It all started because Souad Nawfal wanted to wear pants. Every day, the 40-year-old schoolteacher turned antiregime activist would go stand in front of the headquarters of the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) in the rebel-controlled city of Raqqa to protest the al-Qaeda affiliates’ harsh tactics in her hometown. She hoisted placards calling for an end to injustice, for an end to oppression. First they ignored her. Then they told everyone else to ignore her, and then they tried to beat her. Still she persevered. “A girl all by herself facing the Islamic State,” she sniffs in a recent video posted on Vimeo. “Talk about a state! It’s more like a small gang that takes advantage of people’s fear.” But the small gang was powerful, and when ISIS started threatening her life, Nawfal finally had to flee for Turkey, where she is now hiding in a safe house, wondering what happened to Syria’s revolution.
Lübnan Marunîleri / Yasin Atlıoğlu
