A Personal Grievance Against the Regime

I announced my support for the revolution from the first day it started. Back then, a lot of people were still confused and in shock. I heard a lot of criticism of my opinion. I always replied saying, “I have a personal grievance against the regime”.
Very few know the story behind my grievance.
It all began when I was studying at Damascus university. I met a guy, we fell in love and after two years of courtship decided to get engaged. That was in 2006. Mazen called my father and asked to meet. I told my father that this was the man I wanted to marry. My father said that I was no longer a little girl and was now responsible for my choices. He would not stand in my way.
Mazen’s parents already knew we were in a relationship and that this engagement was clearly the next step. Given that both of our parents supported our plans, Mazen and I decided that his meeting with my father would serve as our engagement party. We told our parents and they all gave us their blessing. On that basis, we bought engagement rings and everything was set for a fortnight’s time.
A few days before the engagement, Mazen and I had an argument. It was like any normal squabble between two people about to get engaged.
Whenever we fought, he used to call me as soon as he got home. But that day he didn’t, so I thought he must be busy. He didn’t call the next day either, so I told to myself that he wouldn’t call before the engagement so as to make this last reconciliation extra special.
When the big day came, he didn’t come and he didn’t call.
I was in an awkward situation. I felt as if I had betrayed my parents’ trust, as the man I had chosen ran away at the first obstacle. I apologised to my father and mother and spent the whole night crying.

I couldn’t stop thinking about what could have prevented him from coming along with his parents. I could find no reason or excuse for him not at least calling.
At last, I decided to forget this bitter experience, to put it out of my mind and never think about Mazen again, whatever his excuse might have been.
After that, I spent the days trying to heal my wounds. I tried to keep myself busy with working and studying and various hobbies. Free time was agony, because I remembered what had happened and the betrayal of someone I loved.
One evening, four months after the incident, I was chatting to my parents while my father was watching the ANN channel, which I refused to watch because it follows an agenda even dirtier than that of the regime. It supports Hafez al-Assad’s brother Rifaat, who spread corruption in Syria during the 1980s and was banished by the then-head of state Hafez al-Assad. Although my father knew this channel’s background, he watched it to see the other face of the regime. That night I saw Mazen’s name in the channel’s news bar. I thought I was dreaming, so I watched the news bar until it appeared again.
“The Syrian regime arrested a number of activists in Damascus,” the announcement read, and it included seven names. Among them was Mazen’s.
Around that time in 2006, a lot of Syrian youths were arrested and accused of contacting hostile elements, interfering in issues that affected state security, undermining the prestige of the president and other charges considered to be major crimes. They were all just fabrications to target those who dared say a word against the governing authorities.
When I saw the news, I gasped and tears began to run down my face. My parents wondered what had suddenly happened to me but I couldn’t say a word and left the sitting room to go to my bedroom. My parents only realised what had happened when they themselves read the news bar.
That was a long night.
“What crime did he commit to get arrested? Dreaming of freedom?” I asked myself. “And is dreaming enough to be arrested and put in a prison that we don’t know if he will ever leave?”
The shock reminded me of the disastrous engagement party.
“Do I call his parents to find out what happened?” I wondered. “How can I call them after what he did? But what if he was arrested before the engagement? is it possible that I might have wronged him?”
Early the next morning, I left the house to go to college and on my way called his sister from a public telephone.
I asked her about Mazen and she said he was travelling.
“I don’t want to talk too much; is the news I heard true?” I asked her.
She said that it was, and that he had been arrested three days before our engagement. She apologised profusely for what had happened and for my humiliation in front of my parents but said that the tragedy had blinded them and that they had not thought of calling and explaining for their son’s sudden absence. To that day they still didn’t know where he was, all they knew was he had been arrested in his underwear and was not even allowed to get dressed before he was taken away.
Nine months later, we found out that Mazen had been detained by the state security service because of some comments he had made on a blog. His parents hired a lawyer so that, unlike so many others, their son’s case would at least go to court.
After a year-and-a-half, they charged him with ten fabricated counts and he was “temporarily” sentenced to six years. We didn’t know what they meant by “temporarily” but there was no guarantee that he would leave prison after finishing his sentence. Despite that, I decided to wait for him and risk six years of my life.
The regime wasted those six years of my life by arresting Mazen. So how can I forget that? How can I not take part in the people’s revolution when I have a personal grievance against the regime?

Salam al-Saghir, 35, works as a teacher. She left Damascus in 2014 and currently lives in Germany.