Syria's Writers Speak - Housam al-Mosilli

Writing Refuge – Syria’s Writers Speak

The 15th of March marks the beginning of peaceful Syrian protests against the Assad regime, starting in 2011 and turning thereafter into armed uprising and civil war. As the conflict in Syria enters its seventh year, over six million Syrians are living as refugees, six million are internally displaced and hundreds of thousands have lost their lives. Syria is one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a writer or a journalist, as arbitrary detention, torture, enforced disappearances and killings have become commonplace and are practiced with impunity by all parties in the conflict. Writers are amongst those most often targeted, and faced with such violence, many writers have been forced to flee the country, with dozens seeking protection and assistance from PEN International and its partner organisation International Cities Of Refuge Network (ICORN).

PEN International talks to Housam al-Mosilli, an acclaimed writer, journalist, translator and researcher from Syria about how he escaped, his years of displacement, and finding new opportunities in Sweden. Al-Mosilli now lives in Malmö having completed his residency with ICORN in Linköping.

What were your final days like in Syria?

It was the last week of 2012. Before this, in September, I was arrested and tortured nearly to death by the regime's forces - something called the Fourth Branch [Fourth Armoured Division], which is controlled by Maher Assad, Assad's brother. It’s a military branch but they use it for civilian operations. After that I moved from one friend’s place to another within Damascus because I was told I couldn't stay in one place. I was afraid for the safety of my family.

Eventually I was put in contact with someone who could help me leave the country legally. Which makes a big difference - you can say you left the country legally and it was registered.

I left Syria on the 27th of December 2012, and spent New Year's Eve in Beirut. It was really tough. I was always worried for my family's safety and my own safety - but mostly for my family's safety. I walked everywhere. I couldn't use taxis or buses because on every street there is a kind of checkpoint where they check IDs. If someone's wanted by the regime they're arrested immediately.

How did you get out of Syria with so many checkpoints?

I was driven out in a car by someone who works in the intelligence system, someone who worked with the resistance and transported me in a security forces car. Every time they asked for an ID this person told them off saying 'don't you know who I am? I'm a comrade.' Eventually we made it to the Lebanese border. This person took my passport, stamped it, and said 'don't come back to this country until Assad is gone.'

This was the beginning of many migrations for you. In a short space of time you moved from Syria, to Lebanon, to Egypt, and then Turkey. Did you ever feel like you had settled in one of these countries, or were you forced to adapt to a kind of constant motion?

I couldn't settle because these countries aren't settled either. It's not like Syria where there's an obvious war but these are countries ruled by dictatorships or that are full of struggles: often against freedom of expression. I stayed in Turkey for almost two and a half years so I was kind of settled there, but I was always thinking about leaving. In Lebanon I had some phone calls - threats. Thankfully friends and people in the Lebanese opposition helped me leave the country without problems. In Egypt something similar happened. I left Egypt after the military coup by Fattah el-Sisi. When el-Sisi came to power he reactivated the military and intelligence consuls in the Syrian embassy. Around that time many Syrian activists were arrested in Egypt and sent back to Syria.

How did you navigate this threat?

They contacted me offering that I work with them - the Syrian regime - saying if I went back to my country they would help me and make sure I wasn't wanted, but I had to work with them. I said 'give me a couple of weeks to think about it' and the next day I was in Turkey. I packed my luggage in a couple of hours and moved to Istanbul. I knew no-one there but wanted my safety.

I wanted to ask you about a line from one of your poems which was published in The Dissident Blog around this time. The poem is called Diary of the Silent and it includes the lines 'Or perhaps his lover will come to him with a gasp of farewell / on their last bed'. The 'last bed' has a very charged meaning when you're in exile and having to move often. Now that you've been settled in Sweden for a couple of years, has your conception of this line and the 'last bed' changed?

It's changed totally. When I was travelling from country to country I was also changing apartments regularly. I had housing contracts for five or six months and would move again and again. It happened in Syria too. You're never secure. You're always living for another day. So it might be the last bed in Syria, because the next day someone could shoot me in the street or someone could arrest me and I'd spend my life in some underground forgotten cell. But here in Sweden it's completely different. Now I've just changed my apartment for the first time in two years, but this time it's my choice. I'm following and living my own life.

Could you tell us about your application to the International Cities of Refuge Network [ICORN]? Were you in Turkey when you heard about your ICORN application being successful?

I applied for a residence scholarship in 2013. They were very helpful. They helped as much as they could, contacting me when I moved from Egypt to Turkey. The problem was that the Syrian regime at the time wasn't renewing passports of people from the opposition or those wanted for political reasons. So I couldn't renew my passport and I was stuck in Istanbul. Then the regime changed the process so you could renew a passport without a security check for about $400. They were desperate for money. Everyone started renewing their passports, including me. Once I'd renewed my passport I sent it to ICORN, who had said I had met the criteria of being an ICORN writer. They said they could now contact cities to see which city would accept me. In only a couple of weeks I had an email from the coordinator in Linköping city saying they’d read about me and I was very welcome to move there. My response was 'woah. Finally.'

How did it feel to hear this news?

I was desperate at that time. I was planning to make the journey by sea. Many of my friends and my mother and youngest brother went to Germany, Sweden, and other places in Europe this way. I thought 'why not take the same route?' I'll follow them by sea. When I got the news from ICORN I was relieved I wouldn't have to do it. It wasn’t that I wanted to travel by sea but I had no other option. It felt like a mysterious power had saved me.

What were your first thoughts when you arrived in Sweden?

When I stepped out of the airport I started coughing. My friends were asking if something was wrong, did I need to see a doctor, but what was happening was that it was the first time I had breathed air like this. Pure oxygen. I'm not used to such clarity in the air - I lived in polluted and crowded cities. Coming to Sweden and finding myself in this green desert with so much pure oxygen, it was a shock for me at first.

How hard was it to settle into Linköping? How have you been welcomed there?

The people of Linköping were very nice - the people of the municipal department were very welcoming. I was the first writer in residence of the city, and they were glad to finally have a writer. In the first couple of weeks the newspaper wrote about me. And then, two weeks later I had an article published in Dagens Nyheter, a major Swedish newspaper. There was a big photo on the cover. I knew they were publishing the article but I didn't know when. I was buying some cigarettes at the supermarket and a man followed me. He was I suppose a stereotype of Swedish people - tall, blonde. He was about fifty years old, dressed respectably. He came up to me and started speaking English, and said he'd read my article and that he and the community were so happy to have me in their city. I was about to cry. In Syria if someone came up to me I would expect a security member who would say 'come with us.'

It's a smaller city than I'm used to so it feels like I know everyone. When I'm walking or writing in a café - this happens on a weekly basis - someone will come up to me saying 'hello, we saw your photo in the newspaper,' and it's been great. People have been kind and lovely. I can say that for every Swedish person I've met in two years. I've never had a situation in Sweden where I felt unwelcomed.

When you moved were you able to start writing and translating immediately, or did it take some time to adjust?

It took a while. Moving from such oppression to such a free country there are suddenly amazing informational resources available. I spent a couple of months just reading, with a great hunger for reading. I read about everything. It changed my perspective towards the Syrian crisis, the revolution. But with access to so much information, such as research you can't access in Turkey or Syria, it affected me as a person, writer and journalist. I absorbed so much new knowledge. Then I began to focus on translation.

Could you tell us a bit about how ICORN supported you and your ability to write over two years?

It was a very busy scholarship with ICORN. I gave readings, lectures, and held events all over Sweden on a weekly basis. When people visited my apartment they would often say it looked brand new because I was almost never there.

I owe ICORN everything. They offered me real safety. They are someone you can go to when you're saying something no-one will dare to say. There's someone to support you and check on you. They can help you if something happens. I'm still in touch with them and saw some of them just two weeks ago. They were great. Everything was perfect. They gave me so many opportunities to speak to both a Swedish and international audience. In 2016 I was invited to the open Gothenburg book fair, one of the biggest book fairs in Europe, with the minister of culture. I spoke alongside highly prestigious artists about freedom of speech and freedom of the press, and I know without ICORN it would've been really hard not just to find these opportunities but even to be able to move to Sweden.

What's next for you now your ICORN scholarship has ended?

I met other ICORN writers in Sweden so I asked everyone what they would do next. About six months ago I started studying at the University of Malmö, which is where I've just moved. I've applied for a permanent residence permit. I'm still working. It takes time here in Sweden and sometimes when I'm frustrated with the system I remind myself it's such a good country to be in. I'm trying to be more engaged with Swedish society, for example two months from now I'm holding a reading at Malmö library. Next month I have a reading and lecture at Stockholm Book Fair for their literature festival. I have a good network of friends and people here who are helping me to move into a permanent career. I've been working on the first draft of a film and a TV series with a very good friend and writer called Inger Scharis. We're now trying to find a production company. I've been offered great opportunities here and I want to keep being involved in that.

This week the revolution in Syria comes into its seventh year. What are your hopes for Syria's future?

To be romantic I hope for peace and for people to have homes. I hope for it to have happened yesterday and not now. I watch TV and the news every day for a couple of hours at least, especially at night.

Let's think about what's happened over seven years. It's one of the major historical events in humanity's records. There’s so much media coverage and people sending us messages of life in Syria via Youtube and TV, and people are also being killed live. No-one's doing anything about that. It's shameful. But it's going to be glorious for Syrians who can say 'we stood alone for seven years, bombed by Russians and killed by Iranians.' They are still standing there. We should respect that. I, as a Syrian, can't say we won or lost. There are victims, those who died because they wanted to stay in their homes. Those people should never be forgotten. After seven years the situation is only becoming more complicated.

There should be kind of a ceasefire which the security council approved, but the Russians are still bombing civilians. The Assad regime continues to accuse the White Helmets [Syria Civil Defence] - who save people's lives - of being terrorists. They lie to the international community. No-one believes them but no-one does anything to prevent the massacre.

Do you have a message for the international community in relation to people - especially writers - forced into exile?

I've seen many people and many writers from different countries who can't or don't want fight with arms - instead they fight with their pens. We writers have a front against injustice, against oppression, against the dictatorships of the world. When the international community, with all its resources and power, won't do anything on the ground against them, they must at least support the writers.

Now, when we talk about Syria, we're talking about people there with no power to fight back against the regime. I was lucky, very lucky, to be in contact with PEN and with ICORN and have this chance, but so many writers weren't lucky enough and live under a threat on a daily basis. Those writers need people to say to them 'we are still with you, we support you, you are not alone.' In Turkey the issue is freedom of the press and freedom of expression. Erdogan woke up one day wanting to be a dictator. This is happening also in Egypt for a long time, and Syria for an even longer time. And other countries when it comes to investigative journalists. They are still threatened. We should offer them more security. They should be at least allowed to speak what is on their minds. It's remarkable how these regimes fear someone who holds a pen and a sheet of paper and wants to write something on it. What's so scary about that record that would force someone to arrest, oppress, or kill a writer? These are such primitive tools we're talking about - not robots or new technology, just pens and our brains. It's the fear of records, the fear of history, the fear of time. The pen is a very effective weapon. Paper will stay after the dictatorship dies, and after the victims die. Paper and pens are what will give justice back to its owners.