Syrian activist and former University of Essex Human Rights student Marcell Shehwaro blogs about her hopes and fears for her wartorn home.

The 31-year-old blogger and activitist holds on to the hope that the rights of the Syrian people can be restored and the world will get past the stereotype about the Syrian Revolution and see them as a people seeking freedom.

Marcell, who now lives in Turkey, says: “Do I have a choice but to have hopes and dreams for Syria? No, as the day I lose hope is the day I will die from the inside.

“But do I feel that these dreams are going to come true?

Unfortunately, I don’t. The world has failed us horribly, but it is not about winning the war, it is about our rights, and I still deeply believe we have rights stolen in there.”

Growing up in Aleppo, Syria, Marcell had just one thought – to finish her dentistry studies and leave forever.

But when her mother was gunned down by the regime at a checkpoint, Marcell’s thoughts turned to activism.

It was 2008 and President Assad’s regime had begun intermittently blocking social media websites and monitoring all comments posted.

Talk of kidnappings and torture were rife and Marcell felt her true vocation was to join others who fought for freedom and freedom of speech.

When her peers started disappearing, jailed and tortured, her mind was made up and she began speaking out against the regime, which led to her being routinely interrogated.

Marcell’s activities and blogging from 2008 put her on the regime’s watchlist.

“Five people I used to know were in jail for writing in a forum,” says Marcell, 31.

Marcell, who studied for a masters in human rights and cultural diversity at Essex University in 2013, after which she returned to Syria, told Woman: “Life growing up was normal I think, but I only had one hope in mind – to finish my studies and leave forever.

“I left Syria step by step. I’d been taken into weekly integration sessions by security forces after my mother was killed.

“Then, when it was obvious they were going to arrest me, I fled into the liberated part of my city, Aleppo, and from there to UK. I did go back to Syria but with the constant fear of being kidnapped, I fled to Turkey.

“The privilege of leaving the poor and the rebels to face too many enemies alone makes me feel guilty now, and anything related to ‘normal’ makes me feel bad.”

However, Marcell’s blogs, which can be found on the Global Voices website and ran from March 2014 to September this year, led her to win an Online Journalism Award.

Dispatches From Syria was praised by the judges for its “intensely personal writing” and for finding “the grey areas in a war usually told from polar extremes”.

Marcell talks about her mother’s death, the rise of Isis and the pain of her own escape and leaving her old life behind.

She was also awarded the top prize in the Online Commentary category of the Online Journalism Awards.

Marcell, who is now the executive director of a Syrian NGO working from Gaziantep, in Turkey, gaveWoman permission to publish extracts from her blog.

SYRIA: I AMALEPPO, ALEPPO IS ME (12 March 2014)

“Who am I? I have always considered this the most difficult question to answer or write about, especially today, three years from the start of the Syrian revolution. The truth is that I don’t really know how much I resemble the young woman I was before.

“Today I am 29 years old. My name is Marcell. The name means “young warrior”. I come from a small family. My late father, may God have mercy on his soul, was an Orthodox priest.

And my late mother, may God have mercy on her soul too, was a housewife and a great mother.

“I studied dentistry in the city of Aleppo until I reached a point where I realised that I was more concerned with social issues. I left medicine and I studied political science – international relations and diplomacy, to be more precise.

“I cannot introduce myself without telling you about my city, Aleppo, as the two of us are exactly alike: Worn down, exhausted, full of fire, full of the desire to live, confused.

“It took some time for the Syrian secret service to develop a dossier on me, especially considering that there is at least one informant for every 10 Syrians.

“During that period, and after a year of protests and listening to advice on being careful from family and friends, the turning point arrived: My mother was martyred at a Syrian regime forces’ checkpoint in Aleppo. I lost a part of me forever.

“Because of the amazing funeral, attended by many revolutionaries who carried my pain with red roses, the authorities began calling me in and interrogating me about my activism on a weekly basis.

“At that time, the armed revolution was edging closer to Aleppo. At the time, I was against armament in all its forms. I believed peaceful change would guarantee Syrians their rights and result in the smallest number of sacrifices. In fact, large portions of my city have already been liberated, except for my neighbourhood and the places I am familiar with, which have remained under the Syrian regime’s control.

“You are free to choose to sympathise with me, or be harsh with your judgements. But my hope is that what I relate to you reflects some of the dream, the desire to change, and the trust that this change is possible, as far-fetched or painful as that dream might be.”

SYRIA: MY MOTHER, ALIVE (2 April 2014 )

“My mother, Marina, was a housewife, who attempted many times to turnmy sister and me into proper society ladies. With my sister, she succeeded.

“She married my father after an endearing courtship in which they exchanged letters which still lie in a corner of our house in the occupied part of Aleppo, and which, as you know, I cannot reach.

“My father died young, after a heart attack which wouldn’t even give him a second chance.

In the blink of an eye he left my mother, alone and with two girls to take care of. My sister, Leila, was about to start a family, while I was difficult, always independent and argumentative about everything. I would be expelled from school for not assenting to the teacher’s requests, or for writing an essay about how violent our school was.

“After my sister got married and left home, for nine years my mother and I lived together, just the two of us. Our relationship flourished during this period, until the start of the Syrian revolution, when she read a blog post I had written entitled ‘Our people deserve freedom.’ “At that point she started enforcing her role asamother, advising and arguing with me.

And I, in turn, began enforcing my role as a rebel refusing to succumb to family pressure.

“My mother would cry every time she heard the revolutionary song, whose lyrics went: “I am going to the demonstration, with my blood in my hands/I will come back a martyr, mother/Do not cry for me.”

“Yet she lived the revolution with me. She remembered the names of friends who got arrested and prayed for them. She helped fix the shoddy stitching on the new revolutionary flags, which we would distribute secretly, and in our social and family circles she would defend me, taking the blame and the blows onmy behalf.

“One week before she was killed, she said to me: “You and your sister are all that is left of my world. If you leave, half my world will end. Do you realise that?” “And although I understood well why she was so afraid, I’d get angry. Once I selfishly uttered a response I regret to this day: “I am not more dear than the children of other people, and you are no different from the other mothers. If I was in prison, wouldn’t you want my friends to protest for my release? Isn’t this what you brought us here to do?” She closed her eyes and wept.

Then she said: “Memo, do you know how proud I amof you?” And I smiled. I believe it is those words that makes me the strong person I am today.

“A week later, officers at a military checkpoint decide that the car in which my mother is traveling, on her way back from a friend’s wedding, is somehow suspicious. They shoot at the car, andamilitary bullet hits my mother directly, killing her. It killed my mother. My mother—the woman who believed in love, beauty, family and the right of Syrian mothers to live a life free from fear and anxiety.

“One bullet ended everything. It went through her body, also killing much of me and my soul. A police office says to me: “It was the mistake of one person. Don’t take it personally.”

ITS BLACK STAIN ON SYRIA (20 August 2014)

“When I was asked to write about the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq (ISIS), I left the blank page open on my computer for several days.

Howwas I to write about ISIS for others, for people who have not suffered the same amount of violence and chaos? And what responsibility do we as Syrians carry, compared to the rest of the world, for creating Isis?

“I need to clarify the Syrian people did not have the opportunity to go shopping at the “Victory Supermarket”, where items such as the option of Assad fleeing in the style of Tunisia’s Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, or stepping down like Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, were on sale. Nor did we have enough oil to buy the NATO option, like Libya.

Instead, we purchased Al- Qaeda, which we found in the discount bin.

“The Revolution requested that everyone live up to their responsibilities towards humanity, and being an open appeal, it was, unfortunately, answered by Al Qaeda.

“So are we Syrians the only ones responsible for the emergence of Isis? Isis is not the product of our streets nor our plans. We didn’t need them in order to terrorise others, and they didn’t need our permission to come through our closed airports.

“Contrary to what some people say, they came to us through open boundaries.

“In their naivety our rebels continued, believing that Isis had come to our rescue, saying that it would be ungrateful to speak of their flaws, which quickly turned into crimes.

“Isis occupied our land because they consider that Syrians have no nation to speak of. To them, what we have is a product of the infidel West. The occupation of our country was announced on Al Jazeera on April 9, 2013, and from that moment ISIS has been fighting us. They have been fighting us as a revolution they do not acknowledge, insisting on burning our flag and kidnapping and disappearing our rebels. And unlike our other opponents, no one dares to ask questions.”

A YEAR AWAY FROM SYRIA ( 8 SEPTEMBER 2015)

“It has been a year since I left Syria, maybe for good. A year of denial, guilt, grief and surrender. Nothing of the hero is left in me. Every part of me that my body was trying to retain in order to make it through the war and under the barrel bombs I left there, for those whomight need it, and I totally crashed beneath what science would call “shock”.

“I don’t know how sick of me it is to say this, but I was genuinely better off there, closer to death.

“Imagine not believing in anything anymore. Not the good or the bad of the human being, not the universe or its justice.

“I regularly take antidepressants these days. I chase away all thoughts of death, to the extent that a Syrian possibly can. I’m reconnecting with friends and I’m embracing the victim that is me. “I try to sort the pieces of me back into place, hoping that in doing so I’ll remember where my fingers were, so I can write again.”

Read Dispatches from Syria at globalvoices.org/special coverage/2014-specialcoverage/ dispatches-fromsyriamarcell- shehwaro-on-life -in-aleppo FollowMarcell (in Arabic) on Twitter @Marcellita and at marcellita.com