The Syrian uprising’s most notable achievement has been to open the floodgates to information sharing and exchange in the country. The previously mute-like public sphere immediately exploded into life with the uprising. Private individuals, along with intellectuals, professionals and activists began voicing their opinions openly, and debates on everything from politics to culture, and, of course, the uprising, became widespread.
One of the more interesting areas for these debates has been Syria’s pre-revolution history. For the first time, the decades of silence under the regime of Bashar al-Assad, and his father, Hafez, were being addressed and recounted on such a public stage by those who had lived through them. The vast collections of anecdotes and stories from that near past that have been shared over the past few years, almost make up a new informal genre in Syria’s modern literary history. More importantly, they contribute to rebuilding a more comprehensive collective memory of Syrians of that period beyond the Baathist-approved history books.
The personal memoirs of Syrians, repressed for decades, came out in the lucidity of the last 3 years. Like this story recounted by former prisoner and dissident Muhammad al-Saleh:
“27 years ago, our comrade Abbas Abbas (a leading member then of the banned Communist Labour Party) was arrested at his house in Homs. During the raid, a member of the security services confiscated a batter charger and announced to the observing crowd of people that it was a communication device used to communicate with Israel. A year later, I was arrested and the same man was conducting an interview with me. I asked him why he said that, knowing full well that it was nothing but a batter charger. His answer was simply: ‘Did you expect me to tell people that we are arresting him for no reason?’”
Renowned Syrian poet Faraj Beirakdar, a former political prisoner himself, recounts another story of that not-so-distant past: “Sometime during the nineties, we were waiting, like we always did, for the prison cars that brought our comrades from their detention centers to their trials. When the car arrives we used to run close to it to get glimpse of them as they were led in chains to the courtroom in silence. On one of these days, an old woman next to me started yelling to her son: ‘Turki, your mother is here.’ I whispered to her to stop, or else they wouldn’t allow us even this little privilege anymore. ‘Please, madame, don’t yell. Your son, Turki, will see you. Just don’t yell,’ I told her. She answered, with tears in her eyes: ‘My son is blind.’ Yes, my dear friend, Turki al-Muqdad, was blind in his sight, but his heart could see us all.”
Dara Abdallah, A Syrian-Kurdish writer brings focus to another story, from another violently repressed episode in Syria:
“In 2004, only a few months after the Kurdish uprising against Baath in the city of Qamishli, I witnessed a very strange scene in our house. I came back from school to see a woman in our living room talking to my father and mother about what happened, trying to ascertain facts about the number of victims, injured, detained and the army’s role in the events. This brave woman was talking about the uprising, she was using words like ‘martyrs’, ‘tyranny’, ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’ at a time when we didn’t even dare utter the word ‘Kurdish’. This strange, and to me, most inspiring woman, is none other than Razan Zeitouneh.”
This collective rewriting of that period covers more than just the political. It also brings to the fore the almost-surreal conditions Syrians had to navigate during the times. An activist from Salamiyah recounts this story from his childhood:
“During the last presidential referendum of Hafez al-Assad (1999) security services in Salamiyah were informed that a man had placed Assad’s photo on his mule. After a certain amount of investigation the man was caught, and he indeed had put the photo of Assad on the face of his mule. He even had Assad’s eyes poked out to allow his animal to see. The men from the security services went insane and the man was put under extreme torture. But while he was being beaten he was telling them: ‘I swear I only put it there because I love that mule more than my own children, and I couldn’t find something I adore more to have the honor of carrying the president’s photo.’”
These stories individually may be nothing more than an attempt to finally exorcise that past, and lift that heavy weight of repressed memories. Collectively, however, they add authentic colors to the monotonal hue of Baathist Syria.
