Dr. Anas Bakir

Abakader Hewedi, Hassan Hassan, Aballah Barama and Mohammad Soubu. Anas Bakir doesn’t stop to think when I ask him to write the names his friends who died on the Syrian war…

When we arrived in Harran, we went to the only restaurant we could find in that part of the town. The cooker, the only English speaking guy there, came to translate the order he himself was going to prepare. After preparing our meal, Anas, with his apron, brought it and sat with us, interested to get to know these foreigners from the Iberian Peninsula. After he told us who he was, the focus of the conversation turned to him.

I asked if I could interview him and he gladly accepted. I wanted to know about his life, something more about the Syrian uprising, and his story in this tragic war. In his good English he explained everything with passion but always rationally.

 

 

An activist against the criminal Syrian regime, Anas was arrested 13 months ago during a protest in Damascus University where he was teaching Economy as an Assistan Professor, and spent six days in prison where he was brutally beaten. The second time the Government went after him, they couldn’t catch him, he fled to Turkey to work and sustain his family in these dark days.

For now he is working… and living in this restaurant in Harran. He wants to go to the capital of Líbia, Tripoli, where he has his friends and where he can easily find a job teaching. Being a cooker in a restaurant is as a respectable job as any other, but the potential this Master in economics and Doctor in accounting has – with 27 years –asks for something more.

 

 

Bashar al-Assad is cruel. I never heard his side of the story but that’s not really necessary, everyone knows that. With the support of people and corporations with interests in the country, his orders to kill civilians are frequent. Just two days before Dr. Bakir escaped to Turkey, his neighborhood was destroyed by rockets. His house is intact, but 19 people, including 5 children, were killed. He explains that that’s the normal Governmental reaction after losing a territory they previously controlled. The rebels fighting the regime, the Free Syrian Army, mainly composed by defected soldiers and civilian volunteers, are supported by the big majority of Syrian people and even people all around the world that want freedom to Syria, and it is expected that they will be able to depose the regime, but who can imagine what will al-Assad’s do to his people in desperation, right before the end?

 

There are now over a million refugees and 2 million displaced (UN). Half of the refugees are children, most of them under 11 and often traumatized by their experiences. Dr. Bakir’s family is still in Hatlah, a small village near Dayr Az Zawr, in the east part of Syria. They’re afraid but won’t leave the country they love. Even if it’s now completely destroyed by the war.

 

When I ask him if he wants to come back to his country when the war is over, does not hesitate: “Immediately, the same day!” he promptly replies.

 

 

Paco