My time in Syria was short but decidedly varied: one week as a tourist, 10 days as a student, and two weeks as an inmate. As the Syrian conflict continues to unfold, my brush with the regime's paranoia was just one of the first instances of what evolved into an extremely bloody crackdown.
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I was arrested on March 18, 2011, the first Friday of what was then termed the Syrian "revolution," after stumbling upon a protest in old Damascus. Just a student at the time, I was suspected of being a journalist, spy, or other unwelcome ilk. I was charged vaguely with "breaking Syrian law" and spent the next two weeks crammed in a basement prison run by the infamous secret police.
This week marked the second anniversary of my release. Since then, the Syria I so fleetingly knew has, for better or worse, unraveled.
The pre-revolution police state in Syria was stifling. No one publicly talked politics, communication networks were monitored, and the consequences of dissent made opposition practically unthinkable. I distinctly remember one college-aged friend refusing to even mention the then fledgling Arab Spring until we were in my apartment, and he had convinced himself that we had not been followed. I thought he was overreacting.
After being swept up by plain-clothed police, I realized why the authorities were so feared. My three interrogations consisted of a strip search, blindfolds, accusations of stoking unrest, and vows to "deal with [me] with violence." At one point, my interrogators even paraded me in front of a state TV camera in an apparent attempt to show that "foreign hands" were behind the protests. Between questioning sessions, I was locked away.
I spent the first week in a three-by-seven-foot cell with one other man. That was followed by another week in a 12-by-12 foot bathroom alongside more than 20 others, some of whom had been living there for more than a year. My companions included weapons dealers and counterfeiters, but also a mentally handicapped soldier and innocent bystanders. Most everyone was beaten, electrocuted, or otherwise abused regularly. Fortunately, I avoided this fate, but was threatened with and forced to listen to torture for days on end.
The regime's tools of repression have become drastically more ruthless throughout the past two years. They now routinely include rape, kidnapping, cluster bombs, missiles, attack helicopters, and more. An estimated 70,000 people have already lost their lives, and the violence is only getting worse: March was the bloodiest month yet of the Syrian uprising. The flow of refugees has also gone from a trickle to a torrent, with the total recently climbing above one million. What began as a struggle for dignity has devolved into a messy civil war with no end in sight.
Syria's cultural heritage is being destroyed as well. The covered market (souq) in Aleppo, with its labyrinth of shops, colors and smells, was the largest of its kind in the world and a favorite stop during my short-lived Syrian travels. In September, the souq burned to the ground when clashes between government soldiers and rebels sparked a fire that ripped through the wooden stalls like kindling. Hundreds of years of history gone in an instant.
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