

“Can you have a seat?” I told her.

Confused, she sat down on one of the kitchen chairs, it was one of the few items in my now empty flat that hadn’t been moved to the basement.

“Why? Where are you going?”

I hesitated slightly. Then replied.

“Damascus.”

Appreciation Post to All the Mothers Out There

Posted by JC

A long time ago I was riding around Beirut with my friend Hanan and her daughter Lina in a borrowed cabriolet. The summer evening was sticky, the humidity almost unbearable, and the sounds of the partying, young rich in Downtown far away.

“Dance, Lina!”, Hanan exclaimed, and Lina started shaking her chubby little body, standing up on Hanan´s lap.

Hanan danced along with her while sitting down in the front seat, snapping her fingers. Lina shaking her head so that her short curls bounced made Hanan laugh. Lina’s silliness was contagious.

We had hung out for a few weeks, and Hanan was soon to go back to what she called home. She didn’t miss Lebanon; it was just a place she visited sometimes from her residence in the Gulf.

“I didn’t think of anything but leaving”, she said once about growing up.

She hadn’t seen much of Lebanon anyhow; mostly her parents’ house and the public school where she failed most courses. Still, she had seen more of the country than her own mother, who usually refused to step out of the house, preferring unhappiness and her prescription pills.

Whatever Hanan had tried to do beforehand seemed to have failed her: moving away from her family, starting a job in the beauty industry, becoming independent. Getting married, moving abroad and having a baby, was the start of her own life.

“Ice-cream!” Hanan said as the car approached one of the many sweet stands, and Lina jumped enthusiastically. Beirut evenings were always sparkling – at least on the surface – and buying sweets was our favorite to top off the evening.

We stopped at the corniche. Hanan pretended to throw Lina into the sea, and Lina laughed. She was used to the outdoors. Every day she and her mom strolled the streets, enjoying malls and playgrounds, had a sandwich for lunch outside. They enjoyed life together, a life new to them both. Even though the sadness in Hanan’s eyes never seemed to fade, I haven’t met many parents that enjoyed parenting as much as she did.

“Ice-cream, mama, bottle!” Hanan practiced her small vocabulary while aimlessly jumping up and down on the corniche.

If Hanan would have lived in any European country, she probably would have ticked several boxes of a social worker’s risk assessment form. Not only was she from a poor, uneducated family, but she would also earn the labels of adolescent parent, victim of violence, lack of family support. All these factors must be an equation for bad parenting – right? But during those sticky, hot weeks in July, Hanan taught me that things are not always as one might think.

That summer, Hanan would tell her family in the village that she was going to stay at her in-laws in Beirut, and after they dropped her off, headed over to my place. The little studio I rented had two single beds; we put them together, I tucked a large blanket over the two and the three of us shared the improvised double bed with Lina in the middle. I still remember Lina kicking me in my head as she was sleeping, happily taking over the whole bed.

We created some memories those weeks.

“Can you babysit?” she asked her in-laws, and they agreed; they loved Lina and were generous, kind people.

And off we went; I brought Hanan to an expat party, she took me to Bay Rock café to smoke sheesha.

But most of all, we often broke night talking on my balcony. What she told me those nights is private, that stays between us. But I blamed myself afterwards, when Hanan abruptly stopped being in touch. Because I know I tend to ask too many questions.

Did I dig up too many painful memories that she would have been better off not being in touch with? Did I do wrong, jumpstarting deep buried emotions? Was it wrong to tell her she deserved a better life?

I knew something was not right, that I maybe had brought up too much. Because upon her return to the Gulf, she was devastated. She called me crying.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, afraid something bad had happened.

“I miss you.”

She cried about everything she had been through, everything we had talked about that she hadn’t told anyone before. It was like Pandora’s box had been opened. Maybe it would have been better to keep it closed.

I have had some memorable evenings during my years abroad, but if there is one I could return to, it would be riding around Beirut in a borrowed cabriolet with Hanan. Because there’s a magic in seeing a mother breaking dysfunctional patterns, showing her daughter true love when she had never experienced one herself. Since I became a parent myself, Hanan continues to amaze me. How she could put so much love and strength into motherhood where many others, more fortunate, cannot.

And she’s not the only one I’ve met, even if she is the one I remember the most. Many mothers are parenting in war zones; parenting other people’s kids; doing the best they can not to transfer the traumas they’ve been through to the children they care for. Unfortunately, these mothers are the ones that rarely get the appreciation they deserve for it. No flowers on Mother’s Day for giving love in impossible situations. They’re often mistrusted, questioned. I don’t believe anyone thanked Hanan for her job; her own family certainly never did.

This post is for all the mothers out there, who are doing the best that they can with whatever little they were handed.

Hanan, if you see this, this flower here is for you.

(please note: not their real names)

Once Upon a Time I was 25 and in Beirut

Posted by JC

Once I was 25, once I was a master student in humanitarian assistance, finding myself in Beirut for the last semester. A friend asked me how I felt about the anniversary of the harbor explosion and the honest answer is this; whenever Lebanon pops up in the news, I wish the news would be better, and I also have ambiguous feelings about the country. May I share them?

It was the longest period of time I had spent in a foreign city. Beirut was a colorful postcard at a first glance, with its bright lights and turquoise beaches. But there were dark sides beneath. This was a year before the Israeli summer war, when many of the young people I had met left for Dubai; before the Arab spring; and way before the harbor explosion wounded an already wounded country.

The men I met all had blackberrys and wanted to drive nice cars. Topics among most of the girls were eyebrows and when to get married. I rarely felt a connection. Not that this would have been necessary; I experienced a fatigue among the young, educated population, with the foreign students coming to Lebanon to do their thing (“gender projects in the Palestinian camps!”; “photography and community development!”), and it was hard to blame them. There’s a self righteousness among many young, white activists that can be hard to digest.

I also found myself disappointed in the world of NGO, at least in Lebanon, where the influx of foreign funding seemed to do as much harm as it did good. Having been so passionate about my field, making it to a prestigious master program, I lost some hope in the role development aid had in supporting a society towards positive change. Yes, there was poverty and despair in the Palestinian camps and among the many very poor Lebanese. Yes, there were a number of internationally funded projects to improve the situation. And the equation between the two rarely made up. Corruption; different actors getting the most they could off inconsistent funding; donors with suspicious agendas – it was all news to a 25 year old idealist.

The autumn seemed to consist of electricity cuts; people who didn’t keep their promises; men I weren’t into who tried to ask me out or invite themselves to my flat; and corrupt NGOs contributing to the inflation that made it hard for most Lebanese people to make a living.

Beirut was as inconsistent in its appearance. The nightclubs, the breathtaking mountains, the hardcore religious preachers, the sectarian hatred that seemed to creep in anywhere. Well-off youngsters spent hundreds of dollars on vodka and cocaine in one night in Gemmayze street; while in the poor suburbs, people worked 12 hour shifts for ten dollars a day, cockroaches ruled the blocks and sewage water overflowed the streets.

I made friends with some Swedish-Lebanese families that had moved back to Lebanon, and the comfort was a relief (that, and a burned cd of Kanye West’s Late Registration, purchased in the black market in Cola bus station); I often found myself hanging out in their living rooms.

Then I was preparing to wrap up my field study for my master thesis; focusing on the outcomes of dialogues among university students from different sectarian groups, and head back home. And then, after months of ignoring men’s phone calls to my Nokia 1110, I fell head over heels, stumbling in to an unfamiliar feeling of anxiety and euphoria. One of the Swedish-Lebanese moms cautioned me; “There are many guys here, be careful who you choose. There will be differences, you know.” But this one, I was sure, was special.

Still I remember the details; the leather jacket, shiny black hair, spotless skin and a hoarse voice. I would have fallen for his type in any part of the world. I can still point out which table at the Hamra bar we once shared our secrets at.

We hung out as friends. He shared my values. He was educated, from a well off family – and a communist. He’d taken classes in domestic violence, even educated me on the subject. But most of all: he listened to me. Was interested in what I had to say. And he seemed to like me, too. He smoked a certain type of cigarettes that I liked but didn’t know where to get.

“I won’t tell you where I buy them”, he said with a grin, “so you’ll have to meet me every day before you go home.”

At the same time, my research among students who had taken part of coexistence dialogues, showed me a different side of Lebanon. Many of the students I interviewed were non prestigious and down to earth. It started to seem possible, what I had been longing for. People who spoke of things like coexistence, peace with Israel, staying in Lebanon, contributing to the positive development of the country. I started to regain trust in this beautiful country; that it was possible for it to heal and corruption to be fought by the young, enthusiastic people I had met; and I also regained hope in the fact that international funding could make a difference.

The night of my flight, he came over to the simple, overpriced studio I rented. We spent some hours talking before a car was going to pick me up at midnight. Having given most of my stuff to the Syrian janitor who lived with his wife and five kids in a single room at the bottom floor, the flat was bare, my bags packed. I asked him to read a short story of Hanan al-Shaykh and give me his opinion, and we discussed it. Neither one dared making the move. After we had hugged goodbye and he’d left, it took around 15 or 20 minutes of thoughts like it’s not necessary, just drop it – then I picked up the Nokia cellphone.

“I forgot to tell you something. Can you come back?”

Within a few minutes he was at my door and before I knew it, I was in his arms. We kissed, carefully, for what felt like an eternity, while the clock was ticking fast towards midnight.

From the view of my balcony, I watched him disappear down the Hamra street, into the foggy December night. He smoked a cigarette and his leather jacket was open. He raised his face towards the sky and the rain, closing his eyes as if he was in a dream. I felt I was in one, too. All the disappointment that had gathered inside of me had seemed to vanish.

Tears started flowing when on the airplane. It wasn’t the first or last time a man made me cry from one airport to another (and this man would make me cry on flights again, which I didn’t know at the time); but this one felt different. It was like soulmates meeting each other in a lost place. I wondered if I would ever see him again. And I would, even though it would take several years.

I still believed in love; love as a force greater than long distances, cultural differences – and that the fast money and lifestyle of Dubai wouldn’t change someone for the worse.

That was a beautiful, childlike belief. Whenever Lebanon pops up in the news today, I wish I hadn’t heard the bad news. I wish that memory could have been my very last memory of him, and of Lebanon. I wish I could have had that belief forever.

Back

Posted by JC

Soon about to be back. Itchy fingers and corona boredom. And things to say. Stay tuned.

On Hold

Posted by JC

This webpage is on hold for a while.

I love writing and I love sharing stories.

Sad stories, positive stories, stories that will make people think.

But I have something more important in my life now. Something that needs my attention.

This page will remain and I will be back.

In the meantime, stay strong, stay united. Let light and love lead your lives, instead of fear and darkness.

The Opposite of Radicalization

Posted by JC

Happy Yezidi New Year!

Posted by JC

This week it was the Yezidi New Year, known as Sere Sal, which means “Head of the Year”. It’s celebrated on a particular Wednesday of April, known as Red Wednesday. This day commemorates the Wednesday that Melek Taus, one of the central figures of the Yezidi religion, first came to earth millions of years ago in order to calm the planet’s quaking and spread his peacock colors throughout the world.

Below are photos from this week’s Yezidi New Year celebration in Sinjar, Iraq, close to the Iraqi-Syrian border.

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Photo credits: Allt om Irak Facebookpage

Syrian Artist Diala Brisly, Painting for the Future of Syria’s Children

Posted by JC

Syrian artist Diala Brisly have been working from Beirut, Lebanon, painting mainly for and with Syria’s children, inside and outside of Syria, to provide them some hope for the future.

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