Every day, death
catches the people of Idlib by surprise. It races them to their morning bread,
then comes to them in the afternoon and hovers over their beds if they fall
asleep. Death wreaks its havoc on their homes and families, along with all
their memories, everything crushed under its horrific weight.
In Idlib, death
expels the living from their towns and villages, stripping them of whatever
remains of their hopes. It turns their faces into maps of tears and tragedies,
and fills the roads of their previous lives with convoys of vehicles laden with
their shadows and some of their basic needs, along with a great deal of dust.
Death looms over Idlib
without moving us. Its atrocities, agonies, and targets provoke no questions or
shock among ordinary people, as they are supposed to.
The frost of death on
the blue lips of a girl staring into the void no longer makes us wonder how
this could happen, and persist for months, if not years. It’s as if everything
we see was expected. As if we were already aware of it and we’re just trying to
postpone starting up our computers, so that death’s live broadcast wouldn’t
dominate our daily routine once again. We lived the same
tragedy before in Aleppo, Homs, Ghouta, Yarmouk, Daraa, Zabadani, Madaya, and
in the forgotten outbacks on the banks of the Euphrates.
Then we try to write. We
try to compensate for the screaming by typing on keyboards and scolding the
impotence that has accompanied us through these years. As if we have a duty. To
write at least once about Idlib and the extinction of its people. To say that
we aren’t tired yet. To follow the developments on the ground and pore over the
maps—which don’t show the sweat of the women picking olives, or the children playing
with the ball—looking for the “M4” and “M5” highways, seeing which green bits
of land have turned red today. To answer the questions asked over the phone by
some know-nothing smart alec who wants to “dig beneath the surface” and analyze
“Fatah al-Sham,” “the Sochi agreement,” “the dynamics of the strained relations
between Turkey and Russia,” and “the forms of Iranian involvement in the
fighting after Qassem Soleimani’s demise.”
Yet, if we’re actually
to write, what do we say about Idlib today? Who do we address? A public who
might be stirred by the trembling fingers of cold and panicking children, or by
more bodies buried in the mass grave that is Syria? Or officials, still calling
for restraint and calm, and for "sparing civilians the horrors of fighting", and
negotiating a constitution and political solution? Or the petty hypocrites who
speculate about conspiracies and plots but fail to see death circling over
humans wandering below, and the perfidy of death’s odious planes, flags, and
slogans? Or do we write to support friends like us? Or to hope that,
one day, the starving homeless and the children who thought there was no more
to life than escaping the sky, might read us and say that we mentioned them
when they were roaming aimlessly, and that we published our words and their
photos in newspapers and magazines?
What more could we say about Syria than that already said over the past nine years? About
the killing and the killers, the chemical weapons, the rape, the torture, the
devouring of corpses, the looting, the displacement and the confiscation of the
lands, about the meaning of the world today and the downfall of the "international
community," the brutal executions of the victims who wanted no more than
an ordinary life, in which they could look upwards and see only clouds, birds,
and stars? About the resistance, the doctors, the teachers, fighters,
photographers, and refugee women working in scattered camps? Or about the laughter of
that beautiful girl whose father banishes her fear by turning the sounds of
explosions into moments of fun and life? What, however, if we stopped writing,
and turned off the lights, and then the next shells fell on the laughing girl
and her father? Or on the kids in the room next door? Would anything change? Would
Syria remain the mill grinding away at laughter, heartbreak, reports, and
articles piled up and swallowed by insatiable death?
We keep writing,
perhaps for two or three reasons. To wipe away a personal shame, or rather to
confirm it; the shame of being unable to do anything except continue staring at
a calamity; washing our eyes of the remains of its cadavers, then going about
our days and postponing our anger, defeat, and hatred. We also write to support
the narrative of people we see from afar, people with tears, blood, and sorrows
silently flooding their souls, while certain depraved people try to tear up
their images and suffocate their glances, burying them under considerations of
"international relations," "interests,"
"jihadists," and "fear of refugees." Finally, we write so
that the impunity enjoyed by the known criminals doesn't pass without witnesses and testimonies. As for those silent about, or complicit with, the criminals,
to hate and despise them is, most likey, what helps us keep going.
In late 2012, after
the battle to liberate the infantry school in Aleppo from the gangs of the
Assad regime, the leader of the victorious battle, Colonel Yusuf al-Jadir Abu
Furat, said he was sad. Sad for the dead on both sides; sad for the burned
tanks and destroyed materiel. He added a question that seemed naive, but was,
in fact, the most eloquent and honest summary of the Syrian tragedy on that
day: “Why do you hold on to a chair, you bastard? Why?”
Nothing that has happened since that question was posed has been more
complicated than the direct answer to it, despite the multiplication of horrors
and endless increase in villains dancing over the graves.
Ziad Majed
First published in Arabic, and translated to English by Dawlati.
