Our source for this post is Kareem Lailah, by his own account a blogger, editor-in-chief of what is reportedly the first underground opposition newspaper, Syrian Hurriyat, and an activist with the Local Coordination Committees in Syria. He writes here about what happened to a woman whose two sons were taken away by security forces. A third son told Kareem what happened to this family from Qudsaya, a suburb of Damascus built on the slopes of Mount Qasioun, a mountain where some believe Cain slew Abel. Kareem is not the writer’s real name. Read his account further below.
The Syrian government restricts independent reporting within the country. We invite Syrians on both sides of the conflict to tell the world how they cope with street violence, human tragedies, political chaos and economic loss in their daily lives. Syria Witness reports cannot be independently verified and, for personal safety reasons, some contributors do not use their real names. Texts are edited for reasons of clarity and style, but no changes to content are made.
By Kareem Leilah, Damascus, October 16, 2012
O Holiness in Qudsaya.
Like her sisters, the daughters of Mount Qasioun, Qudsaya lays on the side of the mountain, spreading her houses from its foot to its peak. At least this is how it was before gunfire invaded its tranquility.
Like other mothers, “Um Mohammad” (Mohammad’s mother) has been taking care of her children and protecting them from even the smallest harm.
She was known for saying to them, “I hope to be stricken with blindness before I see one of you with even a thorn in his hand.”
Um Muhammad did not know that that light of dawn would be the last thing she would see in her life.
It was only a moment that passed over the day’s sunlight, patting with compassion and shyness the roofs of the aging homes which lay between the destruction of Qudsaya and the roar of freedom, until the death squads stormed her house and wreaked havoc, destroyed, and looted.
The soldiers robbed whatever was left of this lazy life’s pleasures, including the bracelets of a mother inflicted with the illness of the heart and time. These are the bracelets that she had told her children to sell to pay for an appropriate funeral when she dies, and to donate the rest in her memory to those in need.
All of this was so that it would be less burdensome for Um Mohammad if things had ended here, but that was not the case.
Here the soldiers are pulling before her tired eyes those for whom she had lived, arresting the youth in two of her children, massacring the life in those who wanted to live it with dignity, and then throwing it into the unknown.
Today, she realizes that she may sleep for the first time, if possible, while the bodies of her young sons and their barely 16-year-old relative will lie awaiting a tomorrow that may never come and a sun that may not rise again.
She did not have the strength to scream at the time, suffered in silence, and lost her wandering thoughts.
No warmth after today could revive her aching heart. She hung her head in silence, and pain took her into a bitter coma after which she would not see the light.
When she wakes again, her soul will mourn her absent sons like sight has become absent from her eyes, only forever.
Forgive me, mother, if I was not there to emancipate her…
Forgive our weakness and impotence, you who are full of grace…
I am your eyes, today and tomorrow…
O you who have given me spirit, hearing, and sight…
Blessed are you among the women of the Earth…
Today we pray for you, O holiness … just as yesterday you prayed for us sinners who are passing through this life …
The Lord is with you …
To the compassionate mother, Um Mohammad, whose children’s arrest has deprived her of her sight …
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David Arnold
David Arnold coordinates the Syria Witness project at Middle East Voices and reports on Middle East and North Africa affairs for both Voice of America and MEV. The Syria Witness project publishes on-the-ground citizen reporting, giving Syrians the opportunity to offer to a global audience their first-person narratives of life on the streets of their war-torn country.