People in Sooreeya are starting to feel the Hooreeya nudge them on, and their whispers are joining together to form bursts of sound in Homs, Damascus, and Aleppo. It began March 15, where for the first time in about twenty years (the last ones being the Hama massacre and the Kurdish protests in 2004), people took to the streets and bravely recognized a need for hooreeya. Because behind the "empty reformist rhetoric" lies forty years of oppression, forty years of martial law and forty years of political prisoners tortured and killed. My mother's friend called upon Syrians--Christians, Kurds, Jews, and Alawites, to come and protest at the Ummayyad mosque in Damascus. And, what's remarkable is these are protests that didn't fall through.
Not only in Syria, though--folks protested in solidarity across the world:
Paris, London (via Syrian Revolution Facebook group)
"Free the political prisoners"
My uncles in L.A.:
& my dad inWashington D.C. He just came home tonight and told me about how they alternated between Libyan and Syrian chanting. Al Sha'ab al-Sooree ma bynthul! Al Sha'ab al-Libyee ma bynthul!
Back at the ranch--at least hundreds are dead, and tens of thousands have died in Libya in the past couple of days of protests.
Something about it really just hit me today. I was folding the mountains of clothing on my floor and began to think about how it would feel to die for an ideal. It was one of those moments where tears sort of unglue from my face and don't stop. I just sat on my floor and cried--for those people who have given themselves so they could vote, raise a family freely, not live in political asylum, show their granddaughters what Syrian jasmine smells like, criticize a leader without fear of torture. And I got so frustrated thinking about how their are human beings dying for justice and that the rest of us are doing nothing about it. There are so many things to care about right now: jet planes shooting down civilians, tsunamis wiping out populations. And after a point, these stories turn into statistics and the majority of people are inclined to stop caring. So I want to let it be known, that I stand with every man, woman, Kurd, Alawite, Druze, Libyan, Bahrani, Yemeni, human who has marched, typed, spoken, or cried to say:
Hooray for hooreya.
