Once again, I’m writing in my own space and now I can practice my freedom where nobody can take it away from me. I’m writing again in the simple language that I always wanted to use, far away from all the complexity that writing for a newspaper can impose. I wouldn’t say that this limits a writer, it’s just a different style that pushes you to seek a form of communication that allows you to be just SIMPLE.
Here I’m just making my introduction, explaining how I want things to be in my own place.
I used to write for newspapers before leaving Syria, and somewhere on the margin of that I had my own blog where I wrote what I couldn’t write in a normal newspaper about issues that might not be attractive to the average reader.
Anyway March 2011 came and, whether you like it or not, it changed a lot in the lives of Syrians; I’m referring here to normal ordinary Syrians, so what about the effects it had on a political activist and journalist ?
How can I dare to call myself a political activist before the revolution? Did we really have any real activism back then?
I swear to you dear readers, what we did before the revolution – and we called it activism back then – was practically useless, so I can’t even remember any of it right now!
Is that weird? I swear I can’t remember any of what was a whole or life for us before March 2011. Oh I certainly remember being investigated and questioned in the regime’s secret services branches many times, but I can’t really remember why! Sometimes I just explain it as: they just wanted to remind us, ‘We are here’, exactly as we wanted to tell ” We are here too” through our activities, nothing more than that …and obviously nothing can be less.
In March 2012, I was arrested for the first time during the revolution; nothing I experienced was different from all those reports you’ve already heard about torture, pain, humiliation, etc., etc. …
What might be unique for me is that in order to protect me, my friends shut down my email and Facebook page and subsequently i lost my blog due to closing my email account.
Another reason to make a new start without any evidence from the first year of the revolution; while I lost all the contacts all the pictures and everything else, that time and those memories are engraved and sculpted indelibly in my heart and mind. I still remember my first protest, and I still remember the face of the first Syrian guy who shouted out loud to gather us for the protest; one year later I saw his picture on Facebook as a martyr. I cried a river, knowing that I had only talked to him for maybe five minutes in that place where I practiced my freedom for the very first time. I still remember everything, like an insane story of first love, and usually tyrants fear the memories.
In Islam they say, Islam erases whatever came before it; obviously all the religions say the same, that you need only to follow religions or ask the Lord for forgiveness in order to erase whatever sins you committed, like a spiritual bribe you pay in order to attain sin-free status. Anyway I’m not religious and I only ask me and any people who I’ve sinned against for forgiveness. But what I’m sure about is that the revolution erased what came before it. It left no space in my mind for anything else.
Dear readers, I don’t know why you might be interested in reading all this, but for me here I’m making the declaration of my new beginning: I’ll write again, in English, Italian Arabic or maybe German later – no more barriers no control, no restrictions at all.
Profilo dell'autore
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Mohammad Abu Hajar è un attivista, giornalista e musicista siriano. Ha fatto il master in Economia politica alla Sapienza - Università di Roma. Scrive dal 2007.
Mohammad Abu Hajar is a Syrian activist, journalist and musician.
He had his master's in political economics from Sapienza university of Rome; he writes since 2007.
محمد ابو حجر، ناشط، صحفي و موسيقي سوري حصل على درجة الماستر في الاقتصاد السياسي من جامعة سابينزا في روما، يكتب المقالات منذ عام 2007
