Quotes from Wendy Pearlman

Thank God, we came here to Lebanon. But life is terrible here, too. This neighborhood of shacks, the lack of hygiene, the germs making the kids sick.

Here in Germany they respect that I'm strong and independent. But I've also realized how Syrian I am. The way I enjoy human interaction, the way I let people into my life—this is our Syrian, our Arab culture.

In the future, I will have grandchildren who speak Dutch, Swedish, and Spanish. If they don't learn Arabic, they will be strangers to each other. They won't have any traces of where we came from. They won't be Syrian. And I will live in exile and die in exile.

Everyone takes advantage of Syrians. If you go to the hospital, they register your visit even when they don't provide treatment, just so they can charge the fees to the UN.

America, we started to learn about debit cards, credit cards, credit history, credit scores.

I'm not saying that the conscience of the international community is asleep. I'm saying that the conscience doesn't exist at all.

There's nothing to protect us. No state, no government, no law, no human rights. Animals have more rights than we do.

My family supports the Assad regime. Especially my mother. She's a true Christian believer who goes to church every Sunday. She loves her country and wants to stay there.

If you don't want refugees, help us make peace in Syria.

The regime isn't protecting Christians, it's only protecting itself. Assad isn't protecting Alawites, either. He's exploiting Alawites.

For us, people who are not privileged enough to have the freedom to be good people, we have to make some bad choices and do some evil things. That's shitty, but it is what it is.

We've accepted the fact that we need to make our dreams smaller if that's what it takes to keep dreaming.

You just adapted to oppression and rotted along with it.

Later, they returned the body of Hamza al-Khatib.* He's a cousin of mine and looks just like my son. He'd been tortured. They didn't leave any spot on his body without cigarette burns. His body was full of stab marks and his neck was broken. They'd cut off his genitals.

After Hamza, people realized that the regime is on one side and the people are on another. That's it. The only thing our leaders know how to do is kill, kill, kill, kill, and kill.

Shabeeha were the only ones armed at that time, apart from the security forces and the army. They were civilian, most likely Alawites, working for somebody connected to the Assad family or other influential families. They did whatever they wanted and nobody dared to stop them.

You know, many Alawites hated the Assad regime, and I think the regime knew that. They also know that the Alawite community is their lifeline, their base for survival.

The regime was basically doing everything possible to put sects against each other and create a toxic environment, where nobody trusts anybody and nobody knows who's in control. Every side had its own enemy. For Alawites, the enemy was extremist radicals. For Sunnis, it was the shabeeha.

I walked around and saw writing on the walls, like: "There is no God but Bashar," and "Assad, or we'll burn down the country.

Many people died, including good friends. I went to the hospital to see them one last time. In one corner there was a mix of body parts from five different people. They couldn't identify them, so they buried them all together.

But when my sister is arrested and they rape her, I have no problem entering any place in the world with a car strapped with explosives.

In the morning, we'd take an injured person to the hospital with a gunshot wound in his leg. That night, we'd return to find him dead with a gunshot to the head.

Most of Nusra's fighters were foreigners—Saudis, Qataris, Tunisians . . .

Qalamoun is near the border with Lebanon, so there were conflicts every now and then.