Doaa and her sisters would join in the chants of “Allahu Akbar” (God is great) and then “How can you kill your own sons?” and “Freedom!” Shouting along from their rooftop was a way of participating. Doaa knew that they had to be careful to not be noticed, as being on the roof made them a target for any snipers surveying the crowds from above. Anytime a soldier looked in her direction, her heart pounded. But despite her fear, being on the roof where she could see and join in the chants made her feel connected to the opposition.
One day, as she was in her usual position leaning over the edge of the roof and chanting the slogans along with the protesters, a soldier spotted her from a nearby building where he was stationed to observe the crowd, occasionally firing shots into the streets.
“Get down, irhabiya [terrorist],” he shouted at her. When Doaa didn’t move, he threatened, “Get inside or I’ll shoot you.”
That day Doaa felt emboldened by her fear, and she shouted back, “You’re the terrorist, you’re the one killing people! I saw you!”
At this, the man raised his gun and pointed it directly at Doaa. She quickly realized, in horror, that this soldier really intended to shoot her, so she bolted for the door. As she did, she felt a gust of air as a bullet brushed past her ear and hit the iron door in front of her, leaving a dent before it ricocheted backward and dropped to the ground. Just an inch closer and she would have been dead.
She threw the door open and ran inside to the safety of her home. Catching her breath, Doaa was surprised to realize that despite the bullet’s having just buzzed past her, she was not afraid. She wondered if she was becoming immune to fear. Every day they learned of more people that they knew who had been killed by government forces, but somehow, at this moment, she felt intuitively that the time had not yet come for her life to end. She felt that God had her destiny in his hands, and that the best way to serve him was to do what she believed was right and to follow the direction she received from her prayers. Doaa didn’t want fear to conquer her or her family, and she was resolved to continue living this way.
Through the fall and long winter of violence and food, electricity, and water shortages, the Al Zamels, like all families, did what they could to get by in a city that had turned into a war zone. Shokri brought home just enough money to buy food, and families and neighbors did what they could to help one another.
Then one day in June 2012, when Shokri arrived at his salon, he found that two missiles had hit the roof, turning the back of his shop into rubble. For over thirty years, Salon Al Fananeen had been his source of income and part of his identity, and now it lay in ruins.
He surveyed the damage, sweeping away shattered pieces of mirror and cleaning the debris from the mangled chairs. He dug out his scissors and brushes, meticulously cleaning off the dust, then placed them carefully back on the half-broken shelf. He pushed the pieces of rubble from the roof to the far reaches of the shop, moved the only undamaged chair to the front, and waited all day for a customer. No one came.
When he returned home that night, Doaa noticed a change in him. His shoulders slumped and his face was blank. He somehow looked smaller than usual. “Baba, what’s wrong? What happened?”
“The shop…” was all he could say. The family tried to comfort him, assuring him that they were relieved to have him home all day so that they wouldn’t have to worry about his safety all the time, but he found no comfort in their words. The loss of his shop took his spirit away. He spent the rest of the day sitting in the same spot in the corner of the house, chain-smoking, and only speaking if someone asked him a question. Doaa sensed that his losing his livelihood was like his losing his manhood, and she desperately wanted to find a way to help him, but the only thing she could do was try to keep his spirits up. “It will be over soon, Baba, we must be patient.”
Shokri’s shop wasn’t the only one that had been destroyed. Ayat’s husband’s popular baklava shop down the street was also demolished by a bomb. He had come late to work that day, just minutes after the missile fell. “God saved me,” he told the family. Days later, another bomb demolished his car. “That was everything I had,” he told Ayat, then revealed his plan to flee for Lebanon where his brother lived. His brother could help find him work and he could send money home for her and the kids. Ayat’s husband had no interest in taking part in the armed struggle for either side. He just wanted to continue to make a living for his family, so instead he joined a growing group of Syrians paying bribes at checkpoints to make their way out of the country for neighboring Lebanon to wait out the war. Ayat and the children would follow him not long after by paying a smuggler to get them to the border, and telling the soldiers at checkpoints along the way that they were headed there to visit relatives.