[This is the first installment of Amal Hanano`s diary of her trip back to Syria]
I begin to lose sleep weeks before I leave – waking in the middle of the night, my mind racing with anxiety. My insomnia may be the obvious sign that I have no business going to Syria while the country, as my close friend likes to remind me, “is on the brink of civil war.” Although I plan to visit Aleppo, where apparently “nothing” is happening, Bashar al-Assad’s forces have been steadily marching north in the last few weeks, creeping closer to my hometown. Moving from southern Daraa to the central cities of Homs and Hama, and along the coast through Banyas and Latakia, the latest frontier against the Syrian Revolution has settled on the Turkish border.
Advice against my trip is repeated many, many times by frantic relatives and friends in the US who have cancelled their summer reservations since the Arab Spring erupted in Syria on March 15th. But each warning is offset by phone calls and Facebook chats with friends already in Syria, their voices cheery (with only a hint of sarcasm), their tan lines already deeply defined, and their children’s laughter in the background. Both sides create a confused state of fear mixed with relief; hence the insomnia.
After being convinced that Aleppo is still safe enough to visit, I embark on a massive “Arab Spring” digital cleaning of my twitter, Facebook, and email accounts. I unfollow, defriend, untag, and block. I send harmless documents and photos to the “cloud,” uninstall apps on my phone, and pack an old-fashioned blank notebook in my suitcase. I purge and delete, attempting to erase every trace of recent history that could incriminate –an email, a forwarded joke, a controversial article– anything that could expose a line of thought that does not fully align with the regime’s convoluted, conspiracy-driven account of the “demonstrations.”
This article is now featured in Jadaliyya`s edited volume entitled Dawn of the Arab Uprisings: End of An Old Order? (Pluto Press, 2012). The volume documents the first six months of the Arab uprisings, explaining the backgrounds and trajectories of these popular movements. It also archives the range of responses that emanated from activists, scholars, and analysts as they sought to make sense of the rapidly unfolding events. Click here to access the full article by ordering your copy of Dawn of the Arab Uprisings from Amazon, or use the link below to purchase from the publisher.
