Before entering Lebanon, particularly Beirut Airport, all Syrians should be aware: your European passport will not protect you, and your second nationality will not make them overlook the fact that you are Syrian. You might think your record is clean, but, my friend, I want to warn you that this has nothing to do with your good conduct or behavior, nor with what you have done. It’s about what others have done without your knowledge — men of the former Syrian regime and their associates at Beirut Airport, smugglers, or anyone who might benefit from your name or data that has circulated for years as you crossed the seas fleeing to countries of refuge.
The solution? Obtain a clearance certificate from the Lebanese General Security to prove your record —and perhaps even your intention—is clean. In all honesty, I met a young Lebanese detainee who was sitting next to me in the interrogation room. Before traveling, he had obtained a criminal record certificate confirming he had no charges against him, yet he was still arrested at the airport. In other words, in Lebanon, your fate depends on the luck you have with the officer who stamps your passport.
“Don’t You Have Your Own Airport by Now?”
“I hate Syrians and Palestinians. They’ve destroyed the country,” said one of the airport security officers to my European colleague after leading me inside. This left her shaken and terrified. The man leading me and many others like me into the unknown was a racist. Whenever our eyes met, I would try to smile to calm her nerves. As a Syrian, I have grown used to being taken aside at most airports to verify my identity and passport and to answer questions, some meaningful, others empty, meant only to intimidate and confuse. As usual, I prepared myself for the worst-case scenario to lessen the blow and to manage the crisis. In this case, given the videos circulating on social media about the arrest, detention, and deportation of Syrians from Beirut Airport, I thought I had considered the worst possible outcomes.
But then the officer, smirking, said:
“Haha, that’s the least of it.”
“What’s the worst?” I asked.
“That you join us for a stay in prison.”
I laughed loudly, mocking him: “Oh, how lovely. What I fled from 13 years ago, I should expect to find here again?”
“And what were you fleeing from?”
“The Assad regime and those supporting it in Lebanon’s airport… In any case, I haven’t done anything to be afraid of.”
“Well, the papers in front of me say otherwise.”
I continued to smile, still believing he was just another racist officer trying to toy with me, a Syrian woman whose mere existence he resented. Then one of them, with a grin, said, “Don’t you have your own airport in Syria by now? Why don’t you leave us alone?”
They printed some papers and exchanged glances among themselves. I sat with a slight air of defiance, my body language was the only way to declare my rebellion against them, or perhaps to challenge their authority. My shoulders were straight, my head held high, my legs crossed elegantly. I wore a short skirt without attempting to cover my legs or hide them. Their bold intrusive stares angered me, especially the one with the bright gold ring who scratched his ear with his long pinky nail every time he glanced at me, offering to keep me company during my visit.
He was mocking me, knowing the papers in his hand already contained the fabricated charges against me, filed in absentia since 2014.
Then they decided to move me to the interrogation officer’s room at the airport, along with a group of other Syrians and Lebanese. The tension in the room escalated as the investigator entered, shouting at the top of his lungs, his spit spraying into the air. He ordered us to place our phones and electronic devices on the table and to sit without moving or making a sound:
“I don’t want to hear your voices. Keep your eyes on the ground, understood?”
I felt humiliated. It seemed that ten years of living in Europe as a refugee had restored my sense of dignity, returning my sensitivity to such practices to a normal human level. Maybe I had forgotten how to avoid such situations, to maneuver around them, to pay whatever it takes to escape them, or to call in every favor from influential contacts before they even occur. In countries where laws are nonexistent, you are vulnerable to any accusation, danger, revenge, or mistake that could cost you years of your life, your reputation, your money, and sometimes even the safety of your family and loved ones.
My sense of self-worth and dignity pushed me to look directly at the officer and, with calm and seriousness, I raised my right eyebrow and extended my hand, palm open, as if setting a boundary: “Excuse me, why are you yelling at us? You can do your job calmly and legally without disrespecting us. There’s no need for the loud voice and insults.”
His eyes widened as much as they could, darting back and forth in disbelief between my eyes and my open palm. He leaned his body closer to me, and I tried not to step back, determined to keep my composure despite the fear pulsing through me. Fear that I might lose control, that my instincts to lash out in moments of danger might take over. He raised his hand, and my eyes instinctively flinched, expecting a slap, but instead, he brushed his hand behind his ear, leaned his head towards my lips, and whispered, “What did you just say? Let me hear you.”
I froze. The other detained girl behind him placed her fingers over her mouth, signaling me to keep quiet, reminding me that punishments are often collective. “If you don’t like it here, I can throw you in there,” he said, nodding towards a small cell, barely larger than a corridor, with a heavy iron door.
I turned my back to him and returned to my chair, sitting down with the same defiant posture, muttering under my breath, “OH my God.”
He pointed his finger for me to stand up. He then yelled for one of his assistants, “Take her. Do a thorough search. Just her,” he added, emphasizing that I was the only one to be searched.
Pain began to build in my neck, the familiar ache of suppressed screams, unspoken rage, and held-back tears. It was the same pain I had felt during the humiliating moments I couldn’t respond to under the rule of the Assads, the guilt I carried for my fear and my silence.
In the meantime, my colleagues had managed to act quickly, contacting a lawyer. They had to reveal the nature of our work as a media organization to gain permission to speak with me. They handed me the number as I was being led to the search room. They tried to reassure me, but until that moment, none of us knew what I was being accused of.
Despite using my European passport, my Arab — specifically Syrian — origins granted them the implicit right to hurl insults my way, as if my background alone was reason enough.
“Take Off Your Underwear and Squat”
I hadn’t realized that a “thorough search” meant being stripped, being touched in every place where something could potentially be hidden. I still didn’t even know what I was being accused of. During the early days of the Syrian revolution, we used to smuggle memory cards with evidence of regime violations, photos, and videos that we would bring to Lebanon, where the faster internet allowed us to upload them and send them to foreign media to reveal the truth of what was happening. We expected to be searched. We feared the borders and, of course, the security services.
But this time was different. The Assad regime had fallen, along with all its fabricated charges. There was no reason for Lebanese airport security to search me for any purpose. I had never committed a crime in my life other than being a journalist, so I was neither scared nor sweating. I had nothing to hide, except for the deep sense of humiliation and violation I felt.
All those years of therapy and the money I had spent in Europe to learn how to protect my body and psychological boundaries had just been erased in a single moment on the Lebanese border. I was dragged back to the harsh reality of our world, to the echo of the words, “Take off your underwear and squat.”
When I emerged from the cramped room, adjusting my clothes, I felt droplets of water on my black sweater. I hadn’t even noticed my own tears until I touched them. The security officer escorting me tried to lighten the mood, joking, “It seems you’ve become too European to handle this. Relax. Nothing happened. You know, this guy is the nicest investigator we have at the airport. Sure, he yells, but you should care more about what he writes down. He always sides with the detainees.”
“But I haven’t done anything.”
“You’ve got a case against you, and there’s already a ruling. Just don’t say I told you. Tell your friends to get you a lawyer. Your case is complicated, and they shouldn’t wait for you. We need to transfer you to a prison in Beirut.”
“Where to exactly?”
“It’s getting late. I don’t think they’ll have time to interrogate you today. When you get there, they’ll explain everything.”
“Where exactly?”
“Just stop asking questions. You’ll find out soon enough.”
By this point, they had overheard that I worked as a media consultant. My manager outside was moving mountains, my colleague arguing with them for my right to speak with my lawyer.
The investigator’s attitude shifted dramatically, his broad smile and exaggerated attempts to justify his behavior making me nauseous. He claimed that what had happened was merely a “performance” to test my endurance as a journalist, and that I had failed the test, followed by his victorious chuckle. Before I reached his office, they had informed him that a woman who hadn’t broken down or begged had been brought to him. He wanted to be the one to break me. It seemed he had won the bet, and I could no longer manage a smile. I had thought I had conquered my fear years ago, but the memory of fear needs only a small aftershock to crack the walls of your defenses, letting the ghosts of your fears flood back in.
“We’ve Got a Score to Settle With Your Lawyer”
Finally, they allowed me to contact the lawyer whose number my colleagues had managed to secure. They told me she was one of the best in handling media cases. As soon as the officer heard her name, he shouted in disbelief, “That’s your lawyer?? We’ve got a score to settle with her!”
I hadn’t known that she was a well-known human rights and media lawyer, but apparently, just the mention of her name had angered them, deepening my anxiety about my case, the details of which I still had no understanding of.
We spoke to her, and she informed the officer that my charges had expired under the statute of limitations, and that he could legally release me. Yet he insisted on keeping me detained. At that moment, a scene from an Egyptian film flashed through my mind as I pleaded my innocence to the investigator, swearing by all the prophets that I had done nothing wrong.
Apparently, the investigator had seen the same film, as the next scene played out with my wrists being cuffed, and I was led to a prison transport van with its locked doors, metal grates, and cold steel bars. I still had no idea where I was being taken.
Yet my escort couldn’t resist injecting his own political commentary about Syria, wanting to know what side I stand on, or maybe he was uninterested and simply wanted to mock me. He asked: “Are you happy now that the terrorists in Syria are wearing suits?”
“There Is No Victor But God”
In 2012, I fled Syria through Lebanon, fearing imprisonment. From Lebanon, I moved through several countries before finally reaching Europe, where I received political asylum and, eventually, citizenship in my new home. After a decade in Europe, the Assad regime fell, the country was liberated, and so were our souls.
I believe in coincidences and often find comfort in drawing connections, even if they are more symbolic than real. It’s a small indulgence that gives me some peace, a way to find meaning amid the chaos. It felt fitting that my first journey with my European passport, after becoming a citizen, would be to Damascus. The doors of the world had finally opened to me. I no longer carried a refugee travel document, nor did I hold a Syrian passport, which had expired in 2014.
At the airport, I met my friends and colleagues, all of us traveling together for work. I was buzzing with a mix of anxiety and excitement, chatting non-stop as we debated which Lebanese restaurant we would stop at for raw kibbeh and Arak before crossing into Syria.
But my plans collapsed that night, and instead, I found myself sleeping in a solitary cell known as “the detention room.”
Before that, after being transferred to the headquarters of the General Security’s intelligence branch, a young officer, surprisingly polite, approached me to search my belongings. He told me he knew nothing about my case, that no one would be available to interrogate me that night, and that I would be transferred to another detention center. He urged me not to worry or listen to the other women in the holding cells. He seemed to sense that I needed reassurance.
I began to cry, truly aware of my tears for the first time. I pleaded with him to let me make a call to my children. They weren’t used to me disappearing without a word, without showering them with messages of love and reassurance — messages that, in truth, serve as a reminder to myself that I still exist in their lives. I knew my absence would worry them, or perhaps I just needed to hear their voices to calm my racing heart. He refused, citing regulations, and I respected his refusal.
He eventually led me to a small, windowless room, locking the door behind me. I assumed this was where I would be spending the night. My mind grew hazy with exhaustion and confusion. I lay down on a narrow wooden bench that took over the room, curling into myself against the biting cold, wrapping my coat tightly around me, knees to my chest.
My mind, desperate for distraction, began to focus on the scratches and carvings on the walls. Prayers for deliverance, curses against the Lebanese security forces, accusations of racism, hastily scrawled phone numbers, some with international dialing codes.
What struck me most were the names of countries etched into the walls instead of personal names, as if the people locked in this place had been reduced to their nationalities, judged for their origins before their individual stories were ever heard.
“Syria” was written everywhere, in every language, at every height and angle. Ethiopia, Spain… and above the word “Spain,” I found the phrase I had once seen carved into the walls of Andalusian palaces and mosques, Al Hambra, a phrase that had captivated me with its beauty and power:
“There is no victor but God.”
I froze, repeating it out loud, letting its weight settle over my spirit, clinging to it as a kind of protective talisman for the week I would spend moving between Lebanese prisons.
Flags Instead of Names
The file was delayed. The ruling had come from the Bekaa, and my lawyer wouldn’t be able to complete the procedures the next day (Friday), as government offices only work half a day. This meant I would have to spend the entire weekend in jail. The worst part was that the judge only works one day a week. For the rest of the week, any detainee must simply wait, whether it’s a week, a month, several months, or even a year. It doesn’t matter.
During the interrogation, they asked if I had ever given details of my Syrian passport to anyone in the past. Like many Syrians, I had, when the Syrian embassy refused to renew it due to my
political opposition to the former regime, I had received assurances from friends and acquaintances that someone knew someone who could sort it out, but it never worked out. That’s why, without papers, I had to apply for asylum in Europe many years ago. But it seems that one of those “someones” had misused my details, forged documents which had been passed from one person to another in Lebanon, and eventually handed over to General Security.
Whether it was a setup to trap me and hand me over to the old Syrian regime, the work of smugglers, or some other theory, I had no idea. But I later learned that the person in Lebanon who was actually involved had been cleared, while I and a group of other Syrians had been handed down in absentia prison sentences, sentences I knew nothing about, had no idea how they were issued, or who was behind them. At that time, I had been living through my worst days with my two young children in a European refugee camp.
My innocence was clear. I had never received or handed over the passport. I had never used the document, but the judge only worked on Tuesdays, which meant I had to wait in jail. (I later found out that some judges in Lebanon earn as little as $40 a month, so it’s not surprising that they take their responsibilities to this institution lightly, but what about their responsibilities to us as human beings?).
The investigators at the Information Branch had been professional and respectful, but their hands were tied. I had to wait for the judiciary, which meant being returned to jail. I asked my friend to bring me a pillow, a blanket, and a book, to keep my mind intact during my stay in solitary confinement, where I had spent my first night on the cold ground, without food, water, or cover. I remember little from that night, just the biting cold and the group of security officers I had seen as I entered their office, gathered around a table piled high with sunflower seed shells, something I later discovered was the only form of entertainment for both the guards and the prisoners, alongside the lingering odor of the prison corridors and cells.
Those three small gifts from my friend — a pillow, a blanket, and a book — gave me the warmth I needed for my body, spirit, and mind to survive the cold reality of this ordeal, along with a lot of love.
When they brought me back to the prison, I realized this time that I would be staying with 25 other female detainees. No one had told me what kind of prison this was, who the other inmates were, whether they had unresolved cases like mine, or if they were criminals, innocent, or simply unfortunate.
The “Bash” (which translates to “boss”, which is what they called the head officer) opened the door to the cell, and the women immediately surged toward him, shouting, pleading, crying, and begging. I took a step back, frightened, and looked at him with a pleading expression, hoping he would send me back to solitary confinement. He just smirked, “Go on in… you’ll have fun in there.”
And to be fair, I did find some distraction after the initial shock wore off.
“Come on in, half of us here are Syrians. Welcome, welcome!”
“Who else is Syrian here?”
“You see those two young women with the little girl? They’re Kurds from Afrin. They got caught with a fake passport. They were trying to get to Europe to be with their family there.”
“And the older woman sitting alone in the corner reading the Quran? She was trying to reach her children in Germany. She hasn’t seen them in ten years.”
“And me, I was trying to join my husband. I had a European residence permit, but it expired while I was in Syria. I renewed it through an office, but, damn him, it turned out to be fake.”
“And the girl on the top bunk, the one crying by herself? She’s heartbroken. She ran away from the ‘happiness’ in Syria. Poor thing, she works for a living here but doesn’t have a residence permit. They caught her, and her family swore to kill her if she goes back. She leans in and whispers, ‘Her family thinks she got caught for prostitution, but she keeps swearing it’s just a residency issue.'”
A Lebanese girl, eight months pregnant, called out to me, “Come sit with us, don’t be afraid. My name is Joanna. What’s yours?”
The fear must have been clear on my face. I didn’t know which bunk to sit on, my eyes scanned the faces, my nose tried to identify the smells, my senses stretched to detect any potential threat. Who was the “alpha” here? I had watched enough TV shows to know that every prison has its queen. I reminded myself that this wasn’t a political prisoners’ cell; I needed to be smart and cautious. But things turned out to be much simpler than I had expected. The girls were straightforward, simple on every level, forming a complete, self-contained society. Their personalities, backgrounds, classes, religions, and beliefs varied, but the prison had forced them to develop a unique capacity for adaptation and coexistence. Even their conflicts and clashes rarely lasted long, as in temporary places, empathy for one another tends to prevail.
For days, I wore the same clothes, feeling them cling to my body. No one had told me about the conditions here or that I should have brought some money or a change of clothes, which had been taken during the search.
“Don’t sleep on the top bunk. It’s too cold, right by the window. We can share my bed and your blanket. We’ll sleep in opposite directions, head to feet.”
“But it’s a single bunk. I’m scared I might accidentally kick your belly.”
“Don’t worry, I don’t move when I sleep. What about you?”
“I don’t move much either.”
Despite our reassurances, I never slept more than half an hour at a time, afraid of accidentally hurting her unborn child. But this closeness brought me an unexpected warmth, a strange sense of tenderness and solidarity. I would often wake to the sight of Ritaj, the Bangladeshi girl on the neighboring bunk, silently weeping. Without a word, I would reach my hand out from beneath the blanket to hold her, trying to comfort her. She would just gesture to her head, indicating that her mind couldn’t take it anymore, that she was on the edge of losing her sanity. She would murmur only her sons’ names, and during the day, she cursed her husband, “My husband is a bastard,” cursed the Lebanese government, cursed her poverty, and wondered why she had such terrible luck. She would often ask, “Is it the computer that lists the names of migrant workers in Lebanon?” I couldn’t help but burst into laughter, hugging her as I agreed, “You’re right, it must be the computer’s fault.”
I had read countless articles and investigations about the plight of migrant domestic workers in Lebanon — the abuse they suffer at the hands of families and recruitment agencies, the expired residency permits, the “madams” who refuse to pay for their tickets home, the false accusations of theft or harassment, or simply being too poor, all of which are used as excuses to keep them locked up until a church or their embassy can afford to send them back to their families in Ethiopia, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and elsewhere. But the reality was far harsher than anything I had ever read.
Their collective suffering and shared profession had bonded these women into a tight-knit group against any stranger —the strangers here being us Lebanese and Syrians—forming an unspoken union that defended their rights and met their needs in every circumstance. They organized themselves to ensure fair access to the single phone call they were each allowed, pooled small amounts of money for the woman who acted as the cell’s “shaweesh” — the informal leader who fetched supplies for us from the prison’s “buffet”. One of them was an expert at braiding hair, a skill she used to keep our hair neatly gathered, safe from lice. She twisted our hair into tight braids with intricate patterns — circles, straight lines, zigzags — reminding me of the history of these braids, which enslaved African women once used to map escape routes onto their heads, fearing their voices would betray them if they spoke their plans out loud.
They still braid these maps today, but in this prison, escape requires more than a clever design. It demands money, connections, and influence. The maps have lost their power, leaving only prayer and faith as the last threads of hope. The devout among us, from all religions, would stay awake long after the card players, smokers, and sunflower seed shell crackers had fallen asleep. One would open her Bible, another would lay out her prayer mat and sink into the Quran. Their tears would flow in deep reverence, and I would find my own eyes welling up, whether for their suffering or my own, I couldn’t say. I often wondered why the most faithful among us seemed to gravitate to the upper bunks or the furthest corners of the cell, away from the clustered masses in the middle. They reminded me of my friend’s cynical joke: “Priests, monks, and politicians always build their monasteries and castles on high ground, so they can look down on us and keep an eye on their subjects.”
Some of the girls were non-believers, their suffering proof enough for them that God did not exist, though they rarely expressed their doubts openly for fear of offending the majority of believers around them. Then there were the minorities — a Murshediyeh girl and a Shia girl, who took refuge in the isolated corners, smoking endlessly, only stopping to wipe their tears, crushed by poverty and the inability to pay their bail. They avoided talking about their families, politics, or religion, retreating into themselves. Breaking the ice with them and joining them into the group wasn’t hard, though — they just needed a small gesture of acceptance, a reminder that they weren’t sacrifices, that they were not responsible for the sins of their entire sects, nor to defend or absolve themselves.
As soon as I asked them to join us for coffee (coffee steeped in hot water) and talked about how the Murshediyeh had neutralized their youth from the sectarian war and refused to recruit them into the army so that they would not bear the burden of blood among their people in Syria, and that the violations and killings that occurred against them by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham in Homs countryside were unacceptable. She then went on to talk about the circumstances that led her to move to Lebanon, her ex-husband’s exploitation of her, her only daughter’s inability to visit her in prison for fear that the police would discover her lack of Lebanese residency and put her in prison, and the scourge of collecting donations and debts to pay bail for one to become two.
Zeinab, the Shia girl, took longer to come around. One day, while talking about the Israeli airstrikes on her village and the targeting of “Sayyid Hassan,” she suddenly froze, her face turning red. She had let the honorific “Sayyid” slip in front of a mostly Sunni cell. I quickly tried to steer the conversation back to shifting the focus to the bombings in Syria to avoid any backlash from Angelique, who only knew enough about politics to praise the Lebanese Forces and Samir Geagea.
When it came down to it, there was an unspoken, instinctive agreement among the women here to avoid the thorny subjects of politics and sectarianism, a shared understanding that these topics could ignite conflicts that would make the already harsh conditions even more unbearable.
What was almost comical, yet not at all funny in the moment — more like a scene tinged with reverence and solemnity — was that we, a group of Muslim, Christian, and non-religious women from every imaginable sect, sat together in a tight circle, holding hands, as Rita led us in prayer. We all responded with a collective “Amen.”
But before I could say my own amen, I silently asked God to ignore one line in the prayer, the part where we admitted that our current suffering might be punishment for sins we had committed in our past, that we were paying the price now so that our souls might be cleansed on this earth. I refused to accept this premise. I was convinced that my slate was clean, or at least free of any intentional sins. I rejected the idea that even God would choose to punish me in this way.
Rita, the Filipino woman, spent her nights awake, clutching her Bible and staring at the small TV mounted high on the wall, a detail I had never noticed, despite my usual obsession with observing my surroundings. But, as the saying goes, when water is present, dry ablution becomes unnecessary, and in this place, the people around you are that water, forcing you to close your eyes to the harshness and ugliness of the setting. I hadn’t noticed the TV because I was confined to the lower bunk, enveloped in the darkness of the bed above me, which mercifully softened the harsh light that never went out, day or night.
Damp clothes and wet towels always hung from the upper bunks, left to dry after washing or simply to mask the musty, clinging smell of mildew that had seeped into both the fabric and our bodies. Sometimes, we would climb up to the narrow, high windows, tying our clothes to the metal bars and tossing them toward the outside, hoping they might dry faster. But the constant rain, humidity, and snow rarely allowed for that.
Returning to the TV, it wasn’t just the hanging clothes or my downward gaze that had kept me from noticing it. The sound was broken, rendering it a silent cinema. I wondered if, as Rita stared at the flickering images, her mind transported her to some other film, perhaps one from a past life or a life she dreamed of in the future. Despite the silence, she watched those old, endlessly repeating movies every day. I once asked about the remote, since the television was mounted so high, closer to the ceiling than to any human hand. The girls burst into laughter, and Rita pulled out a long broomstick, proudly declaring, “This is the remote…on and off.”
My respect for this woman grew tenfold when I learned her story. She had spent two and a half years in this prison on false charges, waiting for her case to be resolved and her name cleared. Her Lebanese stepdaughter, the one who had framed her, had even offered to drop the charges and pay her some money if Rita would agree to divorce her father and leave for the Philippines. But Rita refused, even though her husband was suffering from Alzheimer’s and the stepdaughter was clearly trying to protect her inheritance from being divided.
For Rita, her dignity and the chance to clear her name were worth more than money, even if it meant enduring years behind bars, surviving only on the small amounts of money shared by fellow inmates or the “farewell gifts” left behind by those who had managed to regain their freedom.
Some of the other women thought Rita was being foolish, clinging to an impossible dream. But she believed that God was on her side, even if He had taken two and a half years to answer her prayers. Once, she suffered what seemed like a mild heart attack or a fit, her body seizing up as she screamed for the guards to search the other women. She was convinced that someone had stolen her only comfort, her Bible, the one thing that gave her hope. She didn’t realize it was a prank to tease her
In her anger, she accused the most sincere and spiritual girl, Sunetra, of borrowing a Bible every day to pray and to lift the injustice that had befallen her. She was harassed by the judge’s husband, and when he tried to assault her, she pushed him, trying to defend herself, and he fell and hit his head, so she was charged with battery on her employer, and the judge who gave the verdict was the wife!
Her tears, our tears, and the joy of her release and the church buying her a plane ticket home to Ethiopia were indescribable, we bought cheap wrapped cakes and juice from the buffet, we let her smoke for the first time, she wrapped her arms around Joanna’s pregnant belly to thank the fetus that she believes God freed her through his intercession, and she kissed Hajja Amina’s hand. We all took care of the old woman and the pregnant woman, inviting them to sit with us, to eat together, to wash their clothes, and to fulfill their needs as best we could. Sunetra will leave for the airport at night, we will not sleep today, we must celebrate, dance and sing, we laughed with joy as if we had all been freed from our captivity.
We emptied the water from the plastic “pail” for washing, turning it into a drum that followed the rhythm of their buttocks as they shook. The place expanded and the narrow corridor between the beds and the bathroom became a platform for dancing. We clapped and tightened our arms around each other to participate in the dance. We forgot about our prison until the policeman on duty reminded us of it, shouting to not only silence us, but to shut us up: “Shut up! I don’t want to hear your voices or one word. Understood?”
Muffled giggles escaped from some of the women as they mimicked the officer’s harsh expression. The sound reached his ears, prompting him to storm back in, his voice a sharp threat: “Since you don’t know how to keep quiet, tomorrow, no one will make phone calls, no one will get money or belongings from storage.”
After that, in the days that followed, whenever one of us raised our voice, we would quickly remind each other to keep it down, fearing collective punishment. Each of us had someone on the outside — a child, a husband, a lawyer, or a family member — connecting us to life beyond these walls, a voice we longed to hear for the strength to endure this place. There were 25 women in the cell, but only five of us were allowed to make calls each day, and only for a few precious minutes. We would anxiously wait for our turn, sometimes arguing or bargaining for extra minutes, or swapping spots in the line.
I was the quiet newcomer, keeping myself out of any disputes, not just because I believed they had more right to those few minutes due to their seniority, but because I felt too exhausted to argue, too worn down to beg the guard for anything, fearing insult or disappointment.
In these situations, I find myself becoming excessively polite, a reflexive response meant to set myself apart from them. Yes, I think of them as “them” — those who exploit power as a cover for their own sadistic impulses, for the pleasure they find in humiliating, torturing, and violating others, or as a way to release the violence once inflicted upon them. I have no intention of dissecting the psychological reasons behind their behavior here. What matters to me is not to descend to their level, to avoid letting their brutality strip me of my civility. This politeness has protected me in countless situations, pushing me to restrain myself from even asking for the simplest of my rights, just to avoid hearing a degrading word from the guards, like, “Get lost! I don’t want to hear your voice.”
The other women in the cell often mocked my manners and the carefully chosen words I used. They would imitate me when I addressed the head guard as “Bash” and tease me for the gentle tone in my voice, mimicking my, “Excuse me, please…” Of course, he never heard me. It would usually take one of the louder women to bellow, “BAAAAAAASH!” before he would even glance in our direction, assuming it had been me calling out.
Life inside the cell wasn’t always warm and friendly either. Many of the women would scream, bark orders at us, demand silence when they wanted to sleep, or yell while cleaning. Fights often broke out over the single plastic bucket they used to soak their laundry. I tried to avoid any confrontations. I lacked both the verbal sparring skills some of the women had mastered and the physical strength for hair-pulling or fistfights. I often remained a passive observer, sitting silently on my bunk, sometimes pulling the blanket over my head to feign sleep, even if it meant suffocating a bit. These were moments when I couldn’t smile or speak, moments when I needed my own space, my cocoon, a private refuge I created by wrapping the blanket tightly around my body, from the top of my head to the soles of my feet.
I have often hated this politeness of mine, this impulse to remain above the fray. Perhaps it was my way of clinging to some sense of superiority, a desperate attempt to feel morally and intellectually superior in the face of their vulgarity. But it never truly satisfied me, never soothed my rage. I often wished I had shouted back at the investigator at the airport, humiliated him the way he tried to humiliate me. No amount of comforting words about social intelligence,good behavior, or power dynamics can soothe the anger I feel, the desire to explode, to strike back at the officers, the interrogators, the guards — to wipe away their smirks, their sneers, and all the ugliness they represent, not just for the law, but for humanity, ethics, and justice itself.
To be fair, my judgment does not extend to everyone I met in those halls. That, too, is its own tragedy, that the application of the law and the treatment you receive in these places depend not on a consistent set of rules but on the whims, upbringing, and personal ethics of the individual you encounter, or the strength of the connections you can muster, the calls you can make, and the power of those who stand behind you.
I couldn’t reach my children because of the time difference between the countries and the fact that they were at school during the only hours we were allowed to make calls. I felt a wave of embarrassment when the guard on duty called my name and allowed me to make a call, without knowing who it was to. He simply said, “It’s your kids.” That’s when I realized my friends had found a way to grant me some special privileges.
These acts of privilege filled me with guilt when I looked at the other women around me. I started to share these privileges with them, giving up my own turn to make a call or take a few extra minutes outside, hoping it would balance the unfairness I felt. But these privileges were not always guaranteed, depending on the officer on duty. Some knew I was a journalist and had likely received orders to treat me differently, while others had no idea, and I had to carefully gauge this before making the smallest request.
To linger in the corridor for a few extra minutes after the daily headcount — these were the only moments we were allowed out of the cell, the only chance to take a deep breath and feel the fresh air, instead of the stifling, heavy air inside, thick with cigarette smoke, the pungent smell of sunflower seeds, and the overpowering stench of our own bodies and intestines, made worse by the prison food. All of this mixed with the constant odor of sewage from the toilet inside the cell, the dampness of wet clothes hanging to dry, and the ever-present smell of mildew.
As a Syrian, I never imagined that being a journalist would intimidate any other authority in the Arab world. But this time, I noticed that the word “journalist” or “media professional” accompanied my name whenever I was introduced or handed over from one officer to another, as if it were a code to ensure better treatment. If this detail was forgotten or omitted, I faced the same harshness as everyone else.
Interestingly, the other inmates in my first prison started telling the guards who didn’t know about my profession, either to gain some small favor on my behalf or to use my status for their own advantage, requesting simple, basic rights like a phone call or a painkiller. They would tease the guards, saying, “We’ll have the journalist here expose you as soon as she gets out.” These words made me happy, stirring a sense of power and victory over the violence, the loud voices, the obscene language, and the unchecked lawlessness. Journalism still scares them: they fear the stripping they subject us to without any right. We, on the other hand, don’t need to inspect their bodies. Their files are enough.
One day, Joanna and I were pacing back and forth in the narrow space between the beds and the bathroom, our little “dance floor,” trying to ease the cramps that came with her pregnancy and the constant kicking of her baby. Each movement heightened her fear of going into labor while still in prison. As we walked, my eyes drifted to the iron door of the cell, and I noticed the flags painted on the walls — Ethiopia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Lebanon, and the old Syrian flag. Without thinking, I picked up a piece of charcoal and added the revolutionary flag, the one now recognized as Syria’s flag today.
This time, there were no names; only flags, religious phrases, verses from the Quran and the Bible, crosses with and without Christ, lines of poetry about humiliation, the cruelty of life, and the betrayal of time. Above the beds, some of the women spent their time drawing and coloring small designs, then sticking them to the walls with toothpaste. They would sometimes gift these creations to one another — butterflies and flowers drawn in colors that matched the taste of the recipient. Yet, the most common gift exchanged among us was not a piece of art, but a packet of laxatives to ease the constant discomfort. Nearly every woman there struggled with using the bathroom, especially in the first few days. But my relationship with the bathroom had a different, more painful history; a story of being harassed as a child, a nightmare that lasted for three long years.
