10:00 AM. I wake up as Ahmad and a few guys are already talking loudly around the sobia. Fadi is still sleeping. They are drinking maté and we make some tea. Ra’id calls his friend Abu Assad, to organize the crossing over to al-Khalidiya, but it’s complicated for him. Finally it’s Bilal who will come, an activist from al-Khalidiya who works with the clandestine hospitals.
Despite some unfinished business, like the discussions with the mukhabarat doctor we were unable to meet again, we had decided the day before to leave Baba ‘Amr to begin working in the center neighborhoods, starting with al-Khalidiya which is on the north-west side of the city, where Ra’id had good contacts.
Around noon, after the prayer, the funeral of a shahid. According to the activists from last night he was a civilian who, returning from the center of town, was stopped at a checkpoint, where they saw he lived in Baba ‘Amr. At that point gunfire broke out between the checkpoint soldiers and the FSA; the soldiers bound the man and used him as a human shield. He wasn’t hit but was executed afterwards.
Wait in front of the mosque in the rain.
According to the information collected, the shahid was named Muhammad W. He was buried at 9:00 this morning. But he’s not the shahid they told us about yesterday, he’s a man wounded ten days ago by the shell that fell on the bakery, and who died yesterday from his wounds. [The bombing, shortly before our arrival, of the bakery in Insha’at, near Brazil Street, caused numerous civilian casualties.] Ra’id calls back Abu Yazan al-Homsi, the Al Jazeera cameraman: no, this was the shahid we were looking for. He was hit four days ago – at the checkpoint, as they told us? Impossible to know – and he died yesterday. Since his family is from al-Wa‘er, near the refinery, they took his body this morning to bury it there. Another completely confused story, like all the stories here.
Turns out the dead man from the bakery also exists, and was indeed buried this morning.
Discussion with a group of women: “May God protect you, my sons! May the same thing not happen to you as to your fellow countryman!” A guy on a bike, with shopping bags hanging from the handlebars and wearing earmuffs, joins the conversation. His brother was killed in December by a sniper, as he was taking the bus to go to work.
Since the night of the narghile, with Dr. ‘Ali and the activists, I had developed a cough that would later only worsen and would cling to me for the rest of our stay. Since Ra’id’s friend who was to bring us to al-Khalidiya still hadn’t arrived, we head off on foot to look for a pharmacy.
Pharmacy on the main street, where I go to buy some cough syrup. The pharmacist, Ahmad, speaks perfect Russian, he studied in Moscow for ten years, 1990–2000. His brother too, who is a doctor in Damascus. He just reopened the pharmacy a week ago. The whole area had been heavily bombed.
He’s almost the first person I can speak directly with since I’ve been here, and I’m very happy.
Ahmad comes from a village near the Lebanese border, on the road to Tartus. He studied in Saudi Arabia, before Russia, then worked there and in his home village too. He settled in Baba ‘Amr five years ago. But he grew up here, his father was a teacher. He is Turkmen, like all the people from his village, a town of 14,000 people.
“I’ve traveled a lot, Russia, Romania, Greece, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and I’ve never seen a government like this.” His pharmacy was looted three times by soldiers. The shop window and metal shutters are riddled with bullet and shrapnel holes.
He gets his medicine from the center of town, and also from Damascus, Aleppo, elsewhere; he places the order and they are brought to him, one or two days later. The price of medicine hasn’t gone up, he thinks it’s still controlled by the Ministry of Health. However, many are very hard to find. They lack everything. Just at that moment a well-dressed man arrives, bringing medicine from the center of town. Ahmed and he discuss the next order. The price of paramedical products (milk for children, bandages, cough drops, etc.), which is not controlled, has increased 100–120 percent. Very dangerous to come from the center.
Ahmad jokes about Russia. Over there they used to say to him, “Ты не пьёшь, ты не куришь, почему живёшь? – Толко штобы бегать за девушками.”39
Earlier on, he helped Imad’s clinic, but it didn’t go well. Is reticent to speak about it. Finally lets me know that not everything he gave arrived where it should have. “They’re good guys there, but there are internal conflicts. And some profit from them.” He doesn’t have any more money because of the three lootings, and with this situation as well, he doesn’t want to help anymore. “And Abu Bari’s clinic?” – “No, never!” Vehement reply.
He talks about his uncle, a pilot. Air Force officers are closely watched. Several colleagues of his uncle wanted to desert, they were caught and killed. The uncle managed to flee, he fought a little with the FSA, now he is hiding in the village.
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We go to the Military Council to see Muhannad before leaving Baba ‘Amr. In the median strip behind the mosque, between the trees, two graves already dug, waiting, ready. It’s for days when there’s too much shooting to go to the cemetery.
Photo session in front of the Military Council: portraits of ‘Abd ar-Razzaq Tlass, proud and smiling in his uniform, who poses brandishing his Kalashnikov, and of the naqib Ayman al-Fadus. Then brief conversation with Muhannad.
Sudden rush of fever during the wait and then the discussion. My whole body vibrating.
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The passage to al-Khalidiya, around 2:00 PM. An ordinary taxi that comes to pick us up in front of the Military Council, sent by Bilal, Ra’id’s friend. We go by the apartment to pick up our bags, quickly because Tlass is leaving to launch an attack against some Army checkpoints and things might go sour, and we leave. As soon as we reach Insha’at the topology of the city changes, the buildings are cleaner, there are sidewalks, trees, lawns, many more people, many more cars. We veer into an avenue: in front of us, a building surmounted by an immense portrait of Assad senior, the Ba‘ath headquarters apparently. We are obviously no longer in friendly territory, but we don’t see any soldiers, any checkpoints.
Feeling that the fever is reflecting my state of mind, feverish and fragile.
The taxi heads up the avenue, the traffic is dense, the buildings are full of shops, there are people everywhere. All the pro-opposition neighborhoods are full of piles of trash bags and garbage: the municipality has stopped picking up the trash in the opposition neighborhoods as “punishment.” But otherwise we’re crossing an animated, “modern” Syrian city, a thousand miles from Baba ‘Amr, a working-class neighborhood from the depths of the city, the kind of place where normally you never set foot. We go by Dublin Street, the Corniche, a big avenue in the center of town, then we weave through little streets to skirt round some checkpoints, through pro-opposition but non-secured neighborhoods. In twenty minutes, more or less, we’re in al-Khalidiya. There, first surprise: an FSA checkpoint at the entrance to the neighborhood, with sandbags and armed guys. Ra’id is surprised, that didn’t exist in November; it means the FSA has got seriously stronger, if they dare show themselves openly here, so close to the center. This post was set up two days ago; a little further on, there’s another one, in place for a month. It protects the access to the central square, where the demonstrations take place. We get there pretty quickly. I’m shaking with fever, and devour a kind of small cheese pizza with spicy sauce, cooked in front of me by a street vendor, as we wait for Bilal who arrives with his spirited friend Zayn. Zayn is veiled, but dressed in jeans and mountain boots, something you’d never see in Baba ‘Amr. One of Bilal’s arms is in a cast, he got shot while going to save a wounded man, four days ago.
First big visible difference with Baba ‘Amr: the presence of women. In Baba ‘Amr, other than during demonstrations, they’re almost invisible, whereas here they’re everywhere, mingling with the men. It’s from details like this that you realize how conservative a neighborhood Baba ‘Amr is.
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Around 3:00 PM, visit to a clandestine health center with Bilal. They serve us some tea, and Zayn shows me a long video clip on her smartphone, filmed by her in this very place, of a taxi driver hit by a bullet in the face dying on the floor in front of the sofa where I’m sitting, as the doctors try desperately to keep him alive by intubating him and performing heart massages. The man is lying in a pool of blood, his brain half on the ground. He dies.
She shows me another film of the corpse of a young guy with a well-groomed beard, killed the same day as the taxi driver. He was an FSA soldier, Abu Saadu, who had gone to speak with the mukhabarat soldiers at a post to convince them to join the FSA. One mukhabarat put down his gun and told him: “OK, I’ll join you.” Abu Saadu approached and the mukhabarat took out a hidden pistol and killed him with a bullet to the eye. Video of another dead young man, hit in the throat by a sniper, of a veiled activist, her face hidden by sunglasses, pumping up a crowd with a mic in front of the mother and the son of a martyr.
One of the nurses used to work with the Red Crescent. At a checkpoint, they were told: “We shoot at them, and you save them.” She explains the Red Crescent can’t come to all the neighborhoods, they get shot at regularly. So they agree by phone on a rendezvous with the local doctors, who bring them the wounded person at a safe place.
Bilal’s injury. The Army had wounded a man with a bullet to the neck. They thought he was dead. They transported him to another place, put him on the ground, then called Bilal or one of his contacts so they’d come get him, in order to trap him. Bilal came with a friend, the Army was waiting for them and opened fire. –
To be continued, as a wounded man arrives in a car, he’s carried into the center and laid face down. He moans, cries: “Allah, Allah!” He has a bullet in the lower back. Young, fat, bearded, about thirty, his arms hang over the sides of the table. He can’t feel his legs. Very little blood. Gasps, groans. His belly hurts. Bilal asks him: “Are you wanted?” – “No.” Bilal calls the hospital, he has to be evacuated ASAP.
Probably paralyzed. Injection, IV drip. “My belly, my belly,” the man keeps moaning. Isn’t bleeding much, the bullet is lodged inside. Hit the spinal column. The Red Crescent arrives quickly, in seven to eight minutes, and evacuates him. Takes his identity card.
Welcome to al-Khalidiya.
The nurse who talks to us, after, Abu ‘Abdu, used to work in the Al-Birr private clinic, in the Al-Wa‘ar neighborhood. Also at the Bab as-Sba‘a hospital. Has seen this kind of case often, 150 to 200 at least. Thinks the snipers aim for the spinal column. They’re little bullets, sniper bullets, not stray Kalashnikov bullets. Has also seen many people wounded by what he calls explosive bullets, maybe dum-dums.
Bilal shows me his phone again. A man with his whole stomach open, lungs and guts all outside that the doctors shove back in. All these phones are museums of horrors.
Bilal’s story, continued. When the Army opened fire, Bilal ran to escape the ambush. He knocked on doors and begged people to open up, no one opened, finally he knocked down a door to get into an apartment. That’s when he took the bullet in the arm. The Army began machine-gunning the apartment. A little six-year-old girl got hit in the leg. She was crying, “Uncle, uncle, I’ve never been to the demonstrations.” He had already called the FSA, who sent, he said, 200 men in reinforcement. Some entered the apartment from the rear and gave him a weapon. They counter-attacked the Army to recover the wounded man. This is the moment we see in the film Bilal shows us, where he’s firing. They succeeded, and the wounded man, miraculously, survived.
This health center used to be a hair salon. Open for two months already. There is another one in al-Khalidiya. The center Ra’id used to know was discovered by the mukhabarat, who arrested the doctor, confiscated the supplies, and put seals on the door. There are no doctors in the clandestine hospitals, the only doctor was arrested. Six colleagues of Abu ‘Abdu were also arrested, and he left his hospital from fear of being arrested as well.
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Bilal takes us just beyond the limit of the neighborhood, to al-Bayada where we’re going to stay. He has a nice car, a big 4×4 with leather seats, automatic, he’s obviously a man with means. We quickly cross an avenue, where an Army checkpoint sits 100 meters away, then we enter a dense neighborhood, with FSA men here and there. The apartment was lent by a friend who went on a trip, and left the keys to house wounded men; there’s one in the bedroom sleeping, wounded two weeks ago by bullets to the chest and stomach.
Here, it’s the Caucasian40 quarter. ‘Arif, a young little guy in keffiyeh sitting with us, is of Adyghe ancestry. As for Bilal, he is Bedouin.
I still have fever and ask them to go buy me some ibuprofen. I try to hand them a bill. Bilal: “If you offer money, it’s because you’re greedy. Because when I come to visit you, you won’t offer hospitality.”
Explanations from Bilal. The officers at the checkpoints are changed every two weeks. When they’re Army officers, it’s OK, it’s calm. When they’re from the mukhabarat, there’s shooting all the time. Now, on Cairo Avenue, the big street we just crossed, it’s a mukhabarat. Yesterday they didn’t stop shooting, for three hours the sniper didn’t let anyone cross.
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7:00 PM. Still fever. It’s time for the demonstration. We go to the central square in al-Khalidiya. The people aren’t here yet, just a few dozen youths listening to revolutionary music, too loud but very catchy, on the loudspeakers. The square, called the Garden of the Hills, has been renamed the Square of Free Men. In one corner has been erected a wooden copy, painted black and white, of the old central clock of Homs, situated on a square where a few months ago a sit-in attempt was repressed in a bloodbath by the forces of Maher, Bashar’s brother. Meaning of this copy: the center of town, now, is here. The clock is covered with photos of martyrs, most of them in color, A4 format.
Big rectangular square, with grass and trees, surrounded by heaps of trash bags piled in the street. On one side, a large banner: “No to the imaginary opposition, a creation of al-Assad’s gangs. The SNC unites us, factions disperse us.” Clear allegiance of the demonstrators to the Syrian National Council. Aside from the clock corner, illuminated by the demonstration spotlights, everything is plunged in darkness. Just a few shops, a barbershop with a beautiful red armchair, stand out in the darkness, passersby appear as ghostlike shadows in the car headlights.
The clock is surrounded by street vendors, that’s where we had met Bilal when the taxi dropped us off. Ra’id finds a little blond boy he had photographed in November, with very red fingers and a joyous smile. Many things have changed since then; the information activists, now, film without hiding their faces. The boy is eleven and is named Mahmud. He exclaims: “How did you get back to your country without getting caught at the checkpoints? You’re a strong man, a hero.”
The crowd gathers and the demonstration takes shape. The leader lists the cities that have risen up: “Idlib, we are with you until death! Telbisi, we are with you until death! Rastan, we are with you until death!” and so on.
A kid begins singing in an artificial, rasping voice, and the dances in rows begin.
The leader: “We are not rebelling against the Alawites or the Christians. The people are one!”
Everyone: “The people, the people, the people are one!”
Leader: “We count only on God, not on the Arab League, not on the observers, not on NATO!”
Everyone: “We count only on Allah!” (×3)
The extraordinary thing about these demonstrations is the power they let loose. It’s a collective, popular jubilation, a jubilation of resistance. And they don’t just serve as an outlet, as a moment of collective release for all the tension accumulated day after day for eleven months; they also give energy back to the participants, they fill them every day with vigor and courage to continue to bear the murders, the injuries, the grief. The group generates energy, then each individual reabsorbs it. This is also the purpose of the chants, the music, and the dances, they are not just challenges and slogans, they are also – precisely like the Sufi dhikr whose form they take – generators and captors of force. This is how the people hold and continue to hold, thanks to joy, to song and to dance.
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Internet café, a little further on at the end of a street. According to one guy, thirty-nine dead today in Homs, including twenty-three in Bab Tadmur. The Army bombarded.
This internet café is the meeting place for all the activists in al-Khalidiya, who come to post on YouTube and social networks their work of the day, films of demonstrations or atrocities. Ra’id had spent quite some time here in November, and had stayed for a while in an apartment just above it, from whose balcony he had managed one day to photograph armored vehicles of the security forces carrying out a raid. I check my e-mails, reply to some, then write down the description of the passage from Baba ‘Amr to al-Khalidiya.
11:00 PM. A friend of Bilal comes for us at the internet café in a van. When we leave, he turns on the dome light, to pass an FSA checkpoint, then turns everything off, including the headlights, and we cross Cairo Avenue in the dark, as fast as possible. In the apartment, there’s still no electricity.
In fact, there’s no electricity at all in this neighborhood. A tank destroyed the transformer.
Bilal recounts: three days ago the shabbiha chloroformed and kidnapped, in Insha’at, a lawyer who was defending political prisoners, and beat her very violently.
The officer in charge of the FSA in al-Khalidiya is the mulazim awwal Umar Shamsi. Ra’id knows Shamsi, he photographed him around Telbisi in November. He was part of the Khalid ibn al-Walid katiba. He was invited to come to al-Khalidiya, to train the soldiers. There are now regular exchanges of officers between the katibas.
This is an important point. The FSA, in the beginning, was organized on a highly territorial basis: when officers defected, they would return to their home areas and take command of the soldiers of the village or the neighborhood, like Hassan in Baba ‘Amr, who commands the troops in the neighborhood where he lives. As someone would explain to me a few days later, the invitation made to Umar Shamsi to come from Telbisi to Khalidiya is the sign of a step forward in the professionalization of the FSA.
Bilal: the victim from this afternoon remained paralyzed. He was crossing between Qusur and Khaldiye, and he was hit. The only victim at that place, the sniper just shot for no reason.
Since Bilal’s incident, when they go to pick up the injured outside of al-Khalidiya, they take an FSA car with five men inside as an escort.
Yesterday, there were five dead in Homs.
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39 “You don’t drink, you don’t smoke, why do you live? – Only to chase girls.”
40 Note to the Verso edition: a substantial number of Syrians are the descendants of various Circassian tribes, chased out of the Caucasus Mountains by the Russians in the mid nineteenth century and resettled throughout the Ottoman Empire.