It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way — in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

When I was in secondary school in Aleppo, one of the required English texts was an abridged version of Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. Back then, I sat at an old wooden bench with two girls — who were once my best friends, but now we barely speak — and together we read dusty words about a revolution steeped in blood and sacrifice in a place that seemed so far away in time and space from our isolated lives.

The story of two places, rich and poor, privileged and oppressed, was also the story of our Syria. When we read Dickens, we could not imagine similar scenes unfolding in Syria during our lifetime. In 2011, scenes of protests and funerals, torture and murder, international press conferences and presidential interviews, were recorded not on the pages of a novel but in videos and photographs, in tweets and Facebook statuses, transferred via Skype and YouTube. Over two centuries later we would write the same story: the story of a revolution.

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Confession: the images of the carnage in Houla did not move me like they seem to have moved the rest of the world. Yes, they were tragic, horrific acts of violence against the most innocent of victims. But they didn’t break anything inside of me that was not already broken, nor did they raise the level of outrage or sorrow I feel everyday over what is happening in Syria.

Maybe it was because in the twenty-fours hours before hearing about the Houla massacre, I had heard that a friend’s relative had been killed, I had heard that another friend’s elderly relative had been kidnapped by gangs for ransom, I had received desperate Skype messages from an activist in Homs, crying, “my precious ones are gone, my precious ones are gone,” referring to three Shaam News Network media activists who had been shot dead by Assad forces, I had spoken with the brother of a martyr in Aleppo, who told me that since his older brother was killed one week ago, he was trying to act normally but the truth was, his “heart was burning.” By late afternoon, when I watched the first video of the children of Houla, with their tiny throats slit open below their ashen, angelic faces, all I could feel was yet another heavy thud of dread. One we had felt many times before. 

The days after Houla brought the news of the death of Basel Shehade, the brilliant, young filmmaker who was killed by the shells falling over Homs. (Will the shells ever stop falling over Homs?) The days after Houla brought news of continued shelling and burning of Aleppo’s and Idleb’s countryside, and the deaths of another a dozen men — their eyes blindfolded and hands bound — executed in Deir al-Zor. The days after Houla brought news of thousands of Syrian refugees in Egypt who found themselves stranded with empty homes, empty pockets, and a bleak, uncertain future.

The days after Houla continued as all the days had before. But the world’s eyes halted on the massacre.

Houla’s images instigated the world’s outrage in its predictable forms: in heart-wrenching eyewitness accounts of children watching their families being murdered; in sectarian-tainted op-eds that cynically questioned who had perpetrated the crimes; in dry-eyed, canned statements by regime mouthpieces complaining about the media’s “tsunami of lies” which painted the regime as criminal when in fact it was a “victim.” There was outrage over the images themselves andoutrage over the decision to exposing the international public to the violent images (as not to upset an innocent British boy or girl).

And the outrage moved from analysis and narrative to questions: Is the UN plan working? Is a regime-led investigation a fair way to proceed? Who committed the crimes? Is killing by shelling (by the regime) as bad as killing by close-range (by unknown “monsters” according to Bashar al-Assad)? Is it pronounced Houla or Huli? Were the slaughtered people Sunni or Shite (or Sunnis who had converted to Shiism)? Are we with or against foreign intervention? Who will replace Assad? Who will arm the rebels? Who are the rebels? Why is the Syrian opposition still fragmented?

And of course the debate: Will Houla be Syria’s Sabra and Shatila, Syria’s Srebrenica, Syria’s game changer?

What exactly is the “world” responding to? The graphic images? The sheer brutality? The number of dead? The gruesome stories?

Over the last fifteen months we have seen Houla and variations of Houla happen over and over. We witnessed slaughtered bodies in February in the Karm al-Zeitoun massacre. We have seen men and boys dripping with blood, with half their face blown off, still struggling to breath. We watched while an entire city was destroyed, missile by missile. We watched a man flattened by an Assad tank, over and over, into human road kill. We have seen dead children, not only slaughtered but bombed, burned, and mutilated. We know in addition to Houla’s fifty-two dead children, there are hundreds of others; in addition to Houla’s murdered men and women, there are thousands of others. Our dead have been left to rot on the streets of Homs. Our dead have been buried in the public parks of Hama. Houla’s mass grave is just one more to add to the others, in Homs, Hama, Rastan, and Jisr al-Shoughour. And let’s not forget the unknown thousands of Syrians buried under the concrete foundations of a luxury hotel in Hama by Assad the elder. 

Houla was tragedy. But it was not a game changer. Not even close. Not to us, at least. Maybe it was to those who have been hedging bets on Syria’s future. Or to those who keep a secret, magic “number” of how many Syrians are allowed to die before it’s too much.

How many more gruesome violent videos can we watch before we really can’t stomach it any more? How many people have to die before the world either says enough is enough, or turns away from their screens? How long before the daily death toll in Syria is no longer on the front pages and becomes an invisible battlefield, like Iraq, like Afghanistan, like Libya?

How long before you are desensitized?

How long before you forget?

The cynics still claim that the majority of the Syrian people still back the murderous regime, (although by this time the regime and its “silent majority” should be irrelevant like it would be anywhere else in the world in face of such violence, including Bahrain). When a regime decides to kill thousands of its own, its supporters have become accomplices not neutral citizens.

Why the empty debates? Because the cautiously-watching (yet horrified) world has not decided yet on our “so-called” revolution. They claim it has changed from its romantic (and just) beginnings and has become armed, violent, and sectarian. While the world doubts, we watched the “sectarian” Abd al-Basset Sarout and his “bloodthirsty Salafi” FSA brothers sing in a room to a gleaming wooden coffin with a cross, that held their friend Basel Shehade’s shrapnel-ridden body. We witnessed the regime shut down Basel’s memorial service last Thursday in Damascus to the peaceful thousands who wanted to join the church service and light a candle in his honor. We watched last Friday in mosques across Syria, as Muslim men performed an “absentee” prayer for their martyr, Syria’s martyr, Basel. These are the Syrian people too, whether the world wishes to see them or not. Or perhaps they only tolerate seeing them as shrouded corpses.

Those who still argue searching for game changers in Syria should stop exerting themselves. Those who wait for Assad to change his ways and stop the killing, don’t hold your breath. For those who have been waiting for their magic “number,” it’s too late. The number is too high and has passed the threshold of forgiveness.

The game changed months ago while you were turned away.

Whether your eyes decide to confront or slide away from the images of our slain children makes no difference. Because we have already moved on, to face tomorrow, which holds only one Syrian certainty: there will be blood.

I, along with thousands of Syrians, made a decision from the moment the first fingernails were torn from the innocent hands of Bashir Abazid and his schoolmates in Daraa. After decades of our own silence, we had two words for the Assad regime: Game Over.

As for the world, across the spectrum, from the ones fretting anxiously to the ones claiming Houla was a “hoax,” and everyone else in between: we have one question: What’s your number?

Part 2 of the excellent piece by Amal Hanano (@AmalHanano ) Click here to read Part I

Nine months ago my daughter, Tal Malouhi, a student in high school, was arrested by one of the branches of the security for reasons we do not know until this moment and I do not know anything about her fate. Sir, I knocked on the doors of all the security agencies and the presidential palace and all the official channels possible in order to be assured about my daughter or know anything about her fate or the cause of her arrest, but to no avail. Finally, I received a promise from one of the security authorities that my daughter would be released before the month of Ramadan starts. But, Ramadan is about to end now and Eid will come soon after, while our family is still suffering for our lovely daughter. Mr. President, I cannot describe to you after this disaster on our family, the amount of suffering caused to all of us. Your daughter Tal is a smart student and she loves her country and its people. She writes what comes to her young mind in honesty and transparency and in line with her age. Sir, We have no one left for us, but to address you as the father of all the Syrians in order to save the life of my daughter as she is at a tender age and does not understand anything in politics. And may you long live for our country.

Letter to Bashar al-Assad from Ahed al-Malouhi, September 2010

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Another excellent piece of writing from @AmalHanao

The Syrian revolution undeniably belongs to the street. It’s rooted in the public realm where masses of physical bodies occupy the squares and real voices fill the air with defiance against the brutality of a relentless regime. The virtual realm of the revolution is a strong, second line of defense. Communities of online activists in Syria tirelessly spread the voices and events from the street as far and wide as possible, while the activists outside Syria continue the ripple effect, transferring what is happening inside Syria across the world.

Supporters of the regime like to demeaningly describe the Syrian revolution as iftiraadiyyeh, hypothetical, “a virtual revolution,” fueled by outside forces far from Syrian streets (thus, Syrian interests). They mark the protesters as traitors falling prey to a “universal conspiracy” against Syria’s sovereignty.  

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Nadia* is a beautiful young lady from a prominent family in Homs. Every day for months, she would stare at her closet in agony—she had nothing to wear. Her behavior was typical of millions of girls her age around the world, but unlike those millions of girls, she wasn’t on her way to meet friends, go to a party, or spend the day shopping. She was going to a protest. She said her wardrobe decision was difficult because she had to choose an outfit that was fitting enough for a protest, modest enough for detainment, and honorable enough to die in.

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Another excellent piece by Amal Hanano…

“What are you getting out of this?” This is the question I’ve been asked over and over for the past ten months and three weeks by people in my real life. It’s a legitimate question for all of us. What have all the hours we’ve spent tweeting and retweeting and Facebooking and blogging and writing and arguing and debating, done for the Syrian people? Have they made a difference to the endless suffering of the Syrian people? Did they even minutely affect the tide of bloody events? Or were they merely words, empty and helpless, dedicated to Syria with the best of intentions to show solidarity, to give comfort and support, but failing instead, falling flat and meaningless. 

We speak to feel better, to feel like we’re doing something. But what are we doing except speaking? What good have my words done for the people buried in the rubble of al-Khalidiyyeh tonight? What does our outrage do for Hama, once again sleepless, once again encircled with tanks, once again living the same terror it lived exactly thirty years ago to the day. What does our remote yet sincere concern do tonight for those parents who watched their fathers being killed in front them in 1982, and who wonder if their sleeping children may face the same fate tomorrow?

With what words can we respond to Abdul Baset Sarout as he asks us through the screen, in a room full of fresh corpses, “Where is the world?” Someone next to him starts naming the dead, men we will never know, killed on the Friday that was named “We’re sorry Hama, forgive us.” Never again, we tweeted with defiant confidence, just this morning. A few hours later, the new tweets read, “We’re sorry Homs, forgive us.” How many times can we apologize and ask for forgiveness before those words are exposed as hollow utterances?

The video links begin to appear on my Twitter timeline, each labeled “graphic content.” I click them open, one by one. Each clip introduces more names, more bodies wrapped in bloodied blankets, more bruised faces, with open eyes, forever frozen in their shocked expressions. Haunting wails in the background while a commentator narrates death, never forgetting to authenticate the video with the details, the name, the time, the place, the date, because even in these final, sacred moments, when they should be saying goodbye to their dead, they have to prove that this is real for the rest of the world. The timeline stretches longer as the death toll grows larger. Facebook pages are created, we dutifully “like” each martyr, and carefully read their “info.” But we have already “liked” too many, and in a few weeks we will have forgotten the details.

Someone tweeted tonight in response to someone else who had announced the death of his cousin, “Congratulations on his martyrdom.” Those are the words we wrap like gifts to our youth, the ones who deserved a congratulations on your graduation, congratulations for your marriage, congratulations on your first job, congratulations for your first child. But instead, those youth are dead and so we congratulate their families: Your son is a martyr, he died for his country. But all they hear is our empty words. Because we aren’t the ones who paid with blood. We pay with worthless, pixelated ink. 

“What are you getting out of this?” I thought I knew the answer to that question. It was always clear in my mind. What I thought I got out of this was the ability to look myself in the mirror and know I wasn’t silent, I did everything I could. I convinced myself if I just stood by one principle, telling the truth, it would be enough. But on nights like tonight, I remember what I wrote almost one year ago, “While you were sleeping, Daraa was slaughtered,” and find myself where I began, “While you were sleeping, Homs was slaughtered.” On nights like tonight, my words no longer grant me permission to look at my reflection without guilt. 

Decisions are being made on the timeline now; quick and emotional. Occupy the embassies, declare your support for bearing arms, ask for foreign intervention, protest the UNSC resolution, boycott Russia, write a letter to someone, do something. Anything. Nothing to offer but our words and voices. They seemed invincible only this morning when we did the unimaginable, and mourned the massacre of Hama as a nation for the first time. Words that were like swords in the morning had dissolved into nothing by nightfall. Our words of memory for Hama drown in the fresh blood of Homs. Remembering the events is very different than living them.

Tonight, the souls of hundreds of men, women, and children in Homs who were murdered by the son, meet the souls of the thousands of people of Hama who were murdered in another February, by the father.

The dead are dead, the disappeared are gone forever, the tortured are being tortured as you read these lines, mothers weep, orphans scream, shrouds are delivered, bodies are wrapped. And the tyrant remains. He lives by his father’s rules, Hama Rules: taught to eat the egg and its shell, preferably while being seen enjoying himself in public at a Damascus restaurant, hours before his forces began to shell al-Khalediyyeh. Smiling when he imagined the blood that he knew would soon flow down the streets of Homs. Fulfilling his destiny; his father would be proud. Confident that his bullets and tanks would destroy our spirits, silence our voices, and erase our words. 

Though we’ve learned the era of silence is over, nights like tonight leave you speechless, without words. Or words that are not like words. Words that are physically felt, like a chest tightened with dread or burning eyes depleted of tears. Words that cannot express what the wailing minarets of Homs’ mosques sound like; the language of desperation is universal. When towers of stone scream and weep, we have reached the limit of words. 

I’m left where I started, with nothing but my words. And even I have to ask myself on this dark night, “What is the meaning of our words? Do they mean anything at all?” Unlike last March, though, I am no longer alone. You can find the right person to pose your questions to, not for sympathy, not to be soothed, but for an honest answer. His elegant response was a quote, appropriately from V for Vendetta, “Because while the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power. Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth.”

Tomorrow, we will wake up, on another day of our revolution, the day after the Khalediyyeh Massacre. Though the future is unknown, certain facts are already known: the brave will rise up and crowd the streets, defying the rules; and some of them will not survive the day. The people will continue to offer their flesh for freedom. Despite the losses that leave us speechless, we will humbly offer our words, striving for the “means to meaning,” and we will add our voices to Syria’s voice, even if they fail to do anything. 

But for tonight, silence prevails. 

Out of all the pieces of me, those little bricks that build what we call our identity, being from Aleppo is the one I can never change. Although I no longer live in the ancient northern Syrian city, Aleppo is the place I call home.

Growing up, being from Aleppo was a source of extreme pride. As my father never ceases to remind me, we are not only from Aleppo, but we are from dakhel al-sour, inside the walls. “Inside the walls” is an exclusive term which means your family hails from one of the neighborhoods within the original city walls. Our ancestral neighborhood is indicated on my Syrian identity card, although neither I nor even my father ever lived there. Being from inside the walls is not something you can acquire in a generation or two; you are born that way.

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In the field of evolutionary immunology, “it is important to recognize that every organism living today has an immune system that has evolved to be absolutely capable of protecting it from most forms of harm; those organisms that did not adapt their immune systems to external threats are no longer around to be observed.” 

His story begins on March 5th, 1984, an ordinary Damascus morning. He was on route to university, where he was a second year electrical engineer student. He decided that morning he would read Ahmad Shawqi’s play, The Death of Cleopatra, on his two hour bus commute from al-Mezzeh to the university. He also brought his small English dictionary to study during the often boring lectures. At his destination, he saw a double line of students waiting to be searched before entering the building. He thought, “I feel sorry for the guy who is going to be taken.” He knew the lines meant the mukhabarat  were looking for someone specific. After passing through the doors, someone called him by name, he turned, and a man said, “We need you for five minutes.” He felt “his heart drop to his feet.” After a few hours of waiting and interrogation, he was blindfolded and placed in a car. He thought he was on his way to General Intelligence in Kafar Souseh, outside Damascus, but he wasn’t. Instead, the car took a cross-country detour to a prison in his home town, Hama. 

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Thanks @AmalHanano

Over the last forty years, the Assad regime has mastered the method of burying our stories almost as well as burying our people. Our cities, like their residents, carry the scars of brutality, hiding decades of bloody secrets within their thick stone walls. One city in particular, Hama, lives with a twenty-nine-year-old secret, its 1982 massacre. It’s not really a secret, rather classified as a taboo subject never to be discussed in voices louder than whispers behind closed doors.

Syrians didn’t even call it a massacre, they vaguely referred to it as al-ahdath, the events, as if there were an unspoken deal between the murderous regime and the people. We thought all these years if we never mentioned Hama again, the crimes would never be repeated, and the rest of us would be safe. We were wrong. The dark February month, when tens of thousands of Syrians were slaughtered (the real number will never be known) and thousands more were imprisoned, was destined to be swept under the regime’s dirty rug, and Hama, was destined to be forgotten forever. But after March 15th, the deal of silence was breached, as the crimes of the father were repeated by the son, and the blood of Hama’s past mixed with its present, its stories emerging from the repressed collective memory to join the new painful chapters written every day.

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My Two Cents - This is probably the best article i’ve read to date on the Syrian Revolution. Amal does a fantastic job of exposing Nir Rosen, Robert Fisk and Andrew Giligan for their poor-excuse-for-journalism “impartial” reporting on Syria. I’d like to say more but she (Amal) does it much better than I could ever write.