Suwaida: Where’s Che Guevara?

In mid-October, I returned to the city of Suwaida, to stay at a house I had last visited almost two years ago.

The streets of Suwaida were quiet. People are still welcoming to strangers, but these days with an air of weariness, unlike the old way. That is true of most Syrians nowadays.

My friend Hussein met me at his place. I have known him for 14 years, since we were at university together.

He took me on a tour of Suwaida so I could find out what had happened to the city during Syria’s revolution.

Hussein’s mother, a delicate women in her seventies, was busy stuffing aubergines in preparation for pickling and preparing other seasonal foods for friends and neighbours. She is proud of this work.

These days, she is making more of everything, because she will smuggle some of this food to the rebels and to people displaced from other areas.

“The whole village has stopped talking to me and my children because we support the opposition,” she said. Like many Suwaida residents, she calls this city “the village”. “I’ve been preparing foodstuffs for this village and nearby ones for 43 years. Women used to gather in this house every day, but now no one comes to visit, except those closest to us. They’re all afraid of us.”

Um Hussein says no one has done any harm to her or her children, but she is sorry they are so isolated.

“I raised my children to be free and to do whatever they see is right,” she said. “I’m smuggling provisions to displaced people and to the rebels in Daraa. We smuggle these supplies as if they were weapons – even food has to be smuggled now.”

Um Hussein says no one suspects her because preparing foodstuffs has always been her job.

“I wish people who support the regime would realise that we have the right to speak out loud and demand freedom,” she said. At this, she started crying and left the room.

We went off to visit Abu Rima, a friend of Hussein’s in his forties. His brother was previously detained for supporting the opposition, and Abu Rima does not dare oppose the regime openly.

A chubby man, and brisk in the way he speaks and moves, Abu Rima laughed as he talked about his wife, who supports the Syrian regime.

“I don’t dare watch Al-Jazeera or Al-Arabiyya TV. Just imagine, in some villages it’s dangerous to watch Al-Jazeera. People do it in secret,” he said. “Whenever I speak my mind about the regime, my wife becomes as angry as if I were cursing her father. She threatens to leave me, or worse – she says she might turn me in to the security forces. I’m sure she won’t, but she might leave me.”

Abu Rima said people in Suwaida had been intimidated by regime propaganda about the dangers of sectarianism, about the revolution being a Sunni Muslim movement whose goal is to establish an Islamic state that will threaten minorities.

Most people in Suwaida, he said, were against anyone who “dissents from the majority”.

“People aren’t in control of their own voices. Everyone believes your voice belongs to the group because you’re part of it. No one can see that having a different political opinion is an advantage, not a crime or an act of treason,” he said.

We walked on silently for a few hundred metres. The quiet gave me space for contemplation, something I needed because Damascus had experienced continuous air raids, artillery fire and gunfire for the past few months.

I have the impression that Suwaida is in conflict with itself, unable to make up its mind whether it is for or against the revolution. On the one hand, Suwaida residents live in fear of the regime’s brutality, but on the other, when people fled from Daraa, they took them in and did them no harm.

Most of the city’s inhabitants are Druze, and they behave like other communities – protecting members of their own group from harm by others. This has reduced the level of their commitment to the revolution. However people feel about the regime, everybody believes their faith group must come first.

When we returned to my friend Hussein’s house, I saw that his room was almost the same as it was the last time I was there, except for one thing – a picture of Che Guevara had disappeared.

When I quizzed Hussein about the missing poster, we had a lengthy and heated discussion.

“You’re asking me about Guevara? Everybody is Guevara now. People have sacrificed everything for the cause of freedom. Only the people know what their suffering is like; only someone who’s been displaced or injured knows what it’s like,” Hussein said.

“Everybody wants freedom – but you can’t set a whole forest on fire instantaneously. I wish people would realise that the fire will spread to Suwaida eventually, even if it takes a long time. The Syrian people know what they’re doing. Why would I need Guevara in my room – what for?”

Hussein said my visit was likely to spark many rumours.

“People’s imagination will lead them to believe I’m starting a political party or receiving orders from someone,” he said, adding, “Don’t believe that everyone in Suwaida supports the regime. There are opposition supporters, and in large numbers too.”

After that we stopped talking about the revolution. We spoke instead about our student days in Damascus, and about the old man who used to sit outside the college entrance. I told Hussein that two months before, the man was still there selling his biscuits and pens, but he disappeared after an explosion on Al-Mazzeh highway. He did not die in the explosion; he just stopped showing up.

We remembered Hussein’s old house in Bab Sharqi in Damascus and many other things about the city, as well as the first time we visited a friend house in Homs. After dinner, Hussein went to bed without saying anything else.