Sunday 1 July 2012

Bassell

Last year I completed a two year teaching contract in Damascus. I returned to the UK, only to hear a couple of months later, in September 2012, that a dear, dear friend of mine was killed in the violence there. He was 21. A student at the university. I absolutely loved him. I am a few years older than him and I was in a relationship with his brother at the time, so we used to have long conversations about love and life in front of the fire at their villa on the road to Sednaya.

His dream was to study in the USA, and to really fall in love, as he put it. I gave him a pink quartz crystal in the shape of a heart and he put it on a necklace and I just was so inspired by him. His amazing English, his caring nature. When my contract ended and I returned home, he took my kitten and promised to look after him. He loved that cat. He was a dream brother to have and I loved him so much.

When I heard he had been shot and killed, my whole life seemed to stop and I was so ...... confused. I wanted to understand. To know how and why this happened. I ran and ran outside my house in London and through the forest behind my house, crying out loud. I couldn't stand to be so far away. So, despite the danger, I returned to Damascus a week later.

I just wanted to be there. To see for myself. A video on Youtube showed his brother - my old boyfriend - carrying his coffin in the village of Mneen, in a daze.

And the rest is history.

I don't think I will ever get over Bassell's death. I have lost special people before, but I suppose the unfairness of it is what kills me inside and I risked my safety many times without anyone in my family or circle of friends back in England, knowing where I was, except one, who I told so that she could inform my parents if anything happened to me. I told them I was livng somewhere else, and pulled it off for the entire time. (Yes, I feel guilty, but it was neccessary for my own spiritual journey, to do whatever it was I there for).

I remained there for seven months during this situation and lived and travelled around Damascus and the suburbs as I pleased, narrowlly avoiding passport checks by soldiers, because I was a woman, because I have Arabic features, being half Turkish, and because I travelled with people with ID cards from the region.
And anyway, most of them are just kids, following orders.

I wasn't afraid. I was just..... surviving I guess.

Sanctions on the country meant that there was not enough gas or oil to go around. The winter of 2011/12 was the coldest I have experienced in the Middle East and we all lived with no warmth or electricity for a majority of the time.

Sometimes we didn't have bread in the shops. The flatbread that Syrian people mainly eat.

I think that is just the beginning of what horrific consequences sanctions can have on people.
They have to wake up and realise they don't work. 


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