Syrian heroes / Héroes de Siria

One of the best things that violence brings usually  is the heroic response of some common people. Nowadays, Syria is living dark days of unsuspected cruelty, but at the same time are emerging the stories of some people that never wished to be heroes, but they became a model for all of us because of their bravery.

Every day in Syria, and specially in some regions and cities, is a frantic fight against death. One could imagine that it would put down people’s instincts like those of the beasts. On the contrary, the best human qualities, like solidarity, courage, brotherhood, piety… are twinkling like stars in a dark firmament.

To give some samples, we can talk about the history of  a young man who risked his life to bring food to some families in Bab Amr, one of the most punished neighbourhoods in the city of Homs. There were snipers in many roofs, shooting against everything that moved. In the last house that he visited, an old lady told him that night was coming, and invited him to pass and stay with them. With a smile, he refused telling that still he had other families to visit to bring them food. When the old lady closed the door, she heard many shots, so she couldn’t open the door again. At dawn, when they could open the door at last, they found him cold laying in his own blood: he never could go to another house to deliver them food. His mother, terribly sad, at the same time is so proud of the noble behaviour of her son.

Or we can talk also about a woman, Alia Mustafa al Tabbaa that is not currently in Syria, but in Spain, and was so shaken for the death of Gyath Mattar, another of those common people with heroic behaviour, that she decided to perform a hunger strike. She spend a whole month, 31 days, without  eating, only surviving with water and sugar, in the street in front of the Syrian embassy in Spain, even sleeping there, in a van that some friend put at her disposal. After a month, when her health was seriously deteriorated, and the medical team that visited her regularly decided that she should go to the hospital, she decided to quit, after attracting a lot of attention about the suffering in Syria, not only by the media, quite reticent in the beginning to talk about the subject, but also collecting signatures of common people that saw her day after day in the same place.

Another kind of heroism, the activists risking their lives to let the world know about Syria.  Syria Pioneer was his nickname, Rami Al Sayed the real name. In the morning, I was looking at his live stream video from Baba Amr, and remember admiring his courage for being in the middle of the shelling. In the afternoon I knew that he was dead: he died while helping some people to cross a very dangerous area, trying to lead them to a safer place.

I can’t end without mentioning doctors risking their lives to attend in the best way possible the enormous number of wounded people. The way they try to help them without medical supplies, without sleeping properly, suffering from the same lack of food, water, electricity, feeling the cold in their bones, but still doing their best to save some lives, can’t have another adjective but “heroic”. Some of these doctors were assassinated by the regime killers. They even didn’t doubt to shoot at Red Cross or Hilal al Ahmar ambulances.

These are only a few samples.  There is really a change of attitude in these people. We are used to our routinary lives, working to live more or less comfortably, caring more for money than other things like family. They had to forget daily routine to construct a new reality, infinitely much better, purer, showing us the joy of human generosity.


Una de las mejores cosas que conlleva la violencia usualmente es la respuesta heroica de alguna gente corriente.