Chapter IV. The fair old man

The youngster’s cry pierced the mother’s ear and her heart as she hurried out of the home and stood between the boy and the old man.

He turned away, at least some humiliation was still noticeable on his face, leaving him in her arms, grieving for him and his wounds.

She did not glance at him or say a word as she softly brought him inside. As long as his son serves as a private driver for an Alawite officer in the Air Force Intelligence Agency, the dictator’s most powerful tool for oppression and enslavement, no one would dare confront the old man.

With the imprisonment of the father, ten years had flown by for the mother as quickly as a blink of an eye. He dared to demand freedom, justice, and equality in a homeland now owned by the executioner, his cult, and his entourage; as a consequence, his fate was to vanish.

She does not know whether he is still alive, so she holds onto hope and waits, or whether he has passed away, in which case she perpetuates his memory and continues living.

The only information she had about the misery and suffering he endured every day in the infamous Sednaya political prison, along with thousands of other kidnapped Syrians, was a few whispers that individuals occasionally spoke in private and that touched her.

The youngster, who was brought up as an orphan with a suspended sentence and was naturally rebellious, rejected his reality as well as the expressions of sadness and sympathy in other people’s eyes, condemning and blaming them instead.

The same eyes that saw the executioner’s men carry away his father ten years ago without their owners daring to utter a single word, they are the same eyes that saw him being whipped not for a sin he committed, but because he demanded the fruits of a tree he owned, making his misfortune a branch of it that dared to prestige the old man’s land next to theirs. He did not cut it off, nor did he allow them to eat it.

He had the misfortune to find a branch of it that had dared to prestige the old man’s land adjacent to their land; as a consequence, he neither cut it nor allowed them to eat off it.

Every year, the old man collected its fruits for himself, claiming that the tree must remain one and that it is wrong to break off its branches and disperse its reunion.

The old man is fair, he does not oppress anyone, and he recognizes that the tree is not his but rather the property of the landowners where its roots were struck. As a matter of fact, he does not steal and he respects the rights of others, but no one dispute him over the fruits until the death of this branch, may God prolong its survival.

Owing to his extreme sense of justice, he doesn’t rely on them to take care of it; instead, he tends to do it personally, watering it annually to make the tree and branch grow thicker.

The old man’s branch condensed the executioner’s sect story within it.

And the justice of the dictator in all of Syria was summed up in his justice.

That is a minority group that was stumbled upon by accident or chance in a small area of the nation. By colonization, their lords were enslaved, taken care of, and fattened. They were fed more and more under the guise of safeguarding minority until they grew larger and larger, and eventually, undetected by anybody, they seized control of the entire country and everyone living on it.

And with full knowledge and understanding that the homeland belongs to everyone, they murdered, tortured, enslaved, robbed, and pillaged under the pretext of one nation and one homeland, which must stay one.

Although though minority rule has been prevalent throughout Syria’s history, this hasn’t led to any racism or sectarian tendencies; quite the opposite. Only minority have ruled Syria since the sixth century A.D., and practically all of them were not Syrians. This trend began with the Umayyad Islamic state, continued during the Ayyubid and Ottoman empires, and ended with Hafez al-Assad and the Alawite sect.

Syrian people had no issues with this, and over the course of a century and a half, the state experienced unprecedented prosperity and development as a beacon of learning, trade, and science in the entire East; When justice served as the cornerstone of governance, there was no distinction between the sons of one nation, and everyone had a genuine claim to their homeland.

And its people repaid this by being a staunch supporter and defender of the rulers of the state and their systems, defending their freedom in the face of any external or internal attack that sought to undermine this system of justice and equality. Or for a foreign ruler to dare to violate its sacredness, so that its people took the lead in destroying it and him and reestablishing the system of justice and equality.

Throughout the history of Islam, all of its rulers were aware of Syria’s status as the nation that serves as both the empire’s safety valve and its main cornerstone.

They are a people whose thinking is simple to comprehend, and you can’t use fire and iron to govern them. The magma of their rage would soon erupt into volcanoes in your face, even if you pretended they were being oppressed for a while.

A people whose laws are clear-cut, basic, and simple; If you grant me fairness and equality, I will repay the favor in full.

The issue with Hafez al-Assad is that he did not comprehend this equation; as a consequence, he persecuted, murdered, and robbed, as did many members of his sect, who were then obliged to devastate Syria.

While others perceived the boy’s solitude as the loneliness of a broken-winged orphan, isolated on himself, and missing his father, and gave him looks of pity, sadness, and anguish over his unknowable fate, it was never like that. Instead, the boy preferred solitude to being a part of a silent society over the justice of the old man.

Rather, the solitude of Walid was born to bring about a new dawn.

Or so at least the boy thought…