Once upon a time in Syria…

This is an excerpt from an interview with a Syrian-Kurdish man about life in Syria before the uprising in 2011. The transcript has been edited for clarity.

I couldn’t believe they could torture a human being that way. He returned home after two months, and he couldn’t stand or walk because his feet were swollen from the torture. They beat him. My grandfather was put in a political prison twice.

In 2004, there were clashes between Kurds and Arabs at a football match. That was when I started to become politically aware. I went to the streets and started to demonstrate. I felt anger towards the government. How can they kill people? How can they shoot people?

We had dreams. Young people hoped that maybe some day the country would change. Syrian society was full of corruption. It was a system of gangsters and spies. I knew they could follow me, they could listen to our calls and monitor things like Facebook. We were against the government, but we couldn’t express it freely. We had ambition, but we had an obstacle — Syrian reality.

Authorities would stop me a lot because they thought I was a liberal, probably from the way I dress and my look, which they considered to be opposition. Once I was stopped and I was so scared. The police yelled, “raise your hands” and they pushed me against a car. They checked my pockets, my bag, and asked weird questions. I was a student, not a terrorist. I thought why do you have to stop me like this?

We were preparing for a play in February 2011, so one month before the uprising. I went to the toilet and five guys followed. They stopped me and asked for my ID. They searched my bag, papers and notebooks. They started to read them because they were afraid of the Arab Spring. They kept asking questions. I was terrified.

They found a note in my bag for an idea about a play. It was about Franco in 1974 in Spain and it contained words like revolution and dictatorship. It was only two lines. One of them asked, like a detective, “what do you mean by this word?” It was revolution. I said, “I mean nothing.” He tore the paper in two and put it in his pocket.

They started to follow me everywhere — where I worked, my home. They collected information about me. What I did, what I studied, my political views. I met a beautiful girl at the university, one week before the uprising on March 15, who said she was preparing for a demonstration. I didn’t say anything against the government because I felt she was a spy. I said, “we don’t need an uprising like Egypt or Tunisia.” The girl spoke to my friends. They started to speak against the government and cursed President Bashar al-Assad. The police arrested my friends on March 17.

I left Aleppo with another friend, and we went to a village. We thought we might be in danger. The police came to my house in Aleppo at midnight. My mum said that eight armed men searched for me, even in a little closet. My neighbours said that more men blocked the street.

I shaved and tried to change my appearance. My friends were eventually released from prison. They told me that the authorities knew everything about us, even the messages from our mobiles. They copied all his Facebook posts, everything. The girl from the university was inside the prison when they were questioned. She was a spy, and working for the Syrian Government.

My father supported the government. I hated him a lot. He was a rotten clerk. He went to work, got his salary and just wanted to retire. He wanted a safe life. I’m sorry to say this, I was ready to spit in his face.

I was enthusiastic about the revolution. We wanted to demonstrate, but we were afraid. We heard that people were being arrested, and not even for demonstrating. Some times just for saying things against the government at a café. They planted fear in Syrians for 40 years. We knew there were spies and we could see them wherever we went. We would always say that the walls have ears. They could interfere with every detail of your life and threaten you.

It was an unbelievable dream for the revolution to arrive in Syria. Now, we have blood. We have chaos and hatred. We want to stop the bloodshed. We want to stop the chaos.