Tortured, Missing and Martyred – the Fate of Three Sons

I have always heard of al-Khansaa, the seventh-century female poet who lost her two brothers to war. She is famous for the heartrending elegies she wrote to lament them, and for encouraging her sons to go out to battle, where they too were killed.

In January 2013, I met a woman on a bus who reminded me of al-Khansaa. I was heading to Damascus to visit my son in Adra prison. He had been detained there for five months, and the thought of seeing him soon brought tears to my eyes.

“Are you alright?” asked the woman sitting next to me, whose name was Umm Mohammed. I told her my story and she started weeping, saying, “I’m on my way to visit my son in Adra prison too.”

Her son Omar had been detained in May 2012. Like my son, he had been 17 at the time. Her story didn’t end there – her eldest son Mohammad went out to work one day in September 2012 and never came back. She knew the government had arrested him, but had no information on his whereabouts.

Mohammed was a father to two young children, and the woman told me her heart broke each time her grandchildren asked after him.

I looked at her and wondered, “How is she dealing with all this? I know where my son is, and I occasionally get to visit him, but my life is a misery. Does she even manage to fall asleep at night?”

We parted ways when we arrived in Damascus, but ran into each other again the following day at Adra. Once we had registered our names and gone through a search, we were placed in a room with two barred windows separating us from the detainees.

Omar came out first and started crying as soon as he set eyes on his mother. It was a very touching scene. When my son came out, he nodded to Omar, and told me the two of them shared a prison cell.

An hour later, when visiting time was over, Umm Mohammed and I said our goodbyes to our sons. We gathered up what was left of our broken hearts and reluctantly left.

This was the start of a great friendship. We were united by our hopes and sorrows.

In April 2013, Umm Mohammed received a phone call from a security service office in Damascus. They asked her to come there to collect her son’s personal effects. Mohammed was dead.

That is how she found out about the death of her eldest son. No information on how, where or when he had died, and nothing about the circumstances of his death. This is how the Syrian government treats its people.

Following this catastrophe, Umm Mohammed poured all her efforts into securing Omar’s release. She hired a lawyer and paid him every penny she had. Three months later, in July 2013, she called me to say, “My son Omar is finally being released tomorrow. Please pray that we get back to Idlib safely.”

Despite this happy news, I sensed worry in her voice, so I asked her whether anything was wrong. She said she wouldn’t stop worrying until they were finally back home.

Sadly, her fears were not misplaced. On their way back to Idlib, they were stopped at al-Qatifa checkpoint. Omar was arrested for not carrying a document stating that his military conscription had been deferred. Neither Omar’s pleas nor Umm Mohammed’s tears made any difference.

When I called her to check up on them, she said, “I have lost Omar. I wish I’d left him in that accursed prison.” I went to see her and held her as she cried like a child saying, “Mohammed is dead and Omar is lost.”

In October 2013, I received a phone call from my son, who was still in Adra prison.

“Mother,’ he said. “Omar is back in Adra, but don’t come immediately. Wait a week until he has healed a little and can walk again.”

Omar had been moved from one security service headquarters to another, and he had been brutally tortured. Thank God, he was still alive.

A few days later, Umm Mohammad and I travelled to Damascus together to visit our sons. After we saw them, I returned to Idlib, but Umm Mohammad stayed on in Damascus to carry on the fight to free her son.

She and her lawyer kept pleading with the judge until he finally released Omar. He also granted him a document deferring his military service, allowing him to cross checkpoints safely.

Umm Mohammed collected Omar, but instead of bringing him back home to Idlib, she took him to a liberated area in the countryside where he would be safe from the clutches of the government.

Her happiness didn’t last long. Two months after Omar’s release, her youngest son Akram was arrested and questioned on the whereabouts of his brother Omar.

Umm Mohammad went back to spending her days searching, this time for Akram. She never found out where he was, though.

“I’ve forgotten the meaning of sleep,” she once told me. “I constantly think about Mohammed and wonder what they did to him. Then I think of Akram and wonder whether they are doing the same to him. I’m afraid they’ll kill Akram just as they killed Mohammad.”

When I asked her about Omar, she told me he had joined the opposition fighters.

A year after his release, Omar was martyred in Aleppo. I visited my friend Umm Mohammed to offer my condolences.

“You are the al-Khansaa of the Syrian Revolution,” I said. “The sacrifices you have made are as great as those which history attribute to her.”

The reply she gave me will be imprinted in my memory for ever.

“Al-Khansaa’s children were martyred in the battlefield while defending themselves. My eldest son Mohammad was tortured to death. I don’t know whether my youngest son Akram is still being tortured or whether he has already been killed.”

But then she added, “My only source of joy comes from the fact that my third son Omar was martyred, just like al-Khansaa’s sons”.

Manal al-Hassan is the pseudonym of a Damascus Bureau contributor living in Idlib, Syria.