If I were God

A tribute to Omaya Abbas

If I were God, I would have made Omaya Abbas live another two months. It is a shame to see her leaving our world only two months before her son Omar is released from prison.

Omar, her closest child, whom she couldn’t hold in her arms for the last five years, because thick bars and tough faces of military police stood between them.

Along with six other young men, Omar is serving five to seven years in prison for starting a democratic youth movement in Syria.

If I were God, I would have made these young men grow up quickly, without feeling the temptations of youth to dream, to hope and to try to make this world a better place. Then Omaya could have seen her son graduate from university, and she could have seen him marry and hold his kids, instead of seeing him holding the bars of his prison during her monthly visits.

Now she will never again cook Omar’s favourite foods and when he returns home in two months, it will be to an empty home. His mother is dead, his father is in prison, and his brother is in exile.

Many things have changed during his absence, but the repression is still the same. Many houses were emptied of fathers and sons, while the prisons are overflowing.

Omar´s father, Ali al-Abdullah, a journalist and political activist, was detained twice. After the first arrest, his son Mohammad, Omar´s brother, was arrested too for defending his father.

Yes, it’s ironic, a complicated entanglement of arrests of the kind that even gods cannot understand.

Omaya was struggling to survive. She had to look for her husband and for her two sons in different security branches and inquire, “Hello, is my husband here? I have his medicine, please let me see him.”

“Hello, is my son here? I haven’t seen him in months, it is cold, he needs some warm clothes.”

Doors were shut in her face. But she kept struggling.

After being in and out of prison for several months, Mohammad finally decided to flee the country forever.

Omaya was heartbroken. Her oldest child would leave and she might never be able to see him again. But perhaps it is for the best, she told herself, at least he will be safe from police and prison cells and torture, things he knew only too well, just because he was defending his imprisoned father.

If I were God, I would have made the father an ordinary man who did not care about freedom, democracy and justice. Omaya would have been less sad and would not have suffered so much in her last remaining years.

Ali al-Abdallah has been in prison for more than three years now. He was supposed to be released last June after spending two and-a-half years in prison for belonging to the Damascus Declaration, an opposition group seeking peaceful, democratic change.

The night he was supposed to be released, Omaya had a hunch that he would have to stay in prison. Maybe she knew deep in her heart that she was never meant to see her family again outside the high walls of prisons.

Indeed, they kept him in prison under fresh charges and started a new trial, because he had dared to make a statement from his prison cell supporting the Green Revolution in Iran last year.

In her last few months, Omaya was very sick and couldn’t visit her husband. Ali was praying for her all the time and kept saying that she would survive, that she was a fighter.

He was wrong. She deteriorated day by day. Her weakened body let her down, while her heart was fighting to stay alive.

During her last days in hospital, she kept saying something that nobody could understand. Not even her two daughters. “Do you want to drink?” She shook her head. “Hungry? In pain?” The answer was always no.

What was she saying, for God`s sake? Was she calling for her husband and sons? Was she talking to God, to please let her see her family one last time before she goes? Was she trying to scream out loud how unfair and painful it was to be a mother of idealistic boys and the wife of a man of dignity in this country?

Nobody will ever know. But if I were God, I would be ashamed to look into her dead eyes. And I would be ashamed of those who cause this pain for others only because they have a dream.

I prefer to stay a human being and cry for. Omaya, to console her family and to keep fighting against injustice and repression. Gods cannot change the world. We can, I hope.