This is an account of what it’s
like to be far from loved ones who are living in a war zone. It’s a type of
survivor’s guilt. This isn’t meant to illicit pity. Just understand that I will
not always tell people what I’m going through, partly because I want to escape
from it myself. I don’t expect you to relate. I don’t need big hugs or
apologies. They make me feel guilty. I need people with ideas that help me hold
out hope that some good will be gleaned from this horror. I need help doing something
concrete to help refugees. I need reassurance that my family will survive. I
need things no one can give me.
This is rough. I’ll probably
re-edit at a later date.
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| In the past, the green belt around Damascus would have come about to
the tops my ears in this picture. Sprawl has made food scarcer and more remote from city dwellers. |
On Wednesday November 29th,
2017, I woke up to a call from my father in Syria. He’d been to our family
farm. He just wanted to share his experience assessing the damage that had been
done there by looters or “rebels.” We’re not sure which to call them. Some
local rogue government militias and some villagers in the area have started
their own civil war on class and are taking their frustrations out on absent landowners
kept away by closed checkpoints and shifting war zones. These “rebels” blame
families like mine for not helping them more, but the government took all our
wealth away more than half a century ago. The village we once literally owned
thinks we owe them a school, a well, a mosque, a clinic and many other things
that we could not do for them on our own.
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| A view of my uncle's table grape vineyard. One of the family's only incomes, mostly unharvested since the war. |
So, when my dad calls from Syria
and reminds me that about a year ago, looters torched our farmhouse after
taking everything from antique furniture that was my inheritance from my
grandmother to copper wires out of the walls, and even attempting to steal the
floor tiles, I’m caught in that zone where I think everyone should know about
this, but everyone is a foreigner who can’t relate. All they will feel is pity,
or admiration for my “struggle”, or dismay at my need for attention. Perhaps
they will think I feel entitled, because unlike so many refugees, my family has
yet to lose everything, and I personally have a roof over my head. It is
personal, though. Our farmhouse wasn’t looted or burned because it was on the
road to somewhere. It was targeted because of my family name. Then I just want
to scream, and it becomes a hum, white noise in the back of my head, blurring
my senses to keep my subconscious squarely sub.
I learned early in my childhood to
compartmentalize between my two countries. Regardless of which end of the world
I was on, I was ten thousand miles away from half my loved ones. That was in
the days before internet, when it could cost a fortune for just one minute of
international long distance on the telephone, and snail mail could take a month
each way between Syria and the US. I had to live without knowing the day-to-day
news of my family. We were on opposite ends of the planet.
Since the war, my compartments are
a lot thinner. My co-workers probably think I’m a moody person. I’m by no means
manic, but under the current circumstances I’ve had many days when I could
barely force a smile and every minute felt like an eternity in a corrupted
universe. On one occasion a co-worker asked me how I was doing, after some bombings
she’d heard of taking place in Damascus. I confessed to her that I was having a
harder time than usual compartmentalizing, but couldn’t speak much more than
that because I couldn’t wrap my mind around both worlds at the same time. How
do I speak of the nightmare of hearing about bombs in my city and not knowing
where they were or where my family was at the time. The news rarely if ever
reports the neighborhood accurately, and my family members live in several
different areas and try to go about normal business when it is possible. They
even send their children to school when they dare. I know from experience that
a loved one could miss certain death just by stopping at a traffic light. On
the other hand, my cousin was car-jacked (possibly by ISIS) only blocks from
home.
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| Damascus in snow. |
On other occasions, people don’t
know anything is going on. To them, I’m just being sullen, but my mind is ten
thousand miles away, with my dad who sits inside his house wrapped in blankets
to keep warm with steel shutters closed against random gunfire, my aunts and
uncles, just as cold, who live less than a mile from an ISIS stronghold and are
sometimes hostages in their own homes because of shelling. I might be thinking
of my cousin, a mother of four, who spent last winter getting only one hour of
electricity a day, between one and three hours of water at random times every
three days and gas rations that either fueled a car or heated her house. He situation is similar to those of many
Damascenes, but her village suburb doesn’t offer a full supermarket and a car
could burn a quarter tank of gas just going through the checkpoints between her
and the nearest government produce cooperative. Syria is high desert, so it’s
freezing at night, and the winter winds are like knives even through a winter
coat. Damascus is just below the snow line. My father and my cousin both live
in mountain suburbs that get snow regularly. I can’t tell you how many times I
have wished myself there with them, because even to suffer along side them
would seem more productive than my empty life.
On a daily basis, I smile and give
great customer service to people who are too lazy to read a sale sign, and want
me to risk my job to give them a discount to earn their loyalty for the company
I work for. Meanwhile, I’m thinking how shameful it is that I’m safe, clean,
warm, clothed and fat in my own house while I have relatives who are using
their life savings to buy eggs.
Once, a supervisor saw how agitated
I was and asked me if there was anything he could do. I couldn’t bring myself
to tell him that it felt like someone had been dancing on my grave all day long
and I was desperate to get off work and check online to see if there was
anything about Syria in the news. Instead, I reassured him I only had to get
through six more minutes of work: he didn’t need to worry. I wouldn’t let him
try to identify with my experience. I knew he couldn’t. He stopped trying after
that. When people ask how my family is, I reply “everyone’s safe, as far as I
know. We’re lucky,” but I add silently in my head, “so far, they’ve only
assassinated two of us and killed three others.” By the time my cousin once
removed – I called him uncle – died last summer, from illness unrelated to the
war, I didn’t bother trying to hide or explain my pain. I no longer felt
compelled to justify the lump in my throat or the tears welling in my eyes as I
worked.
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| Before the war. The farmhouse my father built, while it was under construction. |
When I saw this video last year, I
wanted to show it to everyone, “see, I have lost something! I’m not just a
crybaby!” But, I was appalled, at myself. It was, after all, our farmhouse, not
our primary residence, and I was ashamed that anyone would feel so loyal to my
family that they would stand next to a burning house and film it while bullets
were flying all around him, so I didn’t post it. I just went about my days at
work and home with my brain blurred out. Let gossips and co-workers make what
they wanted from it.
My compartments are usually strong.
I have programmed myself so that I can go days without consciously remembering
there’s a war ravaging my childhood neighborhood and annihilating my loved
ones. When I do think of it, I just go blank. Now and then, though, it gets
under my skin and makes my head spin.
My father is now safely in the US.
Here is the video of that fire in
2016.
On official reports, it is listed
as a result of shelling.
