While Doaa’s father disapproved, and her sisters made fun of her for dreaming of becoming a policewoman, Hanaa didn’t tease Doaa at all. Instead she talked to her and tried to understand her daughter’s motivations. Doaa confided that she felt trapped as a girl. Why couldn’t she be independent and build her own life? Why did it always have to be linked to a man’s?
Hanaa admitted to Doaa that even though she had fallen in love with Shokri, she regretted getting married at seventeen. Hanaa had been at the top of her class in school and excelled in her math and business courses. She had hoped to go on and study at the university, but back then, women had few options other than marrying and starting a family, but Hanaa thought perhaps Doaa could be different.
When Doaa was invited by her aunts on a trip to Damascus, the cosmopolitan capital city, Shokri allowed her to go, hoping that the trip might satisfy her urge for adventure. Instead, her visit only increased it. Doaa was transfixed by the bustling city. She imagined herself wandering the streets, visiting the beautiful Umayyad Mosque, negotiating in the bustling trade at the souk, and walking the paths of the sprawling university where she hoped to one day study. Damascus opened Doaa’s eyes and set her mind on the idea of a different kind of future than the traditional one prescribed for her.
But those dreams would soon be torn from her. On December 19, 2010, after clearing the dinner plates, the family gathered as usual around the TV to scan the satellite channels for the news. Al Jazeera was leading with a breaking story from Tunisia about a young street vendor named Mohamed Bouazizi, who set fire to himself after the police confiscated his vegetable cart. A lack of economic opportunity in the country had reduced him to selling fruit and vegetables, and when that last bit of dignity was taken from him, he ended his life in a horrifying and public show of protest. It was the beginning of what was to become known as the Arab Spring. Everything in the region was about to change.
Including in Daraa. But not in the way that the people of Doaa’s hometown had hoped.
TWO
The War Begins
It all started with some graffiti spray-painted on a wall by a group of schoolboys.
It was February of 2011, and for months the people of Daraa had watched as repressive regimes throughout the Middle East were challenged and brought down. In Tunisia, disenfranchised youths, identifying with Mohamed Bouazizi’s despair and reacting to his self-immolation, set cars on fire and smashed shop windows in their frustration and desperation. In response, the hard-line Tunisian president, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who had been in power since 1987, promised his people more employment opportunities and freedom of the press and said that he would step down when his term ended in 2014. However, his announcements did little to assuage the public. Riots erupted all over the country demanding the president’s immediate resignation. Ben Ali responded by declaring a state of emergency and by dissolving the government. His hold on the country weakened and his ring of supporters in the army and the government turned against him. On January 14, less than a month after Mohamed Bouazizi took his own life, the president resigned from office and fled to Saudi Arabia with his family.
For the first time ever in the Arab region, a popular protest had succeeded in bringing down a dictator. In Syria, families such as Doaa’s watched in amazement. No one imagined that they could ever defy the Syrian regime. Everyone disliked some things about the government—the ongoing emergency law, worsening economic conditions, a lack of freedom of speech—but the people had all learned to live with them. Everyone felt that nothing could be done. An all-seeing security apparatus reached into every neighborhood and kept an eye on troublemakers. Activists in Damascus who had demanded reforms after the death of former president Hafez al-Assad had landed in prison, which had intimidated people from speaking ill of the regime, much less making demands—until now. The uprising in Tunisia made it seem to ordinary Syrians that anything was possible.
Doaa, now sixteen, and her sisters began to press their parents for details about what was happening in the region, wondering whether it could happen in Syria as well. Their father tamped down their enthusiasm, afraid to encourage them. Syria was different from Tunisia, he told them. Their government was stable. What happened in Tunisia was a onetime thing. Or so he thought.