GhoutaDamascus countrysideAssad regimeSyrian people hardships
Six years ago the insurrection against Assad regime began in Syria. It has now become the most devastating conflict of the 21st century and is already taking longer than the Second World War.
How does one manage to live in a country where violence, distress and death have been part of everyday life for more than 50,000 hours?
How do the people live with the terror and the fear?
What does six years of war mean for Syrians who are living it every day?
Here a woman we call Sarah, from the long besieged area of Ghouta, describes her dreary life filled with unavoidable violence and suffering.
In spite of the difficulties she shares, there is something in the way she tells her story that still gives rise to hope.
“My life is very similar to that of other people in Ghouta: We are locked in a large prison.
Our dreary life of today began with the dead six years ago. When the first rallies occurred, many demonstrators died because the regime responded to them with bullets.
The people watched them die right before their eyes, and were devastated at not being able to help them. The pain was even worse when it was a neighbor or a relative who died.
From then on, everything was different. We had to leave our homes and escape to places we had never even thought of living before. Schools and mosques, full of people you do not know. But there was no other way out because one flees from death out of fear for his family and the people he loves.
But we would never have dared to go to Damascus because people there were arrested indiscriminately — especially when coming from Ghouta. Whenever the situation calmed down for a brief moment, we returned to our broken houses and began to rebuild them. As if nothing had happened.
Despite our exhaustion and fear of the unknown, we have never given up hope of better times; times without the regime. We still have this hope, six years after the beginning of the insurrection. But the rulers have so often driven us out of our homes that it is almost irrelevant whether we are still alive or dying. The regime has imprisoned us in Ghouta, as in a large prison.
The starvation siege began in 2013, the worst year. It was terrible to leave the house early in the morning and see the people suffering on the streets because they had nothing to eat, not even bread. The markets were empty, all the people looked tired. I went to work every morning depressed. Sometimes I found my laughter when I saw innocent children play happily. Until some of them would suddenly faint from hunger and I could not help them. This is one of the worst moments you can experience.
When one came home, there waited a barren meal. Usually some vegetables, cooked only in water and salt. We even baked bread from inedible things like cattle feed, just to survive. You ate very slowly, so that you felt full - but we never were. And some of the little food we had would be saved for the morning of the next day so that one would have the strength to move at all.
So we spent a whole year. Many people died during this time — either because they starved, did not have medicine or fell victim to bomb attacks.
At the end of this miserable year, tunnels were built that linked Ghouta to the capital of Damascus. After a long time we finally had food and medicines again. This breathed new life into us and the hope of better times grew. Despite the permanent bombings, we were able to laugh and to live.
Then the tunnels were destroyed — the air blasts were devastating. There was more destruction and more dead than ever before. The worst was, and still is, when your own house is hit while you sleep; you are woken up by the noise of the detonation and are afraid that a person you love has ceased to exist. If that happens, you think: Today it hit him, tomorrow it hits me.
To imagine what it would be like to lead a normal life — to marry and to have children — is distressing. And whoever has a child of his own may regret having given birth to him in this hell. Because one is more afraid for the life of his child than his own. For how can it be protected from all evil? Everyone has the right to live and found a family. But the people of Ghouta are denied this right!
How do we endure it all? This is a difficult question that I do not really have an answer to. I believe that being surrounded by people I love and knowing that they are still doing well helps me tremendously. Also the laughter of my daughter and the sparkle in her eyes gives me hope and makes me forget a lot. My work with women also makes me happy — because we fight together for a normal life.
I sincerely hope that this war will come to an end and that we as Syrians will be able to recapture our rights from Bashar Assad and rebuild our country on the basis of a true democracy.”
Adapted from the English translation of an article in German published by Der Tagesspiegel.
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