Diary Jonathan Steele - Syria - London Review of Books
Roughly twice a week several carloads of people set off from middle-class areas of central Damascus for a ‘party’ in the unlikely setting of Qudsaya, an impoverished hill town about eight miles northwest of the city. As the guests drive up the steep streets to the town’s small central square, young men, some with scarves wrapped round their faces, look out for signs of danger. The ‘party’ is actually a protest against Bashar al-Assad’s regime; government security forces may appear at any moment. My first two attempts to get to Qudsaya failed when armed police and militia showed up at the last minute and the demonstrations were cancelled. Along with Barzeh, a northeastern suburb of Damascus, Qudsaya is the nearest place to the capital where there are regular protests against the regime. The bombardment of Homs has monopolised media coverage, but confrontations are going on in scores of other towns and now affect several outlying districts of Damascus itself. As is the case all over Syria, the majority of the protesters in Barzeh and Qudsaya are unemployed young men from poor homes. But they are getting more and more support from the Damascus middle class.
I finally arrived in Qudsaya early one evening. A young man scrambled up a tree where he hung the independence flag – green, white and black with three red stars. It first appeared when the French mandate ended in 1946, but the Baath Party dumped it when it took power in 1963. Now it is the symbol of what activists call the intifada or, more hopefully, the thawra (‘revolution’). On the dot of seven the lights went out in the blocks of flats on one side of the square. ‘Just the usual power cut,’ one of my escorts explained, pointing to the buildings opposite where the lights were still on. Electricity is rationed throughout Syria and cuts of six hours a day are common. Towns where there is unrest get longer cuts.
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Young women in hijabs stood to the left of the crowd, chanting as enthusiastically as the men, but separated from them by a rope, partly to protect them but also to allow them to escape more quickly should the security forces appear. One or two bare-headed women could be seen in the throng and a small group of them stood just beyond it. ‘Welcome, Christian people,’ the first speaker shouted, addressing those women. The government claims the uprising is sectarian, a view its supporters are keen to disprove. ‘One, one, the Syrian people are one,’ the crowd chanted and the speaker roared: ‘This is the revolution’s vow.’ Row after row of people raised their right hands, chanting: ‘We will make our country one – Alawites, Sunnis, Shias, Christians, Druze and Kurds.’ Many of the chants were religious: ‘Allahu Akbar’ (‘God is most great’) and ‘Labbayyka Allah’ (‘We obey you, God’). A girl in hijab came to the microphone and shouted: ‘We have nothing but our hope in God.’ People put their arms round their neighbours’ shoulders or waists and launched into a dance invented by protesters in Homs. They swayed to the right, then to the left, before bending forwards with their heads bowing towards their knees. The movement was repeated several times while the chanting continued.
‘I’m an atheist but I call out “Allahu Akbar” because it makes people feel strong,’ my escort, Anwar, explained on our way home. He is a Circassian, a member of a Caucasian minority which fled to Syria to escape the tsar’s armies. ‘“Allahu Akbar” is also a riposte to a regime slogan that says: “Bashar and nobody else.”’ Later, we had a glass of wine in a smoke-filled café in an upper-class district of Damascus. Anwar’s friend Rime admitted that she was petrified before each ‘party’. ‘Calling out “Allahu Akbar” helps to calm me down,’ she said. ‘But there’s another thing. In detention they sometimes force prisoners to shout, “There is no God but Bashar,” so the protesters want to show there is an alternative
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v34/n06/jonathan-steele/diary
Contrast that with the nonsense of outside infiltrators and terrorists and/or salafists.
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