No Escape From the Bombs

Almost four years have passed since the day my family and I fled our home, but the memories are still fresh in my mind.

We left our town of Al-Sabeena in the Damascus countryside on Friday, September 21, 2012 and headed towards the city of Kfar Nabel in Idlib.

The main roads leading out of Al-Sabeena were blocked due to the fighting, so the driver of the minibus we had hired navigated his way out via a network of small streets.

We were left speechless at the sight of the deserted roads he drove through. Everywhere we looked we saw buildings lying in ruins. The silence was punctuated every now and then by the sound of a sniper firing a bullet or a mortar hitting its target.

The extensive destruction filled our hearts with fear, sadness and pain.

“When are we going to get out of here?” whispered my sister.

We eventually left the town and pulled up at the first of around 50 checkpoints we would cross during our journey. It was manned by government soldiers, who asked to see our documents.

We joined the queue of cars waiting to be searched, knowing it would be a long process. Our vehicle alone held nine people and some furniture we had brought with us.

The lengthening lines of traffic didn’t seem to bother the officer in charge of searching the vehicles, however. He just sat there, sipping coffee, while we waited.

A driver with a lorry loaded with goods suddenly lost his patience.

“How long are we going to be held here?” he asked. “I’ve been waiting for over an hour!”

A soldier walked towards him and dragged him out of his car.

“Unload your lorry, you animal,” he said.

When the man didn’t obey, the soldier hit him and started throwing his goods onto the road, all the while showering the driver with insults.

I watched the unfolding scene in shock, wondering what would happen next.

When we were finally allowed to drive on, we faced more of the same behaviour at one checkpoint after another.

The one I feared most was the Al-Qatifa checkpoint; people were known to disappear there.

It was heavily fortified and those who manned it had a reputation for brutality.

When we stopped at Al-Qatifa, a man dressed in a black uniform with the words “anti-terrorism” written on it came up to our vehicle.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

We lied and told him we were going to Maarat al-Numan. We didn’t want to tell him we were headed towards Kfar Nabel as it had recently been liberated by the opposition.

He looked into our minibus, and my brother froze in fear. He had not managed to defer his military conscription, which meant he could be held at the checkpoint. Luckily, the man didn’t seem to notice him.

After passing Al-Qatifa, we rested for 30 minutes before we resumed our journey on the motorway that led to Homs. A number of other vehicles were heading in the same direction so we decided to drive as a convoy. My father joined the passengers of another car because our minivan was quite crowded.

We drove past the ruins that were all that was left of the Al-Rastan bridge, past buildings riddled with bullet holes and walls with graffiti sprayed across them that read “[Bashar] al-Assad’s army was here”.

Night fell and we were soon enveloped by darkness. As we drove, we were suddenly ambushed by a car that appeared out of nowhere, flashing its lights at us.

Three soldiers stepped out and came towards us. They asked for our IDs, then looked through our furniture asking whose it was. The driver told them it belonged to my parents so they asked about my father. The driver said that he was in another car that had passed the same point moments ago, but they didn’t believe him.

The soldiers began questioning my mother, my siblings and I, then ordered us to get out of the minibus.

“But it’s really cold outside,” I protested.

The driver pulled them aside and gave them money. It seemed to have been all they were after, because they took it and drove away into the darkness.

We re-joined the convoy, making sure to keep close to the other vehicles for the rest of the journey. As we approached another government checkpoint I saw the slogan “Worship God, follow al-Assad” on a wall.

We stopped and disembarked yet again. An officer started questioning my father, asking where he was from and what he did for a living.

“The people of Kfar Nabel are all rebels,” he said to my father. “Why did all its policemen defect and join the opposition?”

I began to wonder if we would ever make it to our destination.

But then the driver handed out another round of money to the soldiers, saying it was for them to buy food and tobacco, and they allowed us to pass.

He then told us that his village was nearby and that we would all spend the night there, as it was dangerous to drive during the dark.

That night in his home in the village of Al-Halba east of Maarat al-Numan was one of the calmest I had known since the armed conflict began. No explosions, no gunfire and no sound of artillery.

We resumed our journey to Kfar Nabel the following morning: Saturday, September 22, 2012. I was looking forward to the prospect of living in Kfar Nabel, thinking it would be as calm as Al-Halba, but I was mistaken.

As soon as we entered the city I saw the same destruction we had left behind, and knew that we hadn’t escaped government bombardment.   

“Life has become unbearable,” my mother told me as she took in the scene,

“We live in fear, we die every day, we lose our sons, husbands and brothers. It is time for this war to end.”

Reem al-Hassan is the pseudonym of a Damascus Bureau contributor from Idlib. The 19-year-old was forced to abandon her studies when the revolution started. She now works as a newsreader at the Radio Fresh station in Kfar Nabel.

Read the Arabic version of this article here