I arrived in Beirut on Friday, January 13. Mani joined me the next day, and immediately began telephoning his Syrian contacts to arrange our passage. Abu Brahim, a respected religious authority from the neighborhood of al-Bayada with whom Mani had stayed in November, asked his contacts in the Free Syrian Army (FSA) to organize passage for us. On Monday 16, around 5:00 PM, Mani–henceforth called Ra’id–received a phone call asking us to come to Tripoli that very night.
10:30 PM. Reached Tripoli in the rain.4 Met at the agreed-upon spot by three strapping fellows, then brought to a nearby apartment. Unlit staircase, naked electric wires bulging from the walls. Freezing apartment, but huge and beautiful, with stone floors, paintings, and Arabic calligraphy on the walls, gilt velour furniture, a big glass chandelier. D., a young activist who came out of Homs a week ago, is chatting on Skype, his laptop resting on a low table. “It’s a bachelor’s apartment, sorry!” A TV, up on a dresser, is tuned to the “People of Syria” channel, an opposition network based in Great Britain.
D. immediately talks to us about Jacquier. “The regime deliberately assassinated Gilles Jacquier in order to dissuade journalists from coming. He was killed in Akrameh, a pro-regime Alawite neighborhood, in al-Jadida, in front of the Al-Butul supermarket. The false information about the place of the attack was broadcast by the regime and a traitor journalist.” He means Muhammad Ballout, from the BBC’s Arabic service, a Lebanese member of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party. The BBC apparently apologized.
Gilles Jacquier, a France 2 reporter, was killed in Homs on January 11 in a bombing, during a press trip that was organized and supervised by the Syrian authorities. The Syrian government and the opposition accuse each other of his death. During our stay in Syria, many of our interlocutors would talk to us about Jacquier’s death, and would try to convince us, without ever presenting any concrete proof, of the regime’s guilt.
Men arrive. The leader, A., our smuggler, is a bearded, stocky, smiling guy in a black tracksuit, two cellphones in hand.
D. continues to talk about Jacquier. The opposition considers him a shahid,5 like all the other victims of the regime. Last Thursday was celebrated as “The Day of Loyalty to Gilles Jacquier” on the revolution’s Facebook page; every day receives a name, not just the Fridays. D. praises him: “He came to bear witness to the martyrdom of the Syrian people.” The revolutionary coordination committees are collecting proof that Gilles Jacquier was killed by the regime. He quotes a few at random: the shabbiha6 running rampant in Homs come from Akrama and the neighboring areas; it’s very hard for people from the opposition to enter those places. The university, to the west, is a military zone. Finally, Syrian television mentioned mortar shells: D. affirms that the FSA does not have any mortars, or heavy weaponry of that kind. It’s one of the first things he talks about, and he insists strongly on it. The smuggler interrupts and we discuss different types of mortar; for him a 60 mm mortar, which weighs 90 kg, is too heavy to carry for a soldier. I don’t agree and we quibble over the details.
Dinner: a copious meal, from a take-out place, chicken, hummus, falafel, salad. The smuggler’s nickname is Al-Ghadab, “Fury.” “They’ve called me that since the beginning of the revolution, but I laugh all the time!” His two friends are Lebanese, smugglers who will get us past the Lebanese security checkpoints tomorrow. Then Fury, who is from Homs, will bring us to the city. There are four stages, it will take a day, a day and a half. Car to the border, then a few kilometers on motorbike, then car again.
Manon Loizeau had explained to me that she had had to cross a minefield to get into Syria. I ask Fury about this.
In principle, we shouldn’t have to go through the minefields. There are other ways to cross, which work well, except for unforeseen circumstances. Fury himself only had to pass through the mines once. But even if we have to, it’s not a problem: the FSA has de-mined a three-meter wide corridor through the middle of the mined area, two weeks after the Army put them there two months ago. One guy lost his legs in the process. The men laugh: “Boom!” and make a gesture imitating the wings of an angel, hands at their shoulders. The corridor is marked with stones, and it is regularly used by smugglers. Fury: “If we have to cross it, I’ll go in front of you. Your lives are more important than mine.” Grandiloquent but sincere.
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4 A map of the border region between Tripoli and Homs can be found on p. vii, along with a map of the city of Homs and its main neighborhoods on p. viii.
5 Martyr.
6 Pro-regime henchmen, often Alawites. In the 1990s the term referred to the Alawite mafia rampant on the Syrian coast, under the protection of the authorities, before Bashar al-Assad had them dissolved when he came to power in 2000. The term was taken up again to refer to civilians recruited by the regime, from the very beginning of the events, to take part in the repression.