The night after her father had given them their knives, Doaa gathered her sisters and created a pact. “If any soldier tries to rape us,” she whispered so her parents couldn’t hear, “we must be ready to kill ourselves. We cannot live with that shame. Our honor is all we have left.” Thirteen-year-old Saja and ten-year-old Nawara took her hands and nodded grimly in agreement.
Not long after that, soldiers came to the house to inspect the back room where Doaa and the family were sitting. One of them was in his early twenties with long, unruly black hair. He ogled Doaa in a way that she found inappropriate. She shifted uncomfortably under his gaze. Though Shokri had instructed them all to stay silent during the searches and not to antagonize anyone, this time Doaa couldn’t contain herself. She glared back at him, not bothering to hide the loathing and anger behind her gaze.
“Why are you staring at me like that?” the soldier demanded.
¨I’m a free person,” she replied defiantly, her face livid with anger. “I can do whatever I want.” Doaa knew the word free would set the soldier off.
Annoyed, he charged toward her demanding to see her identification.
“I don’t have one,” she admitted.
“Don’t have one? Why not? How old are you?”
“Fifteen.”
“So why don’t you have an ID yet?”
“I tried to get one. I applied for an ID at the government registry, but they refused to issue one to me.”
The soldier laughed when he heard this. “Then why don’t you go to a demonstration for that?”
Doaa saw clearly that her participation in the demonstrations was no secret. She felt her heart thump inside her chest as this dawned on her, but she refused to show her fear. “Yes, maybe I will,” she replied flippantly.
The soldier’s eyes flashed with anger as he lifted his gun in warning. “Don’t talk back,” he ordered.
The whole family froze in fear, waiting for the soldier’s anger to explode, but after glaring at Doaa for some time, he finally lowered his gun, turned, and walked toward the door, muttering as he left, “You’d better watch yourself because, don’t forget, we’re watching you.”
When the door slammed behind him, Hanaa was furious. “Never speak to the soldiers like that! You’re putting yourself in danger!”
“You’re putting all of us in danger!” Shokri fumed as he rose to stand over Doaa. “From now on, you remain silent whenever they enter,” he demanded.
Doaa was too shaken and angry to answer. She didn’t even bother to nod in acknowledgment. Instead, she just lowered her head and stared mutinously at the floor. Deep down she was glad she had defied the soldier, but she also knew that she could never admit this to her family. She did feel proud when later that day her sisters whispered to her that they respected her courage, while at the same time expressing their wonder at what had become of their shy sister.
On the morning of May 5, eleven days after the siege began, Hanaa stood in front of the empty cupboard, now desperately worried about how she would feed the family. All of a sudden she heard an amplified voice blaring outside the window. Too afraid to open it since that was against the rules of the siege, the family pressed as close to the window as they could to make out the announcement from the police car driving through the neighborhood: “Today, there is a curfew. From 7:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. you must remain in your homes. From 1:00 to 2:00 p.m. women have permission to leave their houses to shop for food. All women leaving their homes will be searched. The curfew will resume at 2:00.” The siege had been lifted, if only for a brief moment.
Hanaa breathed a sigh of relief, thinking only of the groceries she would finally be able to bring home to her hungry family. But Shokri was outraged by the announcement. Touching women was considered unacceptable in Islam. He felt that this order to search women was an attempt to provoke the men of Daraa in the government’s desperation to control the population.
“I will never let them lay a hand on you, as long as I live,” Shokri said incredulously, refusing to let Hanaa leave. But she was adamant; the children were growing thinner by the day and Ayat’s young children were constantly crying from hunger.
“We have to feed our family. There’s nothing left in the house.” Hanaa pleaded gently, meeting her husband’s eyes. “If I have to suffer the indignity of being searched, I will.”
Shokri looked around at his frail family and reluctantly agreed.
When Hanaa finally stepped outside her home, she found that the neighborhood was completely occupied by soldiers, tanks, and weapons. Just a few hundred meters from the house, she saw a group of more than one hundred officers sitting around long tables laden with food. She realized that while her family and the other citizens of Daraa had starved, the soldiers had been feasting just outside their doors.