Martyr Stories

Arwa Damon ended the "72 Hours Under Fire" CNN documentary with a powerful sentence: "that is your responsibility to keep sharing their stories".

I never realized how important it is that I share the stories my relatives in Syria tell me on a daily basis. As an active participant in the revolution, my seventeen-year-old cousin's stories come straight from the protesting streets. He has watched friends die in front of him, shot by Assad's gangs. He has dragged fellow protesters hit by bullets into alleys and clinics. His stories are accompanied by videos his friends have taken, leaving me staring back at my computer screen in tears. Although I do not have the privilege of traveling to Syria like Arwa Damon did, I do have these connections to family members experiencing the violence firsthand. My cousin tells me the stories in Arabic, and now I feel that it is my responsibility to translate them into English and share.

"Let me tell you the stories behind the deaths of seven of my friends in this revolution", he began the conversation. He started each story with a name and an accompanying date he had memorized. Each one of the martyrs was either 16, 17, or 18 years old.

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June 3, 2011
This was the first day since the uprising began that the people of Hama joined the protests in massive numbers. 150,000 flowers were passed out to the protesters, brightening the streets. My uncle was hesitant about letting my cousin join the protests that day, but eventually allowed him to. In order to plan out the route for the protesters, my cousin and his friend Saed drove to a location that the protesters were walking towards.

Suddenly, they saw Assad's soldiers. Saed began to mock the soldiers, telling them that he was coming for them. They would respond by saying, "come here for a minute, you 'men', the protest is far from here". They eventually ran away without confrontation, and went back to warn the others about the presence of the soldiers.

Other soldiers had already beat them to the protesters, spraying them with bullets and gas. Everyone was afraid to fight back, but Saed decided to fight the soldiers by himself. He hid behind walls with rocks in his hand. He would come out, throw the rocks, then hide again. My cousin described how Saed was the bravest out of the entire group. No one else dared to throw rocks at the soldiers from that near of a distance. In the end, two soldiers began walking towards Saed to grab him. My cousin and his friends began screaming to him, "Saed, run! Run!". He began running. As he was running, a bullet hit him in his head. He died instantly.

My cousin and his friends had to carry Saed off of the street. 182 others died in Hama that day. From that day on, the residents of Hama began playing an active role in the revolution.

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July 30, 2011
Assad's army entered Hama. His friend Jihad was standing at one of the security points the city had set up, attempting to protect the civilians. As soon as Jihad heard that the army entered the city, he ran to grab bottles of fire starting fluid. With them in his hand, he ran towards the tank. Assad's tank simply shot back at him. He was shot in the mouth and instantly died. My cousin described how Jihad was also a real hero, present at almost all of the protests when the uprising first began.

That same day, his friend Talha was also standing at a security point in the city. He heard that the hospital in Hama needed volunteer guards near the entrances in order to prevent the soldiers from entering. On his way there, he was killed by Assad's forces. Talha was with another person my cousin knew, Bisher, who was also killed on the way to the hospital.

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August 10, 2011
My cousin's friend best friend, Abdulrahman, was trying to flee the city of Hama because of the ongoing violence, but was unable to. He lived near a mosque that a protest began out of that night at 9 pm. At that time, he was inside his house and was not not part of the protest. At 9:45 pm, the protest ended. He then left the house and was hanging out with his friends in the neighborhood. Assad's forces approached them, so Abdulrahman and his friends quickly ran into someone's nearby house. However, the government disconnected the phone lines in that area. In order to prevent his family from worrying about him, Abdulrahman told his friends that he wanted to return to his house. Three meters from his house was a small shop, and he passed it running. A soldier then came out of the shop and shot him dead. The bullet came in from his back and out from his heart.

The soldier walked over to him and stood on top of him, making sure Abdulrahman was dead. Earlier that day, the soldiers had killed an eleven-year-old boy nearby. The soldier made a phone call and told the others to come and "pick up these two dogs", referring to the eleven-year-old boy and Abdulrahman. They then dragged his face along the cement, leaving scars and marks. They threw him into the government-run hospital and left.

Abdulrahman was innocent. He was not involved in the protests nor did not anger the government, but the regime killed him anyways.

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December 27, 2011
My cousin describes the next young man as the bravest man he knew. He met him at the beginning of the revolution, and they became extremely close friends. Arab League monitors were planning to visit Hama that day. Everyone soon gathered in the center of the city to protest and show the monitors exactly what atrocities were being committed by the government. Hundreds of thousands of people came from all parts of Hama to protest. They began walking in the tight streets so that the army would have a difficult time reaching them. While they were walking and protesting, they saw members of Assad's gangs. They were at the bottom of a hill, and the protesters were at the top. The soldiers began to hit them with gas and bullets. My cousin and his friend Abdallah were standing in the beginning of the line. They both grabbed a garbage dumpster from an alley and threw it towards the bottom of the hill so it would fall onto the soldiers.

My cousin wanted to grab one of the soldiers and drag him over to the monitors. He was a few meters away from the soldier before grabbing him, when my cousin was hit with rubber bullets. He was hit on his head and back, and then fell to the ground. Abdallah lifted him up, placed him aside, and woke him up. My cousin woke up dizzy, unable to tell where he was walking. They then both continued protesting. The protesters remained peaceful during the entire four hour protest, while Assad's soldiers continued to attack them with gas and bullets.

Among the martyrs that day was a man named Mutassem, one of the best cameramen in the city. My cousin ran with the others to pick him up off of the street. He covered his face with a piece of cloth since the bullet had hit Mutassem's brain.

My cousin was on his way home from the protest when he received a phone call from a friend. He was told that Abdallah was just taken to the hospital, covered in blood. My cousin responded by saying he was most likely assisting with picking up the injured, which is why he was probably drenched. His friend responded, "no, his head was covered in blood". My cousin immediately ran to the hospital to see him. The bullet had hit Abdallah's head. He died two weeks later.

This is a video of Abdallah on the way to the hospital that my cousin later found online: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGcA2YQB1is

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It was 9 pm on a Friday night, as my cousin found Anas and a few of his other friends hanging out in the neighborhood. A protest was planned for 10 pm, so my cousin told them that they should start preparing for it, making sure the speakers and microphone were working. Anas told my cousin, "it looks like we are going to be hearing your voice loudly tonight". My cousin responded by saying, "yes, something like that".

They grabbed the equipment and soon realized they were not working. My cousin told Anas to go grab other speakers for him. They were separated.

My cousin and the others around him soon found out that the area they were planning to protest in was not going to be safe, and was not going to be protected by the Free Syrian Army. They quickly canceled it, and told everyone to go home.

My cousin returned home late that night and signed onto the internet. He read the sentence, "Martyr Anas from Hama...". My cousin started laughing, thinking what he just read was a joke. 'I was just with him', he said to himself.

He called Anas again, and again, and again, but he did not get a response.

My cousin later found out that Anas was standing by the door of a small shop near his house, when a soldier approached him. Assad's soldier asked Anas what he was doing standing there, and Anas responded by telling him that he worked there. The soldier ordered him to go inside the shop and close the door, and Anas listened. The soldier then shot at the shop from outside. Anas was killed in that shop along with four others.

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We hear the numbers of deaths each day and see the images of the martyrs, but we do not hear their stories. We do not know what they they were doing, or how they were killed. 10,000+ Syrians have been killed by Assad's forces in the past year. There are 10,000+ heartbreaking stories that must be shared and never forgotten.

- Iman