Syrian actress finds her true calling in real life drama

Amman: Syrian actress Fadwa Sulaiman says she was drawn to a life in drama because of its promise of freedom.

Disillusioned at the level of state control even in theatre and film, she joined protests last year against President Bashar Al Assad and now takes the stage at demonstrations in the city of Homs, centre of resistance to his family's four-decade rule.

Cutting her hair short like a boy and moving from house to house to evade capture, Fadwa has become one of the most recognised faces of the ten-month uprising against Al Assad.

She played no part in the early demonstrations that broke out in March, but a deep-seated rebellious streak — which was only further roused when she joined the state-run High Conservatory for Theatre Arts — drew her towards the protests. "I chose to study theatre because I thought theatre means freedom to think and to express oneself," Fadwa told Reuters in a Skype interview from Homs.

Describing her time at the conservatory, which like most cultural institutions in Syria is controlled by the state, she said she slowly discovered that "my country wants to drain all culture and content from its citizens."

"I became opposed to the way we work, to the humiliation, the degradation in human interaction. Everywhere you go, even a theatre or a film company, you feel you have entered a security establishment," she said. "Authors write the worst scripts but they are chosen because they have links to security."

Achievements

Before the uprising, Fadwa was known for her roles in television, radio, cinema and theatre, playing an art teacher at an orphanage in Small Hearts, a television series that helped raise awareness about human organ trafficking and was broadcast by several Arab channels.

She also acted in an Arabic adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House at the Qabbani theatre in Damascus.

When the uprising broke out Fadwa, who is in her 30s, became increasingly active as Syria's intelligentsia mobilised in support of the pro-democracy protesters.

She has appeared at rallies demanding Al Assad's removal, sharing the podium with football star Abdul Basset Sarout, one of a number of Syrian celebrities who have backed the revolt.

Veteran actresses Mona Wassef and May Skaf, singer Asala Masri, film director Nabeel Maleh and composer Malek Jandali are among other well-known Syrian personalities who have supported the uprising.

She has also delivered impassioned monologues to camera, calling for peaceful protests to continue across the country until Al Assad is overthrown. In one video message in November, she said security forces were searching Homs neighbourhoods for her and beating people to force them to reveal her hiding place.

Her life on the run resembles that of other activists wanted for their role in the uprising, except that Fadwa is a woman from Syria's Alawite minority — the same sect as Al Assad — taking part in a mainly male and Sunni rebellion.

Tension between sects

In the conservative bastion of Homs where Fadwa has made her stand, most women wear the headscarf and tensions between Sunnis and Alawites have exploded into sectarian violence.

Fearing a Sunni backlash, the Alawite community, a secretive and tightly knit sect which controls the army and makes up most of the security apparatus, has mostly sided with Al Assad, or remained silent as troops cracked down on protesters.

Many Alawites have disavowed Fadwa, including her brother Mahmoud, who appeared on a state-controlled satellite channel saying Syria's unity was more important than his sister.

The actress insists Sunnis and Alawites can still live together despite the spiral of sectarian violence in Homs, pointing to conservative Sunni families who have opened their homes to shelter her from security forces.

Fighting sectarianism

"The regime portrays Homs as a hub for extreme Islam, but I walk in Sunni neighbourhoods distributing flyers, and go like this, without a veil, into the homes of religious families and discuss politics and organising the next protest," she said.

A YouTube video showed Fadwa standing on a podium last month in the Sunni neighbourhood of Khalidiya in Homs, chanting ‘One, one, one. Syrian people are one'.

The crowd, waving Syrian green and white flags from the era before Al Assad's Baath Party took power in a 1963 military coup, thunders after her ‘Khalidiya: free and proud'.

Opposite Khalidiya is the Alawite neighbourhood of Nozha, where the bodies of 30 Sunnis were dumped by army trucks in December, provoking an attack by armed Sunnis, according to an Alawite resident.

At the rally, Fadwa appealed to the people of Nozha "to come and see reality, to see your brothers in blood peacefully demanding freedom". "Freedom cannot be against your beliefs, even if you're pro-regime," she said.

In the interview, Fadwa said that stopping the sectarian bloodshed in Homs had become the main priority, but that Al Assad must also be removed.

"We're a civilised and peaceful nation. We cannot let the regime with a simple ploy make us slaughter each other to justify its existence," she said.

At a rally earlier in the uprising, the actress sang a popular tune by Lebanese singer Marcel Khalifa, surrounded by youths from her home region in the Alawite mountains overlooking the Mediterranean.

"I chose you, my homeland. Lovingly, voluntarily," she sang, in apparently wistful reference to her now estranged Alawite community.

"Let the times disavow me, as long as you will remember me, my wonderful homeland."