Photo by Maurice Pehle
He who laughs
Just hasn’t yet received
The terrible news.– Bertolt Brecht
Terror and anticipation begin the moment iftar ends. That is when the mujahideen knock on doors and search homes. Calls to the General Security prove useless; the response is shocking: “We cannot do anything about them.”
Bullets pierce windows, shattering glass, as threatening voices echo at building entrances. A Kalashnikov barrel searches for a victim.
Wael, an Alawite, moved his child to a Sunni family’s home on another floor to keep him safe. That same night, five armed, bearded men stormed the home of Hussein and Malika, asking if there were any young men inside before ordering the two to leave. Terrified and unable to process the fact that their lives had been spared, Hussein and Malika hurried to their neighbor’s apartment on the second floor. The militants seized their sea-view home and took up residence there.
Ahmed trembled as he stared at his children, his words choked with fear. He ended the call with me, saying they had reached the entrance of his building and that he could no longer continue speaking. Later, he reassured me in a text message that they had not entered.
In the Al-Amara neighborhood, Reem clutched her two daughters, watching the door leading to the black tunnel of death. She said, “I sing to them as I wait. I repeat the same songs over and over.” She choked on her tears and fell silent. She had nothing more to say. Her tear-filled silence spoke louder than the media screens shamelessly spreading lies.
Many individuals have disappeared, their fates unknown. The bleeding corpses in the streets tell stories that may never reach readers or listeners, drowned in a sea of fabricated media narratives designed to mislead public opinion.
Khalil, an intellectual, aimed to send a message about famous Arab TV channels. He explained, “The killers control the narrative, and shaping public discourse. By dominating the screens, they influence the audience, using media coverage to portray their crimes as battles against the regime’s remnants.”
Video clips surfaced showing Jableh city as a deserted wasteland, just as a foreign jihadist had boasted on social media about his role in turning it into a desert. In another video, he is seen chasing an elderly man with a Kalashnikov, gunning him down while riding a motorcycle like a hunter toying with his prey.
Ali, a high school student, believed he was safe in his village. Walking near his home with a friend, he was caught in a hail of bullets fired from a passing vehicle in a mujahideen convoy. Merhej, on the other hand, was persuaded by his wife to flee Jableh to her family’s home in Hmeimim village. But the killers were waiting there too. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, have perished, though documentation is still incomplete, and the final death toll remains uncertain.
Samia wept over the phone: ‘No food, no water, and we can’t leave or even think about opening the door.” She sat in complete darkness with her two sons, one a university student, the other with special needs but fully aware of the fear on his mother’s and brother’s faces. The regime had executed her husband, though the details remained unclear. “Every day is worse than the one before. We go to sleep not knowing if we’ll wake up, and wake up not knowing if we’ll make it through the day, as the Arab classical poet Abu al-Ala al-Ma’arri once said. Do you remember when they destroyed his statue in his birthplace, under the pretext that it was an idol? The same people are here to kill us.”
Nearby, Wael heard his female neighbor’s screams as her husband and two sons were executed before her eyes. Everyone heard, but no one could help. No one could do anything.
In a desperate attempt to survive, Ayman, a lawyer, called his Sunni friend: “Come take me to your home.” Ayman sought refuge in a Sunni household, just as Hussein, the agricultural engineer, and Malika, the schoolteacher, took shelter in their Sunni neighbor’s apartment upstairs. Outside, Syrian and foreign jihadists roamed the streets, hunting Alawites, while Alawite and Sunni Syrians came together in a rare display of human solidarity.
Ahmed, his voice weak and uncertain, said, “I now understand the looming presence of death in war. I understand how it comes through shelling, through the sound of mortars, through explosive barrels, or exploding landmines. I see how everything that happened in the north and northeast fueled this killing machine here. We should have been braver in showing solidarity with the Syrians who were being killed since the beginning of the last decade, but we were afraid. We failed to grasp the power of human solidarity with those who were pushed toward extremism. Yet, slaughtering civilians like this is not a solution, it cannot be justified as a retaliation, because the victims are not fighters, or remnants of the old regime as they claim. It is ethnic cleansing.”
Muhsin came to my mind. Fourteen years ago, I attended his funeral in to express my condolences to his parents. He had been doing his military service in Raqqa. As a university graduate, he was supposed to stay in the army for two years, but with the emergency laws in place, there was no promise of being released. In Raqqa, he disappeared without leaving any trace behind. It turned out that ISIS had kidnapped him. His parents waited in vain for any news, until one day someone called to tell them he was dead. His mother, furious, said the regime had never cared to search for her son. “Nobody cared,” she said. “He wasn’t connected, and he didn’t have money.”
Two years later, he miraculously reappeared. When the terrorists had a gun barrel pressed to his head, he found the courage to ask, “How can you kill someone who has memorized the Quran by heart?” The emir ordered them to spare him and had someone bring the Quran to test him, verse by verse. He succeeded, and they let him live.
“Now, people with the same mentality are besieging our homes,” he said, with the same courage he had once shown. “Let’s see what God has written for us. I hope their God will not be my judge; He promised me hell.”
Marwan, overcome with anger, suffered sleepless nights in Angola, constantly checking his phone for updates on his wife, two daughters, and old parents. He directed his fury at Bashar al-Assad, holding him primarily responsible for the carnage. “They are making us pay for crimes we did not commit. We were never the core supporters for the regime, as the opposition factions claim. The true backers of the regime were Iran, Russia, the West, and oil-rich Arab states. They funded and supported al-Assad’s military dictatorship. Even former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright endorsed Bashar al-Assad’s inheritance of his father’s position. We were just ordinary people looking for work. We failed to realize that we were part of the oppressive machine that served the Assads. I understand that now. Existential shocks deepen awareness.” He paused, then, with bitterness, added, “But look at what they are doing! They are killing innocent, powerless people, while the real criminals were spared by the deal that changed the country’s course. Those who committed crimes either settled their status or fled the country to Russia, while the poor and innocent are the ones paying the price.”
Aziz, whose poet friend and his two children were killed before their mother’s eyes, said the murderers are ideologically programmed to commit their crimes. “They see the other as an infidel, a heretic, stripped of any human worth. True, we deserve blame for our lack of solidarity with other Syrians and our failure to speak out. But we were just as afraid of the security apparatus as anyone else, and we never condoned the killing of Syrians. Maybe we erred by not making our voices louder, but many of us stood by our principles with courage and honor. Syrians chanted at the start of the revolution: ‘He who kills his people is a traitor.’ And that is exactly what is happening now. The killers believe they are eliminating infidels and criminals, but in reality, they are slaughtering their own people. I condemn the killing of the General Security’s personnel in the ambush. However, the killers are armed gangs who do not represent us, and we are not responsible for their crimes.”
Ghasan refused to surrender to fear. He had seen this coming. “The regime’s practices for decades inevitably led to this bloodshed. But the real problem lies in culture. Islam in Syria must be reformed and charged with an entirely different cultural vision, where faith remains a personal matter between individuals and their God. The flaw is not only in the Quran but also in what the Algerian scholar and thinker Mohammed Arkoun calls the second text (the interpretations of the Quran that have fueled extremist thought). We need new critical thought to dismantle this deep-rooted culture that turns minds into weapons of extremism. If this does not happen, this massacre will repeat itself.”
Ghasan was not afraid. He believed in the resilience of the Syrian people. “There is a power outage, the water is cut off, and we cannot buy necessities. The only thing that flows uninterrupted is the fear of indiscriminate slaughter, the fear of being killed like an insect, stripped of humanity. The executioner who may enter soon does not know me, does not care about my thoughts, will not even try to know me. To him, I am an infidel, undeserving of life. His mind is fed with narratives that make me worth nothing more than a bullet.”
I could not reach many I wanted to check on. Darkness prevailed, cold gripped the air, and the specter of fear filled the streets, where death squads prowled, committing genocide, looting, and burning homes across the Syrian coast and its countryside.
However, I managed to get in touch with Samar who cried over the phone, saying, “I am not afraid of death, but of this look directed at me, as if I lack a human identity, the look that strips me of my humanity. I have been dehumanized. I have been given an identity that is not mine. I have been burdened with the sins of others. Soon, the fast will end. Our home might be next.”
She continued, “The death squads belong to forces that became official after the dissolution and unification of factions under the Ministry of Defense. At first, we heard that these forces had come to support the General Security’s forces, which had been attacked by remnants of the regime. However, the government-affiliated forces carried out a ‘jihadist raid’ aligned with the traditions of Al-Qaeda and ISIS. They stormed the homes of unarmed civilians, executing children, women, the elderly, and young men in cold blood without even trying to hide it. They filmed the killings with their mobile phones and posted videos on social media boasting of killing the infidels, leaving the bodies scattered in the streets or inside homes, while shouting phrases that stripped the victims of their humanity and further dehumanized them. They vowed to turn cities and towns into deserts. The death squads continue their killing operations under the pretext of fighting the remnants of the regime, while the government’s vague statements aimed to portray the massacres in the coastal areas as retaliation for crimes committed by the remnants of the former regime. This justifies the crimes and encourages more of them. There has been no attempt to stop the killing or force the criminals to withdraw from the cities and the countryside, where genocide is taking place as if under a legal cover.”
I was unable to reach Tareq directly, but he wrote to me, saying that criminals’ patrols are roaming the streets of Jableh, Latakia, Baniyas, Tartous, and the countryside of Masyaf. The zealots storm houses after breaking their fast. Fear engulfs the residents after iftar, which has turned into an appointment with Azrael (the Angel of Death in Islam). After executions, money, jewelry, and cars are looted because the jihadists consider them as booties; any vehicle that cannot be driven or transported is set on fire. Some homes have been occupied and turned into headquarters, such as what happened in the Teachers’ Housing Units in the Mediterranean coastal city of Jableh.
Tareq said that the killings are still ongoing, with people falling dead in the Rumeila neighborhood and other villages, and no serious effort has been made to stop the crimes.
After many desperate attempts, I finally reached Ayham, my old friend. “I escaped death by a hair’s breadth. The emir spared me. They broke into the house, demanded money, electronics, and everything of value. Just as they were about to shoot me, the emir signaled them to stop, saying he wanted to interrogate me. I told him I was ready to embrace their version of religion, to be guided to the right path, and to become a Sunni. I used my extensive knowledge of Islam as a lifeline, a lottery ticket that saved my life and it worked. I escaped, but all my close friends were killed. I am now a Sunni; my change of faith was the only thing that spared my life.”
I managed to reach my old friend Maisa. She was in disbelief over what had happened to their house after the death squads left. Everything of value was stolen, including frozen food, olives, olive oil, nuts, and chinaware. What shocked her the most was that her wedding album had been emptied of all the photographs, their torn pieces scattered on the floor alongside the broken remnants of some paintings.
“You know that Alawi women don’t wear hijab in the coastal region. At my wedding, all of my female friends wore short dresses, some with collars that revealed a bit of skin. But for the fundamentalist intruders, women must wear the veil and live like slaves. Now my memories are erased. They even tore up the photos of me as a baby and a child. They executed me in photographs, leaving no trace of my past life. They didn’t respect the sanctity of personal belongings that give value to our lives. I feel like a stranger in this country now. I no longer belong here. I cannot live with this kind of religious mentality.”
The former communist and poet Anwar, who left Damascus for the coastal area after work opportunities dried up in the capital, told me about hunger, thirst, halted salaries, layoffs, and the growing anger among people. He said the “death squads were sent to silence everyone”. He added that “Syrian officials’ statements in the first and second days of the mass killings showed a clear refusal to condemn the systematic genocide, treating it not as an isolated crime but as a justifiable reaction, an atrocity contextualized in a way that gives it legitimacy. Had the perpetrators been civilians seeking revenge, it might have been understandable. But the fact that these mass killings are being committed by official government forces under the current Ministry of Defense means that the government’s refusal to stop the massacres is effectively a green light for them to continue. The proof is that even as I speak with you, the killing continues in some areas. When the Assad regime fell, we looked to the people who came from the north – who had been portrayed as barbarians by the regime’s propaganda- as kind of solution. But now, after the genocide, it would have been better if they had never come, because, contrary to what Cavafy said in his famous poem “Waiting for the Barbarians”, they will never be a kind of solution.
This article is based on WhatsApp calls and interviews with individuals living in Syria’s coastal region, where the genocide took place, and their lives were threatened. One of them miraculously escaped death.
Osama Esber is a Syrian poet, photographer, and translator currently based in California. He serves as an editor for Salon Syria and the Arabic section of Jadaliyya, as well as an editor for Status audio magazine. His poetry collections include Screens of History (1994), The Accord of Waves (1995), Repeated Sunrise over Exile (2004), and Where He Doesn’t Live (2006). He has also published short story collections such as The Autobiography of Diamonds (1996), Coffee of the Dead (2000), and Rhythms of a Different Time (forthcoming). As a translator, he has rendered into Arabic the works of renowned authors including Salman Rushdie, Raymond Carver, Michael Ondaatje, Bertrand Russell, Toni Morrison, and Noam Chomsky, among others.
