Reports | 25 05 2020
I select colourful fabrics to fit my own personal style, maybe this would help me on some level to overcome the blackness of the situation that forced me to veil myself every day!
I stand in front of my mirror ashamed of myself, ashamed of from my friends and comrades who I might meet by chance then they would realize how much I have changed, or even tamed. I rearrange my rebellious hair which refuse to obey this decision, and keep trying to escape that small piece of cloth I bought specially for the my enforced veiling in order to save my life.
There on front of the mirror I stare everyday, trying to make up new excuses and offer my apologies to many people…
I start my apologies to those martyrs who have lost their lives for the freedom of our so-called liberated areas. I choke while thinking of our great national heritage which we did not know how to preserve, and of those Syrians we promised a better tomorrow and a free country where they can live in dignity, and then we failed them!
Another apology, as deep as the disappointment of a friend who wears the veil every day as expression of her faith, of her relationship with her creator and her obedience to his will. To this friend I apologize for taking that honest ritual and turning it into a security shield to hide and protect myself from the eyes of the masked armed men. I apologize for emptying her devotion , though inadvertently, of its meaning. I apologize for wearing the same piece of cloth without considering its significance for my friend and many other women in my country. I owe them all a deep and sincere apology for my enforced veiling.
Among all these apologies, there is a painful and guilt-ridden one for the child I might have one day. I would call her Tia, and I would love her to have my rebellious curly hair. My child, if one day you were forced to veil yourself in the streets of our city, that would happen probably because your mother, who claims to be a rebellious soul, has chosen to give up her freedom for her safety. Your mother who has always blamed those who were able to live with injustice, her mother who has always blamed the earlier generations for not rebelling against tyranny, this same so-called rebellious mother has chosen to give in to tyranny to protect herself.. Therefore, to my future beautiful daughter, Tia, I offer my sincere apologies!
A transcendental apology to all the wonderful and strong women in the north of Syria who have not even enjoyed our brief freedom from the tyrant in Damascus before falling in the claws of another. Those great women I have abandoned, leaving them to face betrayals and danger on their own. I am so ashamed of admitting how I blamed those of them who has chosen to veil themselves for protection, how I even hated some of them! Today they have every right now to call me a hypocrite!
I am looking for excuses to give to my “identity," my faith, my religion, and my right to be different, those parts of me which I have to take off now and hide away whenever I veil myself... only to stay alive, to keep going as a rebel as I keep telling myself. Everyday, while putting on my veil, I swallow my humiliation pretending that this is not “me,” I disown myself reliving the humiliation I used to feel in front of investigators in the state security branches when I had to claim I had nothing to do with the revolution just to get out safely.
I finally understand St. Peter bitter tears when he denied Christ three times. How not when I deny him every day! Betrayal after betrayal, I commit every day in the morning as I put on my veil!. Perhaps the greatest of all is my betrayal to myself and to the revolution and to my beliefs
With every betrayal a part of me disappears! So I have to look hard at my reflection in the mirror everyday before leaving my house to make sure that this is me. I am terrified that one day I won’t see myself, or even that I won’t recognize myself...Just like my city, my Syria, my revolution