BERLIN – On my Facebook account, under a post of my latest story for USA TODAY about the besieged city of Darayya, Syria, a friend commented: “I would suggest that you’d do even better writing about Germany … after all, there are almost as many Syrians there as there are in Syria! I can’t understand how a Syrian journalist based in Germany can write a story for an American outlet about the humanitarian and military situation in Darayaa.”
These are valid points. I continually ask myself, how can I report from Berlin about Darayya or anywhere else in Syria for that matter — I have to be there, right?
Maybe, maybe not.
Earlier this year, after Palmyra was retaken by the Syrian army, I was in touch with my Syrian journalist friends in Damascus. And while they were waiting for the mines to be removed to enter the old city for a closer look, I was following them on social media, on another continent. I was trying to be there spiritually. I felt defeated, sad.
The questions that plagued me then — and now: Was this my choice? Did I have the option of staying in Syria? Is this the price I have to pay for leaving — have I lost my chance to cover my homeland? Did I have any other option but to leave?
Life was dangerous in Damascus the first three years of the war; it was suffocating. The war impacts everything, from everyday safety and life to working conditions to one’s future. So when I was invited for journalism training in Berlin in 2014, I got out. And I don’t — can’t — regret it.
That’s partly because outside Syria, I am learning to do much better journalism that what I used to do, simply because I don’t need to choose the careful and considerate words to satisfy the regime. Instead, I can opt for the privilege of reporting what I discover.
Case in point: My friends covering Palmyra work for proregime media outlets, and this showed. Where were the stories about the civilians fleeing the army advance? What about the empty city whose homes had now become as ruined as those treasures in the ancient Roman town. The other side of the story was missing.
I have come to realize that stories can be done, once there is the will and the access. We have the Internet and phones, we have contacts on the ground, and we have the ability to check facts. I can report about Syria from Berlin. And I do.
In my reporting about Darayya — from Berlin — every word comes from a documented source inside the city. And though I might not be there physically, I have gathered enough evidence to refute the Syrian government’s lies, the ones they used to make us journalists write. Except now, I don’t.
This month, Bouthaina Shaaban, Assad’s political adviser, was speaking about the situation in Darayya, saying there was no starvation, therefore no need for food aid.
“I am the one who is living here. … You don’t live in Syria, we are the ones who live in Syria,” she said. Implication: You don’t know.
But I do know. I speak to people inside every day. And on Saturday, the day after food aid arrived in Darayya for the first time in four years, this is what I heard:
“Up to now, we haven’t seen any aid, nothing has been distributed yet because of the severe shelling,” said Mohammad Abo Ismaiel, 48, of Darayya, who explained to me that on Friday dozens of bombs were dropped on the city until late at night. “We can’t move or go out.”
Ismaiel detailed how bombs over the past four years have destroyed crops and how the town is slowly starving, describing people “as skeletons walking in the streets.” And he expressed bitterness over the incoming aid.
“Is this a joke?” he asked, referring to the aid. “Can you eat as bombs are falling overhead? For three months, the air force hasn’t bombarded the city and then when they say they will allow food aid in, bombs are dropped. They are sending bites of food to people while killing them in their homes?”
Riham Alkousaa is a Syrian journalist based in Berlin and a frequent contributor to USA TODAY.
