In my memory there are details I can never forget. Every evening I look up at the sky in confession and supplication, believing that justice has an hour in which I will recount all that happened. And so that the truth does not slip away, I disclose to you what I have preserved of it.
My story began the day one of my sons told me he could no longer remain with the regime in his military unit. The officer in charge, along with the security agents embedded among them, was monitoring them closely. All of them were required to participate in shooting at civilians in the streets and towns. He told me he had decided to defect. Without encouraging him, I rejoiced at his decision, one I had expected and waited for. This was my son whom I had raised.
While I waited after his call for news of him, security forces suddenly descended on us a few days later, in large numbers, searching the houses of the city for my son. His elderly, tender-hearted grandmother was the first to receive the shock. Despite her age, the humiliation they inflicted on her was brutal. They found her sitting in front of the house, cursed her, shoved her, and left her lying on the ground until they departed. We rushed her to the hospital, where the doctor told us she had suffered a stroke. She fell into a coma and died three days later.
The loving grandmother was the first victim. After her death, my defected son decided not to stop at merely fleeing their military service; he joined the Free Syrian Army to defend civilians. From that moment on, I never saw him again, until two years later when news reached me of his martyrdom—a hero who resisted. They were unable to overpower him and a friend of his while they were barricaded inside a building, except by firing a tank shell at them. Afterward, they stormed the place and mutilated his body.
We thought that after this they would stop raiding our home. And although my husband had left Qatana for our farm in the orchards, Air Force Intelligence patrols raided the farm and arrested him for several days. Later I received news that he was in the hospital because of burns on his hand. When I went to him, I found him blackened like charcoal, burned over his entire body. I could barely recognize him. They did not hand over his body to us until they forced us to sign a statement saying he had committed suicide by burning himself with gas. I signed, staring at the officer with looks that said: you are the ones who killed him. He understood, and without my asking, he said defiantly to my grief, “We will burn you one by one.”
I did not know then that what he said was true, and that they carried it out with planning, determination, and intent. They later arrested my two sons: Hammoud, who was at the time an eleventh-grade student—I still know nothing about his fate—and Ahmad, whose photograph was leaked through Caesar. The torture was evident in his broken teeth and the swelling of his face and body. My nephew and my niece’s son were also killed under torture.
We left our homes, moving from one area to another. It was as if they were playing a game of life and death with us. Whenever someone sheltered us, they would summon and threaten him. The last time, they arrested one of the kind men who had given us refuge for months. He remains disappeared to this day. They left the remaining young men of the family with only two choices: take up arms or leave. The shabiha in our town kept repeating that the state was raising, through us, every terrorist and traitor.
I remained alone in my relative’s house in a neighborhood of Damascus, never leaving it. Two and a half years passed, and then we entered 2015. I believed they had had enough of killing us and had forgotten me. I began to think about traveling, telling myself there was no danger in it. On one hand, they were pushing us to leave so that only those of their own color would remain inside the country, with no one left to oppose them. On the other hand, they had never summoned me directly or asked about me before. Their pursuits had focused on specific names in our family. I thought they would not care about me, especially since I was a woman who had taken no action against them. Based on all this, I went on my own to the Immigration and Passports Department to renew my passport.
One of them asked me, “Why do you want a passport, Aisha?”
I said, “I want to travel to my daughter. She is pregnant in her final months, and her delivery is near. She needs me.”
He began preparing the paperwork, and I waited with a group of applicants until the procedures were completed.
After a short while, they called my name: “Aisha, come with me.”
I was afraid and asked, “Where to?”
He grabbed my hand forcefully and said, “Why do you want to go to Saudi Arabia?”
I said, “I told you earlier—my daughter is pregnant and needs me. There is no one with her to help.”
He ignored my words and dragged me downstairs to a room that seemed like an interrogation room.
He opened the papers in front of him and said, “You want to go to Saudi Arabia to fund the saboteurs?”
I said, “I don’t know any saboteurs, and I don’t want to bring money to anyone. I want to help my pregnant daughter.”
He left me for a while, then returned and dragged me to a detention cell. He opened the iron door and threw me into its darkness, slamming the door shut as if it were closing on my chest. I gathered my strength and screamed, “For God’s sake, let me out.”
After about three hours, he opened the door and handcuffed me, saying, “We’re taking you to another place where they’ll make you talk about why you’re traveling to Saudi Arabia.”
He put me on a bus and seated a police dog next to me. Every time it looked at me, I felt it wanted to tear me apart with its teeth. I begged him throughout the journey to move the dog away from me, and he said, “I won’t move it. It will stay with you until you confess.”
They took me to the district branch. Upon arrival, one of them greeted me by saying, “Welcome. We’ve been looking for you for a year! Where have you been?”
He dragged me into a room filled with security men. One of them asked, “What’s her story?”
I answered immediately: “I did nothing. I just wanted to travel to my daughter in Saudi Arabia.”
He asked, “What’s your name?”
I said, “Aisha.”
He said, holding a mobile SIM card, “We’ve been looking for you for a year.”
I heard them whispering my son’s name—the one who had defected. I remembered that his phone SIM was registered in my name. He then loudly insulted my son and me and shouted in my face, “Isn’t this bastard your son?”
I remembered my son’s last conversation with me, when he told me he refused to carry out their orders to kill women, children, and the elderly. I knew their hatred for him because he resisted them and they could only get him treacherously. A wave of pride swept over me. I gathered my strength to preserve his dignity in his absence, as he had preserved it in his life, and I said, “My son is a martyr, not a bastard.”
They all began beating me, hurling obscene insults.
One of them said, “So you’re with the terrorists?”
I said, “I am neither with them nor with you. You both beat and kill.”
They continued insulting and beating me until one of them said, “Take her belongings.”
Another asked, “What are you carrying?”
I took out what I had: 2,000 Syrian pounds, a wallet, and a hairpin.
He took them and examined me, saying, “We will search you.” Then he noticed a ring on my finger and said, “Give it to me.”
I said, “This is my martyred son’s ring. I bought it in his absence for his engagement. You killed him—leave me the ring as a memory.”
He struck me again and forcibly removed the ring, repeating his insult of my son.
I screamed at him, “My son is not a bastard!”
He kept beating me until he grew tired. Then he asked again, “Don’t you have more money?”
I said, “I have nothing else.”
He asked, “Where is your phone?”
I said, “I don’t have one.”
He then dragged me down a corridor lined with iron doors, opened one of them, and threw me into a room barely large enough for ten people. They had already crammed thirty-five women inside, ranging in age from childhood to old age.
The women began speaking to me, trying to comfort me, asking about my name, my family, and my story. I was forty-five years old. I preferred to be cautious, having heard that security planted informants among detainees. A wave of tears burst from me. During interrogation I had held them back so as not to delight them with the humiliation of a martyr’s mother. The women asked me with compassion, but I did not answer until the next day.
A young girl approached me and said, watching my tears, “What’s wrong, auntie? Why are you crying?”
I said, “Because of injustice. I’m here without guilt or wrongdoing.”
She asked me about my children and whether they had participated in the revolution. I said, “No.”
She said, “Auntie, tell them about your children and relatives, and what you know about their revolutionary work. They’ll release you afterward.”
I told her I knew nothing. She kept insisting, saying that if I didn’t tell them, they would never let me go.
I repeated my answer and vowed to myself not to reveal anything I knew. Most of the young men of my family and neighbors were involved in the revolution. I vowed to sacrifice myself for them. I, who had not contributed to their humanity and heroism, would now redeem them with my soul. I swore that the mother of heroes would not be despicable. Having lost two of my sons, I came to feel tenderness toward all the young men of the revolution, as if they were my own children.
The cell was a small room. The detainees had spread blankets on the floor and used another layer as covers at night. The blankets were infested with lice and insects and smelled foul. The toilet was in the same room; due to overcrowding, some of us sat on its edge. At night we lay side by side on one flank, pressed against one another. Every morning they brought us our meager food: a few olives and barely enough bread. As they opened the door, they beat us randomly with a plastic rod they called the “Green Brahimi,” mocking the United Nations. We woke to filthy insults.
On the third day of my detention, one of them burst in like a madman, cursing and shouting my name. As I tried to stand, he stepped on the women’s bodies to reach me, dragged me out, blindfolded me, and handcuffed me. He took me to an interrogator whose voice suggested he was about my sons’ age. I didn’t know whether to pity him for serving the regime or to despise him.
He asked my name. I said, “Aisha.”
He said, “You want to go to Saudi Arabia to fund terrorists?”
I said, “No. My daughter is pregnant and needs me.”
He said, “You’re all terrorists.”
I said, “I have nothing to do with terrorists or anyone else.”
He hurled the most obscene insults at me and beat me severely on my head, face, and body. I screamed, “You’re beating me and I’m your mother’s age!” He replied with curses, “You’ll never be my mother.” I said, “You’re beating a woman who is handcuffed and blindfolded!” He intensified the beating and humiliation. I wished the field were fair so I could teach him what manhood means. I believe my defiance defeated him, until he ended the session in frustration and shouted for the guard to take me back.
When I returned to the cell, I burst into tears as usual. I let my tears express my oppression, never shedding them in front of the guards. A girl whose voice comforted me approached, and we talked. She told me she had cancer. I placed my hand on her head and felt the swelling. I had noticed the detainees avoided her out of ignorance, fearing contagion. I pulled her to my chest, my hand on her head, praying for her to sleep until morning. When she woke, she said, “Auntie, don’t be afraid. My heart tells me you will leave this place.” Her words filled me with resolve. The only thing that worried me was my youngest son, and the fear that he might surrender himself for my sake.
I met a seventy-five-year-old woman who had been arrested by mistake due to a name similarity. After a month of grief and tears, they released her. They spared no one. Young girls suffered even more. The body of Amina remains etched in my memory—they turned it from white to purple. Six guards, after assaulting her, poured boiling water on her private parts. I asked her why all this. She said she had resisted an officer who wanted to rape her. Another young girl—God’s creation—torture did not erase her beauty. Her face was like the full moon, adorned with sorrow and sanctified by oppression. She wandered alone, crying, until the officer entered. At the sight of him, her eyes froze, her teeth chattered, her body stiffened, and she fell into a coma until the beast left.
There were many painful stories—some I witnessed, others the detainees told me. One woman had been transferred between several branches and said the torture in some was far worse than here. She told me that an interrogator once urinated on her face after practicing every form of humiliation.
Interrogation sessions with me continued with the same questions and the same answers, the same beatings and insults. The detainees who became my friends would wipe my wounds and console me when I returned in tears. One day the interrogator suddenly asked about my nephew. “What is Abu Metab to you?”
I answered. He asked where he was. I said, “How would I know?”
He cursed me and began kicking me and beating me with the Green Brahimi until I lost feeling in my body. Deep inside, I persisted in my defiance, determined to exhaust him until he left me. This continued every time—until the twenty-eighth night of my detention, when I saw Abu Metab in a dream. He gave me five white papers and said, “Don’t be afraid, aunt. I am around you.”
I didn’t hide my joy from my companions when I woke. I rolled over them, waking them, telling them I had seen good tidings in my dream. Two days later, the guard opened the door and called several names—mine among them. He led us, handcuffed, to the belongings office. He asked about my items. I pointed to the ring, my heart echoing with my martyred son’s memory. I nearly forgot the wallet, hairpin, and the two thousand pounds.
He asked, “Did we torture you? Did we beat you? Did we harm you?”
I said, my swollen eyes and bruised face answering for me, “No.”
They loaded us, handcuffed, onto a military bus to another place. Tears of joy flooded me as I watched life outside, as if the people in the streets were not the same people I had left behind. My heart raced—I didn’t know whether from fear or happiness.
They took us to an old building, removed the blindfolds, and led us down three floors underground, placing us again in a dark room. They told us food here was sold and could be ordered. I ordered two falafel sandwiches—one for me and one for a friend with no money—and even indulged myself with two sodas.
The next morning, I was taken to a different interrogation. All their questions focused on Abu Metab and the faction he led. From the context, I understood we had been saved by a prisoner exchange, in which my nephew played a major role.
They asked me where I would go. Afraid to tell them my children’s location, I said Qatana. They released me, drove me to the bus station, and took photos of me with their phones as part of the exchange procedure.
Exhausted, I boarded a public bus alone. The pain in my eyes intensified, or perhaps I was finally feeling the pain I had resisted in detention. I felt the swelling on my face as passengers stared. I feared infecting them with lice or scabies and shrank into my seat. A woman who had noticed me boarding—my neighbor, Umm Ahmad—approached me. She examined me, as if to be sure. When she heard my voice, she threw her arms around me. She did not dare ask anything, nor let me speak. Tears framed her sad smile as she embraced me and said goodbye when I got off before her. I understood that fear for her children prevented her from inviting me to her home or accompanying me. I got off at the Qatana junction, passengers staring at me with fear or pity. The bravest among them was the driver. He left his seat to help me down, swearing he would return my fare.
I walked on, exhausted, until a young man stopped me and shouted, “Where are you going, aunt?”
I said, “To my relative’s house in Qatana.”
He said, “This road leads to a military facility. No one enters here unless they want to die. Come, I’ll take you to the correct road.” I was astonished at myself for losing my way in my own town. After he left me at the junction, it took me six hours to reach my sister’s house. I thought the strength I had gathered in prison had collapsed, but the doctors my sister brought said after examination that I had developed chronic diabetes, and that my eye had suffered a severe blow requiring urgent surgery to prevent loss of sight.
From Qatana to Zakiya, my heart led me to my only remaining son—after the criminals had killed and disappeared his father and brothers. To Zakiya, liberated from the regime, where my nephews were, I went. I stayed there four years, never leaving. I lived with them through fighting and siege, hunger and steadfastness, until the Russians imposed displacement or surrender upon us under brutal bombardment. I chose to leave rather than return to live in humiliation under the rule of a gang that killed my husband and children, tortured me, and humiliated me along with other women.
And to Idlib, on the green buses, I carried my memories with me, the scent of my children in their children. I tend to them and earn our living by spinning wool.