22 The Iconoclasts: How Syrian Citizens Brought a God back down to Earth The Iconoclasts: How Syrian Citizens Brought a God back down to Earth 23

and unsupported by any developed critical SANA, and uploaded onto ‘blocked’ Facebook rationality. pages that could only be accessed via proxies. The Iconoclasts: How Syrian Citizens Brought a It was this type of thing that made people gasp Exalted Totalitarianism when they caught sight of Bashar or Asma in the street, as though they were movie stars God back down to Earth For decades the Syrian regime has fashioned and not the president and his wife. Compare an entirely separate world for itself. The this to the famous phrase uttered by the late Dima Wannous world in which Bashar al-Assad and his wife Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish after one Asma al-Akhras live is conceivably even more of his performances in Damascus. As usual he detached than was the world of his father Hafez had received rapturous applause, but after the al-Assad and his mother Anisa Makhlouf. This is show he grumpily confided to a friend: ’I don’t despite cosmetic attempts to give the opposite like all that. What am I, Ragheb Alama (a famous impression. No one knows where the family Lebanese singer), or something?’ and those around them live. The security that By contrast, Bashar and his wife became surrounds their existence is absolute and even obsessed with being seen as the most beautiful, overdone, given that they lived in a peaceful the cleverest, the chicest. Their media machine nation without any political life to speak of: even managed to convince Vogue to publish no independent parties, no autonomous ‘Was Maher al-Assad1 present in the great al-Assad as an ’acceptable‘ Alawite leader. He institutions, no genuine opposition, and no hall? Did he listen to the swearing-in speech? was seen as a moderate who had refused openly declared opponents with the legal, 'The bubble in which the family lived made it We didn’t see him! We didn’t notice him! And to stain his hands with the blood of Syrians constitutional and legislative tools to remove the prisoner of the portraits stuck up in car windows, Farouk al-Sharaa!2 He wasn’t there either! (especially Sunnis) and who had opposed the the al-Assad clan from power. on the walls of state agencies, in the streets, on decision to send the army into Hama in 2011, However, there was the constant They must have been purged…’ lampposts, tree trunks and wherever there was when the uprising was still centred around impression that the family was being stalked space to stick a picture of the president and his wife peaceful demonstrations. and targeted, forcing them to sneak around; This is what a number of Facebook activists These and other stories passed around by moving according to pre-laid plans with streets and kids.' were preoccupied with in the weeks following activists, opposition figures and revolutionaries, blocked, traffic stopped and curfews imposed Bashar al-Assad’s swearing-in speech delivered all point to the same thing; the Syrian regime is in the areas through which they were passing. on July 15 last year (2013). Many of these still just as present in people’s thoughts as it was False rumours were a common tactic here, people had previously been preoccupied with prior to the revolution. The regime still functions a patrol would be told that the president’s an article in early 2011 (just days before the Maher al-Assad, appearing in the company of as it has for decades; a shadow, a spectre, an entourage planned to travel along a particular outbreak of the revolution) that described Lebanese-Syrian singer George Wassouf. One abstraction, an intangible myth fenced round road, then they would select a different road Asma as ‘a rose in the desert.’ activist went so far as to doubt the authenticity with rumour and folklore. Not only has the altogether. Likewise, security branches would The bubble in which the family lived made of the images claiming that it could not have security regime not been penetrated, it has also be ringed round with cement walls topped by it the prisoner of the portraits stuck up in car been a recent photograph, because George retained its capacity to toy with the day-to-day barbed wire or electric fences, as if they were windows, on the walls of state agencies, in Wassouf was now confined to a wheelchair and course of the revolution. While tales of Maher the targets of some imminent assault. All these the streets, on lampposts, tree trunks and could only have been standing if two people preoccupy many of its opponents, the regime is measures served to heighten the regime’s wherever there was space to stick a picture had picked him up, then sat him down again free to pursue its methodical slaughter, torture, mythic status and thus aided the spread of of the president and his wife and kids. These after the photograph was taken. kidnapping and sieges. rumour: How did they live and eat? How did portraits were just a paper-thin caricature, Two years ago, many activists and even The effect of the regime’s decades-old they spend their free time? Did they sleep? The an abstraction freighted with a fantasy that some Western officials were caught up with strategy has been to transform the ruling family regime’s human face became utterly occluded, could not support the reality of the president rumours circulating around the ‘Crisis Room and its dependents into icons or almost mythic and how could it not? For it was walled in with as a person. In Syria the president is not an bombing’ in Damascus that killed Assef figures. Ordinary citizens are struck dumb cement, hidden behind the darkened glass of its individual and nor are the people individuals. Shawkat, the head of Military Intelligence, with amazement when they spot one of these car windows and the gates of its many palaces. There are no individuals or citizens, just ruler former deputy Defence Minister and husband figures in a restaurant or drive past them in a From 2000, Bashar and his wife tried, in a and ruled, president and subject, executioner of Bashar al-Assad’s sister Bushra. At the time it car, and here ‘amazement’ means something somewhat stilted fashion, to humanize the and victim, and the distance between these was claimed that Maher al-Assad had been at like actual disbelief. image of the president and his family. Their polarities is the distance between life and Dima Wannous studied French the meeting of security and military personnel The Syrian collective consciousness has a ‘spontaneous’ appearances, and those of death, a distance whose substance is the fertile literature and translation at and had been killed with the others. Then deep-rooted belief in the ‘sacredness’ of those their children became events in themselves, soil of the imagination that nourishes fear and the University of Damascus in Syria and the Sorbonne in Paris. another report emerged that a private jet had in charge, whether they be military or religious, carefully planned and devoid of any revealing panic. In Syria, the sensation of fear has been She worked as an editor and a taken off from the Mezzeh Military Airport from the president himself to the director of a details. Take, for example, the choice of the transformed over decades of oppression, denial presenter for the cultural program outside Damascus, with Maher on board, in local branch of the intelligence services. The location where they spent their Eid vacation. and marginalization into a fait accompli. People 'City Lights’ that was screened on the ‘Orient’ satellite channel, and the company of his confidantes, heading for absence of any rule of law is one aggravating The people who were chosen to visit the resort do not feel fear when something takes place, writes cultural and political articles Moscow to receive treatment. We should also cause of this abiding illusion, and is confounded where Bashar and Asma had ‘by chance’ turned they fear that it will take place. Maybe it does for a number of Lebanese and foreign newspapers. Among her not forget the rumour, which in September by a generalised inability to properly analyse up, the preparations and events at the resort, and maybe it doesn’t happen, but the fear is literary publications are:Details 2013 gained currency among Arab and Western the situation and these people’s role in it. As all of which coincided with their short stay, permanent, it has become something like a (2007) and Chair (2009). She officials that former Defence Minister Ali Habib such, the revolution on the ground has been clearly everything was thought through and hereditary disease, imprinted on the national currently oversees the cultural page of the electronic newspaper had fled to Paris to prepare for a ’transitional bedevilled by a lack of logic and a propensity to planned in advance. Pictures of their visit were DNA. 'Al-Modon.' period‘ in which he would replace Bashar make hasty judgements (and believe in them) distributed to the official Syrian news agency, Bashar al-Assad and his wife, Asma, have 24 The Iconoclasts: How Syrian Citizens Brought a God back down to Earth The Iconoclasts: How Syrian Citizens Brought a God back down to Earth 25

to the point of creating ignorance, and mutual we encounter the problem of the individual misunderstanding. Religions and sects are beset by an a priori fear. surrounded by a fog of legend and rumour. Following the killing of Muammar Gaddafi, Minorities preserve their distinctiveness with some Syrians were convinced that getting rid secret, undeclared rites. Among the stereotypes of Bashar Al-Assad and his family was no longer that were circulated were: ‘The Druze have just a dream, no longer just a wild fantasy. become creatures who hide tails beneath their Rumours about his death started up, filling clothes and worship bulls’; ‘The Shia bow down social media. Bashar orders the bombing of before vaginas’; ‘Alawites are pagans who do some district and they start passing round not pray or fast and who drink alcohol’; ‘Alawite reports of his death: ‘His convoy came under women are whores who sell their bodies.’ attack and he was killed’; ‘They detained him on The very regime that called for the road to the international airport as he was brotherhood was in truth participating in the trying to make a run for Russia.’; ‘They stormed oppression of all minorities. It outlawed their the palace and assassinated him’; ‘They shelled traditions and customs, while restricting their the People’s Palace’. People began criticizing the movement outwards from their traditional assassins, saying it would have been better to bases. This ignorance of ‘the other’ has also keep the president alive so he could face trial! turned sects into taboos, sacred icons sunk The identity of the assassins was also obscure. three children, and it is no exaggeration to been completed years before the revolution in their past. The different sects that make Sometimes it was the Free Army, sometimes say that most Syrians have lived through three broke out, just served as proof for the rumour- up Syrian society are consequently beset by the Nusra Front. ‘Elements’ (an abstraction) endless and exhausting waves of rumour and obsessed. The regime owns the underground, rumours, most of them untrue. Over the past ‘assassinate a president’ (another abstraction). speculation, each one triggered by the birth of we would say, just as it owns the land and the few years of revolution we have seen much Three years on, with frustrations and one of their offspring. Is it a boy or girl? Pale or sky up above. of this rumour-perpetuated stereotyping, so failures building, many areas of Syria have dark? Healthy or unhealthy? Have they given Life in this underground world was lived beloved of the regime: ‘every Alawite is loyalist’; become mass graves. In this context rumours him or her a traditional name or one of those in isolation from those above ground. Secrecy ‘every Sunni is in the opposition’ and the other have started to function as a kind of temporary new-fangled ones? It is my belief that this surrounded its inhabitants, who, it was claimed, minorities are treated with suspicion and face shot of morphine passed back and forth pandemonium over the three children was went for days, months, even years, without accusations until they are forced to prove between activists on social media sites to ultimately about succession, as it is very hard seeing the light of day. Their identities and their innocence. Far from fraternal conviviality, revive some degree of hope. Reports of ‘the to conceive of the Assad family ever voluntarily affiliations were almost a complete mystery; or the balanced critical thinking that would regime’s fall’ or ‘the death of the president’ or giving up power. It sees itself as immortal, in its their scents and tastes and preferences — benefit the popular movement, Syrians are even ‘the death of the president’s mother’ have portraits, in its ‘spirit’, in the memory of every everything linked to their humanity — was using abuse, insubordination and hatred, become an increasingly tired joke against the ‘citizen’, and so a new born son signifies the unknown. Jelly-like creatures, trapped beneath instead of the balanced ‘conscious’ thinking backdrop of the regime’s ongoing policy of arrival of a ‘legitimate’ successor. It was this that the earth, beneath the office of the director that should properly accompany the popular murder, destruction and detentions. It is now made Hafez al-Assad junior hated even before of such-and-such a security branch. Beneath movement. This generalized tone of accusation incumbent on Syrians—meaning intellectuals, he was grown, a criminal in a baby’s body, the offices where the director would receive has extended to all those who were employed activists, members of the opposition, and implicated before he even knew the meaning his guests, drink tea and coffee with them, eat, in various government centres, institutions the fighters on the ground—to locate hope of the word. It was said that behind their high wash, and maybe even invite his girlfriend for and agencies prior to the revolution - as in something more substantial, and useful walls the men of Damascus’s wealthy families the night. though we had all being living in France where than rumour. They have to mine despair and were praying that Bashar’s son Hafez would The tyranny, the savagery, with which this independent jobs were plentiful and easily frustration to fashion alternatives and strategies ‘turn out a good man, because he’ll be our unknown ‘Above’ to whom we pointed with our available! for the next stage, which will be exceptionally president in the future,’—and this in a country fingers would treat the similarly anonymous difficult and complex now that their single that is supposedly a republic, not a kingdom! ‘Beneath’ — someone who might have been Despair enemy: the regime, has morphed into a horde. our neighbour, our friend, or our relative — all The regime has spread the idea that Bashar Tyranny and the vaults this veiled the machinery of the regime with a Muammar Gaddafi was taken from his bolthole al-Assad’s acceptance of the presence of an cloak of fantasy; incomprehensible, intangible, and led to a car a dying man. He was feeling alternative candidate in his staged presidential At the same time as we Syrians pointed our impossible to see with the naked eye. In this his head, looking at his fingers and marvelling ‘election’ is a major concession. In this vein forefingers heavenwards, in reference to way, the security regime became a nursery at his blood. He couldn’t believe that he was some opposition figures claim that ‘the most those mysterious, anonymous figures who ran not just for the spreading of rumour, but for bleeding. Him… Muammar Gaddafi! And us… important achievement’ of the revolution, after our lives, caused us hardship, prevented our believing it, too. we couldn’t believe it either. The tyrant could more than 170,000 have lost their lives, millions books and films from being published, and die! Just as happened with Saddam Hussein in have been displaced and tens of thousands imprisoned our friends, every one of us was ‘The other’ as stranger Iraq. To this very day, we still encounter people wounded or locked up, is that Bashar al-Assad aware that there was another world that played who are not convinced that Saddam Hussein has been transformed from a god into an mere itself out underground, down in the vaults and The regime has never stopped, not for an instant, was executed. It’s claimed that his body-double mortal. dungeons of the regime. There were rumours promoting an official discourse of fraternity, was killed and that he lives on in a tunnel in about the true extent of these underground peace, and embracing ‘the other’. Indeed, Baghdad. For many it is difficult to believe 1. Commander of the Syrian Republican Guard and brother of President Bashar al-Assad chambers, and how they linked security branch- fraternity — or coexistence — has been a duty, the news. Many fear that if they believe it, and 2. Vice President of Syria offices together. The ‘Metro Tunnels’ project, forced on every Syrian, and practiced for fear are brave enough to give expression to their the plan for an underground transport system of retribution. Discourse on issues related to feelings, he will suddenly emerge from beneath * Translated from the Arabic by Robin Moger in Damascus, for instance, which should have sectarian affiliation is outlawed and supressed the earth and hold them to account. Here, too,