Soon after the Mother’s Day incident, Hanaa joined her sister on a visit to a friend of theirs, the mother of fourteen-year-old Ahmad, one of the boys who had been arrested. When Hanaa returned home, she was shaken and tearful. Ahmad was thin and gaunt, a ghost of his former self. “We almost didn’t recognize him when he came home,” his mother had told Hanaa. When she’d met with the boy, he had sat motionless, staring into space, unable to answer when they spoke to him. His swollen face was covered with red, shiny wounds, and his arms were blotched with bruises. Not only that, his knuckles were cut open and his fingernails were missing. His mother explained that his hands had been beaten with cables as punishment for the graffiti.
As word of the boys’ mistreatment and abuse while in prison spread and the death toll of protesters continued to climb, more and more people joined the weekly protests at the mosque and demonstrators began to add to their original demands of ending corruption and the emergency law. They were now calling for regime change. The protests were growing quickly in size and frequency, and more soldiers started pouring in from Damascus to subdue the movement.
Doaa heard that women were being encouraged to take part in the demonstrations. After what she’d seen on her grandfather’s roof, and hearing about Ahmad’s bruised and beaten body from her mother, she was eager to join in. Something in her had shifted. The shy girl who had once feared change now felt driven to be a part of a revolution.
One of the demonstrations took place in her neighborhood, and many people from the countryside and surrounding areas came to participate. The atmosphere was jubilant. The people of Daraa started to believe that they could make a real difference in their country. When Doaa heard the shouts of the demonstrators approaching her home, she rounded up her sisters, her brother, Hamudi, and her friends Amal and Hoda and joined a row of women and other young girls in the back of the crowd. Doaa was exhilarated. For the first time in her life, she felt a sense of larger purpose, and she was determined to play a part in what she hoped would be a movement for peaceful change in the country she loved.
The more demonstrations she attended, the bolder Doaa grew, and she found different ways to contribute to the cause. One of her roles at a protest was to help people who had been exposed to tear gas by squeezing lemon onto a cloth that they could place over irritated eyes, and by cutting onions in half to provoke tears that would wash away the chemicals. One of her most dangerous tasks was to pick up tear gas canisters and throw them back at the security forces. The hot canisters burned her hands and she risked a face full of tear gas if the canister went off while she was holding it. She also ran the risk of attracting the attention of the security forces, but she didn’t care; she was now wholly committed to the revolution, and her friends were beginning to get involved as well.
The protests eventually became social events where young people would gather to share their hopes for the future. Amal and Hoda would often join Doaa and her sisters after school and on weekends at protests, whenever their mothers allowed it. But most of Doaa’s friends were confined to their homes and would wait anxiously for her to tell them what had happened at each gathering. Doaa’s conversations with her friends were no longer about boys, marriage, or neighborhood gossip. Now they talked only about resistance and rebellion.
At night Doaa no longer watched TV, but rather spent her free time thinking up inspiring rally cries and slogans to print on signs that she would bring to demonstrations for others to carry. She also began making bracelets and rings out of beads that were the colors of the revolutionary flag: red, black, and green. Each took her several hours to make, and when she ran out of beads, she had to beg her father to buy her more. Shokri refused at first, worried that Doaa was risking her safety making the revolutionary-themed jewelry, but in the end, as almost always, he gave in to her. Doaa wore the bracelets on both wrists and gave them out to friends, telling them to hide the jewelry under their sleeves when security forces made their rounds. She knew it was risky to be caught with such jewelry, but she was determined to contribute to the cause in any way she could. Her mother was paranoid that someone might find out that Doaa was making these little symbols of rebellion and feared that Doaa might be arrested, so Hanaa took to hiding Doaa’s materials when she was out, but Doaa would eventually find them again and would go back to work on her jewelry at night while her parents slept.
“I’ll go mad otherwise,” she explained to her parents. She couldn’t demonstrate at night, when only men were protesting, but she couldn’t bear to sit by and do nothing.
The protests were so close to her house that she could hear the chanting as the demonstrators marched by. Each time she heard them, Doaa felt compelled to join in. During the day, she would throw on her jeans and a sweater and drape the flag of the revolution over her shoulders, preparing to go out. Watching her dress, her mother would implore her to stay home, out of harm’s way.
“Hayati [my life],” Hanaa would plead, “please don’t go. The security forces will recognize you and take revenge.”
But Doaa wouldn’t listen. “Mama, we can’t sit at home and do nothing.”