A Hope More Powerful Than the Sea(15)
One day, as Doaa was closing the door behind a group of soldiers who were just leaving the house after searching the property, another group suddenly pushed open the door again, demanding entry. One of the soldiers shoved his rifle into her stomach and pushed her to the floor.
“Why are you closing the door in our faces?” he barked at Doaa, keeping the gun pressed against her stomach.
Doaa lay there frozen still. “Your colleagues were already here,” she said, looking up at him. “They just finished conducting a search.”
After a few seconds, he lowered his weapon and turned his attention to Shokri. “Take me up to your roof,” he demanded. He insisted the family go up the stairs ahead of him and the other soldiers so that if rebels were upstairs waiting to ambush, the family would be shot first. Shokri led the way with the rest of the family crowding into the stairway behind him. As she glared over her mother’s shoulder at the soldiers, Doaa felt her rage swell. This was her home, her family. What right did they have to order them around and threaten them? She despised seeing her proud father forced to obey these bullies, and she bit the insides of her cheeks to stop herself from hurling insults at them. The soldiers quickly discovered that there was nothing on the roof, and Doaa breathed a sigh of relief as this second group of soldiers left the house. The family had survived yet another raid.
Each time a search was conducted, Shokri feared that the soldiers might kidnap the girls. So he made Doaa and her sisters sleep in their abayas so that they would be fully covered in case of a raid in the middle of the night, which was starting to become routine. He also gave each of his daughters a knife for protection. “Stab any man who comes too close,” he advised, and instructed them to keep the knives hidden under their abayas during searches.
The night after her father had given them their knives, Doaa gathered her sisters and created a pact. “If any soldier tries to rape us,” she whispered so her parents couldn’t hear, “we must be ready to kill ourselves. We cannot live with that shame. Our honor is all we have left.” Thirteen-year-old Saja and ten-year-old Nawara took her hands and nodded grimly in agreement.
Not long after that, soldiers came to the house to inspect the back room where Doaa and the family were sitting. One of them was in his early twenties with long, unruly black hair. He ogled Doaa in a way that she found inappropriate. She shifted uncomfortably under his gaze. Though Shokri had instructed them all to stay silent during the searches and not to antagonize anyone, this time Doaa couldn’t contain herself. She glared back at him, not bothering to hide the loathing and anger behind her gaze.
“Why are you staring at me like that?” the soldier demanded.
¨I’m a free person,” she replied defiantly, her face livid with anger. “I can do whatever I want.” Doaa knew the word free would set the soldier off.
Annoyed, he charged toward her demanding to see her identification.
“I don’t have one,” she admitted.
“Don’t have one? Why not? How old are you?”
“Fifteen.”
“So why don’t you have an ID yet?”
“I tried to get one. I applied for an ID at the government registry, but they refused to issue one to me.”
The soldier laughed when he heard this. “Then why don’t you go to a demonstration for that?”
Doaa saw clearly that her participation in the demonstrations was no secret. She felt her heart thump inside her chest as this dawned on her, but she refused to show her fear. “Yes, maybe I will,” she replied flippantly.
The soldier’s eyes flashed with anger as he lifted his gun in warning. “Don’t talk back,” he ordered.
The whole family froze in fear, waiting for the soldier’s anger to explode, but after glaring at Doaa for some time, he finally lowered his gun, turned, and walked toward the door, muttering as he left, “You’d better watch yourself because, don’t forget, we’re watching you.”
When the door slammed behind him, Hanaa was furious. “Never speak to the soldiers like that! You’re putting yourself in danger!”
“You’re putting all of us in danger!” Shokri fumed as he rose to stand over Doaa. “From now on, you remain silent whenever they enter,” he demanded.
Doaa was too shaken and angry to answer. She didn’t even bother to nod in acknowledgment. Instead, she just lowered her head and stared mutinously at the floor. Deep down she was glad she had defied the soldier, but she also knew that she could never admit this to her family. She did feel proud when later that day her sisters whispered to her that they respected her courage, while at the same time expressing their wonder at what had become of their shy sister.
On the morning of May 5, eleven days after the siege began, Hanaa stood in front of the empty cupboard, now desperately worried about how she would feed the family. All of a sudden she heard an amplified voice blaring outside the window. Too afraid to open it since that was against the rules of the siege, the family pressed as close to the window as they could to make out the announcement from the police car driving through the neighborhood: “Today, there is a curfew. From 7:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. you must remain in your homes. From 1:00 to 2:00 p.m. women have permission to leave their houses to shop for food. All women leaving their homes will be searched. The curfew will resume at 2:00.” The siege had been lifted, if only for a brief moment.