The Observer - 25.08.2019

The Observer

25.08.19 11

In the early days, friends would
tease: “They’d say: Waad’s playing
with her camera again...” This
changed after one of their dearest
friends, Gaith – a nurse – and his
brother Mahmoud were killed in
an air raid. “We had lost Gaith,”
says al-Kateab. “We knew he was
never coming back to this Earth but
had this incredible footage of him
laughing, working, sad... the life he’d
shared was recorded.” Filming was
remembering and the people who
once mocked now apologised.
Sama’s birth is an ordinary – and
extraordinary – event, discreetly
presented. We see her friends with
ears pressed to the door of the
hospital room, listening out for the
baby’s fi rst cry and jumping for joy
when they hear it. Al-Kateab is then
seen crying, holding Sama in her
arms – and Hamza teasingly tells
her to stop upsetting their baby.
What was in her mind? “I was crying
because this was a room where two
of my friends – Gaith and Omar –
used to work before they were killed.
I was thinking: I’ve brought life to
this place. I’d been terrifi ed I’d not
live to see Sama born. I was terrifi ed
about the future but also so happy.
I could see Hamza’s and my story in
Sama’s face. Yet I missed Gaith and
Omar and wished they were alive.”
If fi lming was remembering, it

was also, crucially, about resistance.

Al-Kateab emphasises new media’s

role in the Arab spring: “Mobiles

became the only way to show the

world that we were fi ghting for our

freedom.” Early student protests

were peaceful and festive with

fi reworks and dancing in the streets.

But by 2015, the security forces

were beating up student protesters.

“They’d turn up and fi ve minutes

later, the place would empty. A

presenter from the offi cial channel

would ask: ‘Has anything happened

here?’ ‘No, nothing,’ the remaining

students would reply.” Al-Kateab’s

footage would capsize that lie.

Similarly, she would later secure

evidence that Assad’s regime was

using chemical weapons.

Eventually, fi lming became her

way of surviving: “It gave me a

reason to stay in Aleppo. If I was

killed, I’d be leaving something

important behind.” Not that it gave

her distance on what was happening.

It was “doubly harrowing” and

“brought everything closer”. But

for many people, the camera

represented hope. And while on the

subject, I tell her that, strangely, it

was the moments of hope in the fi lm

that undid me – all the more moving

for being unexpected. A woman

who is nine months pregnant is

carried into hospital unconscious. An

emergency c aesarean is performed.

We see the baby pulled out – lifeless.

The misery of it is sickening. War has

killed him. Capable gloved hands

palpitate the little chest to start the

lungs – surely in vain. The nurse

briskly brushes his body with a

sweeping movement. They hold him

upside down and shake and slap

and, just as we have given up on his

slippery, grey body, he opens his eyes

and cries – and everyone who sees

it will join in. God be praised! His

furious frown is a triumph, his cry

defi es Assad (they save the mother

as well). “It is a miracle,” al-Kateab

exclaims. “ It gives us the strength to

stay in the struggle.”

But for her, too, hope is hardest to

handle: “Whenever I watch the fi lm,

it is when everyone else is laughing

that I cry. We were creating hope

and it was destroyed by the violence

of the regime and by the Russians.

At the last screening, sitting next to

Ed, I started crying as I watched the

early days of the revolution. And he

was asking me: “What’s the matter?”

And I said: “It’s the hope.”

But there has been another, more

manageable, version of hope too

• in people’s reactions to the fi lm:
  “It’s been amazing – audiences have
  given me hope, shown me they
  really care. I’ve been to Nantucket,
  Washington, Toronto, and even fi lm

distributors, who normally sample

a fi lm for 10 minutes and then

leave, have stayed and been very

moved.” When people went “crazy”

in Cannes, she says, “I can’t describe

how proud and happy it made me.”

It will be years before Sama is

old enough to see the fi lm made in

her name. Al-Kateab addresses her

in the fi lm like this: “Sama, I know

you understand what is happening.

I can see it in your eyes. You never

cry like a normal baby would.

That’s what breaks my heart.” Now

she confi rms that, on some level,

“Sama understood everything. That

time I was looking for her during

the bombing, I found her sleeping

in a very quiet way”. Her second

daughter, Taima (she became

pregnant again while still in Aleppo,

the baby was born in Turkey) reacts

in a “totally different way. If a bottle

of milk drops, she cries. Sama used

to fall from a high bed and not make

a sound. But I’d sometimes sense

she was scared.”

After leaving Syria, Sama used

to wake in the night screaming.

They consulted experts – she is

doing better now. Better than her

mother, who says: “I still suffer from

nightmares. And whenever I hear a

very loud sound – like a train – I feel

it in my body. I tried to seek therapy

but it did not work for me.” She has

said in the past that her therapist

(whom she now wants me to know

is “amazing” and says she “loves”)

herself needed therapy after their

sessions together.

T

he fi lm’s most

extraordinary

achievement is that,

instead of leaving one

helpless, it creates

resolve. Everyone who

sees it feels the same. Al-Kateab says

audiences come to her moved and

energised and with one question:

what can we do? The fi rst step

is “understanding”, she says –

especially at a point where Idlib’s

suffering is starting to resemble

Aleppo’s. And she gets out her phone

to play the infamous September

2016 interview with US presidential

candidate Gary Johnson. Asked

about his plans for Aleppo, he

replies gormlessly: “What’s Aleppo?”

It was this interview that stung

Al-Kateab into making the banner

seven-month-old Sama holds at

the end of the fi lm with their city of

ash as a backdrop. It reads: THIS IS

ALEPPO. WHAT’S JUSTICE?

As well as the need for

understanding, she hopes for

support for the campaign she

and Hamza plan to launch next

month on forsamafi lm.com , to

“stop bombing hospitals”. She

argues that the bombing of

hospitals is now a “worldwide”

problem. When Hamza’s hospital

is bombed, it is observed with

sober understatement: “Targeting

hospitals breaks people’s spirits.”

Meanwhile, Hamza plans to do

a master’s degree in public health

and has ambitions to reform the UN

and World Health Organization’s

approach to confl ict areas: “He

was put under a lot of pressure by

the UN, she says, “to evacuate the

hospital in a way that was not to the

benefi t of his patients. He believes

the UN was simply implementing

what Russia wanted them to do.”

The fi lm has now been seen at

the UN. The issue of the bombing of

hospitals (with the fi lm as evidence)

has also been raised at a security

council meeting. And it is hoped

that For Sama will be shown to the

Russian government (although

Watts is mindful of the risk that

the Russian regime might “pirate,

re-edit or misrepresent it”). And

might not showing it in Russia be

dangerous for al-Kateab? “It would

but I don’t care. I could have been

killed three years ago.”

From an outsider’s point of view

what seems most striking in the fi lm

is the intensity of the continuing

allegiance to Aleppo itself. One of

the oldest and most beautiful cities

in the world has had its medieval

architecture destroyed by barrel

bombs. Wouldn’t you run from the

wreckage if you could? A boy, with

quavering bravado, says he would

stay in the city even if his family

were to leave. A girl – no more

than three – as she is compelled to

depart, says in a startlingly adult

tone: “Aleppo is gone.” Al-Kateab lets

us know: “Saying goodbye is worse

than death.”

She nods mutely when I ask if

the place itself is precious to her. “A

journalist visiting Syria can leave

any time. I started with Aleppo in

my mind and heart.” She speaks

eloquently about shared experience

in confl ict: “The people I lived with in

Aleppo became closer to me than my

own parents, sister and brother.” And

she makes the point that she and

Hamza recognised the necessity of

their roles as doctor and journalist.

“We live for the moment we can

go back to Syria,” she says, “but it will

never happen while the Assad regime

rules. If he goes, in the same way

that we smuggled ourselves back to

Aleppo [after a visit to Turkey] in the

fi lm – two headstrong people with a

seven-month -old child – we would

smuggle ourselves back again.” The

memory of their brave return makes

her smile. What else can she fi nd,

looking back, that is positive?

“Death was close. We knew we

could be killed at any moment but

lived as if each minute was our last.

That’s why there is so much joy in the

fi lm. When death is all around you,

life is cheap but very important. A lot

of people in the UK don’t know the

value of life. Or the value of minutes.

If you enjoy doing something, do it. If

you love someone, tell them as soon

as possible because this life could

end at any moment.” The world, she

continues, is a “very dark place – with

Brexit here, US policy, Russia – and

you feel nothing will change. But if

people keep pushing, things will be

changed and there will be justice.

And we will keep fi ghting – no

matter how long it takes.”

For Sama is released in cinemas on

13 September and on Channel 4 later

in the autumn. Preview screenings

including Q&A sessions with the

fi lm-makers are also happening

nationwide. See forsamafi lm.com

Left, baby Sama

holds a

homemade

sign at the end

of the fi lm –

al-Kateab’s

response to US

politician Gary

Johnson asking:

‘What’s Aleppo?’

Right, from

top, al-Kateab

fi lming, and an

image from one

of her reports for

Channel 4 News.

Capital Pictures

Co-director

Edward Watts,

Waad al-Kateab

and husband

Hamza take

their message to

the Cannes fi lm

festival earlier

this year.

Allstar