5:30 AM. Call of the muezzin. Very beautiful, massively amplified, cuts through the night.
6:50 AM. Waking up. Bleary gray morning. In the living room, the two Lebanese smugglers wait in silence.
7:30 AM. Departure. White minivan, like a little bus, with a video screen. One of the Lebanese men drives. Video and music at top volume. We weave through the Tripoli traffic in the pouring rain. Then suburbs, factories. We’ll have to make a long detour, snow is blocking the passes. There are also two Lebanese Army checkpoints we have to avoid. The shortest road, normally, is the northern one.
Passage through the Mount Lebanon range: tortuous road, threadbare landscape, little clouds clinging to the peaks, a soft snow that melts on the vehicle. Checkpoint passed without stopping. At one point we pick up a hitchhiking soldier, I’m lying down, I open one eye and then go back to sleep. We leave the soldier in a Shiite hamlet swarming with soldiers. I am woken up on a long dirt road in the middle of a desert plain, with Mount Lebanon hidden in clouds on one side and a village nestled at the foot of little hills on the other. Syria is in front of us. We pass farmers, sheep. Finally, after a few bumpy kilometers, we join a road, having skirted round the Lebanese General Security border post. Money changes hands: Fury gives $700 to the Lebanese men, for us maybe, then another $1,000, for purchases it seems – to smuggle some mortars, perhaps? On the road there is a Hezbollah mosque, we’re near a Shiite village; as in the Beqaa, this area is a mosaic of faiths.
Fury: “Most Sunni villagers support the uprising, with some exceptions; for the Shiites, it’s the opposite.” On the road, we join three young guys with two beat-up motorcycles, old Chinese bikes. They’re local farmers, with calloused hands. We bid our Lebanese friends farewell, settle at three to a bike, and start weaving on dirt roads between houses and fields. Children in hand-me-down clothes with running noses, sheep, beehives, a boy galloping on horseback. A few kilometers and then we arrive at a house, already over the border. We passed right between a Lebanese Special Forces and a Syrian Army position. But the border is an in depth concept, not a line.
The “border” is not limited to the line drawn on the map, but exists for dozens of kilometers on either side, thanks to a system of both fixed and mobile checkpoints. On the other hand, for the people who live in this sort of village straddling the line it doesn’t really exist, or else merely as an economic concept, allowing them to carry out business by traveling from one side to the other.
Now we’re at the home of some people – farmers with their families. Coffee, the fathers stroke their sons. A radio summons, everything is ready, we leave. Crossing.7 A few hundred meters further, another house where we’re led into the reception room. Text message in English on Ra’id’s cell: MINISTRY OF TOURISM WELCOMES YOU IN SYRIA. PLEASE CALL 137 FOR TOURISM INFORMATION OR COMPLAINTS. Welcome to Wonderland. It is dead noon.
A wealthy house, beautiful living room with floral-patterned rugs and divans, made of synthetic material. Big oil-burning stove, sobia in Syrian, and a gas lamp. Ample meal served on a tray by some boys. No women visible. Our host explains the FSA organization for the sector: the al-Qusayr units are part of the al-Faruk katiba8 of Baba ‘Amr, commanded by ‘Abd ar-Razzaq Tlass, a mulazim awwal,9 the first officer to have defected from the government Army.
We already know that to get into Homs we will probably have to pass through Baba ‘Amr, a neighborhood in the southwest part of the city completely controlled by the FSA. Abu Brahim, who organized our passage, lives in al-Bayada, in the north of the city. So we ask some questions about the situation in Baba ‘Amr and the border zone.
Our host: Baba ‘Amr is an FSA bastion because it’s a large neighborhood and communicates with the orchards above the Orontes. It is surrounded, but the Army doesn’t enter it. There are FSA units in other neighborhoods – al-Khalidiya, al-Bayada, etc. – but less important ones since those neighborhoods are smaller and more easily controllable by the security forces.
There are no demonstrations in the border villages. They want to preserve calm so as not to attract the mukhabarat10 and risk disturbing the smuggling. Further on, near al-Qusayr, the FSA has units and is attacking the Army and the security forces.
There have already been two raids by the Army and the mukhabarat in the village. They searched houses to locate some wanted people. They didn’t find anything, and left without causing any problems. Here, they came to the front door and asked questions, but didn’t come in.
Me: “Aren’t you afraid for your children?” Him: “I’m only afraid of God.” He trusts his kids, who are listening to our conversation. “They know how to keep quiet.”
Women take part as well, giving emergency medical care, helping to transfer the wounded, etc.
Him: “We’ve lived under oppression for a long time. It’s a police system where no one trusts anyone.” As a Sunni, he feels discriminated against. The good jobs are reserved for Alawites. “There’s no justice, you can’t demand fair treatment. Arrested people disappear, no one has access to them, there is no news of them.” His son wanted to join the police, and tried for three years without success. He thinks it’s because he is Sunni.
At first they just wanted reforms, more freedom. Then, confronted with the repression, things went further.
______
Departure, toward 1:00 PM. Fury arrives with a pickup and we squeeze in, all three up front. Phone call from Baba ‘Amr: some agitated guys say we can’t enter, they can’t receive journalists, the smuggler has to take us back to Lebanon. Ra’id calls his contacts and things settle down little by little. We leave.
The reticence of certain opposition activists in Baba ‘Amr to welcome more journalists was very strong during this period, even though this would completely change later on when the massive bombing of the neighborhood started. It would be a source of constant friction during our stay in Baba ‘Amr.
A mixed region, with villages of different faiths. We enter an agricultural zone controlled by the FSA. We pass a commander in a pickup, then a checkpoint with a soldier, then, on a bridge, a bigger checkpoint. Endless minibuses and little pickup trucks, coming and going from Lebanon, smugglers. The checkpoint searches them, lets them pass. Another road, another phone call from Homs. Some kid hollers over the VHF,11 a soldier’s son playing. Fury, along with the radio, keeps a grenade next to the steering wheel. If we run into a flying checkpoint, he won’t stop.
We leave the highway for a dirt road: we are reaching one of the checkpoints that surround al-Qusayr. We avoid it by taking dirt roads followed by derelict fields inhabited by Bedouins in military tents. On a small road, we pass 300 meters away from the checkpoint, which Fury shows me, laughing. We enter al-Qusayr, a city of 70,000 inhabitants, crumbling cement two-story houses, painted in faded pastels. Rain, passersby, motorbikes. We dodge through little streets before reaching the smuggler’s house. It is 2:00 PM, it’s taken six and a half hours from Tripoli.
In fact, we are not at Fury’s home but the home of a friend of his, Abu Amar. Small guest room, a computer and printer, the oil stove. There are several people, we are served tea and cakes. A guy turns up with a Kalashnikov; this neighborhood is “free.” A mosque loudspeaker starts up: a martyr will be buried following the afternoon prayer, the imam announces. This morning they have already buried two. All three were killed together, in Homs. Discussion to find out if we can go. They don’t want us to because funerals can easily turn into a demonstration and the Army might shoot; also, they’re afraid of being spotted with us.
After making inquiries, it turns out the dead man has already been buried. His name was Ahmad I., aged fifty. Families sometimes bury their dead before the imam’s announcement, to avoid trouble.
The three men were killed in the pro-regime Shammas neighborhood in Homs. A group of shabbiha entered the supermarket in the Sakan al-Shabbab mall where they worked, and executed them simply because they came from al-Qusayr. The two others were between twenty-five and thirty, and were named Rasul I. and Muhammad H. Rasul is related to Ahmad.
A few shots in the distance. Maybe warning shots, in anticipation of the demonstration?
______
The public hospital in al-Qusayr, near the cemetery, is occupied by the security forces. There are snipers on the roof.
A visit to a clandestine medical unit set up inside a house. Basic supplies – syringes, saline solution, compresses – are offered by families and pharmacies. Plastic on the floor over the rug, for the blood?
The doctor who had been in charge, ‘Abd ar-Rahim Amir, was killed in Rastan two months ago. He was cornered in a health center by the military mukhabarat and executed. Nurses were arrested. Here, there’s one doctor and one nurse left. It’s the only center in town; there’s another one 12 kilometers away, across the river, in a tent.
First aid only. People die here of basic wounds, of hemorrhages. They try to evacuate the more seriously injured to Lebanon, but it’s difficult. They receive one or two wounded a day, injured during demonstrations or at night by gunshots. There is an unofficial curfew and snipers shoot at people at night. Wounds are mostly to the upper regions, thorax, and head. Also people released from prison: tortured, bones broken.
______
Center of the neighborhood. Young people gather for a demonstration. Flag of the revolution: black, white, and green with three red stars. One or two guys with Kalashnikovs serve as watchmen. The neighborhood is protected by the FSA. The Army doesn’t enter, but fires from the hospital and the town hall.
Free Syrian Army: al-Jaysh as-Suri al-Hurr.
Regular Army: al-Jaysh al-Assadi, “the Army of the Assads.”
We pass close to the town hall, a big Soviet-style building, four floors, with bluish reflecting windows all smashed up. The FSA tried to attack it but didn’t succeed, it was too well fortified. The RPGs12 served no purpose, and they didn’t want to use mortars as the town hall is surrounded by civilian houses. On the roof and on every floor are sniper nests. We approach the town hall down a long street, straight toward the building. In theory the snipers only shoot at night. Here, everything is calm.
Further on, a garden that serves as a cemetery for the shahids. Burials in the normal cemetery had become too dangerous, the Army regularly shot at the demonstrations that formed.
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4:00 PM. An old man dies of old age and will be buried quickly. Often the young (shabbab) use the slightest pretext for a demonstration, and even if the old man is not a shahid his burial could be one. But since he is not a shahid it will be in the normal cemetery. So there could be shooting.
We make the rounds of the city, accompanied by a guy on a motorbike. Again, we pass just by the town hall, 200 meters from a big Army post at the corner of the building. In the street of the souk, all the shops are closed; we meet an ex-doctor from the hospital who resigned three months ago when the Army occupied the structure and sent the doctors and the staff to another, inadequate building. He says that since the beginning of the troubles, in August, there have been 120 deaths in al-Qusayr. Our friend Fury shows us a video on his cellphone: the first shahid from al-Qusayr, in August, on the eleventh day of Ramadan, naked aside from some dirty underwear, his body riddled with bullets, his leg torn open, a butchery.
We catch up with the funeral but there won’t be a demonstration. We are introduced to some of the al-Qusayr civilian coordinators. We chat, the guys joke, laugh, a very deep laughter, fed by everything that’s happening. A joyful despair, perhaps.
______
6:30 PM. Magnificent dish of rice, meat, chicken, grilled almonds, kapsi served with labneh. Political discussion. The main objective of our host, Abu Amar: “I want a civil State” – “What does that mean for you?” – “A state where the Army and the security services can’t interfere in people’s lives. Here, even to get married you need permission from the mukhabarat. A state where everyone has freedom of religion, as he likes. Look at me, I let my beard grow, I’ve had trouble because of that. If more than five people gather, it’s forbidden, you can be arrested. It’s the same for Christians, they can be arrested too if more than five of them meet.” Fury: “Salafi Christians!” They dream less of democracy, a concept that no doubt is very vague to them, than of the rule of law.
______
7:00 PM. Demonstration in the street, in front of the neighborhood mosque, protected by the FSA and lit up by spotlights. 300 people? There’s one every day. Opposition flags, drums, chanting and dancing, all of it very beautiful and joyful. The men dance in long lines, holding each other by the shoulder. Slogans: “Bashar, we don’t know who you are, Muslim or Jew!” “Bashar, you have a giraffe’s neck!”
An information guy13 is filming from the mosque roof. Off to one side, women and children watch, and also sing. But only the men demonstrate.
I climb on the roof to join the information guy. His name is M. and he speaks a little English. He shows me a video of a corpse. One of the dead from the supermarket in Homs, perhaps? It isn’t clear to me, and M.’s English isn’t good enough. The dead man is about forty to fifty years old, with a moustache, a bullet in his foot, and his arm cut off with a knife. The arm, if I understand correctly, was cut off when he was still alive; he was killed afterwards. In the film, the father of the dead man is crying.
M: “The demonstration is a dhikr.”14 But there are Christians as well. He introduces me to one, a thirty-four-year-old man, pro-opposition. This latter proudly shows me the cross he wears around his neck. He is wanted and can no longer sleep at home. At the funeral for the three men killed in Homs there were about fifty Christians, I’m told.
M. insists on the interconfessional unity of the Syrians, as does the Christian man. “We’ve lived together for over a hundred years. It’s Bashar, when he came into power, who stirred up problems between us. So that France and other countries would say, ‘The Christians must be protected.’”
M. again: “This country is for everyone, and God is for us.” Slogans: “Bashar, get out, you and your dogs!” “Bashar, we’re the ones from Syria, not you!” The lines of dancers do adopt the form of a dhikr, but without any religious content. Very joyful demonstration in any case.
It’s better not take out my notebook in the street. People immediately become paranoid.
______
8:15 PM. Night expedition to a farm outside of al-Qusayr, in the countryside, to meet an officer. A smiling boy welcomes us into the reception room; he is seventeen, and is helping out the FSA, but doesn’t take part in the action.
The boy counts bullets while we wait. 9 mm, and ammunition in Israeli cases, 200 7.62 mm cartridges in belts for machine guns, with a tracer every five rounds.
Shots in the night, the dushka of a BTR15 next to the hospital. A few volleys.
Ra’id discusses crossing the border with Fury. Fury explains that he used the Lebanese’s minivan because of us. Usually he takes the bus. It cost them several hundred dollars, but he refuses payment from us.
Discussion about the cost of weapons. Fury: an RPG costs $2,500 (including transport); a rocket, $650. A Kalashnikov, a Rusi as they call it here, $1,800. A 60 mm mortar, $4,500, a 60 mm mortar shell, $150. An 80 mm mortar, $7,500.
The FSA gets most of its ammunition through attacks. They don’t have much money. Sometimes, sympathizers from the regular Army give them some. Sometimes the FSA buys some from them, but it’s rare.
Fury thinks the regime won’t fall peacefully. It will have to be overturned by force. The number of deserters is increasing. He estimates the number of deserters in the Homs area at 10,000.
Fury is wanted. The FSA bought some lists from the mukhabarat, his name is on one. He is twenty-eight years old. Before, he was a carpenter. In 2010, he did the little Hajj, and shows me the Jordanian and Saudi visas in his passport. He was a bachelor and was going to get married just before the start of the events. He had a choice: revolution or marriage. Now, he is on the move all the time. He doesn’t do it for the money (his family is well-off), he is not a smuggler. He runs journalists, wounded, medical supplies, etc. for the FSA.
At first, he only demonstrated, but after the fourth month he got fed up with seeing demonstrators getting killed. He began to act as a runner in July, when one of the first senior officers, the muqaddam16 Husayn Harmush, defected to form the first katibas of the FSA.
Husayn Harmush, who had taken refuge in Turkey, was kidnapped there in August, and reappeared on Syrian television going through the confession routine: he received money from abroad, etc. According to some sources he was executed by the Air Force Intelligence Directorate at the end of January, when the FSA offered to trade him for supposed Iranian agents captured in Homs.
We drink maté, imported from Argentina. It’s very common here. The officer doesn’t come and finally we return to al-Qusayr, to spend the night at Abu Amar’s.
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7 Note to the Verso edition: We entered Syria by driving on motorcycles through a Syrian Army checkpoint where the soldiers, silent accomplices of the FSA, simply ignored us. At the time I first published this book, this information was too sensitive to reveal.
8 Battalion.
9 Lieutenant.
10 “Intelligence.” This term, like “security forces,” is used in a generic way, in Syria, to designate four different services: Shu’bat al-Mukhabarat al-’Askariyya, the Military Intelligence Department; Idarat al-Amn al-’Amm, the General Security Directorate, often still called by its old name, State Security; Idarat al-Amn al-Siyasi, the Political Security Directorate; and Idarat al-Mukhabarat al-Jawiyya, the Air Force Intelligence Directorate, the most powerful and feared of all.
11 A small portable radio, also known as a walkie-talkie.
12 Ruchnoy protivotankovy granatomyot, “portable antitank grenade launcher,” also known in English as a “rocket-propelled grenade.” A Soviet-era weapon, widespread these days, and coveted by guerillas the world over; a kind of bazooka, which shoots a rocket with an explosive shaped charge.
13 The activists in charge of information belong to the local coordination committees, the coordination bodies of the revolutionary activists. They are in charge of filming every demonstration, with a sign showing the place and date, to counter the propaganda of the regime seeking to minimize the scale of the uprising. They also film bombardments, wounded, dead, and all other forms of brutality.
14 Mystic Sufi ceremony, which often takes the form of ecstatic dances.
15 Bronetransportyor, “Armored [troop] transport,” a Russian-made military vehicle with eight wheels and a turret usually armed with a 14.5 mm machine gun. In Russian military slang, the dushka (“little soul”) designates the Degtyaryova-Shpagina Krupnokaliberny or DShK (hence the nickname), a 12.7 mm machine gun. But it is possible that the Syrians use the same name, pronounced their own way, for the 14.5 mm.
16 Lieutenant-Colonel.