The Morning They Came for Us by Janine di Giovanni Read Free Book Online Page A

Christians, hundreds of whom had been kidnapped and murdered by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
    On the road back to Damascus that afternoon in 2012, long before the Salafists arrived, we saw the first signs of war getting closer to Ma’loula. As we approached Damascus, smoke rose, curling into the skyline. A car bomb. The sun bore down on the car, in contrast to the cool convent with its sense of hushed protection. The traffic was stalled for miles atthe roadblocks, so we left our car by the side of the road and walked to the bombsite.
    It stank of burnt rubber. Skeletons of charred cars remained. No one had been hurt, which was fortunate. The explosion was caused by ‘sticky bombs’ – handmade bombs taped to the bottom of a car, which had been parked just across from the Justice Courts at the height of the rush hour.
    â€˜Real amateur hour,’ one UN official said to me later. ‘The bombers didn’t know what they were doing – it’s just a scare tactic to make the people hate the opposition.’
    For a while, it worked. People blamed the opposition and ‘foreign interventionists’ for the explosions. Crowds of people gathered, angry that their city was quickly falling victim to the devastation that was spreading across the country.
    â€˜Our only friend is Russia!’ one well-dressed man shouted near the bombsite, his face contorted with rage. ‘These are foreigners that are exploding our country! Syria is for Syrians!’
    It was a common belief that the bombs and the chaos that were spreading throughout the country were widely being caused by a ‘third element’. This was especially true in Damascus, which had long been an Assad stronghold. People refused to believe that the opposition could rule their country without turning it into a Salafist kingdom, an Islamic caliphate where women were not allowed out of the house and Christians were locked up and sold as slaves.
    This was nearly a year before we even began to hear about ISIS, the Islamic State.
    A crowd gathered around us. People were getting agitated from the heat, from the uncertain future, from the violence that had just ripped through their streets. My driver wanted to go.
    After we had returned to the hotel, I watched the end of the pool party in the dying light of the day, and against the faint dusk I could still see the grey, acrid smoke plumes curling in the air, a warning sign of darker days to come.
    â€˜Look at what happened in Tunisia, look at what happened in Libya, look at the results of Egypt,’ said Ahmed, a wealthy seventeen-year-old in a pink Lacoste shirt, faded jeans and Nikes. He was agitated and passionate: he wanted to talk to someone who was not Syrian and he did not often have the chance. ‘Listen to me! Everyone thinks we are the bad guys, that Assad is a monster. But there is another side to the story.’
    Ahmed was giving me a ride home from a dinner party in Damascus – his mother had asked him to take me. ‘He has some solid ideas on politics,’ she said. ‘He expresses what all of us think.’ So Ahmed got the car keys and drove me through the winding streets, back to my hotel.
    Ahmed was from a wealthy family and went to a good school in Damascus, where he lived in a comfortable villa with his family. He was leaving shortly to do his military service in the Syrian Army, then to study at an American university.
    The dinner that night had included Ahmed’s mother, his grandmother, his aunts and his cousin – all of whom are highly educated, multilingual and the holders of several passports. It’s a common thread with the elite in Damascus – tobe bi-national, to have a second passport, a way out. When I pointed out that this might be the reason that they supported Assad – because if it all went wrong, they had a place to flee – Ahmed’s mother looked at me darkly. ‘We had