ONE
RAQQA, 2011
TEAR GAS BURNS OUR EYES.
Nael, Tareq, and I are standing with hundreds of other protesters in the street in front of al-Mansouri Mosque, gagging on the tear gas lobbed at us by the military. Our faces sting, so we wrap them in our T-shirts.
Until five minutes ago, we were chanting, “If you have a conscience, join us,” but now all we can manage is, “Kus ukhtak, ya Bashar”—Hey Bashar, fuck your sister’s cunt.
I see a gas canister on the ground. It leaks the same foul stuff that’s making water stream from Tareq’s eyes. I pick it up from the back end so that it won’t burn me. My hand screams anyway. I throw it toward the line of riot cops. I don’t know where it goes, but I grin anyway, exultant.
It is my first protest.
Fear is dead.
If a bullet hits me now, I’ll feel no pain.
RAMADAN IS DRAWING TO a close, taking with it the sourness of our childhoods, but in Syria, a revolution is being born. It has been six months since the first demonstrators hit Damascus’s al-Hamidiyah neighborhood. Their protests consisted of defiant shouts and the sound of their sneakers skidding as they ran through twisted alleyways, the security forces close behind. Now protests bloom in most cities. The country is boiling, but aside from some tiny demonstrations, our Raqqa seems quiet—a poor, uneducated city, lagging behind, just like it always has.
We are young this summer. I am twenty-two, Nael is twenty-four, and his brother Tareq is twenty-one. We grew up together; we played soccer in the dusty streets beneath the disapproving gaze of our parents. How we longed to escape—and we did: I to study in Aleppo, Nael in Damascus, and Tareq in liberal, libertine Beirut. We are among the first of our families to attend university, but we are still failures in our fathers’ eyes, who only want us to rise to their level of achievement and no further—they fear the victories we might win on our own.
Dusk is falling. The muezzin sings the Maghrib prayer to signal that we can break our fast. We haven’t eaten since dawn, but food isn’t what we are hungry for.
We want to shout our throats bloody. To force the sound of our voices into the most intimidating ears.
Every evening for weeks the same scene has played out at al-Mansouri Mosque in Raqqa. Several dozen protesters merge into the crowds that stream out after prayers. Taking advantage of their relative anonymity, the protesters shout slogans made famous in Egypt or Tunisia for a few thrilling minutes, then vanish into the side streets. For weeks, we’ve known about these protests, and tonight, for the first time, we hurry to join them. I glance at Nael. His face shines with its usual nervous energy, fueled by the furnace inside him, and I think again that for Nael, the whole world will never be wide enough.
“Our parents must not know,” he whispers to me. He’s right. Activists are trouble for their parents, especially if they’re caught.
“No one must know,” I grumble back.
Soon we see more protesters. A few hold Syria’s three-starred independence flag, while others wave signs scrawled in Arabic. Only God, Syria, Freedom. Death, but not humiliation. Word spreads that security forces have massed at a junction near the mosque, so we march instead through the nearby al-Hani passageway. We curse recklessly against the powers that be. “Hey hey! This is Raqqa!” we chant, claiming our city’s place in the revolution.
In response, insults pour from every window and balcony. “Sons of bitches!” “Go back to your parents’ house!” the neighbors hiss. “You have ruined this country!”
“God curse you!” one old woman screams, her face contorted with hate.
What can she know of our motives or those of the other protesters at these demonstrations blossoming irrepressibly across our country? Her rheumy eyes see nothing but a crowd of brats. To her we are stupid children, behaving badly, in need of our fathers’ fists. We will never forgive her, nor those like her, I think. “Ingrate,” I mutter in disgust.
I understand the rich not caring. The well-connected businessmen. The government employees who bought nice cars with the money they got from bribes. The regime turned out well for those people, so why would they spare a thought for others? But how can a working-class Raqqan ever allow him- or herself to be content? Nael told me that when a government keeps kicking people down, they get used to it. Life is shit, they think, and turn for happiness to their personal shit piles. Though we understand the mechanisms of control, neither Nael nor I can excuse this apathy. Even covered in blood, the protesters slaughtered during crackdowns in Homs and Dara’a looked more alive than the zombies who curse us from their balconies. History might prove us wrong, but at least we could speak to the people killed when the regime tanks rolled into Deir ez-Zor mere weeks ago. Somewhere in your country, people cared for you, we could say to our rebellious dead.
We march for ten minutes before security finds us. They chase us, but we are too many, so they start firing the gas.
When the tear gas billows, political sentiments flee. Adrenaline slams me, and I am high inside myself, my throat raw, my skin vivid with electric fire. I am free. I can do anything. I am alive. In the chaos, nothing matters outside my body except to keep Nael and Tareq in sight. We hurtle forward, grabbing each other’s hands to stay together, but the crowd’s momentum is too much. Our hands part. My two friends are in front of me, behind me, beside me. I watch them out of the corners of my eyes.
Nael runs to the front of the crowd. He has wrapped his face in a kaffiyeh to protect against the tear gas and, probably, to conceal his identity; his honey-colored eyes sparkle like they want to escape their orbits. He reaches down to pick up garbage from the street. He hurls it toward the riot line. He screams something I cannot hear. Then he turns toward the crowd, jumps, and raises his hands in encouragement to attack. “Hey hey! This is Raqqa!” Are those his words? The crowd’s? What does it matter? We are one. The riot line fires another volley of tear gas. Nael ducks.
We run down an alley. The neighborhood is a concrete mishmash of bare apartment boxes and traditional Arab houses, its streets barely the width of two cars. We flood them with our bodies, our lurching, screaming youth. The old woman is right. We are naughty children, bad but not ashamed. Fleet of foot, strong of lung and leg. Boys in jeans and undershirts—our outer layers stripped off, then turned into improvised scarves that mask our faces. Five brave girls. Some protesters grab whatever their hands can find—small rocks, bottles, trash—and hurl it in the direction of our enemies. They syncopate their throws to the chants of the crazies at the front lines. “Hey hey! This is Raqqa!”
The military fires more canisters. We peel backwards, graceful as startled deer. The crowd clings to the walls, and I am left with Nael at the front lines. I silently repeat a Mark Twain quote I’d memorized during university: “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear—not absence of fear.”
How long are we in the streets? It might be ten seconds or a night—but it is enough. A few minutes are all we need. We curse the security forces who shake us down for bribes, lock up our families, rule our lives. They can kill us, but who cares?
We shout in their collective face.
We stare death in its eyes, and our minds are opened.
They have guns. We have nothing. In nothing, there lies power.
The young man beside me strips off his undershirt. The tear gas and sweat bead on his skinny brown chest. Come on, motherfucker, his body says. I’m half-naked. You’re in riot gear. I’m stronger anyway. I can take you. Through my lens of tears, he ripples like a mirage.
THE PROTEST DISPERSES. Nael drags us from corner store to corner store, trying to persuade the scared shopkeepers to sell us cola, which activists in other cities say is the best antidote for tear gas. When one finally agrees, we pour the sweet liquid greedily into each other’s eyes. Along with the tear gas, the Coca-Cola washes away any lingering traces of shame.
I find my father and brother-in-law waiting for me in the sitting room. My yellow T-shirt is marked all over by Coke and tear gas and a small red stain I don’t notice until later.
They know. Of course they know.
My brother-in-law starts blubbering, stuffing my ears with his cowardly remarks, but my father only offers a smile whose meaning I cannot read.
That night, as I lay my head on the pillow, frantic thoughts race through my mind. They’re gonna get us. I’ll be tortured to death. I’m drained enough not to care. As I sink into sleep, I hear another, softer whisper: You’ve become a man.