Syria: Mother of Martyrs

My name is Walaa, but they call me “the mother of martyrs”. I am originally from Douma but now live in Eastern Ghouta which is under a perpetual and bloody siege.

I had four children. But Akram and Mohammad have died, and I only have my daughters Walaa and Farah left.

I decided to try to have another child even though I was 42 years old. I defied my age, in order to bring back some happiness to my husband, who had been grief-stricken since Akram and then Mohammad were killed.

My pregnancy was difficult as we are trapped here in Damascus province with little food and no medicine available. That didn’t matter, because a smile finally returned to my husband’s face. The days and months passed until my due date was upon us.

On June 23, 2014, I went to hospital to have my baby. My husband, my daughters and everything around me felt suffused with joy. As I went down stairs, I was bursting with happiness. I waved to my husband, who smiled and wished me a safe delivery.

In hospital, I gave birth to a gorgeous daughter after just an hour in labour. Her face was extremely rosy, her eyes wide and her hair black. She was truly beautiful. My husband was overjoyed and my daughters were enchanted with their new little sister.

“We will call her Fatma,” my husband said.

“Is she in good health?” I asked the doctor.

“Yes,” he replied.

We rode home in the car, but once we got there, Fatma began to change colour, turning blue.

“Take her to hospital,” I told my husband. “She needs oxygen.”

But he was unable to leave the house as military aircraft were circling overhead and shells were falling one after another. We tried to give the baby whatever help we could until my husband was able to take her to the city hospital.

“We’re sorry, we don’t have any paediatric incubators because of the government blockade,” they told him there.

My husband began searching for a hospital that would admit our infant daughter. After two hours he found one in Hamouriya. He handed Fatma to them and they placed her in the one incubator they had.

My husband came home with his eyes full of tears.

“Where’s Fatma?” I asked him. “What happened?”

“I found an incubator in Hamouriya,” he answered.

The next day, he went to bring her home. He entered the hospital and told the nurse, “I am little Fatma’s father.”

“Fatma’s in the morgue,” she told him. “She passed away last night at two am.”

He took her body in his arms, his eyes awash with tears. She was so tiny, but her face seemed to glow with a soft smile. My husband remembered his lost sons, Akram and Mohammad.

And so people began to call me the mother of martyrs. Fatma was the youngest martyr in Ghouta. She died because no medical supplies have come into Ghouta since the beginning of the uprising in March 2011. The doctors have had to rely on past stockpiles as the regime blocked access to medicines even before it cut off our food supply.

Many people have died from not having access to medical supplies. There are so many martyrs, who are unable to survive injury or treatable illnesses like typhoid or measles. This is what life is like under siege.

This story was produced by the Damascus Bureau, IWPR’s news platform for Syrian journalists.