When Revolution Bloomed and Died in Damascus
NEWS | 23 February 2026
In July 2012, the gates of hell opened up in Damascus, and I learned something about what it means to be a revolutionary. It was not the heroic experience one might expect, but something smaller, sadder, and more human. Living in fear drove lovers and friends apart. It did not free us from our flaws. That summer was about a year into Syria’s democratic uprising and its violent suppression. Armed militias had begun to battle the national army. I was staying in the studio of my friend Amer, a Christian painter who had quietly resisted the government since long before the uprising. Every night we heard bombs in the distance and gunshots that sounded like firecrackers. The mountain that overlooks the city—where we used to go for coffee shops, hookah bars, and panoramic views—became a military no‑go zone. Protests, once daily, skidded to a halt. People were disappearing. Some left the country intentionally; others simply vanished. Security forces began arresting people en masse and executing some on the spot. The stories coming out of the city’s hospitals were so horrible that I couldn’t tell whether they were real: injured people chained to hospital beds while doctors, accompanied by security forces, poured rubbing alcohol into their open wounds; doctors burning the genitals of detainees. Many of those injured in the bombings so dreaded such tortures that they chose instead to be treated in living rooms that had been turned into makeshift field hospitals. There, limb amputations became commonplace. Shrapnel was removed from oozing wounds without anesthetic. And so that July, instead of being filled with water and fruit, Amer’s fridge became a storage cooler for vials of tetanus vaccine. I didn’t know—and I didn’t ask—how he’d obtained the vials. They may have come from those very hospitals, smuggled out by a doctor who engaged in some form of torture just to prove his loyalty and protect his access. For weeks, my mission was to distribute the vaccine to the neighborhoods where the field hospitals were. I’d take the needles out of the fridge and wrap them in a towel that I’d left in the freezer overnight. On the public minibus, I’d stash my bag under my seat. I knew that I could be searched at any checkpoint. But I also knew that if the bag with the tetanus shots was found, I could simply say that it wasn’t mine, and the person next to me or behind me would be blamed. My loyalty would not be questioned, because my hometown, listed on my ID, marked me as an Alawite—a member of the religious minority that formed the base of President Bashar al-Assad’s power—and my last name was that of a family close to Assad’s inner sanctum. I had come to Damascus five months earlier, when the stirrings of democratic protest had forced me to confront a truth I had long avoided: A regime I had been taught to view as a protector was instead the source of the oppression I both observed around me and personally felt. I was ready to break free of my father and question everything I had been taught as a daughter and as an Alawite. Robert F. Worth: The fall of the house of Assad I slipped quietly into early protest circles, walking away from the privileges my last name once guaranteed—but I also knew that the protection of my name could backfire. If I was discovered, no punishment would be spared. I knew an Alawite protester who had left the country after being shot in the leg and detained. His captors stomped on his injured leg, and for weeks they told him that his sister was being raped in the cell next door, and that they’d let her go only after he gave them every name he knew. He was sure that he could hear her screams, and eventually gave them a few names. Later, he learned that his sister had never been imprisoned at all. “If an Alawite gets caught,” he told me later, “they make sure to make an example of you. Our disloyalty to them is not just political. It is considered a deep betrayal of their trust in us. Our betrayal is equivalent to a thousand betrayals.” I always deposited the hypodermics at a small shop at the entrance to a neighborhood called Barzeh. The owner was a middle‑aged man we referred to as Al Hakeem. “I’m returning this,” I’d say, placing the bag in an ice-cream freezer decorated with a grinning snowman wearing a red scarf. One day, Al Hakeem’s little son was there, hugging his father’s leg and hiding behind it. “I am doing this for him,” Al Hakeem said. These six words were the only ones he ever said to me. He vanished soon after, and before my heart could ache for the boy, I felt relief that I had managed to stay quiet around Al Hakeem and to give him no indication of who I was. Two miles separated the field hospitals and amputated limbs of Damascus’s outer neighborhoods from Bab Sharqi, the city’s ancient core. On those narrow cobblestone streets, the fragrance of flavored tobacco still wafted from hookah bars; water plashed in fountains, jasmine bloomed, and art galleries became after‑hours speakeasies, where the upper class danced and sipped martinis and wine, perhaps wondering what kind of “freedom” the discontented were demanding for Syria. One of the bars in Bab Sharqi was a rustic place called Abo Elia, named after its white‑haired owner, who spent his evenings preparing meze platters and mixing drinks. My friends and I frequently ended up there. Abo Elia’s drinks were the cheapest in the area, and you could easily get a free one—or five. Abo Elia said he was keeping his bar open despite the conflict as an act of love for his country. “The terrorists want normal life to end,” he’d lament as he laid slices of cucumber and carrot onto our plates. “I won’t give them that satisfaction. May God bless our army!” “God bless our army!” we’d repeat in unison, clinking our glasses and watching Abo Elia top them up for free. He referred to us as his rifaaq, his “comrades”—but had no idea we were on opposite sides of the conflict. We’d play along, drinking for hours. The bill was always for a fraction of the alcohol we downed, and we’d leave the bar giggling and buzzed, God‑blessing the army and swearing to one another never to tell anyone how we’d compromised our morals and hailed our oppressors, just to get free splashes of vodka with grapefruit juice. One morning after a night out, I woke up in bed fully clothed. I found my phone under my pillow. The battery was dead. I plugged it in and saw a message from my friend Walaa, who had been at the bar with me the night before, asking me to call her immediately. I ignored the text. My phone rang. It was Walaa. “Sorry, I just woke up,” I said. “I’m outside,” she said. “Open the door.” Seconds later, she was pushing her way into the house. “Are you stupid?” she barked, and I was too ashamed to ask what she was talking about. “You should stop drinking. You are putting yourself and everyone around you in danger,” she said. Alcohol consumption had been part of my identity as an Alawite since childhood. Drinking, and walking around without a headscarf, were ways of blending in with Christians in past centuries of Ottoman oppression. Arak, the local beverage—a powerful brandy made from figs—is distilled all over the Alawite mountains. Arak featured at every dinner and barbecue throughout my childhood, even at gatherings we held in the shade of pine trees around Alawite shrines, where we feasted on grilled meat from the sheep my Aunt Samia sacrificed as a kafara after breaking a promise. Robert F. Worth: The honeymoon is ending in Syria “Sip a little!” my aunt would say, placing a glass filled with milky-white liquid under my nose. A sip of arak is said to kill the bacteria from the raw meat of kibbeh nayeh, or from the unwashed parsley in our tabbouleh. Children down the stuff, most with grimaces, as their parents and older relatives watch and laugh and joke about how a true Alawite child can handle arak. It is in our blood from birth. Arak was for private family gatherings. For weddings and other public events, whiskey—Black Label in particular—was served as a means of flaunting one’s wealth. A bottle of whiskey was also the most common bribe for army commanders and intelligence officers. I was 15 when I got drunk for the first time—on Black Label, with the daughters of my father’s cousin Hikmat, who ran the intelligence office in As Suwayda. It didn’t occur to me then that the bottle we drank from might have come from a parent desperate for information about a detained child. The last thing I remember from that night is lying on the couch, my head on one of the girls’ laps, as we made prank phone calls from their no‑caller‑ID phone line—something available only to people with a security clearance. Now Walaa’s pale face told me that I’d done something very wrong during the lost hours of the night before. She recounted that the government had been shelling the rebellious neighborhoods on the city’s outskirts, as it often did. The explosions grew so intense that the table shook, and I started crying. Abo Elia told me not to be afraid. “Syria Alla Hamiha,” he said—“Syria is protected by God.” “If a limb has cancer, we remove the limb to keep the rest of the body alive. This bombing is necessary to rescue the country.” “You started arguing with him and you wouldn’t shut up! I kept pinching you under the table,” Walaa said. She told me that we could not set foot in Abo Elia’s bar again. I understood then that I was lucky to be waking up at home and not at the police station. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I will never drink again.” This was a lie, of course. Alcohol was my only reliable source of comfort as things grew ever worse. By the end of that summer, most of the people I’d met at protests had left for Jordan or Lebanon. The rest of us hid in various houses and apartments—moving from place to place, crashing on couches in living rooms where we drank throughout the day and night. Damascus, Syria, on November 4, 2012 (Xinhua / Eyevine / Redux) One day, Amer and I met up at a coffee shop with one of his friends who was about to leave Syria. Samar was engaged to a journalist and former detainee who, after his release, received a scholarship for an arts program in Germany. Samar had been offered a similar scholarship there, too. As she described the excruciatingly complicated process of getting her visa, I saw Amer glance at her pack of Marlboros—the expensive cigarette of choice in Syria, where what you smoked was as much a status symbol as your brand of mobile phone or car. He opened the pack without asking and took two cigarettes. “What’s keeping you here?” Samar asked him. “You want me to be another exiled artist who writes about Syria from Berlin?” Amer asked in reply. His remark was pointed, and Samar clearly knew it. Her fiancé used to post updates on social media as though he were writing from Damascus, and he was routinely mocked by friends, who asked him how the “revolution in Berlin” was going. Eventually, he stopped posting altogether. “You can help more from outside the country than if you stay here,” she said, taking a long drag from her cigarette. “You can meet with donors and businessmen and send money to people like you who cannot find jobs.” I gripped my teacup and avoided looking at Amer. For Arab men, no matter how progressive they may be, money is a sensitive topic—as if not having it is somehow akin to being impotent. And Amer hadn’t worked in weeks. He’d resorted to smoking the cheap local cigarettes, which was why he was always taking cigarettes from his friends. I hadn’t dared to ask him how he was paying rent; I assumed that he was getting money from friends or from someone outside the country. To point out that he wasn’t working was a betrayal. I would never do that to him, I thought. “Where are the Syrians who left in the ’80s, assuming they would be back after just a few months? They are online! Friending us on Facebook just so we can mock them,” Amer said angrily. “Being locked inside a house isn’t really helping anyone,” Samar replied, pushing her chair back to stand. “I’m sure I’ll be seeing you in Germany.” She took another cigarette from her pack and placed it on the table for Amer. I could feel his leg violently shaking under the table. Samar slid the strap of her bag over her shoulder and walked out. Amer picked up the cigarette that Samar had left and stowed it behind his ear. We headed out and strolled silently through the alleys. I distracted myself by inhaling the atmosphere of the old city, trying to detect the scent of jasmine and lemon, but in the peak of summer, the alleys stank of rotting food and of the vapors rising from the Barada River. Anti‑government graffiti had vanished here, and on narrow street after narrow street, the walls were lined with glossy posters of the president, as if the revolution had never existed. Those who had painted anti‑government slogans or posted anti‑Assad leaflets were by now detained in dungeons, or had joined the rebel militias, if they weren’t living abroad. “Samar is right,” I whispered to Amer. “You should leave.” “I would rather die of hunger here,” he replied without even glancing my way. “Why? What are you doing here?” I asked. “Outside you can at least find work. Being away for a few months is better than being dead.” “Do you want me to leave and send money back so people here can buy Marlboros and live off my guilt?” “Aren’t you living off the guilt of other people? You can’t even work!” I froze, knowing I’d crossed a line. Amer turned toward me and exploded, calling me naive and materialistic. “I don’t expect you to understand, because you will always care about money more than anything else, just like everyone who grows up rich,” he said. Amer knew the material comfort I’d left behind to join the revolution. Now he was using the confidences I’d shared with him to hurt me. Rage unleashed inside me. I told Amer he was poor because he was a failure. He was afraid of leaving Syria because here, he could blame his lack of work on the government. Abroad, he would have to face the fact that he was not getting a job because he had no talent, and his incompetence would be his alone. Amer’s eyes welled up. His lip quivered. “Admit it!” I yelled. “You will always be a loser living off of other people’s charity.” The next thing I saw was blinding light. My head swam. Amer had slapped me so hard that I nearly lost my balance. Heat rose from my left cheek and traveled down my neck. People walking by slowed for a second, but no one stopped. They probably assumed that Amer was my husband or my brother, and that I deserved it. I started to run. I heard Amer panting behind me and shouting, “Coward! Coward! Jbaneh!” I’m not sure whether he considered me a coward for admitting that leaving was a good choice, or because I didn’t fight back. My breath was heavy and wet. My eye burned and wouldn’t open. I hailed a taxi and jumped in. “Are you okay?” the taxi driver asked, turning to look at me. “Do you need me to stop at a checkpoint and ask them to help you?” “No! I’m fine. Just go!” I gave him a friend’s address. The next morning, I looked at my phone. Amer hadn’t called. I felt completely alone. My dearest friend, who had always protected me, had left me with a black eye. Amer was the reason I hadn’t left Damascus, although I was scared for him and for myself. I wanted him to respect me. I wanted to be one of the real ones who stayed until the end, who fought, who was not harassed and intimidated into fleeing. Only years later would I understand that under pressure—under the fear of death by execution, torture, bombing—people can release the monster they’ve spent most of their lives repressing. I didn’t know then that almost every marriage, every friendship, that I’d seen blooming around us in Damascus during that time would die. The two couples who went to jail together and married right after they were released. The girl who was so scared that her partner would be taken away by the police that she got pregnant just to preserve something of his smell. The girl whose boyfriend’s family rejected her because she was not Sunni, and who agreed to elope with him because the whole country was revolting against injustice, so why couldn’t they? Even Samar and her partner’s relationship would eventually collapse under the strain of exile and the guilt Amer spoke of. So many love stories. All of them decimated, just like our hopes for what Syria would become. Later that day, I went to Amer’s to pack my belongings. I found him sitting in an armchair with the lights off. A thin wisp of cigarette smoke hung in the stale air. Avoiding eye contact, I started putting my books, laptop, clothes, and everything else I owned into one bag. When I was done, I stood in front of him, unsure of what to say. Should I apologize? Yell at him? Pretend that everything was okay? I searched his face for some acknowledgment of what had happened. He was silent and as motionless as the smoke suspended in the air. His glasses were on the table. He bit his thumbnail. The tip of his cigarette glowed orange and was reflected in his eyes as he gazed into space, as if I wasn’t even there. On the wall was a sign that I’d once risked my life to bring him from a protest, because I knew that Amer would appreciate it. It was my gift to him. Beneath the sign, above the table where Amer threw his keys, was one of the white lilies he had given me months ago on International Women’s Day. He had hung it upside down, and it had blackened over time, but still, there it remained, his gift to me. “You can keep the flower. I’m taking the sign,” I said, stepping around Amer’s chair. I read the quote, taken from a Federico García Lorca play, again as I tore the clear tape from the edges: What is a human without freedom, Mariana? Tell me. How can I love you if I’m not free? How can I give you my heart if it is not mine? I tucked the sign under my arm, grabbed my bags, and walked out of the studio for the last time. This article has been adapted from Loubna Mrie’s new book, Defiance: A Memoir of Awakening, Rebellion, and Survival in Syria.
Author: Loubna Mrie.
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