What Normal?
Hwaida Saad
There’s a scene from a Syrian TV show in which one woman detainee at a Syrian prison asks another what had happened to a person they both knew named Taym. The first prisoner had been detained during the early stages of the Syrian crisis in 2012, while the other had been taken in more recently.
The second detainee answers, “Taym works at a field hospital in the liberated areas.”
“What? The liberated areas?” the first woman asks. “We have liberated areas in Damascus now?! Why are you upset?”
“In theory, yes, we have liberated areas,” the newcomer responds with a faint smile, traces of blood on her lips.
The first detainee is surprised by the second woman’s rather subdued answer and her lack of enthusiasm. It’s obvious she hasn’t an inkling as to what had been going on beyond the prison walls during her detention. She claps excitedly, demanding more information about the so-called liberated areas.
“You must tell me everything, especially about the liberated areas! Is the war coming to an end, then?” she asks.
The newcomer maintains the cold, expressionless look on her face.
It’s a short scene, but to my mind, it sums up the events in Syria from 2011 to 2018. By now, I feel as though the story of the country has become a long and unending saga. The second detainee’s sarcastic smile says it all.
When I first sat down to write this essay, I hesitated. I was forced to think about the past seven years and the numerous exchanges I have had with individuals on social media. I have so much in my head: events, names, and places I’ve been. There is so much to remember.
Yes. It has been seven years of the Syrian conflict already, and we’ve now entered its eighth. Yes. The years that have passed us by are a string of moments, and I’ve lived through them all, every detail. The events I’ve followed have grown bigger and bigger.
There are the countless stories that I’ve reported for the New York Times. There are the accounts of people I met and corresponded with through Skype, WhatsApp, or Facebook. Where do I start? How do I start? And the bigger question: What happened between 2011 and 2018?
Anthony Shadid was part of the story in the beginning, although he wouldn’t make it to the end.
It was 2010. The New York Times had hired Anthony to take over as Beirut bureau chief from Robert Worth. For years, I’d been covering Syria from afar, occasionally taking trips into the country with Robert. Entering Syria as a journalist wasn’t easy, even back then. Arranging a trip would involve days or even weeks of waiting, since international and particularly American media weren’t welcome in Syria. And there were complications involved at every stage, from applying for a visa to crossing the border. But it was nonetheless still possible to enter the country legally as a journalist at that point.
Anthony had an attractive personality. He was always smiling, very sharp, and, most important, he spoke Arabic fluently and had a deep understanding of Middle Eastern culture. At the time, the newspaper’s local office doubled as a work space and a home for Anthony and his wife, Nada Bakri, who was also a reporter at the Times. The couple converted one of the house’s five rooms into an office for us, with four chairs and joined tables. Anthony insisted that we work together, in the same room, rather than in separate ones. We had a very good relationship; I often helped organize his trips to Syria.
Beirut was quiet back then, and early 2011 was uneventful. The demonstrations in Tunisia were broadcast on almost all the TV channels, and I watched them with Malik, Nada and Anthony’s son. I didn’t think much of them at the time. I thought they were just protests, nothing more than a passing event.
By the time the war erupted, entering Syria to report from the ground had become an increasingly dangerous endeavor. And in any case, it would have been too risky for me to get information from my sources in person.
In the early days of the uprising, I communicated with Syrians I had already met during previous assignments in Damascus by phone. Later, some of my colleagues at the New York Times who were also covering the uprising shared with me a list of phone numbers belonging to prominent Syrian opposition members as well as protesters, suggesting I reach out to them. Some of those individuals were active on Skype, so I also connected with them there. One Skype contact led to another, and the list grew longer and longer. Later, the Syrian government blocked Anthony’s and my mobile and landline numbers, so we could no longer make any phone calls to Syria. I resorted to the virtual world for the crux of my reporting, communicating with Syrian citizens through Skype, WhatsApp, and other social media.
I don’t know where they all were before the war started: Mohammad, Bilal, Maysara, Abu Al-Baraa, Abu Al-Majd, and the others.
Perhaps they were at school or university. Perhaps they were street vendors or owned stores in Syria’s old souks. Perhaps I walked past them, or bought from them. Perhaps they were laborers in Lebanon, toiling the land or working menial jobs. They were Syrian citizens, their full names known to all. They were ordinary people going about their daily lives.
But the beginning of 2011 changed all that. Names morphed into pseudotitles whose origins could be traced back to long-gone eras.
Mohammad became Abu Moaz Al-Shami (Abu Moaz of Damascus); Bilal became Abu Bilal Al-Homsi (Abu Bilal of Homs); Nour became Thaer Al-Dimashki (Damascus rebel). Their faces changed, and their jobs did, too.
Yahya used to be a car mechanic in Beirut. He joined the revolution early on, growing a beard and joining an extremist group. He says he remembers Beirut, but doesn’t like it.
Abu Taym, also from Homs, used to work in agriculture. He later became a commander. He’s torn between his love of Lebanon and his duty as a commander of a battalion in the Free Syrian Army.
Rami Al-Sayyid of Yarmouk, the Palestinian refugee camp in the Damascus district, lived in Achrafieh, Beirut—just steps away from me—in 2000. He chose to stay in Yarmouk at the beginning of the revolution, and lived through it all. Now he’s trapped in the conflict, and reminisces about his beautiful days in Beirut. He wishes we had met in those days, before the war, a wish I share with many others I’ve spoken with. I became obsessed with that idea, too.
Even the chef became a battalion leader. He changed his name from Hadi to Abu Al-Laith (Father of the Lion). He describes himself as moujahid fi sabeel illah, “a fighter for the sake of Allah.” He used to spend his holidays between Beirut and Damascus, dancing late into the night with his friends. But now he deems a woman’s voice ’awra (a blemish or weakness). Sometimes, Abu Al-Laith slipped and forgot that he was a moujahid—he would send me flirtatious messages accompanied by heart and rose emojis on Skype. He was once a professional at making Arabic sweets and kebabs; he’s now a professional at making hand grenades.
In the beginning, my exchanges with these men were filled with humor. Our Skype chats were a much needed break from the long days of protesting, and later, when the peaceful demonstrations turned violent, from the battlefields. Reading the words or hearing the voice of a woman made the men nostalgic for their loved ones after having been disconnected from them for various reasons. For the most part, they weren’t bothered by the fact that I was Lebanese; they loved the personal questions, such as my age and social status.
But after President Bashar al-Assad issued a general amnesty in May 2011 that applied to all detainees belonging to political movements, including the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, violence rose dramatically. Armed factions started surfacing, and non-Syrian parties, mainly Hezbollah of Lebanon, began to enter the fray, too.
As the conflict spread its tentacles, the questions from my online sources took an ugly turn. The men wanted to know what my political affiliations, religion, and sect were. That infuriated me. Most explained that their questions were necessary for them to establish trust and ensure their safety, especially after sieges on “liberated areas” had begun, metaphorically.
“Don’t misunderstand my question,” one of my contacts said. “You know that the situation is critical and that we must be wary of the regime.”
Some were diplomatic. Others, not so much.
“Honestly, I do not love or trust the Shi’a, nor the Iranians, and we fear you might be one of them,” one contact told me.
Their questions bothered me a great deal, and I insisted on not mentioning religion or sect whatsoever. I didn’t want to play their game, especially as the “sect game” in Lebanon had already exhausted me. (Syria was once a haven for my family; we’d often visit in order to forget my country’s sectarian, doctrinal complexities. But today, Syria has become a place that reminds me of all those complexities.) My defiance was a great obstacle in both my emotional state and my career: it sometimes meant I’d lose the contact altogether, or that they’d cross me off their Skype list.
And yet some were still prepared to play the “love game” with me, even taking risks and crossing the siege to come to Beirut to meet me in person.
One of those men was a Syrian from the Homs countryside who was educated in Lebanon, at the Beirut Arab University, and opposed the regime. He adored the Lebanese accent and remembered Beirut fondly, but hated the Dahieh—a mostly Shi’a Muslim southern suburb of Beirut.
He had tried hard to rise above the sectarianism; his city, which is situated along the border with Lebanon, was under siege by regime forces and Hezbollah. He didn’t ask about my sect. Perhaps he didn’t insist on finding out because he thought we were of the same denomination. Or maybe he had come to his own conclusions based on the fact that I lived in Achrafieh, a predominantly Christian area in Beirut.
We didn’t talk about religion. He was enthusiastic about the revolution. But his enthusiasm wore off as the number of armed factions operating in his area increased and corruption spread. Our chats were a mix of his rendering of Lebanese pop star Elissa’s songs—even though he didn’t like music—and the sounds of regime shelling and propelled grenades pouring down around him. He was highly educated and witty.
As the war took a different direction in Homs, and Hezbollah came onto the Syrian scene, our banter began to change. The ongoing shelling and siege in his hometown had a negative impact on him. His mind was swinging between his loyalty to the revolution and his hatred toward the Lebanese militia. He started reflecting on the differences between the doctrines of Sunni Islam and Shi’a Islam as the political schism between them deepened.
After a year, he grew tired of virtual chitchat and decided to take a risk and come to Beirut to meet me, the Lebanese houriyyat al-bahr, or “Beautiful Mermaid.” (The term houriyyah in Arabic wasn’t widely used before the days of Daesh; the group popularized it as it had promised its soldiers that if they martyred themselves, they would be granted “pretty women” in heaven.) I found the nickname beautiful. It reminded me of a film I love, A Fish Called Wanda. The man sold his laptop—one of the only valuables still in his possession after he’d lost nearly everything—to pay for the trip’s expenses.
When we met in person, he didn’t hide his resentment toward Hezbollah and Shi’a Muslims: he criticized them strongly and freely. I had brought a Syrian friend along to the meeting, and we listened to the man silently. His comments were blunt to the point of being offensive. My friend and I tried to take the edge off with faint smiles, after which we exchanged knowing glances. The man seemed confused by our behavior, and doubt filled his soft face as he realized that one of us “could belong to the enemy’s sect,” or be a supporter or member of “the other party.” In his eyes I saw struggle and confusion between his loyalty to the revolution and his infatuation with a reporter who had drawn him to Beirut and whose political and religious affiliations he knew nothing of. After all, I might have belonged to a sect he considered his biggest enemy.
His first cause was the revolution. Later, matters became increasingly mixed up. His brother was killed by a Shi’a neighbor. He lost his city, which had fallen into the hands of the regime and Hezbollah in the spring of 2013. The price of his revolution was high. His anger and bigotry fluctuated, but his passion strengthened. A counterrevolution was brewing inside him.
He decided to emigrate and live elsewhere with his depression. We stayed in contact for a while after he arrived in Sweden, where he was seeking refuge. There, he began to suffer in different ways, as he had to contend with a new language, a new community, and new traditions.
After the crisis in Syria turned bloody, some regions were “liberated.” In other words, they came under siege. During the siege, ideas changed, and so did faces—many of which grew beards. On the radio, jihadi songs replaced those of Elissa. Innocence gradually disappeared. Tired of demonstrating, some decided to join armed factions.
Death edged closer and closer, touching everything and taking everything. For me, it started with the passing of Anthony on February 16, 2012, during his reporting trip to Idlib, which had just been announced as liberated by the Free Syrian Army.
My Skype list started shrinking one name at a time: the little green dots began disappearing, until finally very few were left after seven years of conflict. It was like the tale of the ten little monkeys—and then there were none. A picture of a cake on Skype, however, reminds me of them once every year on their birthdays.
Abu Bilal Al-Homsi was around twenty-eight when the protests started in his hometown, which came under siege from 2012 to 2014. He took part in the demonstrations, recording what he was witnessing and sharing it with Arab and international media.
We communicated through Skype. He was quiet and had a fair complexion, sleepy eyes, and full cheeks. His reserved personality didn’t stop him from joking around. He often added smiley emojis and kisses to his Skype messages. He once didn’t even hesitate to propose to me. He thought of himself as a Syrian citizen who was fighting for change in his country and defending his neighborhood. He was religiously conservative, but seemed open to the outside world.
He adapted to the siege, sharing pictures of his home in Bab al-Dreib with me. One was of his rooftop plants: tomatoes, lettuce, and eggplants. Even as he became more conservative, he retained his sense of humor. He liked to call me Um el-’Ayoun (literally, “the mother of the eyes,” meaning “the one with the eyes”), sometimes sending me the eyeglasses emoji.
But something happened during the siege. Goals shifted. Religion turned to bigotry. Over time, Abu Bilal committed to his faith wholeheartedly.
In April 2014, Assad forces and rebel groups reached an agreement to evacuate old Homs under UN supervision, allowing the government to take full control of the city. Abu Bilal couldn’t hide his anger at the leaders of the factions who had signed the evacuation agreement, describing the deal as “criminal,” according to Sharia (Islamic law). He decided to stay in the suburbs of northern Homs, pledging allegiance to Daesh. I never thought that he would become a Daesh fighter.
He kept in touch with me through Skype. He wasn’t a foreign fighter, but a national who had decided to join the most extreme and bloody faction in the Syrian war, cheering Daesh’s victory when the group barged into Palmyra in 2015. He was put in charge of “the prisoner file,” and started negotiations for the release of the state’s detainees with the regime.
When Abu Bilal joined Daesh, he asked me for the first time about my sect.
“I’ll give you some lessons about Islam to save you on the day of judgment,” he said soon after he pledged allegiance to the group. He talked with his usual shyness about a Lebanese girl who used to send him pictures dressed in not-so-modest “modern” clothing. He was trying to introduce her to Islam and heaven. “I convinced her to pray and read the Qur’an,” he once said jokingly, in his sharp Homsi sense of humor.
I shocked myself when I agreed to visit his empty home in Bab al-Dreib during a reporting trip a few months after the regime had gained control of old Homs and after he had fled. When I arrived at the house, I took photos of it to send over to him. Water had flooded the home. Abu Bilal searched for his plants in the images, but couldn’t find them; they were gone. The old Bab al-Dreib mosque, which was a few yards from his home, brought memories back to him.
“You took me back to past memories, Hwaidita!” (as he used to call me). “I thought you’d never find your way to my house!”
Abu Bilal went from sending news about besieged old Homs to international news organizations to reporting on Daesh’s victorious battles against the “infidel nation.”
“I am now very happy living the jihad,” he told me. “The Middle East is changing. Islam is stronger. It is the road to heaven. I want the Americans to hit their heads against the wall.”
“Are you scared of us?” he asked me the day after Daesh took Palmyra. “One day, you will come visit us in Palmyra for a reporting trip.”
Over time, the frequency of Abu Bilal’s Skype messages decreased, until finally they stopped altogether, a few months before his suicide mission.
The last things he wrote were exultations of Daesh’s foreign operations, such as the attack on the offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in January 2015. He called the attack “a blessed operation in retaliation to those who participated in bombing Muslims and in response to the crusade alliance.”
In January 2016, an explosion shook the Al-Zahraa area in the heart of Homs, which had an Alawite majority. It was a suicide attack carried out by none other than Abu Bilal Al-Homsi. He killed more than thirty citizens and wounded about a hundred others.
Abu Bilal, the man whom I had been chatting with for months, had become the “Knight of Martyrs,” according to Daesh. Ever since, his green icon on Skype has been permanently shut off.
While I met some of my sources online, I knew others in real life, too. Abu Al-Majd, who was a twenty-year-old officer in the state’s military police when we first met, was one of these contacts.
When Anne Barnard was named the Beirut bureau chief of the New York Times in 2013, our Syria reporting entered a new, challenging era—one that entailed meeting with and interviewing people living in government-controlled areas. Anne took the lead and I followed in her footsteps.
I went on a reporting trip to Palmyra with Anne the following year, just before Daesh’s attack on the area. This particular expedition was one of the most bizarre trips we’d ever taken. Security forces accompanied us to monitor our movements, as well as the interviews we were conducting. A local sheikh, Ahmad Dagher (known as Abu Ali), was with us every minute of the visit. He complained when we stayed in the city of ruins longer than expected. People at the souk looked at us from afar. Clearly, they found it odd that a group of foreigners was visiting the city considering the security situation, despite the fact that prior to 2011, Palmyra had been a major tourist attraction. Some seemed anxious about the security vehicles that had been trailing us. They tried to avoid talking to us, or answering our questions. Only the children were excited to see us. Dozens of them walked with us in groups, and they didn’t leave until late at night.
We conducted a lengthy interview with one of the clan’s sheikhs, known as Sheikh Faisal Al-Katran, at his house. When we left, we were met by an army of people, military as well as civilians; it appeared that they had been waiting for us. It was a dark night and there were no streetlights. Suddenly, a voice from the middle of the crowd asked for my phone number. I shouted it out, even though I didn’t know whose voice it was.
Months later, I received a message from an unfamiliar Syrian number.
“Hello, this is Abu Al-Majd. Do you remember me?”
The name didn’t ring any bells.
“I’m the voice who asked you for your number that night.”
Abu Al-Majd had been part of our security escort. He was one of the first members of the Syrian military who dared to speak to me and, in turn, to an American newspaper. It wasn’t easy to establish a line of communication with members of the military. I was excited.
The man was twenty, but when I spoke to him via Skype, his soft features made him appear even younger, and he behaved like a teenager.
“I loved the jeans you were wearing,” he said when we started our correspondence, which lasted through May 2015, nearly a year in total. “When you gave me your number that night, dozens of people in the crowd wrote it down.”
Abu Al-Majd messaged me almost daily, either by WhatsApp or on Facebook. He talked about everything: his service in Palmyra, his holidays in Old Damascus, his love of music, his love for his cousin, his romantic escapades, and even his salary and experiences as a soldier. His favorite movie was Behind Enemy Lines, he once told me, because it reminded him of his own story. He spoke nostalgically about his life before the conflict and about his house, which had been destroyed in Yarmouk.
Palmyra was a form of exile to him. He spent hours at checkpoints, at the front line with the enemy—Daesh. There was no electricity, and no television; he was completely cut off from the outside world. He considered himself “dead, a dead human being.”
“The city has a negative effect on me,” he often said. “It’s arid; there’s nothing but tents, palm trees, and clan chiefs.”
His mood fluctuated as events changed.
Sometimes he’d seem happy, and would send me love songs by the Lebanese singer Wael Kfoury. Other times, when he was feeling morose, he’d send me depressing messages about how low his salary was—the equivalent of one hundred dollars a month. He’d talk about his long shifts, and share with me the nightmares he had about Daesh capturing him or ambushing his group. He was only truly happy when he was reunited with his mother during the holiday season in Damascus, he said.
One of Abu Al-Majd’s nightmares came true when Daesh attacked the Shaer mountains along the outskirts of Homs in 2014. He lost a number of his companions in that ambush.
By May 2015, Abu Al-Majd increasingly felt the enemy advancing toward Palmyra, and his distress grew by the day. He hated Palmyra, he hated Damascus, and he even hated himself. “I don’t know who is against whom in Syria,” he told me repeatedly, referring to the state of complete and utter loss that the country was enduring.
He was proud to be a soldier serving his country. To his mind, the concepts of the “opposition” and regime “supporters” were illusions. There were two sides—with the state, or with terrorism—but he didn’t hide his sarcasm regarding how the state treated its foot soldiers.
“We get everything here,” he said once, with sarcasm and ridicule. “We even pay for bread! What a shame.” He resented those who lived happily while he was deprived. He even wished his life were like mine. “Try to enjoy your life as much as you can,” he told me. “You’ll regret every moment you lived which you did not enjoy.”
Abu Al-Majd was coming of age. He continued messaging me via WhatsApp and Facebook, either by sending me photos—in which he was evidently trying to make himself look cool—or by sending me his favorite songs. He sometimes sent me voice messages containing the sounds of his battalion exchanging fire with Daesh.
He felt certain that we’d never properly meet. “We’re in two different countries,” he once said. “Only these messages bring us together.”
Between March and May 2015, there were signs that the end was nearing.
On May 13, 2015, Daesh started executing people in Sukhna, located some forty-five miles from Palmyra. At the time, Abu Al-Majd was on leave in Damascus. More than seventy military men, most of whom were his friends, were either killed or slaughtered when Daesh suddenly attacked their police center in the area.
Daesh was edging closer and closer to Palmyra. Abu Al-Majd’s morale was at its worst. He could’ve been one of those whose throats were cut.
He used to send me pictures of the dead bodies of his friends. He once sent me a picture of his friend, the daughter of an officer, whose throat had been slit. She was beautiful, he had told me.
He decided to never go back to Palmyra.
“No one can force me to [go back],” he told me on May 14. “I’m not a coward, but I am a human being and I have the right to be scared. Right?”
A day later, Abu Al-Majd was instructed to move from Damascus to Homs city, where the situation was less dangerous. He seemed somewhat relieved, but his relief didn’t last long. The feeling that he’d imminently be sent to Palmyra occupied his thoughts.
“I feel lonely, but if I was ordered to go to Palmyra, I’d go,” he said in one of his last messages to me. “I have no choice. I’m not happy at all. Quite honestly, I’m headed toward suicide,” he told me.
The following day, what he had predicted did indeed happen: the order from the army headquarters to head to Palmyra arrived. The evening of May 17 was the first and last time Abu Al-Majd ever called me.
“I’m in Homs; tomorrow I’m heading to Palmyra,” he said. His voice was weary, and he asked me to refrain from asking any more questions. He told me they would leave Homs for Palmyra in the morning by bus.
That day, Abu Al-Majd had seen a fortune-teller; she had read his cup of Turkish coffee. As she was reading the cup, he recounted, her voice changed suddenly, and she started mumbling.
She told him he had many enemies. She spoke about his suffering, and said that although he was now in a desert, he would soon move with four others to a “safe green place.”
The fortune-teller scared Abu Al-Majd, but he wanted to know more, so he decided to see her the following day before setting off to Palmyra.
The instructions he received from his senior commanders were clear: if he didn’t go, he’d be “punished.” He knew he was marching toward death.
“I wish I won’t wake up tomorrow,” he said. He repeated what a friend of his had posted on Facebook:
Alas, a country whose heroes die in graves and [whose] thieves live in mansions.
On May 18, Abu Al-Majd left Homs in a military vehicle, but the road was riddled with land mines, so they headed back to the city. But fate had other plans.
The following day, he sent me two pictures via WhatsApp. One of them was of him smoking sheesha in his green fatigues. The other was of him posing. With the pictures came a short message:
I took these pictures on purpose. They might be my last. We are moving to Palmyra shortly.
After that, Abu Al-Majd’s messages stopped for good. I tried to reach him via WhatsApp before his final journey, but he didn’t reply.
Days passed. I followed the stages of Daesh entering Palmyra closely, and its impromptu executions of both civilians and the military, often documented in their press releases. But there was no news of Abu Al-Majd.
Before we were disconnected, Abu Al-Majd had introduced me to his cousin, whom he had intended to marry. I tried to get in touch with her. It was she who finally gave me the news, via a message on WhatsApp:
Abu Al-Majd’s throat was slit by Daesh, days after he arrived in Palmyra.
The news was shocking. Death is death, but the manner in which Abu Al-Majd had been killed came as a shock nonetheless.
After a long search on Facebook, during which I contacted many people in Abu Al-Majd’s network, one of his friends agreed to reveal exactly what had happened to him.
According to the friend, on May 19, sixty soldiers and policemen, along with one officer, headed by bus to Palmyra’s military airport. Abu Al-Majd begged the driver to head back, but it was too late. The men were dropped off at the airbase, while the driver and the officer drove back to Homs. Within hours, Daesh fighters raided the airport, killing anyone they could find.
Abu Al-Majd managed to flee along with some of his friends, finding refuge in the home of a local family who had agreed to host him and allowed him to communicate with his family intermittently.
He was petrified, and his father told him to read the Qur’an. Prayers failed him.
Four days into his stay, Abu Al-Majd decided to leave the home, telling his parents that he didn’t want to further endanger the family that had taken him in. He disguised himself in a woman’s abaya and wandered into Palmyra’s souk, which at the time was teeming with Daesh fighters. It was time for midday prayer, and since Daesh required men to drop everything they were doing to go to the mosque, his only choice was to make his way there to avoid arousing suspicion.
When he entered the mosque, he uncovered his face for the first time. A civilian recognized him and asked if he was Abu Al-Majd, to which he replied, “Yes, but I haven’t done anything.” The man was an informant. He wasn’t convinced of Abu Al-Majd’s innocence, so he called a Daesh fighter.
As if he’d already assumed his own fate, Abu Al-Majd handed over a letter to a civilian, asking him to deliver it to his mother, so she would know that he had died in martyrdom.
Later that same day, Abu Al-Majd’s throat was slit by Daesh fighters in front of the mosque. According to eyewitnesses, his body was left in the streets for several days. It was the same street through which he had escorted me and my colleagues during our visit to the city a year earlier.
When I learned of Abu Al-Majd’s death, I wondered if Abu Bilal had documented it, as he reported on Daesh’s victories. The answer isn’t certain. What is certain, however, is that both men overlapped in Homs in 2015. While one chose death voluntarily, the other was forced into it.
These stories won’t be the last.
Following Lebanon’s fifteen-year civil war, which erupted in 1975, and theoretically ended in 1990 after various Lebanese political parties signed a peace accord, people claimed to have resumed their normal lives. But there was always a big question mark following the word “normal.”
I could never figure out what they meant by “normal.”
Today, seven years after the beginning of the Syrian war, despite all that has happened, some people speak enthusiastically about how the situation in the country has started to improve.
An acquaintance of mine who lives in Beirut, for example, always tells me with conviction whenever I return from my reporting trips to Syria that things are “back to normal” in Damascus.
His comment takes me back to that scene in the Syrian TV show between the two female detainees.
With a skeptical smile on my face, I reply, “What normal?”
TRANSLATED FROM ARABIC BY MARIAM ANTAR