Motaz Omarien
Perhaps the wonders of tales, the wonders of novels, and the wonders of stories cannot describe the first day of the revolution that took place in Syria — the revolution I brushed against in a way I never expected, and survived in a way I could never have imagined.
On that day — the 15th of March, 2011 — I decided to go to the al-Assad Library, the central library on the central square of the central capital of Syria, to prepare a meticulous piece of research on the subject I was working on. I went to the al-Assad Library from al-Thawra Street, took a right, and there before me, at the library's entrance, was a security patrol.
The man in charge of the group said to me: "What are you doing here?" I said to him: "I'm going to the library." He asked me: "Why?" I said to him: "I'm a student at the Virtual University." And with a deep feeling that came over me, it entered my head that he had begun to check up on me, to question me, to verify my identity. That self appeared — the one that defends its right to live — but with a small dose of humiliation, of defeat, of submissiveness, and of direct contact with this man who was in charge of the group. And I suspect he was an Alawite, from the way he spoke, and from his head and the way he carried his body.
Quite simply I answered him: "I'm a student at the Virtual University, and I want to do some research." So he began to question me, to make sure that I really was a student at the Virtual University. I don't now recall whether I showed him the ID they give us at the Virtual University or not, but as I believe, I did show it. And after I showed it, he confirmed a few details, asking me: "Is it any good? Is it useful? Will you be able to find work if you finish it?" And I answered him with the utmost submissiveness, the utmost directness, and the utmost defeat.
I entered the library. Its many shelves were long and wide, and my footsteps betrayed that I was thinking and thinking and thinking that I had survived. There is a small detail the reader may not care about: that at that moment I was wanted for compulsory service — what we in Damascus called the military. And quite simply, if my name were struck, or if he asked about my name, it would come out that I was a fugitive.
For the record: I never left the house at all, for two reasons. The first and main reason was that I had compulsory service hanging over me, and I could not simply move about this place. The second reason was that I had no work. In fact, I had two jobs: the first was work from home, in that I could create a website and earn money from it; and the second was that I worked and did not work, and money came in to me from that supplementary income. But at the same time I was a lonely, miserable man.
The library overlooked a square. I sat in a corner watching this direction and that direction, and I began to see some people entering and being seized by the security patrols. They were trying to gather in the square.
The experience of Egypt, and the victory of Egypt's experience, was strong proof of Syria's ability to break free of al-Assad's rule, to break free of the rule of the Baath, to break free of tyranny and killing and backwardness and darkness and death and the gloom of prisons and the weakness of movement and everything. It was an opportunity more than historical, so it was incumbent upon Syrians to seize it and set off into a new liberation.
I returned home safe and sound, in soul and in body. In the evening I spoke with my father. He said to me: "I walked all the squares and saw no sign of any movement."
Perhaps it was that revolutionary inside him, that anger suppressed in his soul, wishing to himself that deliverance was possible, and that people had become people, and wanted to move, and wanted to uproot the darkness from their eyes, and wanted to achieve the future and justice for themselves and with their own hands.
But my father was dispirited. He said: "There is no movement in any square. This is Syria; it is not Egypt."