take out of my bag; I carry it wherever I go. A small, sharp switchblade to be used in self-defence. For years now I have said Iâll plunge it into the body of anyone who tries to insult me for being a single woman living alone. I didnât use it very often, flashing it a few times in the face of stunned men, but lately I have begun saying that Iâll plunge this knife into my own heart before I let them insult my dignity.
Whatâs the point of everything I am saying now amidst this carnival of death? Simply going out into the street means the possibility of dying; this thought hit me, that walking down the street you feel someone might kill you at any moment. A crazy idea, but itâs strange, you go out with your friends to demonstrate, knowing that there are snipers from general security who could shoot you at any time. The same security forces who have stamped on peopleâs necks for decades, calling them whores and traitors, locking them up, killing them, and then continuing to saunter down the street in cold blood.
How does the human body get turned into a lethal killing machine? Hands, eyes, hair, brain â all these organs that resemble your own, how are they transformed into giant probes and long fangs? In the blink of an eye, reality becomes fantasy. But reality is more brutal. They say writing a novel requires imagination, but I would say it takes reality: nothing more, nothing less. What we write in novels is less brutal than what occurs in real life.
Bouthaina Shaaban 1 appears on television. My mother tells us all to listen up, âSheâs talking about traitors and sectarian strife! Oh, the horror! Shut the windows!â Images of the tortured children and dead little boys return. The face of the little boy I held in al-Merjeh Square, as he watched his family getting beaten and arrested. I hear a man on television talking about the blood of the martyrs in Darâa, calling for revenge, âWe wonât respond to this woman [he means Bouthaina Shaaban], we donât respond to women. They expect us to listen to a woman?!â Nothing that is happening seems anything like me: my family cheering for this lady, my friends cheering for the blood of the martyrs.
I am ashamed of the blood of the martyrs. Oh Lord in Heaven, if there is human sin, and it turns out You are sitting up there, unwilling to come down and witness what is happening, then I will reach up and drag You down from your seven heavens, so that You may hear and see.
As I step out onto the balcony, the lemon trees revive me. This place is calm for a few moments, then gunfire breaks out. Everybody knows that the cityâs calm before was not a natural calm, since nobody could challenge the power of the security apparatus. Agents are always in the street. Suddenly the streets are transformed into a carnival of horror. Chaos is everywhere. Security forces watch the people: some flee, others get arbitrarily eliminated. The gangs sprouted out of the ground just like everything here, out of thin air, without any rhyme or reason. How could armed men suddenly appear and start killing people? How did all this happen? I have been exiled from the city, from the village and even from the sea air itself. Everyone glares harshly at me, from all directions. I understand both sides. I know the other aspects of life in Damascus, where the city was transformed into another kind of village.
What am I doing here?
Waiting around to die?
As the debates start up once again â the saboteurs, the infiltrators â I cower inside myself. Now I am an infiltrator among my own family, an infiltrator in my own bed. Now I infiltrate everything and I am nothing. I am a lump of flesh curled up under the blankets, infiltrating below the asphalt on the street. I infiltrate the sorrow of every Syrian who passes before my eyes. I hear the sounds of gunfire and prayer. I am a mass of flesh, trudging each morning from house to house, trying