Still in draft form, work in progress but it is a taste.
After weeks of preparation, the time had come. I was going into Syria. I would cross with my good Syrian friend Abou Maen, we were both so eager to go after all the preparation we had made. The plan was to cross the border from Turkey to Syria from Kilis. While waiting for our contact Mohanned, I had time to see what what was happening at the entrance to the refugee camp on the Turkish side of the border. There was a sizeable group of Syrian refugees hanging around outside. It was not possible to get a look at the inside of the camp, you need an electronic pass to enter, so only those registered at the camp can come and go. I did have the chance to chat with one man and ask him about life inside. He told me that it is difficult, the Red Crescent deliver food every fifteen days but it is only sufficient to feed a person for ten days. I asked him how it was possible to live. He said that a lot of people do small jobs when they can, to get the money to buy extra food. I asked him what sort of jobs he did, he went quiet for a moment, looked at me, and said quietly that he smuggles cigarettes, not big time, but enough to pay to feed his family. I looked at him, and thought to myself, if I was in the same situation then I guess I would do something similar, how can you watch your family go hungry?
After about an hour Mohanned arrived, he came from the Syrian side to meet us, he was to be our contact in Aleppo, honestly I don’t think there isn’t anyone in the north of the country that he doesn’t know, in his late twenties, very intelligent and articulate, he would become a good friend, saying that, I very nearly killed him the next day, but that will come later. Going to the Turkish border control we hit a problem, Mohanned is registered as a refugee in Turkey, he has a sister in the camp and so needs to be able to get in to see her. When he pulled out his passport he also accidentally let be seen his refugee card. The border police were never going to let him cross after seeing this, it was quite frustrating and I was wondering if we would get across with him. In the end we decided that Abou Maen and I would cross with a taxi driver and he would come across by bus. The border police are much more lax about bus passengers so after half an hour or so he arrived. The actual border crossing for me was quite a moment, going from peace into a war zone in just a few hundred meters. On either side of the fenced off road of the border crossing, the Turkish have laid out a mine field on their side anyone trying to cross into Turkey except by the road will be either blown up or shot, they are very strict about controlling entrance into their country. Seeing the Syrian flags as we drove along, gently fluttering in the breeze, those green, white and black horizontal stripes with the three stars, telling me I was about to enter a very different world from the peace of Switzerland where I now live.
Honestly, I wasn’t sure what to expect, I tend to live by the motto ‘expect the unexpected’ and mentally tried to prepare myself for whatever I might see. The first stop was the Bab Al Salam refugee camp which is directly at the border. A huge sprawl of white UNHCR tents spread out before me, rubbish littering the ground. The sun was out and it was pleasantly warm, but looks are deceiving, this part of Syria had just come out of one of the hardest winters in living memory, very wet and cold and a fair amount of snow. Now the ground was dry, but I can imagine how much of a quagmire it must have been and how difficult to keep your family warm while living in a tent. People use small camping stoves for cooking, or if they are lucky, they have a small wood burner with a metal tube chimney poking out of the door. Obviously it isn’t the best idea to have any sort of fire inside a tent, but what choice do the people have. There are accidents and tents catch fire. I was told that it takes about eleven seconds for a tent to catch completely on fire, also the problem is that many of these tents are very close together, so if one goes up then it will take several others with it, people die.
I must admit that I was expecting to see a lot of misery but it wasn’t quite as simple as that. I saw a large group of women lined up to get their food, men wandering around, cigarette sellers and lots and lots of children. In fact it was the children that most impacted me, I was totally unprepared to see so many smiling, laughing faces. Really, I was shocked. Yes, you could see some children with blank looks, their eyes focused on something a million miles away, but the majority were having fun, asking, pleading with me to take their pictures, laughing and jostling each other to get into camera shot. For my first hour or so in Syria it was almost like a sensory overload, the total opposite of what I had expected. So much for my motto! However, there was one boy, I guess he is about eleven or twelve, he just followed me, didn’t say a word. His eyes, you just knew that he had seen some terrible things. I took his picture, he just stood there, not a word, no change of expression. His is one of the faces that still haunt me.
One of the things I noticed was how it is the women that do all the work, the men seemed rather aimless, sitting around or wandering from here to there. The problem for them is that in their culture the man goes out to work and the woman looks after the domestic things. Only now, the men don’t have work so they don’t do anything apart from sitting with other men and drinking tea.
As I was looking around the camp I was invited to sit and drink tea with a small group of men, one of them spoke English and they were curious to know who I was and what I was doing. So I sat, crossed legged on the blanket with them, one of them gave me a cushion to make me more comfortable, tea was passed to me. One of the questions I always asked was ‘what was your job before the war’ just to give me an idea of who I was talking to, these people had jobs and totally different lives before this revolution began, just looking at a person and calling them a refugee negates their entire identity. So there I was, sat with a small group, construction workers, mechanics, an accountant. I asked them what they wanted to come out of the revolution and they all said they wanted to be free and not have to live under such a brutal regime, to have the opportunity to build something with their lives instead of working long hours everyday just to have enough money to live from day to day. Most of the group I was sat with were in their twenties and thirties. Guys with energy, the question I wanted to ask but didn’t, was why they were sitting on their butts in a camp instead of doing something for their country. I had just arrived in Syria and decided that it would not be a good idea to get myself killed so soon into my trip by asking this question. Later I would understand why so often these men do nothing, some really must stay to look after their families, especially if there are no other male relatives on hand. For the others however, it was something much more insidious, the Syrian regime has pushed down on the majority of people for so long, cramping their movement in so many ways that many have been conditioned to believe that they can’t do anything except live day by day. Now that they have freedom, and I saw this often, many of them have no idea what do with it. For fifty years the regime has controlled so many aspects of these people’s lives that now they are a little bit like a deer caught in the headlights of a car. For the vast majority, they finish school when they are about twelve years old and go to work with their families. They have never been taught how to think, question or understand how to make a new life for themselves. So now, many of the men I saw in the camps sit around with no idea of what they should do. Don’t get me wrong, not all are like that, there are many who have joined the revolution and want to fight for a better life or work in some other way to liberate their country, but yes, there are a large number who are just sitting things out and waiting for someone to give them bread. I have to say that the women seem to be much stronger, even if their home is now just a tent, they still have to cook, clean and look after their families, in this way their lives haven’t changed so much and they are getting on with things. I will be talking about the role of women in the revolution later. They are doing some remarkable work, both inside and outside of Syria.
After a couple of hours it was time to head out and make our way towards Aleppo. Our first brief stop was in Azaz, the site of the first major battle win of the Free Syria Army against the regime. It was a huge battle and was given the name ‘graveyard of the tanks’ as more than twenty tanks were destroyed, remarkable when you consider how lightly armed the FSA were in comparison. I was told that balloons filled with paint were thrown at the tanks to block the vision portals as part of the battle strategy. What else could they do without heavy weapons? It must have been an insane battle, looking at the town, the level of destruction along with the burnt out hulls of the tanks I was filled with a sense of just how strong this conflict has become since those first peaceful demonstrations back in 2011. The people never wanted conflict, they had only asked for more freedom and for the regime to relinquish some of its iron grip of control. That it has got to this point of open warfare with ordinary people prepared to fight and die for their cause tells me just how desperate they are. I hate war but I can understand when they tell me it is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees. This regime will not give up its power easily, that is the problem with power, it tends to corrupt. Like a sweet poison, power corrupts those who desire it and search to drink ever more from its poisoned chalice, creating only suffering when it refuses to be relinquished.
