Clarissa Ward - On All Fronts: The Education of a Journalist

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Copyright 2020 by Clarissa Ward

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Mahmoud Darwish, The Damascene Collar of the Dove V: In Damascus: / the traveler sings to himself from The Butterflys Burden, translated by Fady Joudah. Copyright 2007 by Mahmoud Darwish. Translation copyright 2007 by Fady Joudah. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC, on behalf of Copper Canyon Press, www.coppercanyonpress.org.

Fair Weather, copyright 1928, renewed 1956 by Dorothy Parker; from The Portable Dorothy Parker by Dorothy Parker, edited by Marion Meade. Used by permission of Viking Books, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Ward, Clarissa, 1980 author.

Title: On all fronts : the education of a journalist / Clarissa Ward.

Description: New York : Penguin Press, 2020. | Includes index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019049839 (print) | LCCN 2019049840 (ebook) | ISBN 9780525561477 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780525561484 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Ward, Clarissa, 1980 | Television journalistsUnited StatesBiography. | War correspondentsUnited StatesBiography. | Iraq War, 20032011Personal narratives, American. | SyriaHistoryCivil War, 2011Personal narratives, American.

Classification: LCC PN4874.W2885 A3 2020 (print) | LCC PN4874.W2885 (ebook) | DDC 070.4/333092 [B]dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019049839

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019049840

Some names and identifying characteristics have been changed to protect the privacy and safety of the individuals involved.

Cover design by Darren Haggar

Clarissa Ward photograph by Brigitte Lacombe as shot for The Female Lead

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For my mother, who rightly insisted that this book should be dedicated to her.

And for my beloved Ezra Nour.

Prologue

NOVEMBER 2011

DAMASCUS, SYRIA

I looked down at the swell of mourners moving toward me. A coffin was held aloft, touched and blessed by a thousand hands as it swayed down the street. The men carrying it were sweating despite the cool afternoon, pressed in on all sides by chanting protestors. Some of them had caught sight of me and my camera as I had tried to catch up with the cortege and they cleared the way. They wanted their story of resistance told. I struggled through the crowd and jumped onto a flatbed truck a few yards ahead of the coffin, which was draped with the flag of the Syrian revolution (three red stars rather than the two green stars of the official flag).

I cant screw up this shot, I cant screw up this shot, I whispered to myself.

Lying in the coffin was a sixteen-year-old boy who had been shot by Syrian security forces the day before. He had become the latest martyr of the rapidly growing uprising against the regime of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.

I took a deep breath and balanced the small point-and-shoot tourism camera on top of the cab of the truck, willing my hands to stay completely still as the coffin approached. I could see the face of the dead boy now, smooth and gray, his eyes closed, his lips parted a fraction. And then he was gone, carried off on the wave of angry mourners.

I was on my own in Damascus on my first assignment as a correspondent for CBS News. As a dual citizen with a UK passport, I had managed to obtain a tourist visa, but my producer had not. And I had no cameraman. I had little experience shooting video and did not underestimate the risks of embarking on such an assignment. A journalist traveling alone could easily be disappeared. But Id been to Syria many times before, spoke enough Arabic to get around on my own, and was desperate to cover the fast-expanding Syrian uprising, which was reaching a boiling point by that fall of 2011.

Opposition activists had brought me to the sprawling suburb of Douma to cover the funeral. I had been in Damascus for a few days before I had managed to slip away from my hotel and the ever-present secret police to link up with them.

Hundreds of people now poured in from all directions. The women marched together at the back of the procession. Rows and rows of them waved banners with slogans demanding justice and the overthrow of the regime of Bashar al-Assad. Someone started beating a drum, and the crowd hoisted a boy onto a mans shoulders so that he could lead the chant. Oh, Bashar, you liar, he chanted, to hell with you and your speech. Freedom is at the door.

Yalla irhal, ya Bashar, the crowd chanted, clapping rhythmically. Get out, Bashar! The chant had become the anthem of the revolution, a revolution gathering strength in the suburbs of Damascus and in Homs and in Hamaand posing a genuine threat to Assads rule.

I looked over the sea of people, cheering and chanting, hands with cell phones raised in the air to capture the protest and beam it out on social media. The crisp November air crackled with the energy and excitement of their voices. Emboldened by their own daring, they grew louder and louder, the clapping thunderous. My foot tapped along with the beat. It was electrifying.

Bashar, screw you and screw those who salute you.

These protesters had been waiting for their moment since the Arab Spring unfolded earlier that yearknocking over decades-old dictatorships in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya.

At the time, Assad had told the Wall Street Journal: This is the Middle East, where every week you have something new. But he had confidently predicted that the maelstrom would not affect his country. Instead, it would spur reform. He would turn out to be spectacularly wrong on both counts.

On March 6, 2011, a group of teenage boys, inspired by the wave of protests spreading across the region, had been arrested for spray-painting As-Shaab yurid isqat an-nizam! (The people want the downfall of the regime!) on walls in Daraa, a rundown farming town near the Jordanian border. It was the rallying cry of the revolutions in Egypt and Libya and it brought swift retaliation from local security forces. When the boys were released two weeks later, alive but brutalized, their angry families marched on the governors house to demand justice. They were met with a hail of bullets. Three protesters were killed. And an uprising was born.

By now a pattern had emerged. The funeral of someone murdered by the regime would then turn into a protest against the regime. Security forces would flood in and open fire, and then the next day there would be an even larger funeral. By that November, there were dozens of such funerals across Syria every day.

I watched the crowd as they chanted hurriya, hurriya (freedom, freedom) over and over. They waved banners calling for a no-fly zone to prevent Assad from murdering his people. They had seen Western jets save Libyans in Benghazi from Qaddafis advancing forces months earlier and they believed that the West would do the same for them. How bitterly disappointed they would be.