In the ‘kingdom of silence’, the caged bird raps

In Syria, the caged bird raps. On my first night imprisoned, I began to write: 1am certain, after the long night there will be light. The jailer will collapse, and the prison will fall.

- Mohammad Abu Hajar

That was 2012. Thirteen years later, my certainty arrived.

The al-Assad dynasty ruled Syria for 54 years, from 1970, when Hafez al-Assad orchestrated a coup d’état and cemented his dictatorship over what became known as the “kingdom of silence” and through the reign of his son, Bashar al-Assad, which began in 2000.

The moment Mr Assad's regime fell last December, I was asleep in Barcelona. Though the nights leading up to it had been restless, haunted by my obsessive attempts to follow the opposition’s rapid advancements into Damascus. On Dec 8, I woke up to a deluge of phone calls and messages. I knew instantly: Mr Assad was gone.

I watched the footage of prisoners being freed. I cried. I thought back to my own experience as a political prisoner, and to that song I started writing in that cold cell, how its lyrics and imagined rhythms became a space that liberated me from the terrifying reality of jail —allifeline of escape in a time of hysterical, bloody dictatorship.

On March 14, 2012, at 9am, a friend called to tell me that local teachers had organised a small protest in front of the regional government building. I accompanied him to understand the demands they were raising.

Twas already a member of Ahrar Tartous (“Free People of Tartous”), one of the revolutionary groups in my city. We had organised protests and several other campaigns of nonviolent resistance — we belonged to the angry streets. Once the 2011 uprisings began — part of the larger Arab Spring — I was detained multiple times, but never spent a night in prison.

But that day, by 9.55am, an armed man had seized my ID and those of two other comrades. “Come with me,’ he demanded. Twenty minutes later, I found myself imprisoned.

On the first day, the officer said, ‘It’s only five minutes.’

He remembers that, on that night, out of fear, he couldn't sleep.