It had been decided, with the editorial board of Le Monde, that these ten days in Homs were enough for the articles, and that it was time I go back to Lebanon, while Ra’id, as initially planned, would stay a little longer. The day before, Ra’id had telephoned the FSA in Baba ‘Amr, and it had been agreed that we’d come this morning so that Ibn Pedro could exfiltrate me into Lebanon. For various reasons, as will be seen, it did not work that day, or the following days; I would only finally manage to leave on Thursday, February 2.
Morning. Early awakening for departure to Baba ‘Amr and, insha’Allah, further with Ibn Pedro. In the courtyard, a pensive, melancholic soldier is smoking a cigarette, seated. Two comrades join him. Noise of weapons being dismantled mixed with bits of song. As they make tea another soldier arrives, pushing his electric bicycle. He shows us a long, twisted metal tube, a piece of a small rocket, which fell this morning in Karam al-Zaytun. Two dead.
8:30 AM. A young taxi driver sent by Abu ‘Adnan comes to pick us up. We leave by the little streets of Safsafi and then, instead of continuing on via the souk, as we did on the way in, we emerge, to my great surprise, on to the avenue that circles the citadel, just at the foot of the mound. Raising my head, I see very clearly the shooting positions, surrounded with sandbags, just above us. It doesn’t seem to bother the driver, who slips into a wide avenue toward the center. There’s a little traffic, everything looks normal. We pass not far from the military security building, through a neighborhood, take another avenue; at an intersection, in front of the Education Ministry, the driver makes a U-turn just in front of three soldiers on guard duty, who royally ignore us. Then it’s Insha‘at, crossing Brazil Street, and the first FSA checkpoints which stop us: “Who are you?” – “French journalists.” A little surprised but not troublesome, they let us pass.
We find Hassan’s apartment where we wake up Ahmad, still the bear. Long wait. Ibn Pedro arrives around 10:15 AM. The conversation is quick. Today, he’s only going to the town where we stopped on the way here, then he’s returning to Baba ‘Amr; he could hand me over to someone else to take me to al-Qusayr, but it’s not safe. What’s more, Fury forgot his cellphone in Tripoli and can’t be reached. On the other hand, in two days he can do a round trip directly for al-Qusayr, just to take me there. We discuss briefly with Ra’id, then opt for that solution. So, return to al-Khalidiya and al-Bayada.
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Breakfast sitting on a bench in the sun, on the central square of Khalidiya. A moment of grace. Warm pastry stuffed with walnuts and honey, bought at the “Pâtisserie Abu Yaser” [sic] whose sign is in French, and a kind of drink made from warm cream and ground nuts, rather cloying. Afterwards, we go to the barber to get shaved, but he’s still closed. His neighbors, in a machine repair shop, invite us over for coffee. According to them, the shelling on Thursday night [the one we had heard from Safsafi] didn’t cause any victims in the environs of the square, although a house was hit by a mortar shell; further on, they don’t know. It is 11:15 AM.
Ra’id, last night, also went to see the singers after I finally went to sleep. Abu Layl and one of his friends were singing quatrains by ‘Umar Khayyam, in a version by Umm Kulthum. Ra’id sang a little with them. Tarab, the emotion you feel listening to music.
The coughing fits keep worsening from day to day. They undo me completely, leave me empty and trembling for a long moment.
Gunfire volleys as we drink coffee. The shooting is from a building next to the al-Katib cemetery, in a street in Khalidiya. At that point we hear shouting. A funeral procession emerges, men carrying a bier, chanting “La ilaha illallah!” surrounded by armed men shooting in the air. The dead man on the bier isn’t visible beneath the plastic flowers. He was killed by a sniper. The procession heads for the mosque, in the crackling of gunfire. I go back to finish my coffee as Ra’id runs after it to photograph it.
The funeral processions I’ve seen here don’t express mourning or contemplation, but rage and the live pain of loss.
The crowd has stopped a little further on, at the mosque, and I head there with a kid who shows me the impact of Thursday’s mortar shell, in a top floor apartment looking out on to the square. Ra’id is already in the mosque. The bier is set in a corner, surrounded by distraught people and onlookers. Two men in tears, probably a brother and the father. The victim is a handsome young man, solid, vigorous, transformed by death into a yellowish wax doll. Ra’id introduces me to Abu Bakr, an activist from the neighborhood he knew before. Abu Bakr explains that the man was killed by a sniper this morning at 8:00 AM, as he was going to work. He shows us the videos he took, the bloody body with its torso pierced by the bullet, the mother and sister shaking it, incredulous, overwhelmed with hysterical mourning.
The moment of grace didn’t last long.
Ra’id stays to photograph the prayer and the burial. I go back to the machine shop. The barber where I want to get shaved is still not open. So I head back to the mosque. The prayer is about to end – the sermon for the dead, according to Ra’id, was overwhelming: “The imam really brought the faithful to the gates [of Paradise]” – and the people are getting ready to bear the dead body out. A young man is hoisted on to someone’s shoulders and, hand raised, launches the first of the invocations: “La ilaha illallah!” Then the invocations follow each other, bawled out loudly by the faithful, as the leader waves a handsome framed portrait of the dead man, made in a photo studio and probably taken from the wall of his house. “To Paradise, by the millions, we will go as martyrs!” Then the procession leaves along the square, followed by FSA soldiers who fire long Kalashnikov volleys in the air. Kids rush between the feet of the marchers to pick up the casings, still burning hot. “We are all martyrs! All!” howls the leader, meaning dead men on probation. The procession moves around the square to the replica of the Old Clock, where they carry the bier around in circles, to the sound of invocations. The cemetery is five kilometers away, only two or three people will be able to accompany the remains, it’s too dangerous. The barber is finally open and I can get my cheeks and neck shaved. I’ve got used to the goatee, it will serve for a few more days.
In front of the barber’s, brief exchange with a very expressive young boy. “Shahid: Ahmad.” He explains: “Kannas,” and mimes a bullet in the back of the head and one through the chest. “Uma shahid,” and with his hands he mimes the tears running down the face of the martyr’s mother. “Haram,”46 he concludes sadly.
In Syrian dialect, kannas, “sniper,” is pronounced gennas. Plural kannasa.
Discussion on the square with Marcel Mettlesiefen, a German journalist, half Colombian. He’s here with a tourist visa, for the fourth time. We exchange information and contact details.
Marcel, who doesn’t speak Arabic, was accompanied and helped by a young, friendly Syrian who introduced himself to us under the name ‘Umar. I talked a little with him that day, and took down his contact details, as he said he was ready to work with any journalist who came to Homs, and several friends were asking me for contacts. But he was killed, coming to the aid of the wounded, during the great bombing of Khalidiya on the night of February 3. It was only then that I learned his real name, Mazhar Tayara, twenty-four years old.
I go to get some kebabs, liver for a change, as Ra’id waits his turn to get shaved. It’s still as nice out. Further on, beyond the citadel probably, we hear explosions.
The kebabs take half an hour instead of the ten minutes promised, but are delicious. Ra’id is shaved and Abu ‘Adnan joins us. Sitting in the sun, I drink a coffee and smoke a cigarillo as Abu ‘Adnan organizes transport.
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We cross from al-Khalidiya to al-Bayada in a small Suzuki truck, with Abu Bakr in a very good mood. To reach Abu Brahim’s place, through a labyrinth of narrow streets, you have to cross four sniper avenues or streets. The last one is apparently the most dangerous. “This is where all the shahids of the neighborhood died,” says the driver. But today the snipers aren’t working much, it seems, and we cross without trouble, with passersby and children.
At the home of Abu Brahim in al-Bayada, finally.
Abu Brahim, a Sufi shaykh responsible for humanitarian aid for the neighborhood of al-Bayada, is Mani’s contact who had organized our passage from Lebanon. Fadwa Suleiman, the Alawite actress who went over to the opposition, and who is often presented as the muse of the Syrian revolution, had been living at his place for months, and I had hoped to be able to meet her. But she had left for Zabadani, to support the people there who for some time had been resisting a bitter siege and bombardments.
Conversation. Rumors of an imminent attack? Abu Brahim doesn’t think so. If there were concentrations of troops, he would know. It’s always possible, but probably not for tomorrow.
As for the snipers, they continue to shoot. This afternoon, sustained fire, a little earlier, but no wounded. Yesterday three wounded. The FSA here doesn’t have enough means, in men or ammunition, to counterattack.
A new katiba has been formed in the suburbs of Damascus, the Hussein ibn ‘Ali katiba, a curiously Shiite reference. Abu Brahim: “No, we insist, Hussein is also our son [for the Sunnis]. This indicates that we don’t have sectarian views.”
Other katibas operational in Damascus and the far suburbs: the Abu ‘Ubaydah ibn al-Jarrah katiba, the al-Hassan katiba, and the Qawafil ash-Shuhada (“Caravans of the Martyrs”) katiba. The Hussein ibn ‘Ali katiba has regiments in Damascus, Homs, Hama, Dara‘a, and soon, “in’sha‘Allah,” in ar-Raqqah, 200 kilometers east of Hama.
Abu ‘Umar, a neighborhood activist who has joined us: “Bashar al-Assad hasn’t left us any other options but armed conflict. Demonstrations, dialogue, congresses, nothing worked. They only replied with bullets. They leave us no other choice.”
Comment by Abu Brahim on Thursday’s massacre: “It’s a form of ethnic cleansing.”
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We go back out. The sniper street is twenty meters away from Abu Brahim’s. There are snipers to the left and the right. “Now not shooting. But ready. Not know when shooting,” Abu ‘Umar explains to me in rudimentary English. He shows me a Suzuki pickup riddled with holes: “My friend killed in this car.” Just here at the intersection. Targeted because he was transporting wounded.
Evening walk through the neighborhood. Muddy streets, rarely paved, and in the open spaces immense piles of garbage in bags, piled up for months and torn open. Many buildings under construction. Working-class neighborhood, poor, proletarian. In the streets, clusters of children follow us chanting anti-Bashar slogans. Little by little, the people are cutting down the olive trees planted in front of their houses to warm themselves; three girls, in front of a door, are struggling to saw through a trunk. At the windows, veiled girls spy on us, whispering. In a place with bare concrete walls, some youths are playing billiards. At the end, a broad four-lane avenue turned into a shari ‘al-mout, a “street of death.” We approach the corner carefully. Gunshots ring out regularly; Abu ‘Umar forbids some youths who want to get to the other side from crossing. Last Thursday, five deaths at different crossings: three in the head, one in the neck, one straight through the chest. On a parallel street, a very long metal rod, with two hooks soldered at the end, lies on the ground: it serves to recover the wounded – and the dead – shot in the middle of the avenue. Abu ‘Umar’s apartment looks out on to the avenue from an upper floor. The walls on the sniper side are pierced by explosive bullets, and he was forced to move to the lower, more protected floor. By zooming through one of the holes, I can photograph the red sandbags, at the corner of a big intersection, from where the sniper is shooting. On the avenue, you can see big black traces with rusted wires, truck tires burned so that the smoke can cover people crossing.
A little further on, in another parallel street, we see some vehicles cross, a family in a Suzuki pickup, a taxi, a KIA with some FSA soldiers. They’re not very visible in the neighborhood: their presence is weak, and the ones who are here don’t show themselves much; the FSA checkpoint near Abu Brahim’s is deserted. At each passage of a car, the sniper fires, but always two or three seconds too late. A taxi arrives on our side: we explain to him, he gives up and does a U-turn. In front of a dried fruit and candy store where we stop to buy some almonds, a crowd of young people surrounds us. A very handsome boy, in a blue tracksuit, shouts at Ra’id: “They arrested my father, they arrested my brother, they beat my mother! They came to arrest me, and if they find me, they’ll kill me! All that because I go out and say I don’t like Bashar!” He stretches out his neck and pinches his Adam’s apple: “My only weapon is my voice.” He is a demonstration leader, he’s seventeen, and in front of us he performs a demonstration of his art, arm outstretched, accompanied by a little drum, starting up chants that all the kids swarming around us take up in chorus.
On the way back, we pass a house that is flying, rather incongruously, next to the flag of a soccer team, a “governmental” Syrian flag. The owner can’t be blamed for it: he was killed by a sniper, two months ago. A little further on there’s an old Hajj sitting on a chair, smoking in the company of a friend, who tells us how he was tortured for twenty-one days by the mukhabarat, beaten, electrocuted, accused of complicity with terrorism, him, a sick old man. At each stop some people gather, try to tell their stories.
A few words about our host, Abu Brahim. Before the events he was a truck driver, with just some religious knowledge; today he’s a local authority, widely respected in his neighborhood, who manages humanitarian distributions for al-Bayada from the ground floor of his building. He’s a Sufi, a Qadiri of the Shadhili branch; his first master was a Tunisian shaykh who died ten years ago, then a Syrian shaykh, member of the fatwa committee of the Umayyad mosque, Muhammad Abu al-Huda al-Yaqoubi. This shaykh had to leave the country after denouncing the repression (“It’s a sin to kill people in this way”) and entering into conflict with the mufti of Syria, Ahmad Badreddin Hassoun. “He is not the mufti of Syria,” Abu ‘Umar specifies. “He is the mufti of the regime, the mufti of Bashar.”
With his shaved head, his great beard standing out from his chin, and his cunning smile, Abu Brahim could easily be taken for a Chechen. The comparison seems to please him.
Just like the Qadiriyya, a Sufi order founded by Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani in Baghdad in the twelfth century, the Naqshbandiyya is a branch of Sufism, founded in Bukhara in the fourteenth century by Bahauddin Naqshband al-Bukhari. I visited his tomb in 1998, and this is what I then discuss with Abu Brahim.
Spiritual conversation about the Naqshbandi and the tomb of Naqshband. Abu Brahim agrees that a pilgrimage to the tomb of Naqshband has value – not the mechanical value of a half-pilgrimage to Mecca, as the Uzbeks claim, but a spiritual value if the pilgrim goes to the saint’s tomb to study his thought and to evolve spiritually. It’s the same for Mecca: if you go there like an object, like your pair of shoes or your camera, and you return unchanged, there’s no point.
He says there are a lot of Naqshbandi in Syria. There was a Naqshbandi shaykh in Ifrine, Hussein Qorqo, now dead, who was a friend of Al-Daghestani in Cyprus, a shaykh I know by reputation thanks to Misha Roshchin who had spent some time with him.
How Abu Brahim defines Sufism: “Being in balance between your inner and outer being, between the batin and the zhahir. Zhahir is appearance, the exoteric path, batin is the interior or the esoteric way. They are also two of the ninety-nine names of God.”
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Abu Brahim also has on his computer some videos of the lost Belgian, Pierre Piccinin. Sitting in this same living room, looking out of his depth and a little frightened, making phone calls to friends in Belgium, all on voicemail. Five hours before he showed up in a big brand new American car, a Ford or Chevrolet rented in Damascus, speaking not a word of Arabic, there had been a big battle between the FSA and the Army just where he passed through. “That man, God loves very much,” says Abu Brahim. Then: “We welcomed him, we fed him, we sheltered him, and we filmed him. We told him: ‘If you go back to see the regime and you say we mistreated you, we’ll put the videos on YouTube.’” They were convinced he was sent by the regime. Photos of him here with Fadwa Suleiman, the Alawite actress.
Ra’id tries to call him. A little later, Mr. Piccinin calls back. He’s actually an academic, a professor of political science and history. “I’m a specialist of the Arab-Muslim world. I don’t speak Arabic but I get by very well with English.” His line: “The SOHR47 just tells lies, Le Monde too. I came there to see what was really going on because I don’t believe the discourse of the media or the activists. They claimed there was bombing and I looked for the neighborhood. But I didn’t see anything. I wrote objective articles about the situation, that’s how I obtained my second visa. Of course I was supervised.”
It continues for a while in this vein until in the end Ra’id, exasperated, retorts, “Sir, I’d like to advise you to change specialties. You speak English, specialize in the Anglo-Saxon world.” He bawls him out pretty sharply, the guy equivocates, “We’re not going to be polemical over the telephone,” but of course doesn’t listen. When Ra’id talks to him about the massacre and the article in Le Monde, he replies, “But who killed them?” To get here, Abu Brahim explains, he passed in front of all the snipers without noticing anything. In truth, there is a god for morons from Gembloux.
I was later able to take a look at Pierre Piccinin’s production, on his blog. He presents a version of the events in Syria in complete conformity with the regime’s propaganda, minimizing as much as possible the killings as well as the extent of the uprising. Neither his brief trip to Homs, without any translator and without any knowledge of the neighborhoods or the configuration of the city, nor his discussions with Abu Brahim and Fadwa Suleiman, will have changed his mind.48
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46 “Forbidden, illicit.”
47 The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, mentioned earlier.
48 Note to the Verso edition: Pierre Piccinin, in the months following the original French publication of this book, experienced his own abrupt “epiphany on the Road to Damascus.” Having returned to Syria in April 2012 on a third government-sponsored trip, he somehow found himself arrested by regime forces and was detained in Homs, witnessing the hideous torture of his fellow Syrian prisoners and experiencing some mistreatment himself, before finally being released and expelled from the country. Over the following year, now fully converted to the cause of the rebellion, he returned repeatedly and clandestinely to Syria, with FSA units, and published two books about his experiences. On April 8, 2013, during his eighth trip, he was kidnapped in al-Qusayr together with the Italian reporter Domenico Quirico, possibly by Islamist elements of the al-Faruk katiba. Both men were released on September 8, 2013, reportedly after the Italian government paid a large ransom. This unpleasant experience seemed to have triggered a new conversion, and Pierre Piccinin caused something of a controversy by declaring that information overheard during his captivity proved that the regime was innocent of the August 21, 2013 Ghouta sarin gas massacre, a statement that Domenico Quirico categorically contradicts.