Laila Alodaat: If you’re wondering why many Syrian’s are inexplicably silent in these dark days, remember that we spent the past 7 years trying to make the argument that no one should have to live under a genocidal war criminal who gases his people and bury them in masses under the rubble. We spoke, wrote, advocated, demonstrated, lobbied politicians and raised funds for victims, all while trying to stay sane and support each other. We did all what is humanly possibly to be moral but practical, passionate but balanced, to own our loss without being pitied, to seek help while maintaining dignity, to learn without being pushed around by orientalist neo-colonials, to remain hopeful but prepared for the imminent loss of yet another friend or family member, to be thankful to the communities that offered us protection but fight their government’s racist and abusive policy against refugees, to shed light on the horrors back home but still support the struggle of those suffering from occupation, tyranny and racism everywhere, to highlight the realities of women without being retweeted by a sad islamophobic troll, to own our voices and platforms without choking that reporter who would like to have “a Syrian preferably-not-headscarved-English-speaking-woman who is available in the studio in 26 minutes with a yes/no answer to whether the UK should militarily intervene in Syria” just because he realised a minute ago that all those analysing Syria are western men.
We did all that while trying - and more times than not failing - to deal with trauma, survival guilt and absolute disillusionment.
The Syrian people didn’t only offer many lives to the hope of freedom and dignity but also millions and millions of hours of dedicated work, none of which seems to have made any difference, the world still knows very little and civilians still die in every way imaginable.
We are now exhausted, traumatised and many of us are speechless and out of options (huge respect to those who aren’t) it is now your turn to make sure that stopping the mass killing of civilians is not a a radical demand but a baseline for a world we would all want to live in.