The Syrian Sunset, page 1
The Syrian Sunset
Howard Kaplan
Copyright © 2022 Howard Kaplan
All rights reserved
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 9798363111983
Cover design by: JT Lindross
Printed in the United States of America
For Those Missing in Syria
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
AFTERWORD
About The Author
Books By This Author
CHAPTER 1
DARAA, SYRIA
THE ARAB SPRING 2011
On March 21, 2011, trying to hold onto hope that was vanishing like blue skies as a storm gusted in, Lilia Wassaf hurried towards the main square in Daraa, Syria. The Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia had blown the winds of the Arab Spring a seemingly impossible distance to Damascus. Snared by their satellite dishes, Al-Jazeera television from Qatar gave voice to the voiceless. People spoke of the sweet fragrance of living without whispering, of an end to the secret police knuckling on their doors at any hour, of some of their loved ones and neighbors whisked away over decades emerging from the dark cells.
A warm breeze lifted the ends of Lilia’s multi-colored headscarf, and she brushed them defiantly from her face. With each step, electric fear jolted through her, and Lilia hoped she would not bolt home. When she heard what had happened to those Daraa boys ten days ago, she had fallen to the floor in her parent’s house, cried helplessly and could not move. Finally, two days later, she had slipped outside far behind her two brothers and, unseen, followed them halfway to the massing male crowd before turning back.
At thirty-two and slight, Lilia favored the western dress of the middle class, black pants and a red floral blouse she had hunted for in the faraway stores of the capital to the north. As long as she could remember, even as a girl, she had dreamed of something more than marrying and pushing out children, but never could put both hands on what she wanted. She acquiesced to becoming a teacher. Her exasperated parents and particularly angry mother ushered potential suitors into their ablaq mosaic floored courtyard with its small trickling fountain. Like a horse’s tail swatting at flies, she sent them scurrying. Lilia preferred to sit in the hills alone, read and dream.
She had been certain those fresh winds would sweep away the grit and grime of Syria. Everybody who wasn’t too beaten down thirsted for change. Most of those who argued for the safety of the status quo were older and remembered too well the eccentricities of the president’s father, Hafez al-Assad. They still spoke of the 1982 massacre of twenty thousand in rebellious Hama, 200 kilometers north of Damascus, only after looking to see who might be listening.
Like Arab stallions running free in the desert, the common people had trampled the leaders of Tunisia and Egypt and dragged them into small barred rooms. Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, trained as an ophthalmologist before replacing his long serving father as president, promised reform that like most assurances Lilia had heard, never made it from fabric into a dress. Bashar had married Asma, a British socialite of Syrian pedigree, pale, on occasion blonde, but more typically her wavy short hair framed her face in a restrained brown. Degreed in computer science and French literature, textbook provenance for the new kinder Syria the Assads heralded, Asma gazed out often from the covers of international magazines who clamored for a walk and talk through their 340,000 square foot marbled hallways. That was merely the main palace on the mountaintop compound in the western Damascus suburbs. Everything a dictator under duress might need immediately was a stroll away on the plateau: a hospital and the Republican Guard headquarters.
Asma excitedly told these correspondents in her endearing British lilt of her progressive programs for women’s rights and education, which she actually had come to Syria to achieve. She soon bore three, still very young, children. Out of the spotlight, she stood regally by Bashar’s side as people disappeared. For someone as shy and gangly as Bashar, you had to rule a country, grand or tin pot, and Syria was a good deal of both, to snare a looker like Asma. Lilia admired or hated her depending on her activities on any given day.
On Friday March 4, five boys ranging from eleven to sixteen snuck out of their parent’s homes late at night and gathered at their school. Earlier, they had happened across cans of red spray paint. They scaled the short perimeter stone wall first, the older boosting and lifting the smaller over, and undeterred by the dark in their familiarity with the grounds, approached the stone building. In flowing red Arabic script, they scrawled everywhere on the outside limestones and similarly adorned the low stone wall. Their handiwork read: ‘jayeek el door, ya daktor’ (you are next, doctor) ‘asjaab yurid tsqat al-nizam’ (the people want to bring down the regime.) At that hour, the boys believed they were unseen. Informers fearing their neighbor’s settling of scores, never slept soundly.
Saturday morning the five along with more than a dozen classmates, who weren’t even there, Lilia thought so angry she suddenly wished she had her brother’s knife to use on anyone who questioned her, were yanked from their beds. Driven away, they disappeared in an adjacent province. Soldiers brushed over the slogans with thick, uneven black strokes. The girls in the nearby school where she taught couldn’t manage even learning games and cried all week.
Lilia quickened her step, excited that women were now for the first time welcome at the demonstrations in the main square. Her face suddenly felt hot as she thought about those shot dead there three days ago. Terrifyingly not a murmur reached Daraa about the missing boys; certainty the torturers were plying their skills on the boys’ soft bodies. Most of these children, children, she repeated to herself as she strode determined were from her Abazeid clan. She had secreted her brother’s small hunting knife in her long pocket but at the last minute returned it, afraid she’d start shaking and draw the secret police to the blade. The elders, of course only men in this backward country, approached local officials who lamented that they were powerless to free the boys. Whole days later, the elders were allowed into the room to see Atef Najib, Bashar al-Assad’s cousin, head of the local mukhabarat, the secret police, and the only man in Daraa who could, with a sweep of his hand, release them.
Fathers and elders shuffled before Najib and begged forgiveness: they were good boys, guilty only of youthful indiscretion and would never again display such disloyalty. The men were told to forget their children. They should bring their women and the mukhabarat would impregnate their wives and this way replace the boys.
Like every person in Daraa, Lilia lost her mind at the affront. Resentment and rage burned like an inferno through every home; even regime supporters demanded amends and the children’s return. More meetings between the burgeoning number of elders and the mukhabarat chief in nearby Suwayda, where their boys were being bloodied, failed to bring them home.
Lilia reached the main square. At the extremity of southern Syria, Daraa hugged the border with Sunni Jordan. Daraa was proudly Sunni. Bashar was Alawite, an offshoot of Shia Islam and a minority in Sunni Syria so he required repression to rule. Lilia felt so many emotions simultaneously, she feared her skin might split and they’d burst out. She loved her city and the Syrian people the way she promised herself one day she would love the right man. She simply required more first, why she was in the square. She looked at the old, stone minaret of the Omari Mosque; the minaret facades alternated between sections of light-colored limestone and black volcanic rock. To her right, three arches rose in the old, dark stone mosque wall. The dome shined white. A few motor scooters puttered in the two-lane street wide enough for dozens, maybe hundreds of jammed together protestors. Billowing white clouds blotted out most of the blue sky. The beauty nearly spilled tears from her eyes.
Two days ago, Friday afternoon, thousands wedged in between the single-story shops on one side and the volcanic wall opposite. Voices competed like at a sports match with a rival region. Some aging men warned: if the demonstrators don’t stop, they will free the ghuls from the cemeteries to roam their streets. Lilia had laughed at that. Two days ago she stayed at home, frustrated and restless, and helped her mother prepare the afternoon meal of kebab hindi, rolled lamb with onion and pomegranate molasses. She had hungered to join her brothers, but it was not then allowed.
Her brothers had texted her with their every step. Word echoed from nearby mosques. Hundreds march shout ‘Hurriyeh, hurriyeh’ (freedom, freedom.) Instantly: Proud elders in tribal attire. Nothing, nobody could turn back this tidal wave. Bashar too would be toppled.
The mukhabarat broadcast from the minaret loudspeaker, tinny pleas she heard through the boys’ phone calls. They asked the protestors to write down their demands and then return home peacefully. The regime would listen. Nobod
The sea of people, lest they flatten each other, headed towards the provincial government headquarters in al-Mahata. People argued. Some shouted: reform the regime. Others threw bottles at the large photo of Bashar at the intersection. Uniformed police reinforcements burst from buses, split into groups, each commanded by plainclothes mukhabarat officers. Young men and many teenage boys chanted and pumped their fists. Emotion, long stomped on, silenced, sang to the heavens. Their boys must be freed! “Ba’al el youm ma fi khouf” (no fear after today), rose like an anthem. As the trapped crowd thinned in the forward march, some pounded on their motor scooter horns and shouted, “Allah Akbar,” (God is great.)
Lilia too had felt brave clutching her phone outside by their fountain despite her fear for her brothers, for everybody. Then the beating in the air drowned the sounds of their trickling water. She looked up. Helicopters noisy overhead, and from the courtyard she saw them descend towards nearby fields below the hills overlooking the city. Her bravado deserted her alone by her fountain and she dropped to the ground and leaned back against it. More texts: In black. Mukhabarat. Sharpshooters running into shops. And soon: On roofs. Aiming. I love you, Lilia.
Then hot angry tears spilled from her coal black eyes, helplessly. She grabbed the edge of the fountain for support and screamed. Sending video to al-Jazeera. She was so afraid for him; she dropped to the floor and covered her ears with both hands. Her other brother phoned. Her damp fingers answered.
“Lilia, listen,” he implored her, panicked.
She heard the loudspeakers pointed in all directions from the minaret just below its pointed peak. Electronic voices sounding disembodied, inhuman, and maybe frightened like her called through them for the crowd to go home, repeated that their demands could be met if they did. The crowd, emboldened by their numbers, not believing doom could strike when the just were so many, erupted in screams of “Liars, liars. Down with Bashar. End the regime.” Lila’s call abruptly cut off and her heart dropped down through her body.
Almost immediately her brother sent video. She watched. It was like being there but safe she thought, ashamed. Black clad police pushed the crowd back which then, like a boomerang, surged forward. Truncheons pummeled protestors. They kicked men and boys, and then threw them into black vans that burst away and weaved through the fleeing crowd. Those who moved too slowly were slammed to the ground, the sound metal against bone.
Incredibly hours passed. Lilia couldn’t bear waiting any longer. She had to act, not think. She silently eased out the front door, ran halfway there and stopped, her heartbeat wild. Alone in the street, she saw up ahead neither side gave ground. Tires burned, the smell acrid. A fusillade of rocks pelted the security forces. The sharpshooters fired into the air. People in the street ducked. She suddenly realized she was vulnerable and ran to the side of the nearby shop, whole lambs hanging from hooks in the window, mouths drooped. She crouched low and watched.
Then as if in a dream, sharpshooters fired into the crowd. The sounds weren’t real she tried to convince herself, only the backfire of cars. Men screamed. Most seemed hit in bleeding arms. The mob scattered. At the crack of bullets more fell, shot in the legs. Though she felt she could not count on Allah, she thanked him for the sharpshooter’s sure aim. The crowd ran back towards the Omari Mosque shouting, “Someone was hit in the head. He’s dead.” She saw another drop, blood exploding from his chest, and he collapsed like a doll. The mukhabarat grabbed the bodies, a man at the head and another at the feet, ran with them, pushed the lifeless into cars and sped away. The crowd scattered. Uniformed black ghuls wielding black batons gave chase.
Her younger brother called to tell her he was not hurt and impart the news. She dared not tell him she was near and saw. She started back towards her house in a daze, keeping low and against the shops. She could not cry and stumbled forward.
The next day cowed elders met with Bashar’s cousin, Najib, and promised to fulfill his every order. Najib released the dead bodies on condition they be interred immediately, quietly and without a mass funeral or another mass protest. He then raised a finger as a warning and a threat. Without discussion, the elders agreed. The population felt otherwise; the martyr’s sacrifice had to be honored. Lilia had joined a sea of people, tens of thousands, covering the ground to the cemetery like ants.
After the funeral young men and boys, emotion spilling like a fountain overflowing in a downpour, raged into the streets. Bearing tents and food, they encamped in the stone Omari Mosque courtyard. Authorities ordered them to leave. Not a soul budged. Security officers wielded their truncheons, strode between and on them, the black wood wet with red. The courtyard emptied and then within an hour everyone surged back. For fear of reprisals or worse, nearby clinics refused to treat the wounded. A makeshift hospital under a tent flew up in the mosque courtyard, sides dancing in the wind. All day Lilia made the rounds to pharmacists and clinics, and begged for supplies, bandages and medicines. The activity, the stealth, the weight of her parcels, the edging through alleyways to avoid undesired eyes greatly calmed her. As long as they were not seen, the merchants donated readily. Some men trembled as they filled plastic bags, others wept; most hurried and stayed silent.
Now, the following day, Lilia walked across the stained black stone and entered the treatment tent in the mosque courtyard. All morning, shots burst into flesh, the death toll over thirty. It was inconceivable and at the same time exactly why they seized the streets. About half a dozen girls darted from blanket to blanket where men lay on the ground. Despite her horror, Lilia was hopeful as these girls had crossed an ancient line into a new present. There would be no going back. As a schoolteacher, she had taken the required course in medical first aid and her heart leapt that the men so welcomed her here. She washed wounds, applied creams, wrapped gauze until her scarf was wet from sweat and her clothes dyed with blood. She felt free, knew a Daraa husband would never have allowed her here.
An hour before sunset, word bounded from house to house that the boys had been released. Bruised, broken, all with electric shock bites in their skin, none could walk on their own. Several were near lifeless. Joy and rage crashed together inside her like thunder. She willed herself to believe a regime that would do this to its children must certainly collapse under the weight of such evil. Yet as she brushed aside some unruly hair that had fallen over her face, she knew Hafez al-Assad had rampaged for three decades. Bashar had absorbed it all at his father’s knee.
Just then, as she noticed the sun meeting the horizon, a yellow ball visible through an end of the tent, the sky pink and purple like the beautiful wound of a hurting country, her elder brother touched her shoulder and motioned his head. She understood. Girls could not remain among the all-night protestors at the mosque.
In the half-light, she walked alone in the empty street towards her home. Wild dogs howled from the fields. It was cold and in her damp clothes she shivered. Her father had accepted her presence at the healing tent, and she thought she saw approval in his silent, red-veined watery eyes. Her mother fumed. Lilia found it easy to ignore her mother’s upset at what the extended family would think.
She turned the corner and saw a dreaded mukhabarat black van parked ahead of her. She was not sure why it was hidden, as they could take anyone anywhere. Some instinct made her stop and walk backwards. Suddenly she sensed someone behind her but before she could spin, she felt a hand clasp her mouth.
“We’re friends, don’t struggle,” the voice said but it was not the Daraa accent, nor the softer Damascus dialect, nor from anywhere else she immediately recognized. She felt herself lifted into the air, did not resist and to her surprise being held felt comforting. She was just crazy tired she told herself.
Her feet did not touch ground until she was inside the van. The man released her and almost in the same motion the driver eased the vehicle ahead.
