July• 2019 | 125myself in a couple of
weeks. My family did try
to take me out, but it was
too much trouble since we
had no lift, and I had to be
carried up and down five
f lights of stairs. But I did
not wallow in misery. My
favourite saying is: “Laugh
as long as you breathe, love
as long as you live.”
In January 2011, just
after my 12th birthday, I
was watchingDays of Our
Lives when my brother
Bland rushed in and turned
the channel to Al Jazeera.
“Something has happened!”
he cried.
On the screen we could see people
gathering in the main square in Cairo,
waving flags and demanding the re-
moval of President Hosni Mubarak.
Then came the tear gas and rubber
bullets to drive the demonstrators
away. A few days later there were
tanks and barricades in the streets,
until President Mubarak stepped
down. It was the Arab Spring.
Soon, every day on TV, there were
reports of uprisings somewhere new.
Yemen, Libya, Algeria, Morocco.
When would it be Syria’s turn? The
whole country was holding its breath.
The spark came in Daraa, near the
Jordan border, when a group of teen-
age boys was arrested for scrawling
anti-regime graffiti on school walls.
More teenagers were arrested. Therewere reports that the boys were be-
ing tortured. On March 18, after Fri-
day prayers, families of the missing,
accompanied by community leaders,
marched on the governor’s house. Riot
police used water cannons to disperse
them, then armed police opened fire.
Three people were killed.
Two days later, protesters set fire to
the local Ba’ath party headquarters
and other government buildings. Pres-
ident Assad sent tanks to crush the
protesters. The revolution had begun.
Rebel groups got together in what
they called the Free Syrian Army
and began to prepare for war. Assad
stepped up his military actions, until
the revolution came to Aleppo in the
spring of 2012.
My sister Nasrine was among those
PHOTO: COURTESY OF NUJEEN MUSTAFA protesting at the university, when the
Nujeen as a 10 year old in Syria,
before the war