لمحات

Am I capable of killing?
If somebody had asked me this question five years ago, being a person who used to decorate her desk with Jesus’ advice to Peter—“Put your sword back into its place. For all who take the sword will perish by the sword”—I would probably have swiftly, and naively, answered: “Impossible! I neither have the ability nor the desire to end someone’s life.” Without much further thought I would probably have added: “—whoever this person is, and no matter what atrocities they have committed.”
We always like to think we are pretty; we aim not to smell like death; we believe we are messengers of life. We like to think that we are on this planet to make it a better place. That we are here for a higher purpose. That we are alive in order to chant others’ lives and be enriched by them, not to demean those lives and take them away. Five years ago I did not believe in abortion or the death penalty. I hated weapons and violence and I believed that change is made by love.
Today, I don’t know what I believe in anymore. It’s the war. Living perched on the verge between life and death all the time. You would either need a survival instinct always steering you toward the inevitable death of the enemy, or you’d surrender. One of you must die for the other to triumph. It’s the violence which redefined everything: our hopes, our beliefs, and our trust in the world. At a very early stage I had to rethink the answers to many violent questions: Am I a murderer? Am I capable of killing? Do I want to kill?

The first shock came when they shot at us, a group of completely peaceful protesters. There they stood; they resembled us in everything but the dream. They spoke our language, some of them were even from the same city. I had to accept that the murderer is a person who’s like me. Maybe up until yesterday we went to the same places and danced to the same songs. Maybe this murderer was in love with the Aleppo Citadel, like I was. Maybe he had a girlfriend he’d met in a café or in university. How did he suddenly become, upon orders from the Sultan, a murderer? Where did this readiness to kill come from? How can a person, who doesn’t seem to have made any personal gains from the system, turn into such a killing machine? I wanted to think that I was better than that monster. That no one, and no ideology, would ever make me do something like this.
The question arose again when my mother was shot, and again when I was under investigation. Then I wished the investigator would die, especially after he threatened to hurt my family. I couldn’t really judge whether the world would be a better place if this person were gone. I wished for his death and I was ashamed of this wish. Does the new me believe that the death of certain people might actually be a benefit to the rest of humanity? And that not every single life is “sacred”? And that killing someone might save thousands of lives? Of course, I hoped over and over again for the death of Bashar Al Assad—I even dreamt it many times. Was I subconsciously playing God deciding who had the right to live and who didn’t? Definitely! I was surrounded by beautiful heroes who were falling dead because of the violence of people who I was supposed to believe had a right to live. The equation was very difficult. Oh, how much I’ve changed! And how much has maturity changed this naïve, romantic idea of changing the world with love.
All this was less pressing than living in the line of fire. From there we could see the army, only steps away from our houses. We chose those locations because they were less likely to be targeted by air strikes. This army that bombs us day and night. There was a check-point close by where we could see them drinking tea and hear them swearing at us through their walkie-talkies, in Aleppo we call them “fists”. The regular black humor in our house was about what we would do if the army broke in. As with every terrifying thing, we needed to face it with humor to silence the fear. One of our friends asked us not to wake him if the army broke in, and another said he’d jump off the balcony if it happened, while I joked that I would claim that I was kidnapped by my friends.

A friend said he would use a weapon and fight them to death; another said he’d rather blow himself up than be captured alive. This is what the images of death under torture do to us. I said, whispering: I don’t think I am capable of committing the act of killing. There was silence, then they all laughed at my “articulate phrasing”. One of them said in a deep Aleppean accent: What, sister? I repeated the answer with the confidence of someone who believed in the morality of her decision: I will not kill!
And so began conversation that was to last for hours, until one of them asked me: What if the soldier was going to kill you? I answered: Then I would die. I’d rather be the victim than the murderer. He continued: What if the soldier was going to kill me? What if you could save me? What if this soldier heads to the neighbors’ house to kill Aiisha? Aiisha was the neighbors’ daughter who used to knock on our door every day to collect plastic bottles. She was too small to be seen through the door’s peephole.
I couldn’t know whether I was actually capable of stealing another life, and I was not sure that this inability is not, by itself, another form of killing. I have changed, I am disfigured now. This is probably a logical explanation, or maybe I simply matured.
The violence escalated. Scuds, barrel bombs, rockets, shells, friends dying under torture. And with every story I remembered—or don’t because my brain prevents me and suppresses these memories—the certainty that I was a person who neither kills nor wants to kill was gradually shrinking. ISIS was spreading in the liberated areas and started kidnapping journalists one by one. We ran then to our armed friends asking for protection, which was an important, fundamental contradiction: we wanted to hold on to our moral supremacy, which depended largely on others’ violence, not the nonviolence itself.
I still, to this day, don’t understand this war and its killing equations. This war, which I don’t know whether brings out the worst in you or changes you. The person who robbed his neighbor’s house after his neighbor fled: he doesn’t think he would have done that if it weren’t for the war. The person who wishes the death of everyone who doesn’t share his religious beliefs: he didn’t realise he had this much hatred inside.
My questions and uncertainties might not interest you. You might be completely confident, like I used to be, that you are incapable, or capable, of committing an act of killing. But my question remains: is every life “sacred”? Even the life of an ISIS militant who tortures others to death? Is passive surrender to your murderer another type of killing? Killing yourself? Ending your life or the lives of others whom you were supposed to protect? Did living constantly with death to the point of familiarity, and all the anxiety and uncertainty one experiences as a result, cause the answer to my initial question to become In fact, I don’t know?

Christmas used to have a special meaning in my family, full of spiritual and familial rituals. As children, my sister Leila and I used to take turns throughout the night watching out for Santa Claus, waiting to catch him “in the act”. I cannot remember clearly when we realized it was a trick played by our parents, or when we found all our letters to him, written over the years, safely stashed away by our parents. Even after growing up and realizing that Santa did not exist, my mother insisted that exchanging the gifts under the tree remain an annual ritual. A ritual that stopped, obviously, after she was gone.
At the beginning of December, she used to ask each of us what we needed, what we wished for, and she made sure that each of us bought gifts for the others. We would spend Christmas morning exchanging gifts and letters, after which I would spend hours upon hours getting ready. The hairdo, the makeup, the new clothes. I kept on buying new clothes—“Christmas clothes”—every year until I was 28. I used to look very colorful at Christmas. My hair would be, contrary to the norm, well styled. I used to practice using different colors on my eyelids. I would even sometimes go all out and draw a butterfly tattoo on my shoulder—“It’s Christmas!” I would then go to mass, followed by a party where Santa would show up and give us balloons and hats, and we would dance to “Jingle Bells”.
When my father died many Christmas rituals disappeared from our household. The tree disappeared, for instance, but my mother retained the rituals of love and gift-giving, as well as her insistence every year that we go out to celebrate with our friends and leave her by herself. Today I regret every time I left her alone, as a teenager, to go out to celebrate with friends.
After my sister’s marriage and birth of her first child, Christmas regained its familial flair and my mother regained her smile. The ritual of decorating the tree was revived and she celebrated with the grandchildren. The number of letters to Santa increased and we all got creative in inventing new scenarios for Santa to show up and distribute the gifts.
Then the revolution started.
The first Christmas is as ordinary as possible. I try to ignore the imminent threat and have an ordinary family Christmas, trying to ease my mother’s fears and wishes for me to stay safe.
The following year it is impossible to ignore all that. My last day in our house is New Year’s. Security forces are already on my trail because of what I was writing, and what some people—people with whom I used to spend Christmas, singing, dancing and celebrating—were writing to the security forces about me.
That day was my last day on the western side of Aleppo which, to this day, remains under Assad’s control, making it impossible for me to go there. I crossed the border into Turkey and re-entered from the liberated side of the city. To make the crossing between the two territories I had to use a fake identity and disguise myself with a head scarf. And to evade the regime's snipers targeting crossers, we had to race between the crossing’s two points. Those were the most dangerous five minutes ever. Crossing, without any goal worthy of this sacrifice except the “memory of the New Year”. Christmas as an act of resistance—I wasn’t going to let them steal my Christmas.

I crossed safely to the other side: a “Christmas miracle”, maybe. And I celebrated Christmas and New Year’s with the friends who loved me so much they took the risk of celebrating with me. I then returned to the liberated part of Aleppo, making that my last visit to my house, to those streets and to Christmas as I knew it.
At the same time that year another miracle happens in my city: my best friend survives a shelling at a new year’s party. I’m still grateful for that. The most beautiful miracle of my life.
The following year finds ISIS on my tail. It is very dangerous for me, as a Christian, to be in areas where they roam freely, kidnapping revolutionaries, first the Muslims among them. But despite the danger I insist on putting up a Christmas tree at my house. During wartime, there is no place you can easily buy a Christmas tree. I had to buy it in Turkey, at a price that I could ill afford then. I wrapped its various parts in clothing and smuggled it all the way to Aleppo. I hid the decorations inside boxes of tissues. Two hours on the road during which I feigned confidence at every checkpoint so that my clothes wouldn’t be not searched and my smuggled tree wouldn’t be exposed.
At an ISIS checkpoint at the city’s entrance a guard asks: “Who is this suitcase for?”
It’s mine. I make a move to open it but the driver answers: “It’s for the woman.”
The guard loses interest in searching it, and I pass safely into Aleppo. Another miracle? I don’t know.
I gather friends around me. Most of them are decorating a Christmas tree for the first time and even though the ritual has no religious meaning for them, they came and stayed around me to share my joy.
Jawad, the weirdest among them, says cheerfully: “Christian feasts are really nice.” And we all laugh.
Ali, my friend in the Free Syrian Army, approaches carrying a gift he wants me to put under the tree. I take it—I’m stunned with terror. A very small assassination pistol. He says: “It’s nothing. Is case they come for you,”—he means ISIS – “don’t let them get you alive.”
The thought is terrifying. It’s terrifying that someone’s love for you suggests your suicide. He realizes that I cannot kill, so he didn’t even try to convince me to defend myself. The pistol was eventually stolen, along with the laptop and other items in the house, and we never needed to use it. A miracle, again.
Today that tree lies in a house in the neighbourhood of Al Sukkari; a house its owner sealed up with bricks before fleeing to we don’t know where.
Maybe this is what Christmas is all about.
To be naïve among the people you love, defying death and loneliness.
To ignore the fact that Santa Claus is really your parents.
To brave the possibility of sniper fire so you can spend New Year’s Eve with friends.
To smuggle a Christmas tree through ISIS checkpoints.
To set goals for the New Year, knowing you cannot achieve them.
To pray from the heart that the doors do not close in the faces of the refugees from your country like they were closed in the faces of Mary and Joseph on Christmas Eve.
To try and find a miraculous way to penetrate an extremely painful memory and paint some love into it.
Maybe this is what Christmas is all about. To be naïve enough to write a letter wishing for “freedom”.

I see my psychotherapist on a weekly basis, without any of the feelings of shame widespread in our society regarding this practice. But I have a barrel of guilt inside me that is wearing away what is left of the love of life in my heart.
Wednesday at noon is the time I steal away from work to talk about almost everything in life. At the end of the session, the psychotherapist tells me: “But you don't talk about anything personal.” And I am taken by surprise, overtaken by the silly desire always to appear that I am right, or gain the upper hand in any argument (as a close friend tells me I always do), to show my therapist that he is wrong.
I fail!
I am not sure exactly what constitutes “personal” and “public” in a Syrian's normal existence. My friends are the friends of resistance—our lives are intertwined as a result of prison and escape and the memory of our martyred friend. The only person left in my family that I am in touch with is my sister, who was forced to be displaced for security reasons related to me. Her displacement is part of the Syrian hemorrhage to the rest of the world.
My work is a continuation of the coordination for the revolution.
And even my attire reflects my gender in meetings in which I betray my right, as a woman, to appear more serious according to general society norms. Or perhaps it is the opposite: a reflection of my freedom in the face of inexcusable interference in women's privacy.
My body? I am not sure whether I love it or not. It is part of my beliefs that beauty comes in different sizes, contrary to the media’s uniform categorisation of what beauty is supposed to be.
I live in a town I don't know how to make peace with. It is the closest to Syria and the most workable among the choices available. My feelings towards it are irrelevant when it comes to “the greater good of the cause.”
All that I read is about the revolution or the revolutions of others, and sometimes about their wars—my current fixation, for example, is reading about the Lebanese civil war. All that I write is about the revolution and how it rages inside me.
Some time ago I went out on a date with a man. He started the conversation, perhaps to appease me, by asking if I knew whether the Geneva III talks will be held soon. I had forgotten what it is like to meet someone normal and talk about normal things. I don't even know the latest songs, except for the revolutionary songs produced over the past five years.
There is nothing “personal” at all.
Even my disclosure, in the first paragraph, about going to a psychotherapist, is to encourage people like me to admit their depression. It is a constructive disclosure. There is an armed thug in my head and my happy thoughts are littered with bombs. A thousand checkpoints and snipers stop memories from flowing.
At the beginning of the revolution, Bashar Al Assad's supporters used to accuse us of saying that our opposition to the regime is “based on personal feelings.” They wanted to deny families the right to hate a regime that has killed, jailed and kidnapped their children. But how to disentangle the personal from the public in your animosity towards those who want to kill you just because you attempted to assert your personal and public rights?
After this brainstorming session I can't be angry with my therapist, and I avoid his gaze. He is absolutely right: I have to stop my peaceful debate and confess that I am afraid of my personal thoughts.
I smile coyly, as I usually do, when he successfully overcomes my attempts at outsmarting him. He conquers all my attempts at pretending I am strong and all my dark sarcasm and elicits a true answer:
Am I now beyond reflecting the revolution, instead reflecting the war and, like the war, full of disease and death? My feelings of guilt prevent me from screaming that a healthy revolution is first and foremost the work of healthy people. I am afraid of Marcell, of her loneliness, or her confused value compass, of her relationship with a God she used to turn to for everything before the war. I am afraid to meet her and become terrified.
He asks me, for our next meeting, to look for personal spaces I can have fun in. I sense—and I am someone who loves challenges—that this may be one of the most difficult tasks I have to face this year.
Personal? Like what?

Before the Idea
I realise this year how late we are in talking about the third anniversary of the Syrian revolution. It is as if delaying talk about it will change the depressing reality. We are marking the third year since the start of the revolution. A lot has changed in those three years, to the extent that you no longer recognise yourself, or your friends, or your family or your own home. Those who have managed to remain as they were—if you do manage to find a Syrian who has not changed—are lucky. Or perhaps very unlucky.
I've also noted the absence of the debate that Syrians love to engage in every year, about the exact date the revolution started. The question we ask ourselves jokingly is: Are you a supporter of the March 15 revolution, or the March 18 revolution? I will try to explain briefly the roots of this debate, which has not surfaced this year because of exhaustion, or perhaps because we have given up on pinpointing the exact date which ushered in the revolution.
Here's the argument put forward by proponents of the notion that the revolution started on March 15, 2011: On that day, a small protest took place in Al Hareeqa in Damascus. A number of protesters were arrested, which prompted a sit-in  the following day, next to the Ministry of Interior, to demand their release.
Those who insist that the revolution started on March 18 (I am one of these), state that the revolution kicked off in Daraa on March 18, 2011, and that this was the point of no return. All that had happened before this date was merely a prelude, with relatively few participants, and which would have been stifled had it not been for the popular rebellion in Daraa on March 18.
This year we seem to have reached a consensus that the anniversary stretches from March 15 to 18. And in Aleppo, my city, the debate raged in the comment pages, between those who decided to stay put and those who decided to take a break in Turkey. We decided to prepare for this anniversary celebration 10 days earlier.
While Preparing for the Idea
A friend of mine who is always enthusiastic, and whom I envy for his passionate belief in the revolution, says: “We need to organise something across all of Syria.” As soon as he utters this, we realise how  difficult it has become to say “all of Syria”. The concerns of those besieged in the Damascus countryside and Homs are completely different from the concerns of those in the liberated North, and is painfully distant from normal life in other parts of the country. Even the concerns of those in the liberated North are not the same as those in Aleppo, which is constantly bombarded; or Idlib, which is celebrating its recent liberation; or Al Raqqa, which is suffering under a new dictatorship—a faction which calls itself the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or as Syrians prefer to call it, Daesh.
Despite all this, we start a small group on Facebook to prepare for the third anniversary of the revolution, as we rarely meet in real life, thanks to electricity cuts and the difficulties in accessing the Internet from one region to the other. We insist on re-instilling the basic values of the revolution. Someone suggests the slogan “Rights, Humanity, Justice.” Nowadays, however, there are some who oppose the revolution simply because of the word “freedom”, so we insist on including it. We decide on “Freedom, Justice, Dignity” as our motto for this anniversary, which expresses, essentially, the values we held at beginning of the movement.
We acknowledge that there are many reasons the slogan has changed over three years, and how linguistics have interfered to deny the revolution its values. Among them are politics, and money and a desire to appease the Western media by adopting its vocabulary. Because we are the children of this revolution, we decided that we needed to remind people that what is happening in Syria today is not a crisis, or a conflict, or a civil war, or a clash between two forces. What is happening is a revolution: a dream for change, rights, humanity, freedom, justice and dignity. These are the reasons we chose this year's slogan.
A Rebellion for Freedom, Justice and Dignity
On the first day our slogan will be “Freedom”. We will paint the word in different languages on a public wall in Aleppo, to tell the world which is witnessing our blood being spilled that whatever price we pay, we still believe in freedom.
On the second day, we will focus on “Justice”, and put up a memorial with photographs of 500 martyrs killed in Aleppo. We will also take flowers to the graves of martyrs, which have filled up our cemeteries.
On the third day, we will celebrate “Dignity”. We will collect letters from the front-lines of the Free Syria Army, from the medical camps, from activists, from people on the street. They will be letters of support, from one part of Syria to another.
And on the last day, we will erect revolution traffic lights which remind people that “Calling People Apostates is a Critical Juncture”, “Revolution is a One-Way Street”, and “The Road Ahead is Monitored by Media Cameras,” among others.
All the tiny details we have prepared are painful to contemplate. It hurts to search for old slogans which were a dream for most Syrians, before violence changed us. The photographs of martyrs are heart-wrenching. How have they already become numbers, after being covered in blood and when the pain felt by their families is far from over? It is exhausting to write to Syrians of whose suffering and challenges we know very little. It is worrying that they have actually started to divide us.
It hurts to try and bring back the happiness that disappeared after the year one, the intensity of preparations for the second anniversary and to consider how much we have lost by the time of this third anniversary.
I am proud that after all this violence, we have not lost our minds, and that we still adhere to very high values. We may perhaps be worn down from the debates, the back-stabbing and the horrible errors being committed. But I am proud of the movement, mistakes and all, and just as I have written, in the local dialect, to the fighters who have become exhausted and given up:
“The road of the revolution is asfull of pride and freedom as the number of people we have lost, and the energy and dreams that have vanished. I am writing to you to remind you of that moment, when we raised our hands at the protest, and swore to complete the road together and bring a better future to this country.
“I am writing to tell you that you, perhaps, may not have felt the importance of your presence with us as I have. Remember that each of us was leaning on the other for support, and any one of us leaving leaves all our backs exposed. Remember that we have a duty towards the families of martyrs.
“Perhaps last year in particular was a shock, which reminded us that for our freedom to grow, we had to pay a dear price, and that our ability to live in the liberated areas was paid for by the blood of young people, who received the first bullets, shot at the demonstrations. Today, we are able to move freely in Aleppo, without a dictator, thanks to the sacrifices of Abu Younis, Sultan, Saif, Amin and other young people.
“We still have a lot to fight for, Abdulwahab, Abu Mariam, Luay Abu El Joud and Nour, and many many more to return.
“We still have a long way to go for people to stop being martyred in Syria, like Tuti, who was killed from torture.
“Yes, the road is very long. But just as we wrote, on the walls of my city, a quote by [Palestinian poet] Mahmoud Darwish:
“We are still alive and will persevere. And our dream remains alive, no matter what.”
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This post is part of The Bridge, featuring original writing, opinion, commentary and investigation from the unique perspective of the Global Voices community.

Who am I? I have always considered this the most difficult question to answer or write about, especially today, three years from the start of the Syrian revolution. The truth is that I don't really know how much I resemble the young woman I was before. Writing for Global Voices could be an opportunity for me to reaquaint myself with myself, or at least remind myself of who this person whom I live with, and who is me, has become. 
Today I am 29 years old. My name is Marcell. The name means “young warrior”. I come from a small family. My late father, may God have mercy on his soul, was an Orthodox priest. And my late mother, may God have mercy on her soul too, was a housewife and a great mother.
I studied dentistry in the city of Aleppo until I reached a point where I realised that I was more concerned with social issues. I left medicine and I studied political science – international relations and diplomacy, to be more precise.
I cannot introduce myself without telling you about my city, Aleppo, as the two of us are exactly alike: worn down, exhausted, full of fire, full of the desire to live, confused.
Aleppo is the second largest city in Syria. According to statistics, its population used to be 5 million. I am not sure how many of them still remain, and how many refugees from other places have come to live here.
I discovered my ability to express myself orally and in writing from a young age. It could be a characteristic I inherited from my father. I enjoyed writing essays at school, a chore other students considered boring. I read everything that fell into my hands. I also used to write on anything I could write on: bills, tissue paper in restaurants and in the margins of books I was reading. And when blogging arrived, naturally, I took it up. And this is what happened.
I started blogging in 2008. At the time, I had friends who were paying the price of freedom of speech in Syrian regime prisons. This was enough for freedom of speech to become my mission, which turned me into a regime opponent early on. An opponent of a regime that supressed general freedom and civil life.
When the revolution started in Egypt, it paralysed our ability to mobilise ourselves in any other direction except towards our hope that a revolution would take place in Syria too. So without further thought, I joined the revolutionary wave. At first, I wrote about it. Then, I joined the protests. I still remember the feeling of euphoria mixed with worry, and the fear and embarrassment that at the back of my throat as I chanted, “The people want to overthrow the regime!”
 During one protest, volleys of bullets started raining on us from the Syrian security forces’ firearms, and those around me began running. I discovered then that I am one of those people who is paralysed by fear, which prevents me from moving and turns me into an obstacle for those trying to run away. My friends grabbed my hands and pulled me away to protect me, and since that time I have been collecting stories about being on the verge of death, injury or arrest, and how people more rational than I would intervene and rescue me.
It took some time for the Syrian secret service to develop a dossier on me, especially considering that there is at least one informant for every 10 Syrians. During that period, and after a year of protests and listening to advice on being careful from family and friends, the turning point arrived: my mother was martyred at a Syrian regime forces’ checkpoint in Aleppo.  I lost a part of me forever.
Because of the amazing funeral, attended by many revolutionaries who carried my pain with red roses, the authorities began calling me in and interrogating me about my activism on a weekly basis. At that time, the armed revolution was edging closer to Aleppo. At the time, I was against armament in all its forms. I believed peaceful change would guarantee Syrians their rights and result in the smallest number of sacrifices. In fact, large portions of my city have already been liberated, except for my neighbourhood and the places I am familiar with, which have remained under the Syrian regime's control.
When the interrogations became more serious, and it looked inevitable that I would soon be arrested, I decided to accept a scholarship to study for a Masters degree in human rights in the UK. Like any survivor of bloody events such as I have witnessed, during that year I returned to Syria over and over again, to Aleppo, driven by guilt. I moved from one friend's house to the other, as it was dangerous for me to return to my own home, until my friends’ lives, too, became endangered as a result of their association with an activist like me. I was then forced to make what was obviously the right decision, and moved to the liberated part of Aleppo, leaving behind friends, family, memories, my home and the two graves of my parents. In short, most of the life I was used to.
Living alone as an activist during wartime, alone and away from family and familiar surroundings, posed new challenges. I had moved to an area which I knew nothing about, except that the regime's security apparatus had no presence there. But it wasn't free of all the other forms of death.
As one of the very few unveiled women in conservative and humble surroundings, among people who are very kind, despite the violence of their environment, I sometimes suffer from petrifying loneliness. I live with the constant fear of being kidnapped. At times I can withstand it, but at others I break down in exhaustion.
I am surrounded by stories of heroes whose heroism might inspire others to effect change themselves. Because of all this, and because our daily lives are full of events which may not be enough for one lifetime, I have decided to write for you. My articles will some times be about my everyday life. At other times they'll touch upon memories and what we would love our lives to be like, despite the horrors we see.
You are free to choose to sympathise with me, or be harsh with your judgements. But my hope is that what I relate to you reflects some of the dream, the desire to change, and the trust that this change is possible, as far-fetched or painful as that dream might be.
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This post is part of The Bridge, featuring original writing, opinion, commentary and investigation from the unique perspective of the Global Voices community.