To remain sane, I created a file titled “not to be published”. In it, I wrote down everything that was happening, with dates, full names, as if I was reporting these suppressed facts to undefined audiences in an unknown time. Perhaps they would read it when I was killed or kidnapped. I was now a reporter of history.
Forced to leave the rebel-held area in 2015 after publicly voicing my support for the Charlie Hebdo magazine journalists who were murdered in Paris, I lived in southern Turkey for almost two years, before moving to the UK. But I still found myself unable to report freely on Syria even though I had left the country.
In 2016, for example, pro-opposition activists attacked and bullied me when I published a piece highlighting violations committed against civilians by the opposition.
That was the first of many campaigns against me. Another was launched when I published an article with openDemocracy about secular activists attacking feminists.
It took me years to realise how populism and polarisation have silenced me, too: realising how traumatising it had been only when I began writing again last year.
My friends who saw me after my article was published told me I looked “different and lighter”. Nothing had changed in my life, except that I had returned to being a journalist.
After 15 years of my career, it is only this year I realised that being a journalist has become a central part of who I am.
