A Night Tale – a true story

Michel Kilo1

8 October 2012

Suddenly, the door of my cell in the dungeon was open. It was around 3:00am. The security man ordered me to follow him. After about fifty steps, he opened the door of another cell, and entered before me, holding my hand, and pulling me behind him. He removed the blindfold off my eyes, and whispered to me: “I will come back an hour later to return you to your room” (in Syrian prisons, the solitary cell is called “Room”). He pointed out to an empty corner and said: “Sit there, and narrate a tale to this little/child boy.”

In that narrow place (2m x 2m), there was a woman in her thirties. The security man got out and closed the door, ordering me not to talk in a loud voice lest any of his colleagues would hear me, and then a disaster may occur which could see both of us sent to Tadmur [the most notorious political prison in Syria, located in the desert in the East of Syria]. استمر في القراءة

Fatima’s Head

Ziad Majed

25/09/2012

It is hard to imagine what had happened to Fatima*. It is hard to describe the silence that swallowed the voices of the spectators of her death. I think the artworks on Facebook which had returned her head, portraying it as an orchard of flowers, a moon or a sun, tried hard to compensate for this horrifying silence, and to relieve Fatima, relieve her beloved ones, and relieve all of us.

What can be done for a little Syrian girl who had “lost” her head?!

What can be said to a little girl who had laid down on the ground in her dress, opening her arms, her small bleeding shoulders stuck directly to the wall..? استمر في القراءة