Marah

For a long time, my mother had us living in a bubble with unrealistic moral standards. The crisis in Syria has forced us out of that bubble, and we are finally facing reality. Throughout the past few years, we’ve had contact with all kinds of people, in shelters and, later on, in our own place, when we’ve embraced friends and relatives in need of help. We’ve witnessed heated fights, bad language, and some violence. Although we understand the effort our mother made in order to protect us, we also now feel that we do not belong to the world in which we live, a world in which everything is very foreign to us. Time, work, and school have also contributed to expanding my horizons, and have provided me with opportunities to learn more about life outside of the bubble in which we grew up. I find myself being gradually immersed in this new world and its standards. This could be my way of rejecting my mother’s authority, or revolting against my old, well-organized world—I do not know.

I have developed a temper. I hurt people’s feelings easily, and I’ve lost the capacity for forgiveness and patience that I used to have. I fight with my siblings and explode with anger, even with my mother, who keeps trying to contain me. I am not even nice to my friends anymore, and I keep losing them, one after another. I feel that hatred has possessed me. I hate everything around me. I’ve become a mean person, even with little kids. Can you believe it?

I do not have respect for anything or anybody, and I’m afraid that I will soon lose my self-respect—that will be the absolute end. I do not enjoy being around people anymore, and I spend most of my time alone. I do so because I am scared that the monster that has grown inside of me over the past few years might come out and hurt those I love. Have I developed this from those I have had contact with, like a kind of disease? Is it bred by the chaos that we are living in? Or is it because of this bloody war? I do not know.

I am scared. I am really scared. I do not know what’s in store for us. I cannot take our current situation anymore, and I am afraid that the future will be even harsher. I have been silent recently; silence is my new shelter in this reality that I cannot change. Will it be my end as well? ♦

Marah’s diary is produced in collaboration with Syria Deeply, a digital news outlet covering the Syrian crisis. It was translated from the Arabic by Mais Istanbelli.