The Bitter Taste of Victory

The battle to liberate my city of Kafr Nubbal began on August 6, 2012, the day after I began my studies at Idlib University’s college of art.

I was terrified of being away from my family given the gravity and the volatility of the situation but was told that the locals had all fled Kafr Nubbal and that there was no way I could go back.

I was also worried about how I would see my family again especially with the disruption of communications in the city and surrounding area.

Then I received a text message from an identified number. It was from my father.

“We have been trying to locate a place with mobile phone coverage to send you this message,” it read. “Go to the city of Khan Shaykhun, to my friend Abu Ahmad, as we are outside the city. He will find a way to get you to us in the village of Kisafrah. When you get there ask for a house that belongs to a young man called Nazih. Nazih will then bring you to us.”

I immediately did what my father asked. The driver I found took me via a circuitous route to avoid the fighting and we arrived in Khan Shaykhun after a long and exhausting journey. I was petrified. There were many fighter jets in the sky and the sound of bombardment was deafening.

When I got to his house, Abu Ahmed quickly jumped in our car and asked his wife to accompany us. As we drove the sound of fighter aircraft and mortar rounds shook the air around us. There were no other cars, just us. We stopped repeatedly during the two-hour journey to take shelter from the bombardment but eventually reached the village of Kisafrah. We kept asking for Nazih’s house until we found it. It was a small house with two rooms and a kitchen, previously occupied by Nazih’s brother and his wife. They moved out to make room for us.

Nazih and my own brother were very good friends. Nazih had told my brother, who had been wounded in a previous ill-fated battle to liberate our city, that he could bring family and whoever he wanted to this house.  

We found space in this small house for my family, my eldest sister’s family and the family of my sister’s friend. In total we were 19 people. Men slept in one room and women and children slept in the other room.

It was the month of Ramadan. We prepared food and broke our fasts together.

Actually, those days brought people together. People in Kinsafrah were all very kind and fearless. They welcomed internally displaced people (IDPs) into their homes. And because there were so many IDPs every house was home to two to three families.   

Despite seeking refuge in Kinsafrah we were not entirely safe. Three days later, we were woken at six in the morning by the sound of a warplane firing missiles at a nearby house. Three people from the same family were martyred in the attack. They were displaced like us. They had fled their home only to be killed here.

A further displacement was coming our way. The bombing scared the local population and most decided to run away. We fled too and ended up in a village called Al-Mozrah.

My brother-in-law, who is a doctor, took us all to a house of a man whose son was one of his patients. We stayed there for one day. The next day, August 10, 2012, our city of Kafr Nubbal was liberated and we were able to return home.

But the festival that followed at the end of Ramadan a few days later arrived like an unwelcome guest. Eid Al-Fitr, on August 19, 2012, felt like a burden, especially for the bereaved mothers and wives who lost loved ones in a battle that left more than 100 martyrs.

The martyrs’ cemetery was the busiest place in town. Everyone there came to mourn a loved one.    

One could feel the tragedy just by walking down the street. People were dressed in black to mourn their dead, and were all terrified by the intense bombardment that followed the city’s liberation. Children found it particularly hard. They were no longer joyful and their smiling faces grew tense.

I will never forget those few bitter days of displacement.Yet, despite the hardship, I was still delighted by the liberation. And despite the death, destruction and everything else, victory was indeed sweet.

Nisreen al-Ahmad, 33, is from Kafr Nubbal in the Idlib countryside. She is a mother-of-two. The dire security situation forced her to drop out of university when she was a third year student of Arabic literature.