Children in theater and the syrian revolution

natasha rothenbucher

Syrian writer Sa’dallah Wannous wrote many plays that metaphorically critiqued former Syrian President Hafiz al-Assad’s regime.  In his play The King’s Elephant, Wannous predicts the crucial involvement of children in affecting political change, suggesting that change will emerge from the youth because the Assad regime has instilled a fear strong enough to silence Syrian adults. As such, the Assad regime has established an unopposed one-party system. As such, the Assad regime has established an unopposed one-party system. Syrians have endured the Assad regime with little opposition except in 1982 in what became known as the Hama Massacre.  The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood led a rebellion in the Syrian city Hama against Hafiz al-Assad and his Ba’athist Party rule. Hafiz al-Assad responded by besieging the town. Although the official death count is unclear, accounts range from 10% t0 25% of citizens killed.  Following this massacre, many surviving rebels were forced into exile and the entire country watched as Hafiz al-Assad mercilessly defeated the Syrian people.  The brutality of the Hama Massacre forced many into a fearful silence that would last almost thirty years.

In 2011, protests beginning in Daraa, Syria spread throughout the rest of the country leading to a civil war.  The protests in Daraa began when a group of 15 schoolboys wrote revolutionary slogans on their school wall. They were arrested by Bashar al-Assad’s secret police and brutally tortured for over a month. Consequently, protests erupted in Daraa demanding the release of the children.  Soon protests against Assad and the regime spread to other cities in Syria. Bashar al-Assad, following in his father’s footsteps, responded almost immediately with violence by sending the military to siege protesting cities and “put down” protestors. By July, Syrian Army defectors created the Free Syrian Army and the protests evolved into a full-scale civil war.  In a country with people too afraid of their government to speak out, it took the torture of children for opposition to form. Thus, Wannous’s prediction in The King’s Elephant came to life in 2011.  Children’s actions and their consequent suffering broke the barrier of fear so long instilled in the Syrian population.  The children, because of their youth, could not completely grasp the fear the generation before them felt and thus, acted courageously against the government without fully understanding the repercussions.  As a result of their actions, the Syrian regime has continuously punished and targeted children throughout the revolution in an attempt to silence the opposition into fear. However, this brutality against children has only further encouraged dissident behavior among adults and children, breaking the long tradition of passivity out of fear of the Assad regime.  

In The King’s Elephant, author Sa’dallah Wannous predicts the monumental role of children in inciting political change in Syria.  The play, written in 1969, slyly critiques Hafiz al-Assad’s brutality and highlights the depth of fear within Syrian society.  The play depicts an Arab kingdom where the king has an elephant who destroys something new every time he walks through the town.  In the past, the elephant had destroyed someone’s home or injured a person. However, this time, the elephant crushed and killed a little boy, townsman Muhammed al-Fahd’s son.  This event prompted people to discuss with each other the atrocities the elephant has committed and how the king cannot see the harm his elephant has done to his people. However, people continually remark that they cannot speak up because “it’s the King’s elephant.”  Present in this discussion is a woman with her daughter.  Her daughter chimes into the conversation with innocent questions such as “why did the elephant tread on him [the little boy]?” or “will they punish him [the elephant]?” or “why does the King love a vicious elephant?”  These questions, all very logical, reveal the little girl’s innocence and inability to grasp and understand the authoritarian rule of the King.  This inability to conceptualize the fear the adults feel leads her, later in the play, to act in a way the adults never could. The more the people of the kingdom talk, the angrier they become.  Finally, they decide to address their grievances to the king. The townspeople, including the little girl and her mother, rehearse their speech while one man, Zakaria, leads. He begins with “The elephant, lord of all time!” while the rest of the people follow with “killed Muhammad al-Fahd’s son…” along with the rest of the offences of the elephant.  After many rehearsals, the people go to see the king. As they are led to see the king, the people notice an increasing guard presence and become more and more nervous.  Upon seeing the king, Zakaria begins “The elephant, lord of all time!” but only a few voices continue, “kill—.” As soon as the few voices realize they are the only ones talking, they fall silent. Zakaria tries again, “The elephant, lord of all time!”  This time the little girl says (alone because none of the adults will speak) “killed Muh—” but her mother silences her quickly. Thus, out of fear the people never address their grievances to the king.  Instead, they tell the king they love the elephant so much that they think the elephant should have a wife to keep him company. Their fear leads the people to further contribute to their problem by suggesting the king get another elephant.  

Although political change was never achieved, the role of children is still clear.  The little girl did not understand why people were afraid, she could not comprehend potential repercussions from the king.  As a result, she had no problem speaking what the adults rehearsed. Being a child, she was less afraid and therefore more likely to act.  Additionally, it was the death of a child that prompted the people to speak to the king. Thus, it is clear that the harm of a child can diminish people’s fear.  Wannous later predicts that there will be a greater Syrian Revolution. At the end of the play, the dialogue goes:

“GROUP: That was a story.

ACTOR 5: Which we acted.

ACTOR 3: In the hope we can learn a lesson from it.

ACTOR 7: Do you know now why elephants exist?

ACTOR 3: Do you know now why elephants breed?

ACTOR 5: But this story of ours is only the start.

ACTOR 4: When elephants breed, a new story starts.

GROUP: A violent, bloody story, which one day we’ll act for you.”

This dialogue communicates that the actions of the elephants (that symbolize the government) will only worsen over time.  At some point the actions will become so disgusting that the people will revolt. This is the “violent, bloody story” the group will one day act out.  It is the Syrian revolution of 2011.  Thus, Wannous both predicts the Syrian revolution and anticipates the place of children as crucial actors in the revolution.  Like the little girl, children will not have the same fear the generation before them has been conditioned to have. Like the little boy’s death, it will take cruelty towards and the suffering of children to ignite political action in adults.  

Prior to 2011, most Syrians experienced a silencing fear under both Hafiz al-Assad and Bashar al-Assad.  Scholar Wendy Pearlman defines silencing fear as fear that “encourages submission to their [the autocratic leader’s] coercive authority” through threats to punish citizens for political dissent.  The harsh regimes of Hafez al-Assad and Bashar al-Assad succeeded in instilling this silencing fear into Syrian society, even “’conditioning the behavior of most Syrians.’”  The Hama Massacre of 1982 ended so tragically that it sent Syrians into a further, deeper silence where the memory of this traumatic event has blocked any attempts at political action since then.  In an interview conducted by scholar Wendy Pearlman, a Daraa citizen recounts Hafiz al-Assad’s reign: “Hafiz al-Assad tamed the Syrian people by using security and military rule. It was like you have a wild animal that you want to make a pet.  This turned Syria into a big farm…He killed political life.”  Thus, following the Hama Massacre and the immense violence employed by the regime, the Syrians were tamed (or silenced).  They were obedient and under the strict control of their owner (Hafiz al-Assad). Another Daraa citizen explained: “We don’t have a government.  We have a mafia. And if you speak out against this, it’s off with you to bayt khaltu – ‘your aunt’s house.’  That’s an expression that means to take someone to prison.  It means, forget about this person. He’ll be tortured, disappeared.  You’ll never hear from him again.”  This expression appears to have become commonplace, along with the practice of telling someone to forget another person. 

Fear is reaffirmed in a person with every arrest and every arrest can occur with the smallest critique of the government. The conditioning of silence is further carried to the next generation through parents (who lived the Hama Massacre and other Hafiz al-Assad atrocities) raising their children with the warnings “’Whisper!  The walls have ears’ and ‘Keep your voice low.’”  This practice carried over to Bashar al-Assad’s rule as one Syrian recounts that he did not even mention Bashar al-Assad’s name.  The practice of silencing fear, instilled during Hafiz al-Assad’s rule and continued in Bashar al-Assad’s reign is indicative of the Syrian way of life.  Fear was so commonplace that it was a lifestyle, an identity, and second nature.  Thus, in 2011 adults were conditioned to be silent, conditioned to fear the Assad regime.  This paralyzing fear is why the ignition of the revolution belongs to the children not the adults.  The children because of their innocence and youth have yet to understand the fear of their parents, their grandparents, and their great-grand parents.  Their actions are informed by an incomplete comprehension of the Assad regime and the extent of its brutality. The children will be the ones who break the barrier of fear in adults, they will be the ones who end the silence. 

The events in Daraa City that ignited the Syrian revolution highlight the crucial role of children in affecting change.  On February 16, 2011 high school boys Bashir Abazid, Naief Abazid, Issa Abazid, Mouawiya Syasneh and eleven others participated in writing revolutionary slogans on their school walls.  The boys wrote phrases they had heard from the Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions: “The people want to topple the regime,” and “Leave.”  They also wrote their own phrase directed at Bashar al-Assad: “Your turn, doctor.”  Bashar al-Assad was a medical doctor before he became president and thus, the boys were telling Bashar al-Assad that he was next to fall just as Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Tunisian President Ben Ali had.  The boys’ actions were a result of what they had seen on TV happening in Egypt and Tunisia. In an interview with Al-Jazeera, Naief Abazid claims “It was something silly. I was a kid. I did not know what I was doing.”  Thus, it is clear that these schoolboys did not understand the weight of their actions, they “were just playing.”  An adult in Syria would never have written such graffiti because he or she understood the brutality of the Assad regime and has been conditioned into silence.  However, a child is different. A child cannot understand the fear and thus, acts without fully comprehending his or her actions.  

Following this graffiti, the schoolboys involved were arrested by Bashar al-Assad’s secret police.  Moved around from one site to another, the boys were brutally tortured. They were beaten, hung from the ceiling, electrocuted, had their fingernails torn off, and much more.  The boys were held for a month and a half, and during this time, Daraa changed drastically.  At the start of their arrest, parliament representative from Daraa, Nasser al-Hariri, went to the office of the local intelligence chief Atif Najib (a relative of Bashar al-Assad) to negotiate the children’s release.  There, Najib told Nasser, “’Your people either accept things as they are, or you bring their women to me and I make them conceive some new kids.’”  This comment was extremely insulting to the people of Daraa.  It insulted the women of Daraa and showed that these children would never be returned. Disgust at the regime and desperation for their children prompted people to act in protest.  It was not just one person’s kid who was tortured, it was the children of Daraa City and thus the entirety of the Daraa Governorate. In Daraa, clan-based networks are very prominent in daily life and the children arrested came from some of Daraa’s major clans (the Abazid clan is the largest in Daraa City).  Thus, the brutality against these children was further magnified to all community members. People took to the streets demanding the release of their children and the government responded with violence. Eventually, Bashar al-Assad released the children. However, upon their return, everyone could see their scars – scars that represented the intense brutality of the regime and the fact that not even children were off limits.  The release of the children was too late, protests had begun throughout the Daraa Governorate and throughout Syria. In defending their children, the Syrian people had finally broken the barrier of fear and were demanding change, demanding the fall of the regime that had silenced them for over 50 years. Like the boy who was killed in The King’s Elephant, these Syrian schoolboys were the catalyst for wider societal action.

With the Daraa City schoolboys setting the stage for child involvement in the revolution, they also set a precedent for the targeting of children by the Assad regime.  The cruel arrest and torture of the schoolboys proved to Syrians that children were not off limits in this war. Brutality towards children by the regime served the purpose of, in the eyes of the regime, silencing its opposition and asserting its power.  However, hurting children crossed a line and thus, had the opposite effect – it called Syrians to action. This is precisely what happened when Hamza al-Khatib, a 13 year old boy from the Daraa Governorate, was arrested at a protest on April 29th 2011, brutally tortured, and returned dead to his family a month later.  Hamza al-Khatib was disgustingly violated, carrying marks of torture when his body was returned to his family: lacerations, bruises, and burns to his feet, elbows face and knees.  Additionally, his hand and genitalia were severed.  The brutal treatment of Hamza shows that the regime sees children not only as collateral damage, but also as yet another demographic of people to torture and abuse.  The incredibly inhumane acts committed by the regime toward children only generated greater disgust by the Syrian people towards the regime and thus, greater political action.  In targeting children to instill fear in his subjects, Bashar al-Assad did the opposite: he broke the fear. He pushed the Syrian people over the edge. Hamza al-Khatib’s story, along with the many children victims of the war, shows the importance of children as an emotional trigger against a merciless government.  Similar to the boy’s death in The King’s Elephant, it takes brutality towards children for adults to decide to take action. 

In The King’s Elephant, play writer Sa’dallah Wannous predicts the Syrian Revolution and anticipates the monumental role of children in that revolution. Like the innocent girl in The King’s Elephant children cannot fully comprehend the fear the generations before them feel towards the Assad family and regime. Therefore, they are more likely to take political action without anticipating the weight of their actions and the consequences. Like the schoolboys from Daraa who thought they were just playing, children unwittingly started the Syrian Revolution. The consequences of their actions called adults to action. The regimes brutality towards children did not send adults and children alike into submission and silence. Instead, it empowered them to break their long tradition of fear and unite in protest and opposition. This is similar to the boy’s death at the hands of the king’s elephant in The King’s Elephant. It was a child’s death that made the adults decide to finally take action. Although the adults ended up backing out of their decision to protest the king, the end of the play sees a revolution on the horizon. The role of the children in the play eludes to how further brutality toward children will eventually push the Syrian people towards revolution. Thus, the monumental role of children as the spark of the revolution is evident through the schoolboys in Daraa and Hamza al-Khatib’s death, along with countless other children’s deaths and gross mistreatments.

Bibliography

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