I looked down at the swell of mourners moving toward me. A coffin was held aloft, touched and blessed by a thousand hands as it swayed down the street. The men carrying it were sweating despite the cool afternoon, pressed in on all sides by chanting protestors. Some of them had caught sight of me and my camera as I had tried to catch up with the cortege and they cleared the way. They wanted their story of resistance told. I struggled through the crowd and jumped onto a flatbed truck a few yards ahead of the coffin, which was draped with the flag of the Syrian revolution (three red stars rather than the two green stars of the official flag)."I can''t screw up this shot, I can''t screw up this shot," I whispered to myself. Lying in the coffin was a sixteen-year-old boy who had been shot by Syrian security forces the day before.
He had become the latest martyr of the rapidly growing uprising against the regime of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. I took a deep breath and balanced the small point-and-shoot tourism camera on top of the cab of the truck, willing my hands to stay completely still as the coffin approached. I could see the face of the dead boy now, smooth and gray, his eyes closed, his lips parted a fraction. And then he was gone, carried off on the wave of angry mourners. I was on my own in Damascus on my first assignment as a correspondent for CBS News. As a dual citizen with a UK passport, I had managed to obtain a tourist visa, but my producer had not. And I had no camera- man. I had little experience shooting video and did not underestimate the risks of embarking on such an assignment.
A journalist traveling alone could easily be disappeared. But I''d been to Syria many times before, spoke enough Arabic to get around on my own, and was desperate to cover the fast-expanding Syrian uprising, which was reaching a boiling point by that fall of 2011. Opposition activists had brought me to the sprawling suburb of Douma to cover the funeral. I had been in Damascus for a few days before I had managed to slip away from my hotel and the ever-present secret police to link up with them. Hundreds of people now poured in from all directions. The women marched together at the back of the procession. Rows and rows of them waved banners with slogans demanding justice and the overthrow of the regime of Bashar al-Assad. Someone started beating a drum, and the crowd hoisted a boy onto a man''s shoulders so that he could lead the chant.
"Oh, Bashar, you liar," he chanted, "to hell with you and your speech. Freedom is at the door." " Yalla irhal, ya Bashar ," the crowd chanted, clapping rhythmically. "Get out, Bashar!" The chant had become the anthem of the revolution, a revolution gathering strength in the suburbs of Damascus and in Homs and in Hama--and posing a genuine threat to Assad''s rule. I looked over the sea of people, cheering and chanting, hands with cell phones raised in the air to capture the protest and beam it out on social media. The crisp November air crackled with the energy and excitement of their voices. Emboldened by their own daring, they grew louder and louder, the clapping thunderous. My foot tapped along with the beat.
It was electrifying. "Bashar, screw you and screw those who salute you."These protesters had been waiting for their moment since the Arab Spring unfolded earlier that year--knocking over decades-old dictator- ships in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya. At the time, Assad had told the Wall Street Journal : "This is the Middle East, where every week you have something new." But he had confidently predicted that the maelstrom would not affect his country. Instead, it would spur reform. He would turn out to be spectacularly wrong on both counts. On March 6, 2011, a group of teenage boys, inspired by the wave of protests spreading across the region, had been arrested for spray-painting AsSha''ab yurid isqat annizam! (The people want the downfall of the regime!) on walls in Dara''a, a rundown farming town near the Jordanian border.
It was the rallying cry of the revolutions in Egypt and Libya and it brought swift retaliation from local security forces. When the boys were released two weeks later, alive but brutalized, their angry families marched on the governor''s house to demand justice. They were met with a hail of bullets. Three protesters were killed. And an uprising was born. By now a pattern had emerged. The funeral of someone murdered by the regime would then turn into a protest against the regime. Security forces would flood in and open fire, and then the next day there would be an even larger funeral.
By that November, there were dozens of such fu- nerals across Syria every day. I watched the crowd as they chanted " hurriya, hurriya " (freedom, freedom) over and over. They waved banners calling for a no-fly zone to prevent Assad from murdering his people. They had seen Western jets save Libyans in Benghazi from Qaddafi''s advancing forces months earlier and they believed that the West would do the same for them. How bitterly disappointed they would be. In that moment, though, I felt giddy with a mixture of excitement and fear. Rallies like these were often targeted by pro-Assad militias, infa- mous for their thuggish cruelty. Known as shabiha, derived from the Ara- bic word for ghosts, these men wore street clothes and seemingly appeared out of thin air.
People lived in fear of them, not just because of the brutal beatings they administered, but because they acted as informants, telling the regime which families were involved with the protest movement. Un- like the military, you never knew if the shabiha were there or not. Under these circumstances, talking to a Western reporter could be a death sentence. And yet here in Douma, as soon as people saw that I was a journalist, they wanted to tell their story. I marveled at their bravery. One man had stopped me in the street as I walked past with my camera. He spoke some English and so I stopped to record an interview. "Please," he implored, "this is the real Syria.
" His voice quivered with emotion. "If you come you will see real bodies. They are not stones, they are not toys. They are real bodies." A group ushered me over to the small graveyard designated for those who had been killed in the uprising. They were called shuhada , or martyrs, and there were about sixty of them buried in neat rows. A photograph of a young boy smiled out from one of the headstones. I thought of the man''s words--"they are not toys.
" Each shaheed (singular for martyr) left behind the grieving. The day before the funeral, I had been introduced to a tailor who sat on a stool and wept quietly, his eyes fixed on the ground, as he told me about his son''s death. He spoke so softly that I strained to hear the details. His son had attended a protest at his university. Security forces arrived. Bullets were fired. His son . He stopped speaking and his body shook softly with sobs.
I watched his hands, fidgeting constantly with fear and grief. I wanted to take them in mine and hold them, to put down the camera for a minute and be a human being. But I knew the only way I could help him was to make sure that people heard his story. I prompted him to keep going, " Wa ba''dayn ? And then?" His son was shot in the stomach on the university steps, he went on. The hospital didn''t want to treat him because they feared punishment from government forces. He bled to death. The man''s voice cracked. It was excruciating but I held the shot, held the pause as he wiped his eyes.
It had taken me weeks of research and Skype calls to connect with the Syrian opposition, which by the end of 2011 was being relent- lessly harried by the regime. Many activists had already been thrown in jails or simply disappeared; stories of terrible abuse and torture were be- ginning to circulate.For the first few days I had played the role of tourist, which is what my visa insisted I must be. Then, one morning, I had put on a headscarf, or hijab , and slipped out of the hotel--away from the watchful gaze of the chain-smoking secret policemen. With my blonde hair hidden away, I was suddenly invisible. The difference from the previous days, when everyone seemed to be staring at me, this foreigner, was incredible. I would often wear the hijab on subsequent assignments in Syria. From a security stance, it lowered my profile significantly.
But it also allowed me to stand on the sidelines quietly and take in a scene as it was unfolding instead of be- coming its focus. It''s never easy as a television reporter, because carrying a camera inevitably attracts attention. Anything I could do to minimize the distraction of my presence was a plus. I was careful to ensure I wasn''t being followed as I meandered through the streets of the Syrian capital on my way to meet an activist called Hussein. We had been introduced through another Syrian activist online who acted as a coordinator in Damascus. The night before we had stayed up late on Skype, discussing where and when to meet. I agreed I would come and find him at Bab Touma, one of the seven entrances to the old city, the following morning at eight o''clock. For the next five days, I would stay with him.
Hussein''s face was round and smiling, with a permanent five-o''clock shadow, and he wore the same sweatpants and plastic sandals every day. He looked like a college student who had pulled one too many all-nighters. He shared his small courtyard house in the old city with a litter of white kittens that climbed over him as we chatted and kneaded their paws on the sofas noisily. Like many of the activists I would meet that week, Hussein was giddy with the excitement of being part.