The Morning They Came for Us by Janine di Giovanni

mosques when people took refuge in holy places’. She was disturbed. She raised her voice: ‘This is a crime against God . . . and Alawites believe in God as well as Sunnis.’ She was close to tears as she turned to me, saying later that it was in this moment that she truly realized that people were certainly killing each other.
    â€˜Why?’
    Maryam shrugged. ‘No reason. I can’t answer.’
    One side says this, the other says that. The town also shifted hands several times. From August 2012, government forces kept the town until November 2012, when another battle of Darayya played out. First the rebels pushed back, then, according to
Al Watan
newspaper – which is close to the government – on 20 December, after thirty days of siege, the army penetrated the last areas of the city centre that the rebels held.
Al Watan
claimed most of the fighters were foreigners, playing into the narrative that jihadis were taking over Syria. The next day they launched a massive attack against the city, but rebels reported they met a strong resistance from Darayya. The government remained in control and AFP reported that in August Assad visited the ‘ex-rebel bastion’, now mainly under government control, his first known visit outside the capital since March 2012.
    By December 2013, government forces were hitting the town with barrel bombs. From 25 to 31 January 2014, as United Nations representatives met with opposition and government officials in Switzerland for the Geneva II ‘talks’, the regime continued to bomb Darayya mercilessly. 10
    Reporters asked Walid Muallem, the Syrian Foreign Minister, at the Geneva talks why his government continued to use barrel bombs. Muallem replied: ‘I want to give you a simple response. Do you want [us] to defend our people by sending SMS messages?’
    The film mentioned in note 10, made by a local cameraman, opens with the words: ‘Once upon a time: a few days ago. In a land far, far away: Syria.’
    By April 2014, government reporters claimed Darayya was mainly being fought for by foreign rebels. The grey plumes of dusty smoke from the bombs could be seen from the highway. When the smoke cleared, there was nothing left behind but skeletons of buildings, of people, of what was once a town.
    Maryam never went back.
    My government visas were revoked a few months after I entered Darayya ‘illegally’.
    As of March 2015, my requests to return to Syria ‘legally’ on the government side of the war were met with silence, threats or excuses from the regime.
    Once, a Syrian friend went to the Ministry of Information on my behalf to plead my case; she was told that if she wanted to ‘save my ass from getting thrown in a Syrian jail’ then she should tell me never to come back to Syria.

6
    Zabadani – Saturday 8 September 2012
    By the autumn of 2012, in the wake of Darayya, the evolving skirmishes in Syria had become a full-blown war. The denial that had existed a few weeks before among a certain class in Damascus, the bubble of parties, the insouciant chatter, the seductive evenings at the opera, were gone. That bubble had burst. Four men in Assad’s closest circle had been assassinated, probably with the help of FSA members who had infiltrated the government. People were talking about the fall of Damascus. There was heavy fighting in other parts of Syria – in Idlib, in Aleppo, and in the suburbs not far from the capital. If Damascus fell, the country fell.
    A Syrian reporter I met through friends invited me to her house, then texted me emphatically to arrive only after dark, and to take the stairs, not the lift, to avoid people seeing me.
    When I arrived, the woman’s face was darkened with worry. The reporter, who we will call Renda, had been famous in the 1990s. She was a well-known commentator and politically considered herself ‘pro-Assad, but liberal’. ‘I say