10:00 AM. Awakening. The guys are sleeping everywhere around me, on little mattresses on the floor; ‘Umar Talawi has been sleeping for fourteen hours almost without moving. It rained for much of the night but finally it stopped. It’s calm. There’s no gunfire. Outside everything is sodden, you can hear a few shots in the distance, that’s all. It starts raining again.
Noon, time for the Friday demonstrations. The activists separate: ‘Umar goes to Bab as-Sba‘a, Abu Bilal takes us to Bab Drib, with Mahmud, to the Hanableh mosque where we stopped yesterday to order the sfihas we never got to eat. The people in the neighborhood are organizing a new demonstration, and the activists will broadcast it live on Al Jazeera to support them. In front of the mosque, the trees are covered with an immense revolutionary flag, black-white-green with red stars. We came on foot, in the rain, it’s not far from where we’re staying. When we arrive, it’s the call to prayer; in a shop opposite the mosque, caged canaries of all colors trill and sing in chorus with the imam.
The mosque fills up, it’s the sermon. The imam stresses the cooperation people should show to each other. We must come to the aid of those who are suffering. He recalls the tradition of the Prophet and his companions, who sacrificed themselves to come to the aid of those who were suffering. Abu Bakr gave his entire fortune to the needy. The tone rises, takes on shrill, hysterical accents. The crowd cries out in chorus “Allahu Akbar!” The imam talks about all the blood that’s been shed in the neighborhood: “It’s our blood, all these souls killed are our children. But even so, we say to all our oppressors, to all our tyrants, to all those who have succumbed to hubris: Whatever you do, victory will be ours.”
When you witness this noon Friday prayer, you’re struck by how much the ritual serves to bring together and unite the community. This is where the collective will is formed and takes shape, focused by the sermon. Unlike Christian prayer in Europe, attended by only a handful of the faithful, here the entire neighborhood takes part, adults and children – the men in any case, meaning the ones who make the decisions concerning the collectivity. It’s truly a mechanism for forming a “public opinion,” in which even those who don’t agree, or who don’t come to pray, take part in one way or another. It’s thanks to such mechanisms that one can speak of “collective will.”
End of prayer. As usual, a great collective cry – “La ilaha illallah!” – repeated by everyone, as the faithful pour out of the mosque as they fluidly slip on their shoes, without stumbling (not the case for me). The demonstration forms. I cross the street and try to take a picture from a fruit seller’s stall. Immediately I’m set upon by two older, moustached men, in their forties. I just barely manage to put away my camera and take out my cellphone to call Ra’id, so he can come explain, all the while repeating “Sahafi fransawi, sahafi fransawi,”45 two of the few words I know. Immediately one of the moustached guys, howling, tears away my cellphone and grabs my wrist. People start shouting, I try to catch Ra’id’s attention, he’s photographing a little further away, finally he comes. More arguing, the guy won’t have any of it, Ra’id is more or less held too. Someone calls over a bearded soldier who asks questions, Ra’id looks for Abu Bilal, explaining we’re with him. Finally an activist recognizes us and signals them that it’s OK. The soldier hands me back my cellphone and apologizes.
A man takes me into a building still under construction, but already partially inhabited, to get a view from above. The rain has finally stopped and the sun is peeking out through the clouds. It’s the same joyful ritual, the people lined up in the street in front of the mosque, the same songs, the same slogans, with a few new ones:
“O my mother, they slit the children’s throats with their own hands!” [Allusion to the Nasihin massacre the day before.]
“The people demand capital punishment for the butcher!”
“The people demand the militarization of the revolution!”
Under the leader, men unfurl the banners printed by our French-speaking friend. This Friday is the one for the right to self-defense.
One of the youths, in the demonstration, is waving a Turkish flag. “Why?” I ask Abu Bilal – “They don’t have any others!”
Passage behind the demonstration of a dozen FSA soldiers, in camouflage uniforms, three even with helmets. Immediately the crowd starts chanting “Long Live the Free Army!” The kids run after them and swarm around them. I join them, at the corner, near the FSA checkpoint. The officers have piled into a big black 4×4, and three soldiers are standing on the rear bumper. There is a ra’ed, a naqib, and a mulazim awwal. They tell Ra’id that they’ve come to protect the demonstration, but maybe they’ve also come to show themselves. A kid shouts to his father: “It’s them, it’s them, it’s the Free Army!” Slowly they head toward the demonstration, and enter the crowd to the shouts of “Allah grant long life to the Free Army!” Procession, three soldiers standing on the roof, then they move forward and leave. All of a sudden the rain starts falling and the demonstration comes to an end.
The FSA men come back and an old guy on a motorbike empties his clip into the air, laughing. Then a little further on an Army post starts firing.
Apparently, yesterday, the FSA gave a pounding to the Zahra checkpoint from where the men who massacred the family had come. If the FSA show themselves in force today, it’s probably also to reassure the population. The 4×4 with the officers continues to come and go after the demonstration. And the people are clearly happy to see them, and to see us as well (paranoid fits aside). For many Syrians, our presence seems as much a sign of moral support as the promise of reliable information reaching the outside world.
I go pick up some apples and mandarin oranges at the fruit seller. He’s one of the men who held me earlier on, and he doesn’t let me pay. Return under the rain. Near the house, a mouthwatering smell draws me to a kebab seller. Eleven days in Syria and I haven’t eaten a single kebab. We order a kilo, for all the guys, which the vendor’s son will bring us in an hour.
At the house, Anjad, back from Bab as-Sba‘a. Three wounded, one seriously, with a bullet that went through both legs. The shooting has resumed from the citadel. Nonetheless, for a Friday, it seems calm.
Yesterday the FSA attacked three places: checkpoints in Zahra, checkpoints on the Damascus road, at the entrance to the al-Midan neighborhood, and Military Security on Hajj Aatef square, inside al-Midan. They apparently entered the Security building. In the neighborhoods they took numerous checkpoints, killed the soldiers, captured the weapons and ammunition, and withdrew. They can’t hold these positions in front of armor. The operations were led by the guys from Baba ‘Amr, the al-Faruk katiba.
In principle, according to Anjad, the FSA tries not to kill the Army soldiers who surrender and to capture the officers, including mukhabarat. But they systematically execute the shabbiha.
Video of the demonstration in Bab as-Sba‘a. They burn a portrait of Putin with one of Bashar. The demonstrators hit them with their shoes.
The kebabs finally arrive. We lay a tablecloth on the floor and everyone crowds around, even Abu al-Hakam, the boy who always serves us tea. Delicious.
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4:00 PM. We go out. Extraordinary light, the sun pierces through the clouds and illuminates sections of buildings while it still rains. It’s calm, kids are playing in the street. We meet a bearded soldier, a policeman who defected because of the regime’s exactions: “Yesterday’s massacre is an example of why we’re fighting.” His eleven-year-old kid carries his Kalashnikov.
Beautiful long stroll through the neighborhood. The light keeps changing as the clouds go by. The puddles reflect the sky and the fronts of the buildings. There are a few isolated shots, a few explosions, but overall it’s calm. On a square where children are playing, we chat with some FSA soldiers. One of them takes us a little further off, to a building under construction which we enter by climbing a wall. We climb to the roof, carefully: the openings in the stairwell look out on to the citadel nearby, no more than 200 meters away. We look at it out of the corner of our eye, a vast mass of earth covered with green, brilliant grass, with fragments of walls, surmounted by an immense Syrian flag that I photograph stealthily: no point getting shot for Assad’s flag, Ra’id jokes. The stroll continues, we meet some inhabitants, FSA soldiers. The neighborhood visited this way seems tiny, you can’t go 500 meters without bumping into an avenue controlled by a checkpoint, a line of fire.
We visit the street that leads to Bab as-Sba‘a, the one with the tires at the end, which we had rushed down the other night. Several cars pass at top speed toward Bab as-Sba‘a, without getting shot at. The perpendicular street offers a line of fire to the citadel, you have to walk hugging the wall and watch out. We return calmly.
Le Monde has printed our material from yesterday on page three, with a headline on the front page and the photo taken by Ra’id. They ask him for more info to print more material tomorrow on the massacre.
Later that night Ra’id would write a long piece about his nighttime crossing of the city, the previous night, which would be published in Le Monde dated Sunday, January 29–Monday, January 30, with one of his photos of the eleven bodies of the massacred family. On Saturday the 28th, Le Monde had already published a first photo, with an unsigned article written in Paris on the basis of information I had sent them by e-mail.
Big argument between the activists. Anjad throws his camera and telephone on the table. ‘Umar Talawi was criticizing him for his captioning of the YouTube videos from the day before. Apparently an ambiguous phrase had made a lot of people think ‘Umar was dead.
Shower at Anjad’s place. Posh building, just next to the house where we’re staying (which is much less so, posh I mean), with plants in the marble staircase; bourgeois apartment, with elegant furniture, impeccably clean, good-quality rugs. The father receives me in the living room, near the stove (the radiators – they have them here, a rare thing – aren’t working, they consume too much diesel fuel). He lived for a long time in Brussels but only remembers a few words of English. The shower, the first one since Baba ‘Amr, is a magnificent moment. Ra’id arrives afterwards for his, and we drink tea. When we leave, Anjad taps his fingernail on the living room door, to warn the women, whom we never see. Even the bourgeois maintain purdah.
The father offers me a very beautiful rosary made of blue stone. In Arabic one says misbaha, from the word subhan which you mouth when you count your beads: Subhan Allah, “praise to God.” The Persian word I’ve always used, tasbeh, is formed from the same root.
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2:30 AM. I still can’t get to sleep. In the big room in front, the room for the FSA soldiers, there’s been singing for hours. I get up and go see. About twenty men are sitting all around against the wall, smoking cigarettes and drinking tea or maté, and taking turns singing, a cappella. I don’t understand the words, of course, but they sound like love songs, maybe also songs about the city. The voices tremble, groan, sigh, when one finishes, another starts up. One man especially leads the singing, a man in his forties, with a narrow face, bearded, slightly reddish hair, cunning eyes, completely toothless except for a single incisor in the lower jaw. He sings with intense, concentrated emotion, and seems to know all the songs asked of him. When he pauses, another one takes it up. The others listen, call out, sometimes clap their hands. No one interrupts anyone, there’s no contest or competition, everyone sings for the pleasure of singing and listens for the pleasure of listening, all together.
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45 “French journalist.”