Omar al-Shogre:
‘I was madly in love. I could do nothing but think about her. I could do nothing but imagine. I could do nothing, but every thought was around how she is, how she looks, what she does. All of that, all the time, non-stop.
But I was that very shy guy. I would never dare to look at her in the eye, I would never dare to tell a girl that I love her. But I was tired of that. Especially because she was sat in the seat in front of me for two years in a row. So I can’t breathe without seeing her. All the time, six hours a day, in the classroom. And I was very challenging. But I was so shy.
I would find tricks. I would come to the exam without a pen. So the teacher would give us the paper to write the answers, and I said I didn’t have a pen. So she turns around, to give me a pen. And I would write the answers with hers, and I would keep the pen in my hand. And I wouldn’t give it back. So she would come to me, and say, “Hey, can you give me the pen?” So I could see her, looking me in the eyes.
But every time she would come to me, I wouldn’t know what to do, hide behind my finger. I was so nervous, so shy a guy, as a little boy. At some point I decided, this cannot go on. I need to have a revolution in my life. I need to dare; to do something that is so important to me.
So I decided, to take a pen, and paper, and write the first letter of love, in my life. And I take it, and I think, and I think, for hours and hours, what should the first letter say? Is it a poem, is it a painting, what should it be?
So with the paper, and pen, I came with the most brilliant idea. I wrote the first letter of my name, O, and the first letter of her name, H, and a heart in the middle. And I filled it with red. And I folded it, and put it in my pocket, next to my heart. And I go to school, and during the break, I sneak into the room, and put it on her chair.
And then, when everyone comes back from the break, I go to the corner of the room. I don’t want to be too close when she falls in love. I stand here, and I see her coming in with her friends. You need to understand how beautiful she is, how funny she is, how strong, so many things. And the way she walks, like a queen. Like she doesn’t care, her shoulders to the back, saying hey it’s me. She walks, and with every step, my heart is just beating faster.
And she comes in, and she sees that note. She takes the note, and she opens it up, and she reads it. Doesn’t take a long time to read it. She holds it in both hands. She’s imagining how much she should love me. And she is walking, and walking, with the note in one hand, and next to the door, there is a trash can. My heart was put in a trash can.
So with the paper, and pen, I came with the most brilliant idea. I wrote the first letter of my name, O, and the first letter of her name, H, and a heart in the middle. And I filled it with red. And I folded it, and put it in my pocket, next to my heart. And I go to school, and during the break, I sneak into the room, and put it on her chair.
And then, when everyone comes back from the break, I go to the corner of the room. I don’t want to be too close when she falls in love. I stand here, and I see her coming in with her friends. You need to understand how beautiful she is, how funny she is, how strong, so many things. And the way she walks, like a queen. Like she doesn’t care, her shoulders to the back, saying hey it’s me. She walks, and with every step, my heart is just beating faster.
And she comes in, and she sees that note. She takes the note, and she opens it up, and she reads it. Doesn’t take a long time to read it. She holds it in both hands. She’s imagining how much she should love me. And she is walking, and walking, with the note in one hand, and next to the door, there is a trash can. My heart was put in a trash can.
I can’t stand sitting behind her all these hours after that moment. It’s only the first trick. I go home, and I’m so upset, so angry. I don’t know what to do. I walk to the door, my mum calls on me; no, I’m studying. I sit in the corner, I want to cry, I’d rather not do anything else. And in the darkest moment, hope comes. How would she know it’s me? You know, there are seven Omars in the classroom. How would she know it’s me. So I decided, to have that brilliant idea. I take the pen, and the paper, and write her a letter. O, H, and a heart in the middle, and put some glitter on it, and my perfume.
And I drop it, she comes in, and she takes the note. She’ll know it’s me, it’s my perfume. It’s very cheap, I always use it. She’ll know it’s me. She opens it up, holding the note in both hands, Walks, My heart is about to pop with that attention. No, it goes in the trash, That monster, she never cared.
I go home. I’m so sad. I don’t know what to do. That was the most important thing that was happening in my life. What, you think school was important? No! The only reason school was important was because of her. There was nothing else relevant, importantly relevant, in my life; except that love, that good feeling I had. And in the darkest moments, hope comes along.
What girl would want in her purse, a note that’s so guy perfumed, that she’s going to smell like it now? Of course she doesn’t want that in her purse. So I come up with a brilliant idea to write her a letter. So I put O, H, a heart in the middle. I colour it red, put glitter on. I go to my mum, can I use your perfume? I go to my sister, can I use your perfume? M other sister, can I get your perfume? My third sister, I have four sisters, my aunt, my neighbour, any female perfume; and I perfumed it so much, and take it the day after.
And I drop it, she comes in, and she takes the note. She’ll know it’s me, it’s my perfume. It’s very cheap, I always use it. She’ll know it’s me. She opens it up, holding the note in both hands, Walks, My heart is about to pop with that attention. No, it goes in the trash, That monster, she never cared.
I go home. I’m so sad. I don’t know what to do. That was the most important thing that was happening in my life. What, you think school was important? No! The only reason school was important was because of her. There was nothing else relevant, importantly relevant, in my life; except that love, that good feeling I had. And in the darkest moments, hope comes along.
What girl would want in her purse, a note that’s so guy perfumed, that she’s going to smell like it now? Of course she doesn’t want that in her purse. So I come up with a brilliant idea to write her a letter. So I put O, H, a heart in the middle. I colour it red, put glitter on. I go to my mum, can I use your perfume? I go to my sister, can I use your perfume? M other sister, can I get your perfume? My third sister, I have four sisters, my aunt, my neighbour, any female perfume; and I perfumed it so much, and take it the day after.
This is it, I’m going to make it. I put it there, she’s coming in from the break, and I have had my heart broken so many times, that I see images playing faster than the reality. I see her picking it up, walking to the trash and throwing it, faster than the reality. And she comes in, takes the note, and she opens the note. And this note smells so much of perfume, it can kill the whole classroom.
She opens the note, the glitter’s dropping, and she is walking. My heartbeat is racing, oh so bad, and she’s walking next to the door. She gets to the door, she puts it in her pocket, and she walks out. And I knew she was in love, severely in love. She could do nothing without me any more. And I could not be happy. I could not sit. I would raise my hand to any question the teacher asked. I just wanted to be visible. I’d go home, “Mom, can I clean, wash dishes?” I’d do anything. I was so excited.
She opens the note, the glitter’s dropping, and she is walking. My heartbeat is racing, oh so bad, and she’s walking next to the door. She gets to the door, she puts it in her pocket, and she walks out. And I knew she was in love, severely in love. She could do nothing without me any more. And I could not be happy. I could not sit. I would raise my hand to any question the teacher asked. I just wanted to be visible. I’d go home, “Mom, can I clean, wash dishes?” I’d do anything. I was so excited.
That excitement ended a few days later. When I was off to the first protest, for the first time in my life. I see the police standing, in front of a crowd of people, with their guns, aiming in the faces. I didn’t know what was going to happen. Are they going to shoot, or not? Those are the police the military, of my country, they are my people.
And in the middle of your thoughts, your questioning; Boom! Boom! And they start shooting people. People die. For the first time in my life, I see people dying, blood. Not random people, people I didn’t know, my friend was dying. Before calling on me to run away, Omar run away, but I didn’t run away, I froze in my place. I didn’t know what to do.
And they took me to prison from there. And they tortured me. And they tried to break me, not only physically, but mentally. To disconnect you from humanity. They see you in pain, but to make sure you are in mental pain, they would force me to torture my favourite person in the world, my cousin. They forced him to torture me, so we would lose our humanity. To lose our love for anything.
And in the middle of your thoughts, your questioning; Boom! Boom! And they start shooting people. People die. For the first time in my life, I see people dying, blood. Not random people, people I didn’t know, my friend was dying. Before calling on me to run away, Omar run away, but I didn’t run away, I froze in my place. I didn’t know what to do.
And they took me to prison from there. And they tortured me. And they tried to break me, not only physically, but mentally. To disconnect you from humanity. They see you in pain, but to make sure you are in mental pain, they would force me to torture my favourite person in the world, my cousin. They forced him to torture me, so we would lose our humanity. To lose our love for anything.
But in that dark cell, I would sit; and although it was terrible, it was sad, it was dark, it was annoying, it was hateful, I was starved; I would have a lot of good moments to think about something beautiful. One month, two months, three months, I was holding images in my head, like a school time, like going to school every day. I would try to remember our home town, I would remember her, sitting behind her, the first time she opened a letter. The first time she threw it in the trash. All these things that were painful, it was beautiful, because it was outside.
And half a year later I couldn’t see her any more. I couldn’t reconstruct her image in my head any more. I was starved, I was in pain. The only thing I see are people dying. I never seen anyone get out. And I start to lose memories; not only her, but my family. And you start to disconnect from any life outside the prison cell.
That was fantastic. Because, sitting in a cell, even though its painful and terrible, and sitting in a pose like this is so tiring; you are not surrounded by walls, you are surrounded by other prisoners, a human wall. Those prisoners, none of them are criminals. Those people are well-educated, the top people of your country. They were arrested for that reason, because they are so good, the régime needs to get rid of them.
Next to me sits a prisoner, who was a doctor. The other side, a psychologist. In front of me, he’s a lawyer. There’s an engineer. What do you think the doctor’s talking to me about? How to survive physically. What does the psychologist talk to me about? How to survive mentally. What do you think the lawyer talks about? Human rights. How we construct a mechanism so we don’t kill each other because it’s starvation, steal each other’s food.
So everyone was using what they had done in their life, to build a system, so we could survive. Teach the people round them something useful. So instead of being that little boy, seventeen years old in prison, I had no function in life, except for that love I had; suddenly I’m sitting in the darkest place you could ever imagine, and sometimes when it’s the darkest, that’s when it’s easiest to have hope.
So I would learn everything they teach me. Those people will die, because when a doctor’s sixty years old, and they break his arm or leg, he will die. He won’t heal, because he’s being tortured every day. I could heal faster, and they will teach me everything, because they wanted their legacy to stay alive. They invested in me all the time, because I could physically survive much longer because I was much younger. I heal faster. And the doctor would teach me, and make sure the other prisoner whose arm is broken, I could help them. And the one who is mentally suffering, I have learned so many techniques; I have processed my trauma on a daily basis, I have talked about it. I have managed to find ways to succeed my trauma with a reward. For me, pain was a state with something good I would receive after it, so it would minimise the impact, the pain, that comes out of it, of the torture. And I could teach that to other people.
And half a year later I couldn’t see her any more. I couldn’t reconstruct her image in my head any more. I was starved, I was in pain. The only thing I see are people dying. I never seen anyone get out. And I start to lose memories; not only her, but my family. And you start to disconnect from any life outside the prison cell.
That was fantastic. Because, sitting in a cell, even though its painful and terrible, and sitting in a pose like this is so tiring; you are not surrounded by walls, you are surrounded by other prisoners, a human wall. Those prisoners, none of them are criminals. Those people are well-educated, the top people of your country. They were arrested for that reason, because they are so good, the régime needs to get rid of them.
Next to me sits a prisoner, who was a doctor. The other side, a psychologist. In front of me, he’s a lawyer. There’s an engineer. What do you think the doctor’s talking to me about? How to survive physically. What does the psychologist talk to me about? How to survive mentally. What do you think the lawyer talks about? Human rights. How we construct a mechanism so we don’t kill each other because it’s starvation, steal each other’s food.
So everyone was using what they had done in their life, to build a system, so we could survive. Teach the people round them something useful. So instead of being that little boy, seventeen years old in prison, I had no function in life, except for that love I had; suddenly I’m sitting in the darkest place you could ever imagine, and sometimes when it’s the darkest, that’s when it’s easiest to have hope.
So I would learn everything they teach me. Those people will die, because when a doctor’s sixty years old, and they break his arm or leg, he will die. He won’t heal, because he’s being tortured every day. I could heal faster, and they will teach me everything, because they wanted their legacy to stay alive. They invested in me all the time, because I could physically survive much longer because I was much younger. I heal faster. And the doctor would teach me, and make sure the other prisoner whose arm is broken, I could help them. And the one who is mentally suffering, I have learned so many techniques; I have processed my trauma on a daily basis, I have talked about it. I have managed to find ways to succeed my trauma with a reward. For me, pain was a state with something good I would receive after it, so it would minimise the impact, the pain, that comes out of it, of the torture. And I could teach that to other people.
That gave me a function, in my life, for the first time. Something useful to do, something important, I was saving lives. When you save life, do you think you feel good about that or not? I was saving so many lives on a daily basis. I was loving my life. I wasn’t loving torture, of course not. But I was used to it, two years later, being tortured on a daily basis, what do you think? You get used to it. Your body is capable of getting used to pain. You can try it yourself, hit your hand fifty times. It hurts the first thirty times. But then you get numb to it. Physically and mentally, over time. So I get numb from that perspective, and I invest in time, because people have decided to invest in me.
And that’s the power of caring about each other. You cannot survive on your own. In prison, you don’t survive because you are strong. You don’t at all. You survive because you have people around you to protect you when you are at your weakest. Someone to fight for your food when you can’t fight for your own food. Someone to feed you when you feel like you can’t eat. Someone to kick you when you do the wrong thing. That is the only reason you will survive.
That doesn’t only apply to prison. That applies everywhere. If you don’t have a community of people around you you trust, you have nothing. You wouldn’t survive to have a good life. So that’s the most important thing we’re going to have. And that’s what we try to create for everyone coming out of Syria. Everyone who’s trying to be a witness, everyone who’s trying to bring awareness of suffering. Everyone who’s suffering, coming out trying to share their story. We decided, the Syrian Emergency Task Force, to protect them. To make them trust us. They’re in a safe place, they can share their story, in a way that fits them, their profile, their experiences.
Not everyone can come publicly the way I do. There’s a risk you take, and some people can not take risks the way I can. If Syria, we’ve had multiple people come out with a lot of evidence, strong evidence. We’ve had evidence of mass graves in Syria. Caesar you’ve already heard of, but also we have the Gravedigger, who was part of the mechanism the régime built to massacre hundreds of thousands of people. And today we have him with us. I want him to say some words in my ear, to say to you, because you’re not allowed to hear his voice for safety reasons.’
The Gravedigger:
‘I was tasked and forced to work for the régime for eight years, opening mass graves, and burying innocent people that had been killed under torture, under starvation, and shot outside in the street for protesting by the Syrian régime; and this eight years, if you listen to the courts who worked out these cases, there are over a million people who have been buried, and that’s just the simple estimates of the brutality of this régime.
And for eight years, I was not allowed to have a vacation. Because of my family, I could not have a break even for a single day. And every time they brought a truck of dead bodies, a fridge of dead bodies, the régime would give me a list. The list would have the name, the number of dead bodies, the branches, the prisons they were coming from, and the numbers were usually higher than the official numbers. So they would give you 250 on the paper, sometimes it would be 400 people.
Just like the ones who were alive who were treated with the most brutality, the Syrian régime has even treated the dead body, the corpse, with that brutality. You’re not allowed to show any mercy with those dead bodies when you bring them, you have to throw them in that big hole that you made. Because they wanted to remove any connection between this dead body, and their story, and their life.
The régime has been an expert in forced disappearance. Including children, who are three months or three years old. And during my time there, I was responsible for burying the bodies of kids who were just a few months old.
They used to bring children to that location of the mass graves. The children had torture marks, just like the adults. In addition, some of them, their skeleton would be destroyed just by jumping on it with the military shoes of the soldiers.
I started in 2011, and managed to escape in 2018, and still the régime is creating these crimes.’
And that’s the power of caring about each other. You cannot survive on your own. In prison, you don’t survive because you are strong. You don’t at all. You survive because you have people around you to protect you when you are at your weakest. Someone to fight for your food when you can’t fight for your own food. Someone to feed you when you feel like you can’t eat. Someone to kick you when you do the wrong thing. That is the only reason you will survive.
That doesn’t only apply to prison. That applies everywhere. If you don’t have a community of people around you you trust, you have nothing. You wouldn’t survive to have a good life. So that’s the most important thing we’re going to have. And that’s what we try to create for everyone coming out of Syria. Everyone who’s trying to be a witness, everyone who’s trying to bring awareness of suffering. Everyone who’s suffering, coming out trying to share their story. We decided, the Syrian Emergency Task Force, to protect them. To make them trust us. They’re in a safe place, they can share their story, in a way that fits them, their profile, their experiences.
Not everyone can come publicly the way I do. There’s a risk you take, and some people can not take risks the way I can. If Syria, we’ve had multiple people come out with a lot of evidence, strong evidence. We’ve had evidence of mass graves in Syria. Caesar you’ve already heard of, but also we have the Gravedigger, who was part of the mechanism the régime built to massacre hundreds of thousands of people. And today we have him with us. I want him to say some words in my ear, to say to you, because you’re not allowed to hear his voice for safety reasons.’
The Gravedigger:
‘I was tasked and forced to work for the régime for eight years, opening mass graves, and burying innocent people that had been killed under torture, under starvation, and shot outside in the street for protesting by the Syrian régime; and this eight years, if you listen to the courts who worked out these cases, there are over a million people who have been buried, and that’s just the simple estimates of the brutality of this régime.
And for eight years, I was not allowed to have a vacation. Because of my family, I could not have a break even for a single day. And every time they brought a truck of dead bodies, a fridge of dead bodies, the régime would give me a list. The list would have the name, the number of dead bodies, the branches, the prisons they were coming from, and the numbers were usually higher than the official numbers. So they would give you 250 on the paper, sometimes it would be 400 people.
Just like the ones who were alive who were treated with the most brutality, the Syrian régime has even treated the dead body, the corpse, with that brutality. You’re not allowed to show any mercy with those dead bodies when you bring them, you have to throw them in that big hole that you made. Because they wanted to remove any connection between this dead body, and their story, and their life.
The régime has been an expert in forced disappearance. Including children, who are three months or three years old. And during my time there, I was responsible for burying the bodies of kids who were just a few months old.
They used to bring children to that location of the mass graves. The children had torture marks, just like the adults. In addition, some of them, their skeleton would be destroyed just by jumping on it with the military shoes of the soldiers.
I started in 2011, and managed to escape in 2018, and still the régime is creating these crimes.’
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