Places | Earth

‘I Don’t Have to Tell You I’m Scared’: Inside One Syrian Family’s Displacement

“I felt as if the world was coming to an end.”

Deana needed to use the bathroom, so she took a deep breath and prepared to run for her life. The mother of eight and grandmother of four stood at the edge of a basement that, like many basements in Syria, had been transformed into an underground shelter. It was late March of 2018. One of the approximately 400,000 civilians in the eastern Ghouta region, Deana was witnessing the five-year siege that severed her from the outside world reach its end. Regime forces were closing in; it was a matter of time before the blockade would crumble and armed soldiers would pour through the streets.

As Bashar al-Assad’s military unleashed its final salvo onto Ghouta, helicopters and jets carried out relentless air raids, along with rocket and artillery fire. Going above-ground was extraordinarily dangerous, but, due to a power cut, there was no functional plumbing in this basement. The only toilet Deana could use was on the third floor, inside her apartment, which had already been damaged by aerial assaults. Cognizant of the perils overhead, she raced up the stairs, returned to refuge as fast as her body would allow, and exhaled.

There was no way to cook in the shelter, either. Deana’s husband, Khalid, put himself at great risk each time he prepared a meal. Khalid would dart up the steps and use a wood stove on the third floor to boil water. He’d then mix tomato paste with rice or cracked wheat; on occasion, he’d toss in lentils, too.

During most of their time beneath the earth, Deana and Khalid’s family would only leave in moments of quiet. The last two days of the siege, however, did not offer those moments of peace. Which is why they had to expose themselves as explosives struck close by unremittingly, echoing through the air and shaking their home.

“I felt as if I was crazy,” Rayhana, Deana’s twelve-year-old daughter, recalls. “My older sister would pull me up and down the stairs like a rocket.”

“We were being bombed, and we were sad,” Deana’s six-year-old girl, Raiyan, says. “My brother Yusuf would carry me down the stairs fast.”

Once, as Yusuf, nineteen, was walking to the bottom of a shelter across the road, Deana heard the deafening blast of an airstrike that landed across the way.

“Yusuf!” Deana shouted. She rushed to the front door, opened it, and tried to get a glimpse of her son, but plumes of dust and smoke filled the air; she could hardly see anything. “Yusuf!”

As much as Deana wanted to get closer to find her boy, the most dangerous place to be during the siege was in the open. She couldn’t make herself that vulnerable, not with all the aircrafts circling the skies. So she waited by her entrance, heart racing, screaming her only son’s name again and again.

And then, amidst the clamor, a man’s voice cut through: “Yusuf is okay!” It was one of their neighbors. “Yusuf is okay! He made it!”

Relief washed over Deana, whose worst fear was seeing her kids harmed by the barrage.

“I saw many children [in eastern Ghouta] who had lost limbs,” she says, “and those images haunt me to this day.”

“Whenever I heard the warplane I had great fear,” Yusuf says. “During a strike, my brain would go blank. My thoughts would then run to my family. I felt I needed to protect my parents and sisters but I couldn’t. All I could do was hope they were okay.”

When people returned to one of the area’s basements during those final hours, they were greeted by a harrowing sight: Dozens of civilians—some members of Deana’s family, some their neighbors—huddled together in the cramped, unlit space. Everyone was bone-thin, the fear and exhaustion palpable in their eyes. The air was hot and damp. The smell was difficult to bear. Adults wept, and, in turn, their sons and daughters followed suit.

Deana understood what was happening. With internet access, she saw the fighting in eastern Aleppo unfold in intimate, gruesome detail. There, troops patrolling checkpoints began limiting the amount of food, medicine, and other essential goods permitted to filter in, leaving inhabitants emaciated and doctors without vital supplies. In 2016, once the population had been weakened, the siege intensified dramatically, resulting in a high and unknown number of civilian casualties. Backed by Russian might, the regime gained an edge and put the rebels’ backs against the wall; as government forces pierced the barricade and started re-taking ground, neighborhood by neighborhood, activists used social media to issue their final goodbyes to the world. Some residents who survived the onslaught were bused to the province of Idlib, another rebel bastion, where more hardship—including more attacks from Syrian and Russian military—awaited.

An activist in her own right, Deana knew history was repeating itself. Lots of the events that occurred in Aleppo had already transpired in her region. The regime had tightened checkpoints outside of Ghouta, as well, and twice enforced a complete shutdown of goods—once in 2013, once in 2017. Deana and Khalid seldom had access to fruit and, during winter of 2013, could only harvest cabbage, lettuce, and cauliflower. To survive, they boiled the available vegetables without starch products, creating a thin, bland soup. It wasn’t enough. The adults grew frail; their children were starving. In the course of that period, some were desperate enough to eat animal feed. Khalid couldn’t bear the idea at first. After a month, though, he gave some to his kids after they begged to have their hunger pains soothed.

“That is when I learned what hunger truly meant,” Deana says.

For months, Deana, Khalid, and their family shared their experience under siege, as well as their exit from eastern Ghouta, by way of phone calls, emails, and WhatsApp. (Deana translated some of the messages from Arabic to English.) When absorbing their story, it is important to understand one fact, in no uncertain terms: They are victims of crimes against humanity.

According to the International Criminal Court’s Rome Statute, a campaign of extermination, indeed a crime against humanity, can be carried out by “the deprivation of access to food and medicine, calculated to bring about the destruction of part of a population.” As it became impossible for Deana and Khalid to properly nourish themselves and others, as their children pleaded to be fed what is typically given to farm animals, they were suffering such a campaign.

Malnutrition was a widespread problem throughout the siege. Deana, an English teacher, saw the struggle every day she conducted class. Her students would often become dizzy and pass out in the middle of the room. Her daughter Zaynab, twenty-four, taught English, too. The sight of her first-graders remains the most painful memory from that chapter of her life. She tried to teach by singing songs in English, but the kids sat in front of her silently with blank expressions. They were simply too weak to focus. Zaynab did everything she could to make them smile. Nothing worked.

“I only wished I could make sandwiches for the whole class,” she says. “My family had empty cupboards and sandwiches were a far-off dream, even for us.”

On Feb. 19, 2018, several months after the second shutdown commenced, violence swelled. With Aleppo under control, the regime turned much of its focus on eastern Ghouta: a valuable enclave due to its close proximity to the Syrian capital of Damascus. When Assad spoke with reporters about the offensive from his Presidential Palace, he stood less than fifteen miles away from Deana and Khalid’s home.

In early March, Russia established “humanitarian corridors” that, according to the Kremlin, would allow civilians to leave eastern Ghouta without harm. Deana never deemed them a viable choice. Some who used such corridors had gone missing; moreover, Deana worried her fierce criticism of Assad, which she frequently articulated online, got flagged by the regime.

They were far from the only ones who refused to use these passages, which a US State Department spokeswoman called “a joke.” Afraid that reaching the checkpoint on the government side would lead to torture, exile, death, or conscription into Assad’s military, the vast majority of eastern Ghouta’s populace stayed put. In other words: They considered it safer to remain under constant bombardment.

Those who waited were eventually presented with another choice, one also offered to survivors in eastern Aleppo. When it became clear that Assad’s army would soon break the siege, rebels controlling eastern Ghouta struck a deal, brokered by Russia, to evacuate citizens out of the region via bus. Once news spread, Deana and Khalid knew what had to be done.

“For my family and I, there was no other choice except to leave [on the buses],” Deana explains. “I had spoken openly on Twitter that Assad’s criminal regime was ruthless. This was enough to get myself and my family tortured and killed. We had no second thoughts about leaving when we learned that Assad’s forces were entering.”

Per the ICC document Elements of Crimes, a crime against humanity has been committed by a perpetrator who “deported or forcibly transferred, without grounds permitted under international law, one or more persons to another State or location, by expulsion or other coercive acts.” This is what Deana and Khalid’s family endured—even though they were not physically removed from their home. The ICC makes it clear that forced displacement “may include threat of force or coercion, such as that caused by fear of violence, duress, detention, psychological oppression or abuse of power against such person or persons or another person, or by taking advantage of a coercive environment.”

Dr. Galya Ben-Arieh, the founding Director of the Center for Forced Migration at Northwestern University, explains in an email the terminology further:

“The word ‘forced’ was joined with migration or displacement to raise awareness that migration or displacement is not a free choice of individuals, and that we need to look at the underlying state factors—persecution, systemic human rights violations, social disenfranchisement, state-supported violence, etc.—that are forcing people to leave their homes, even though someone may exercise agency as to when and how to migrate.”

After the deal had been agreed upon, Khalid searched for ways to sign up for the evacuation. He tried to get everyone on the first list of passengers that circulated, but couldn’t do so. The list for the second convoy filled, too, then the third, then the fourth. Before long, six convoys reached capacity, and Khalid was unable to register his family for any of them.

“As a father, I didn’t want to leave anyone behind,” he says. “I tried my hardest to gather my married daughters and their in-laws too. I felt helpless and frustrated.”

“When you experience something like this, you just stop thinking. You go into emergency [mode],” Deana adds. “I wasn’t thinking about what was going to happen to me. When we were living in Ghouta, we just wanted to leave. If we have to live in a tent, we’ll live in a tent. We just want to get out of this situation of bombing and starvation. We started thinking, ‘We can live in a tent, no problem.’”

As regime forces drew close, Deana, Khalid, and their extended family, around twenty people in total, gathered what they could carry into small bags and set off into the night—a last-ditch effort to escape. Miraculously, they came upon two buses that, combined, had enough room for everyone in their group.

It was one in the morning when they confirmed their seats. The last to board, Deana sat at the back of the bus with tears in her eyes. A Lebanese-American who met Khalid in the United States when he took a trip there, she moved to Syria in 2000 to be alongside her husband’s aging parents. She envisioned a peaceful life in eastern Ghouta, where generation after generation could coexist harmoniously. She wanted the country to exemplify how non-violent protest could transform a Middle Eastern nation into one that offered the freedoms enjoyed in the West.

As she recounts the night of her departure, Deana mentions the hope she felt in 2011 watching passionate demonstrations from her balcony. The rhythmic din of chants echoed through town, and she and Khalid were optimistic that Assad would forsake his powers, that the international community would do its part to enact change.

“We expected to win,” Deana says. “We thought, ‘This is it.’”

Instead, their city, as well as many others, has been destroyed—reduced to little more than rubble and ash. The dreams of the Arab Spring have been quashed. Syria has become a breeding ground for extremists who poison the message of rebels seeking a democratic society. Assad remains in power and, with Russia’s help, is winning the war decisively. Recent reports estimate more than half a million civilians have been killed as all of us have borne witness, offering little more than thoughts and prayers. Millions have left the country as refugees; even more have been internally displaced.

As the driver turned on the ignition, pulled the gear stick, and slowly navigated the fractured pavement, Deana, along with those she loves most, joined that final group.

“I felt as if the world was coming to an end,” Safiya, Deana’s sixteen-year-old girl, remembers. “I was sad. Sadness engulfed me but I kept smiling for my little sisters. I put on a brave face, but underneath my heart was shattered.”

In total, the bus trip from Ghouta to al-Bab, a rebel-controlled pocket in the Aleppo Governorate, took fifty hours. Deana describes it as “a ride from a horror movie.” The windows did not open, and there was no air conditioning. Her eight-month-old grandson cried most of the way due to poor ventilation. And members of the Syrian regime, dressed in plainclothes, occasionally moved around and tried to speak with other riders. The family, knowing what the agents might do with accurate information, gave fake names.

“My two children were very hard to handle,” says Aisha, twenty-five, Deana’s oldest daughter. “Leaving my home and everything I know made me cry. I tried to be brave and hide my tears in front of my children and young sisters. We tried not to eat or drink anything during the trip because we knew there were no restrooms. This made me exhausted since I was nursing my son. I became dehydrated.”

Not only were there no restrooms—the only sites they were allowed off the bus were open fields. Safiya refused to relieve herself without a semblance of privacy; as a result, she developed a urinary tract infection and still feels kidney pain.

Back on board, as the bus carried her north, Safiya decided to put her grief into words. In a moment of deep reflection, she picked up her phone, created a new text memo, and began writing.

I don’t have to tell you I’m scared. My body is shaking, my voice is cracking—fear is running through my veins.

Don’t ask me about being homesick. Ask my friend, the one I left behind; we cried together until I thought I would suffocate in my sorrows.

Don’t ask me if I’m in pain. Ask my books and journals that I saved under the rubble; I placed them neatly on a shelf to bid them and my bedroom a decent farewell.

Don’t ask me. I beg you! Ask the bricks of my broken house. For the tears in my eyes may overflow if I say just one more word. So please, don’t ask me.

Safiya read the text, set her phone down, and looked around at her fellow civilians. Like her, they were awash with fear.

They feared the buses, which frequently broke down, would stop working altogether, leaving them stranded to die. Passengers had heard tales of convoys that broke down for good. Those inside did not make it to their destination.

“You know when there’s a herd of animals and the sick and the old get left behind? That’s how you feel,” Deana says. “Any bus that gets left behind is not protected.”

They feared their belongings, the essentials they gathered last-minute, would be stolen. They feared for those back home who didn’t escape. And they feared the future that awaited them at their destination would be too difficult to manage—that they’d end up broke, homeless, unable to pursue enriching lives.

To the relief of those on each bus, the periodic engine problems kept getting fixed. In the middle of the night, more than two days after leaving Ghouta, the convoy transferring members of Deana and Khalid’s family reached al-Bab.

Reality set in fast. The mosque where the buses stopped was already packed and emitted an unbearable stench. Everyone sat outside in the dark, unsure of what to do next.

Then a stranger approached and introduced himself. He had been displaced, too, he told them—from Deir ez-Zor to al-Bab. He had been in their shoes. He understood their anguish. The man has since found a home—a nice home, one with space to accommodate lots of guests—and told the family it could stay with him until it got settled.

Says Deana, “He is one of the greatest people I can think of right now.”

Everyone entered the stranger’s house and formed a line for the bathroom. When it was her turn, Deana stepped past the door and felt overcome with emotion as she gazed upon the clean, white, ceramic toilet standing before her.

“In that moment,” she says, “I was the happiest person in the world.”

Minutes later, she exited the restroom, lay on the ground, and pulled a blanket over her. All was quiet. For the first time in memory, Deana slept peacefully through the night.

*

More than five months have gone by since Deana and Khalid’s family left home. It is impossible to say how many Syrians have done the same, but the statistics available are staggering. In 2017, the UN stated there were 6.1 million internally displaced persons (IDPs), including 2.5 million children, within Syria. More than 920,000 people were displaced inside the country during the first four months of 2018, lots of whom resided in eastern Ghouta. Since then, more than 350,000 have reportedly fled from the Dara’a governorate toward the southwestern border.

If we add the three numbers above together, the result is greater than the individual populations of most countries in the world. (With another offensive in Idlib forthcoming, that total could quickly surge.)

Deana, Khalid, and their loved ones are now safe; however, they have yet to find a permanent residence. They currently pay a monthly rate to stay in a tolerable apartment complex, but there is no official agreement in writing. Deana fears the property owner could kick them out at any moment for any reason—legitimate or not.

They haven’t generated steady income, either. As difficult as her role is as the matriarch, Deana believes her husband’s role as the breadwinner is far more difficult. Khalid is still searching for stable work. The family has savings, but, with a lot of people to support, cannot live off that long-term.

“You know that person who sits by the side of the road with nowhere to go? That’s how I feel,” Deana says. “I feel as if I am a homeless person sitting at the curb of the street with nowhere to turn.”

Of paramount concern is the children, who have been impacted by recent events in varying ways.

Displacement has devastated Safiya, and it has galvanized her to take action. “I want to write,” she says. “I’ll be a writer and put in black and white what is wandering aimlessly in my head. All of mankind will know what happened to me in a country called Syria.”

Displacement has uplifted Yusuf’s spirit. “Some were scared of the unknown and being displaced, but for me, it was a new chance for life,” he says. “On the trip, I saw the trees and greenery, and I thought back to how I left the dust, smoke, rubble, and destruction behind me. A fragile calm overwhelmed me.”

Displacement has infuriated Rayhana. As she contemplates her exodus, her face curls into an angry look. “I was sad!” she shouts. “I left my best friend. I gave her my most loved possessions, so she would always remember me.”

Displacement has brought relief to Raiyan. One evening, as Deana was tucking her into bed, the six-year-old assured her mom they “came to a better place,” one free of bombing. It pained Deana to know a girl so young believes her life as an IDP is an improvement over the life she had back home.

It is indeed an improvement, for all of them, but a host of challenges must still be overcome to build a stable, happy future. Despite these hurdles, and despite all she has suffered, Deana maintains faith that better days lie ahead—for her, for her family, for Syria.

“Sad memories override our minds,” she says, “but hope remains in our hearts. Because without it, we would have lost everything.”