The Story of Jasmine
Jasmine`s story is not a story to be easily told or read, for words remain unable and deficient to express the real horror implied in such a story. The story starts on the night of August the 4th, 2013, while the inhabitants of Lattakia villages were sleeping soundly and safely. The dawn which followed that night brought harrowing incidents of kidnapping, guns and blood to the civilian inhabitants of these villages, a dawn which represented the terror which plagued our wounded homeland.
We will always wonder how the memory of that night would affect the way through which the children -who witnessed the massacre- conceive their future Jasmine is a ten years old child who, miraculously, survived that massacre. The Syria Times interviewed Jasmine and her sister Hanadi Najdat Shehada (nineteen years old). Hanadi, using simple yet effective words, narrated what happened on that terrible day. “Sunday morning around four o`clock”, she said, “my brother Yousef phoned to tell us to leave the village as soon as possible because the armed groups had attacked our village Inbata and started shooting people.” Yousef was eighteen years old and he was a member of the people committees in the village. There was no presence for the army there but only few units of the National Defence were present.
“We ran away”, Hanadi continued, and quickly disappeared out of sight. We hid in the forest in what we thought was a safe place. We could not walk by day because of sniping; the shelling was horrible and terrorists came from all directions.” Hanadi added that there were about thirty five other people who fled the town, and at Sunday night, they resumed their attempt to flee the area. “We walked all night till Monday morning. Around 6 o’clock, we sat to catch our breath. Suddenly, we were surrounded by armed Islamists who opened fire. My sister Jasmine was wounded by three gunshots. My cousin Khitam (twenty one years old) and neighbour Tamara Alshekh were immediately martyred. The three terrorists took the rest of us as hostages. Two walked before us, the third followed. After a while, we heard a voice coming from a bush. The third terrorist looked to inspect who was there. At this moment, my father (Najdat Shehada) and sister Boushra (twenty one years old) escaped through the woods. An hour later, my little sister Reem (seven years old) and me had the opportunity to escape also, and we hid behind a huge rock till the terrorists lost hope of finding us and went their way.
My brother Yousef”, Hanadi added, “could not escape with us because he was carrying my wounded sister Jasmine. However, we kept walking till the dawn of Tuesday, until we finally reached a place where soldiers of the Syrian army offered us protection, food and shelter. We napped for two hours only, and then the soldiers took us to the hospital in Lattakia because we were all wounded by the bushes and rocks in the woods. Three weeks later, a man whose name was Bashar was looking for us. He told us that Jasmine survived and that she was taken to Turkey. He also said that a Turkish doctor felt sorry for Jasmine`s miserable condition. The doctor sent her back to Syria through a member in the Turkish parliament, and Jasmine was brought back to the hospital in Lattakia.”
A doctor in the hospital described Jasmine`s health condition. He said that she had undergone a surgery, but he was not sure about the medical objective of that surgery. He also said that Jasmine still had to suffer from a shrapnel which remained inside her body. When we asked Jasmine, she said that all she could remember was that she and her mother were taken to Turkey.
There were only nine survivors of the massacre in Inbata. The rest were slaughtered. The women were taken as sex-slaves for the terrorists.
This gruesome massacre, like many others, has revealed that serious efforts are being made to foment the vilest hatred the heart of man can ever be capable of. The unity and consolidation of the Syrian people, who –for thousands of years- have always enjoyed a state of social and religious harmony and steadily expressed love and belief in the country, are seriously targeted by these types of unspeakable acts. The essence and core of Islam are also seriously targeted by the propagation of the Takfiri ideology of ‘exterminating the Other’.
Zainab Makhlouf