A Hope More Powerful Than the Sea(5)
While eventually Doaa became happy with her new neighborhood and friends, it became clear that the life of a traditional Syrian girl was not going to be enough for Doaa. Her childhood stubbornness grew into a resolve to make something of herself. Daraa was a traditional community, but Doaa knew from soap operas and the occasional movie that some women studied and worked, even in her own country. The Syrian state had officially declared itself in favor of women’s equality, and tension was growing between two factions: those who believed that women should be housewives submissive to fathers and arranged husbands, and those who felt that women could pursue higher education, careers, and husbands of their own choosing. Doaa’s favorite teacher was a woman who told her female students, “You must study hard to be the best of your generation. Think of your future, not just marriage.” When Doaa heard this, she felt a stirring inside her to break people’s assumptions about her and to live an independent life.
After the sixth grade, boys and girls no longer shared the same classrooms. Doaa and her friends would talk about boys; however, it was not culturally acceptable to talk to them. At fourteen, she and her friends were approaching the traditional age for marriage. The other girls would make bets about who would marry first. But when Doaa thought about her future and what it might hold, all she could think of was helping her family.
Her favorite place outside of school and her home was her father’s barbershop. She wanted to show him how she could be a useful and efficient worker, even if she wasn’t a boy. From the time she was eight, Doaa would go to Shokri’s shop to help him whenever she could. As Shokri trimmed and cut, Doaa swept the hair that fell on the floor and always appeared right at the moment he finished a shave, holding open a clean, dry towel. When new customers arrived, Doaa would slip into the small kitchen at the back of the salon and emerge with a tray of hot tea, or small cups filled with bitter Arabic coffee.
On Thursdays after school, Shokri let Doaa shave him with the electric razor. He would laugh at her earnest face and call her “my professional” as she concentrated on her task. This nickname stirred an extreme sense of pride inside her and only made her more intent on one day earning money to support her father.
So when her sisters Asma and Alaa married at seventeen and eighteen, and her family began to tease her, “You’re next in line!,” Doaa immediately let them know that they should drop the subject and that she wasn’t interested in getting married anytime soon. After their initial surprise, Doaa’s parents accepted that she would take a different path from other girls and would at times dream that maybe she could be the first in their family to go to university. Hanaa always regretted that she never had that chance and loved the idea of one of her daughters achieving her own professional dreams.
Doaa surprised everyone when she announced that she wanted to be a policewoman. “A policewoman?” Hanaa said. “You should be a lawyer or a teacher!”
Shokri hated the idea as well. He despised the thought of her patrolling the streets, mingling with all levels of society, and confronting criminals. And on top of that, he didn’t quite trust the police. Shokri was old-school and believed it was a man’s role to protect society, particularly to protect women, not the other way around. But Doaa insisted, saying that she wanted to serve her country and to be the kind of person whom people turned to in times of trouble.
While Doaa’s father disapproved, and her sisters made fun of her for dreaming of becoming a policewoman, Hanaa didn’t tease Doaa at all. Instead she talked to her and tried to understand her daughter’s motivations. Doaa confided that she felt trapped as a girl. Why couldn’t she be independent and build her own life? Why did it always have to be linked to a man’s?
Hanaa admitted to Doaa that even though she had fallen in love with Shokri, she regretted getting married at seventeen. Hanaa had been at the top of her class in school and excelled in her math and business courses. She had hoped to go on and study at the university, but back then, women had few options other than marrying and starting a family, but Hanaa thought perhaps Doaa could be different.
When Doaa was invited by her aunts on a trip to Damascus, the cosmopolitan capital city, Shokri allowed her to go, hoping that the trip might satisfy her urge for adventure. Instead, her visit only increased it. Doaa was transfixed by the bustling city. She imagined herself wandering the streets, visiting the beautiful Umayyad Mosque, negotiating in the bustling trade at the souk, and walking the paths of the sprawling university where she hoped to one day study. Damascus opened Doaa’s eyes and set her mind on the idea of a different kind of future than the traditional one prescribed for her.
But those dreams would soon be torn from her. On December 19, 2010, after clearing the dinner plates, the family gathered as usual around the TV to scan the satellite channels for the news. Al Jazeera was leading with a breaking story from Tunisia about a young street vendor named Mohamed Bouazizi, who set fire to himself after the police confiscated his vegetable cart. A lack of economic opportunity in the country had reduced him to selling fruit and vegetables, and when that last bit of dignity was taken from him, he ended his life in a horrifying and public show of protest. It was the beginning of what was to become known as the Arab Spring. Everything in the region was about to change.
Including in Daraa. But not in the way that the people of Doaa’s hometown had hoped.
TWO
The War Begins