A Hope More Powerful Than the Sea(6)
It all started with some graffiti spray-painted on a wall by a group of schoolboys.
It was February of 2011, and for months the people of Daraa had watched as repressive regimes throughout the Middle East were challenged and brought down. In Tunisia, disenfranchised youths, identifying with Mohamed Bouazizi’s despair and reacting to his self-immolation, set cars on fire and smashed shop windows in their frustration and desperation. In response, the hard-line Tunisian president, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who had been in power since 1987, promised his people more employment opportunities and freedom of the press and said that he would step down when his term ended in 2014. However, his announcements did little to assuage the public. Riots erupted all over the country demanding the president’s immediate resignation. Ben Ali responded by declaring a state of emergency and by dissolving the government. His hold on the country weakened and his ring of supporters in the army and the government turned against him. On January 14, less than a month after Mohamed Bouazizi took his own life, the president resigned from office and fled to Saudi Arabia with his family.
For the first time ever in the Arab region, a popular protest had succeeded in bringing down a dictator. In Syria, families such as Doaa’s watched in amazement. No one imagined that they could ever defy the Syrian regime. Everyone disliked some things about the government—the ongoing emergency law, worsening economic conditions, a lack of freedom of speech—but the people had all learned to live with them. Everyone felt that nothing could be done. An all-seeing security apparatus reached into every neighborhood and kept an eye on troublemakers. Activists in Damascus who had demanded reforms after the death of former president Hafez al-Assad had landed in prison, which had intimidated people from speaking ill of the regime, much less making demands—until now. The uprising in Tunisia made it seem to ordinary Syrians that anything was possible.
Doaa, now sixteen, and her sisters began to press their parents for details about what was happening in the region, wondering whether it could happen in Syria as well. Their father tamped down their enthusiasm, afraid to encourage them. Syria was different from Tunisia, he told them. Their government was stable. What happened in Tunisia was a onetime thing. Or so he thought.
Then came Egypt, then Libya, and Yemen. In each country, protests followed a different script, but all of them called for the same thing: freedom. One man’s desperate act of protest had ignited flames of revolt across the Middle East. The Arab Spring was born, stirring hope in the discontented, especially the youth, and fear in those who ruled them. When the uprisings swept over Egypt, Syrians took particular notice. The two countries had merged for a brief three-year period in 1958 into the United Arab Republic. Syria had seceded from that union in 1961, but cultural ties remained strong. So when Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak was forced to step down on February 11, 2011, many disgruntled Syrians celebrated the victory of his toppling as if it were their own leader.
Doaa and her family watched the television reports in awe as the thousands of demonstrators in Tahrir Square in Cairo erupted into joyous celebrations. They cheered along to the chants of “Allahu Akbar” (God is great) and “Misr hurr” (Egypt is free) streaming from their TV screens.
Daraa had always been considered a reliable base of support for President Assad and his Ba’ath Party. But after the fall of Mubarak, in hushed discussions, citizens of Daraa started to talk about their own oppressive regime. Who would dare confront the Syrian government? they wondered. Assad was known for meeting dissent with crushing violence. Maybe ordinary people rising up against an all-powerful system could change things in other countries, but not in Syria, they felt sure.
A group of defiant young boys on the cusp of puberty would be the first dissidents to gain attention in Syria. On a quiet night in late February 2011, inspired by the rallying cries that had dominated the Arab Spring, they spray-painted graffiti on their school wall, Ejak Al Door ya Duktur (You’re next, Doctor), alluding to Bashar al-Assad’s training as an ophthalmologist. After they finished, the boys ran home laughing and joking, excited by what they saw as a harmless prank, a minor act of defiance. They knew the graffiti might anger the security forces, but they never imagined their small action would provoke a revolution of Syria’s own and lead to a civil war that would divide and destroy the country.
The next morning, the headmaster of the school discovered the graffiti and called the police to investigate. One by one, fifteen boys were rounded up and taken off for interrogation to the local office of the Political Security Directorate, the arm of the Syrian intelligence apparatus that tightly monitors internal dissent. They were then transferred to one of the most feared intelligence detention centers in Damascus.
Doaa’s family knew some of the boys and their relatives. Almost everybody did. In the close-knit city of Daraa, everyone was connected somehow, either through marriage or community. No one was sure which of those rounded up, if any, had actually sprayed the graffiti. Some boys were pressed to confess or implicate friends. Others were interrogated because their names had been scribbled on the school walls long before the graffiti was painted. No one could believe that these kids had been arrested for such a minor act.
About one week later, the families of the boys visited Atef Najib, a cousin of President Assad’s and the head of the local Political Intelligence Branch, to appeal for their release. According to unconfirmed accounts that became legend, Najib told the parents that they should have taught their children better manners. He allegedly mocked the men, saying, “My advice to you is that you forget you ever had these children. Go back home and sleep with your wives and bring other children into the world, and if you can’t do that, then bring your wives to us and we will do the job for you.”