Revolutionaries don’t always come in the form that the uneducated among us might imagine.
Loubna Mrie was barely out of her teens when the Syrian uprising began in 2011, and she became swept up in the fight for freedom. For her, this nationwide effort was inseparable from her own personal quest, to liberate herself from a stifling family environment, where money and power were prioritised above all else, and cruelty was commonplace.
Defiance is the memoir of a revolutionary: what one young woman did after she realised she was unable to keep living in the way that was expected of her. It is also an insightful account of what it was like growing up in a privileged Alawite family under the Assad regime and Baath Party – an experience about which assumptions are often made but that is rarely seen from the inside. Presidents Hafez and Bashar al-Assad, and most regime ruling members, were Alawite – an ethno-religious minority making up about one-10th of Syria’s population.
“I knew my family had been poor just a generation ago, [but] didn’t know the details of their rise to prominence; all I knew was that I had to defend the family name,” she notes early on. Those details are quite dark, though it takes time for Mrie to learn what her abusive and often estranged father is truly capable of. After she withdraws from him, she begins attending protests, leading to a complete breaking of ties.
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Mrie’s mother – who grew up in a society where the role of women was to get married and be obedient to men – remains dependent on her father’s family, despite encouraging her children to pursue education so they can stand alone if needed. She is brutally punished for her daughter’s perceived transgressions.
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Defiance is an exposé of the poor treatment of women. Her mother tells a young Mrie to know her worth yet almost never questions her husband. Underlying this is that Syrian law entitles male relatives to inherit twice as much as their woman counterparts, Mrie notes, and she and her sister must “secure” their inheritance or be left with very little in a country where women’s options are limited. “We knew we had to keep our father happy to protect our future. And he was aware of this dynamic, and took advantage of it.”
This book is also about elitism. Mrie’s father tells her that “poor people are just jealous of us”. She writes honestly about the ways these attitudes shape children who grow up surrounded by them. Later, elitism appears again when she writes about her discomfort with money being spent in misguided ways by international donors and organisations, even as most Syrians continued suffering for the very basics.
Mrie is remarkably brave – documenting protests and opposition efforts in Damascus; later moving to eastern Aleppo, under heavy bombardment, to work as a photojournalist. She is also honest about her own flaws or actions that were not so admirable – infidelity; drinking alcohol to numb her feelings; spending money meant for worthy causes on dinners in nice restaurants.
Perhaps the biggest potential mistake she brings up was a tendency by Syrian activists to overlook, or even deliberately hide, a slide into chaos within the opposition, and the unfolding of darker elements. As Isis emerged, the extremist group kidnapped, held hostage and then murdered her partner, Peter Kassig, while he was attempting to help Syrians with aid. Her descriptions of Kassig are moving – his vitality, thoughtfulness and humanitarianism come alive on the page.
Mrie’s initial experience of education was under a system that does not encourage free thought. Kassig encouraged her to expand this; she travels to New York for a photography fellowship, which she extends with further study. She discovers writing, and how it can provide a kind of balm or method of processing painful experiences. She slowly builds a new home abroad, realising that she has no other place to go back to.
Mrie is an immensely skilled writer, and Defiance is gripping, even as it is devastating. It is a look at trauma – how much can one person bear; the incomprehensible scale of loss that Syrians have gone through; the sacrifices faced by people who dare to challenge the status quo.
The book ends as the Assad regime falls, leaving out the massacres in Syria’s coastal areas, including Mrie’s former hometown, that took place months later. She has continued to write publicly about these developments: a reminder that there is never a definite ending to any revolution, that the job of documenting it continues.
Defiance is one of a few new books about the Syrian revolution, including Days of Love and Rage (Pluto Press) by Pulitzer finalist Anand Gopal; Critical Conditions (Doppelhouse Press) by Hadi Abdullah; and It Started in Damascus (Hurst) by Rime Allaf.
Mrie’s writing must undoubtedly have brought her fresh pain, but the book she has authored is an important account: yet another essential documentation by her of the history of her country and her people, and of her own significant story within that.
This is Also a Love Story, Sally Hayden’s new book, is published next month by Fourth Estate.
