Someone Was Watching
The detail that broke through for me was a journalist named Zouhir al-Shimale writing about his birthday from east Aleppo. No cake, nothing to eat, nothing to drink, family unreachable in the western half of the city. Very probably I will never see them again,
he wrote. What a sad, lonely birthday it was.
The understatement of it was worse than anything dramatic would have been.
By December 2016, the Syrian government’s offensive had encircled rebel-held eastern Aleppo. The fall was coming. And the people still inside—journalists, activists, civilians who’d stayed or had nowhere to go—did the only remaining thing: they opened their phones and started posting.
The feeds filled with farewells. Artist Monther Etaky: I am still here. Together with my friends I am facing genocide. Without any comment from the world. I wish I could livestream my death. I want to thank the people who stood up for us. I will never forget you if we pass to the next life.
The account belonging to seven-year-old Bana Alabed—run by her mother Fatemah—posted a final message saying no one was helping them, no one was evacuating her and her daughter. Journalist Bilal Abdul Kareem filmed what he described as perhaps his last transmission from east Aleppo, bunker-busters audible in the background. Lina shamy posted video of children after a chemical attack, gasping.
These weren’t posts. They were wills. They appeared in timelines alongside product launches and arguments about films and the ordinary noise of a platform that couldn’t tell the difference between a meme and a death notice. That’s the obscenity beneath the obvious obscenity—not just that a city was being destroyed, but that its destruction was broadcast into the same stream as everything else, and the stream kept moving.
Writer Lina Sergie Attar wrote the line I haven’t been able to shake: When the videos and images stop coming out of Syria, you should be terrified. It means that the public genocide has become private once more.
The videos eventually stopped. Most survivors were evacuated to Idlib under disputed conditions. The Syrian army executed civilians in the streets during the surrender. The stream moved on.
I don’t know what bearing witness from a laptop accomplishes. But I keep thinking about Monther Etaky saying he’d thank the people who stood up for them, even from the next life. Someone was watching. It mattered to him that someone was watching.