Qusai Zakarya’s hunger strike: Day 18

December 16, 2013

Like thousands of other civilians, Qusai Zakarya is trapped behind a total regime blockade of his town, Moadamiyet a-Sham, outside Damascus. Already one of the targets of the August 21st chemical attacks, Moadamiyet has made headlines in recent months because it faces a new enemy: hunger. The blockade means nothing and no one go in or out. Moadamiyet is just one of countless towns across Syria currently facing the total blockade policy, one that imposes a collective punishment on all citizens of rebel-held areas in Syria. Zakarya launched a hunger strike last month to bring international attention to Moadamiyet a-Sham. Here, on Day 18, he writes this dispatch. Read the original blog post here.

Wasn’t able to write yesterday because I was so mad at the entire world. I was freezing in body, burning in heart.

I walked around Moadamiya while the snow was falling, and I saw my town covered with white death. The thick snow killed the simple vegetables that some of the families tried to plant to feed themselves.

Many children were taken to our field hospital to get treated for very bad colds, and there was nothing the doctors could do except give them painkillers because we are very short of medicine.

Moadamiyet a-Sham, December 2013. Photo courtesy of Qusai Zakarya.

Doctors are also treating a lot of Moadamiya civilians for stomach pains and worms and other digestive problems related to eating things that may not really be fit for eating.  Leaves of random trees, domestic animals…who knows what has gone into their guts these four months.

Left the field hospital angry as a bull. Went back home forgetting all about my freezing starved body and killing bad back pain. Signed in to Facebook and Skype to do some work, but all I saw is more Syrian kids froze to death, more shit about Geneva 2, the expansion of the Islamic extremists in the FSA, more crap about new truce the regime is planning to offer us, and of course more dumbheads who are willing to fall for this trick again.

Dammit. I felt my heart pumping fire instead of blood through my body.

I felt that, in a way, all the world has the icy blood of freezing children of Syria on its hands, starting with Bashar the damn Assad and his allies, the hypocrites of the Western governments who only care about their benefits and getting rid of Assad’s chemicals but don’t care about the damage his other weapons are doing, the greedy politicians of the Syrian opposition, and let’s not forget corrupt FSA leaders, and even my small attempts to make a difference.

One way or another, we all have the iced blood of the freezing children of Syria on our hands, so please stop blaming Storm Alexa!

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