We Lined Up for Bread and He Massacred Us

Here in Idlib, Syria, we have gone back to the most primitive ways of living: We cook on coal. We wash our clothes by hand. But we are surviving. Some days it feels like a miracle.

By Amal

As told to Jessica Goudeau with Amy Bench

This is the final essay in Displaced Voices, a monthly column by Jessica Goudeau which tells first-person stories of refugees, asylum-seekers, and economic migrants. The as-told-to format gives them control over their narratives; when appropriate, we have used pseudonyms to protect their identity.

Jessica’s note: For the last two years, I have been in weekly, sometimes daily, contact over WhatsApp with “Amal,” a woman who lives with her six children in Idlib Province, the last rebel-held region in Syria. I connected with her through her relative, who was resettled in Texas, when I was looking for a source on the ground for an article about the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons in the town of Khan Sheikhoun in April 2017. I interviewed Amal over video chat and “met” her six kids—while we talked, we could hear bombs falling outside of their shelter. Since then, a translator—based in the United States and using the pseudonym “Amena”—and I have chatted often with Amal. Filmmaker Amy Bench joined several of our conversations, asking many of the questions that led to this article. Our little group celebrated when Turkey brokered a truce in Idlib in September 2018, which meant that the combined Russian and Syrian regime forces would respect a buffer zone and no longer target the 3 million civilians who were internally displaced, like Amal and her kids. In late April of this year, backed by Russia, the Syrian regime broke that truce and began bombing its own people again. Amal’s messages took on a new caliber, begging us to do whatever we could to save her children and to get her out of the war zone. I cannot do that, though I have tried through every connection available to me—no one is getting out of Idlib right now. The only thing I can do is share her story, told in short messages over several days in April and May.

Today the Russian forces are dropping cluster bombs and barrel bombs on people in Idlib Province. The attacks were in the southern suburbs of Idlib, so all day today people have been migrating into the city by the hundreds. Today a mother and her baby girl died because of the attacks from the Assad regime and Russia.

We used to live like everybody else. We had life and hopes. We lived in peace and we had dignity. We never believed any of this would happen to us.

I am from Aleppo, Syria. I was born in 1983. I was born to a poor family. I have six brothers, including my twin brother, and three sisters.

My dad loved life, he spoiled us as much as he could. He took us places although we were very poor—he tried his best. We did not have much education; my oldest brother became a doctor and he is in Turkey now. As for the rest of my siblings, some finished studying and others did not—I was not able to go to school very often because of a lack of money. But we were street smart, and we were a happy family. We were open to life. Every one of my siblings worked hard to make something of themselves.

I got married when I was eighteen. I was very happy with him. My husband also came from a poor family, but we were doing ok. We took care of ourselves. We were able to buy a TV. We worked hard and eventually even bought a phone.

I had three kids in a row within four years. Later I had three more. I was raising my kids full time, and I had hopes that, even if I were not able to fulfill my dreams, my kids could achieve theirs. We had plans to educate our kids, since we never had the opportunity ourselves. We were so happy.

During those years, we couldn’t say what we thought; everything was for the Assad family. If you had any paperwork that needed to be processed, you had to pay money to get things done. It was total corruption in favor of the Assad family and their followers.

But when the Arab Spring began, with the revolutions starting in Tunisia, then Egypt, we thought: This is it. We can also change the future of our kids.

Bashar al-Assad and his followers did not like our protests. He sent his gangs to hit the protestors, to humiliate and imprison them. They raped the women. They killed the kids.

That only made us more stubborn.

We were determined to get rid of this regime for the sake of our dead. No ruler treats citizens of his country in such a horrific way. It is our right—it is the right of people everywhere in the world—to have freedom, to be able to ask for change. That is why the Syrian people launched the Free Syria Army.

The Assad regime responded by attacking us with weapons that are not approved in any country in the world. Chemical weapons. Barrel bombs. Missiles targeting hospitals and schools.

No other leader has done to his people what Assad did to us and remained in power. We lined up for bread and he massacred us. We took our children to school and he massacred us. We took our wounded to the hospital and he massacred us.

We fought so hard. The attacks only made us more resolute. Inshallah, someday we will rid Syria of Assad. But it got harder when international forces started assisting him: Russia, Iran, Hezbollah. The intervention of their airplanes and soldiers helped Assad stay and win.

Two of my brothers joined the Free Syria Army in Aleppo in 2012. They were killed. My twin brother was one of them.

We left our homes and moved from town to town. Five families or more would shelter in a house. Every house we moved to was destroyed by bombings. Assad has no mercy—not on children, not on the elderly, not on anyone.

I thought about my life before while we ran away from the bombs that threatened my children. My dad used to own a small store selling clothes. When we got out of school, we would run to his store and he would give us money to go buy snacks. On Fridays we were out of school and he would take us on a picnic—to farms around the city, to parks. We used to have a small truck and we would all pile in—my sisters and my brothers, my twin and me.

My father sold clothing, but I could not get clothes for my children. We played together after school, but there was no school for my children. We ate snacks and had picnics, but I could not find any food for my children.

The war killed my father. It was not a bomb or a gun. It was sadness.

After my two brothers died, my father worried all the time—he and my mother made themselves sick with worry. A year and a half after my first two brothers, a third brother was killed in an airplane raid. My sister’s husband and son were killed by another airplane raid. Cousins of ours died as well. One of my brothers took my father to Turkey to try and get him better. It did not work.

We had the best days of our lives with my father. Our family had so much love. We never realized a war would separate us all.

While my dad was dying in Turkey, my family stayed in the villages around Aleppo for a couple of years, then we went back to Aleppo. That’s when the siege happened.

One missile could take out a whole neighborhood. The noise was unbelievable. We did not have underground places to hide. We would run to basements, but those basements were not meant to be lived in. There was no electricity or water. We could only stay for two days at a time. When I remember the days when we were there during the siege in Aleppo, I don’t know how we managed to stay alive.

My husband and I were separated during the siege. He eventually made it to Turkey. He is trying so hard to get my children and I out of Syria. We do not have passports—why would we, when we were just poor people who had never traveled? My older sister and I stayed together with our children. We are together still.

My sister and I took our kids out of Aleppo as soon as we could. We came to a place near Idlib City; rebels held the region and we hoped they could protect and defend us. We settled in a little town next to a village called Khan Sheikhoun.

In April 2017, the Assad regime dropped chemical weapons on Khan Sheikhoun. I saw children burn. People suffocated. Dead people lay in the streets.

We moved to the city of Idlib after that.

These are the stories we tell each other when we meet new people. Somebody will talk about how he lost his house. Another will say how lost his whole family. There is one story I cannot forget: A man went to get bread. He came back to find the whole building had collapsed on his wife, his kids, and his family. He was the only one left.

And still, we are alive. Here in Idlib, we have gone back to the most primitive ways of living: We cook on coal. We wash our clothes by hand. It is like in the old days. But we are surviving. Some days it feels like a miracle.

People are coming to Idlib by the hundreds every day. Everything is expensive. A kilo of rice is almost fifty dollars USD. The Syrian lira is not keeping up. It is so hot. There is garbage everywhere—no one can collect it. People are dying of preventable diseases. We are suffering so much. At the end, when human beings lose hope, we would prefer death to this kind of living.

The air raids started again in the city. The Assad regime has bombed all of the areas around here. The rumor is he plans to bomb the city of Idlib soon; we have no idea every day how much time we have left.

I want to be safe. I want to see peace again. I want to keep my kids alive.