DAY 365 - MARCH 15, 2012
Protests in Daraa, Idlib, and Homs mark the one-year anniversary of the Syrian revolution. Government crackdowns ensue, staying in line with an unrelenting wave of brutality. Assad supporters stage their own rallies in Damascus, Latakia, and the Druze city of Sweida. The international community, floundering for a plan, appoints former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to head a special envoy tasked with diffusing the Syrian crisis. With the fear of arming terrorist rebels in the background, the US is hesitant to supply the Syrian opposition.
After Khalil leaves, you continue to work from your small home in Sakhour. Your tweets have transformed from English and Arabic topics of secular, political, religious, and personal in nature to mostly passages from the Koran. You only write in Syrian (Levantine) Arabic now and the only adages you put out are messages to the Kafir ---- the "infidels" and non-believers of Islam. Visibly, your following changes from a more international base into a more local and Muslim one. You find a new confidence that comes by being lauded on the local level, the grassroots opposition movement that you believe in most. The regime has started to use starvation as a weapon of war, particularly in areas of Homs as the city has been under siege for the last three weeks. In order to prove Assad's heinous and inhumane practices, you curate and spread footage taken by citizen journalists inside the city. This not only helps bolster support for the rebel movement but also for your specific hardline branch of Islam. You remember when you yearned to be part of a community and a brotherhood. Now, along with Sheikh Yousef, you yearn to make your own.