Quotes from Wendy Pearlman

My brother was kidnapped by the shabeeha. After eighteen days, they sent him back to us, killed under torture.

Meanwhile, Hezbollah wanted to come from Lebanon to Syria to help the regime. One way was through al-Qusayr, because it's right on the border.

Forces from Hezbollah, Iran, and Russia encircled the town.

We had money, but there was nothing to buy. Instead, my husband would collect grass and leaves and we'd fry them in olive oil.

I was arrested in my second year of medical school and spent five months in prison. I was home recovering when ISIS showed up.

It's airstrikes that have destroyed the country. Planes do the most damage, and ISIS doesn't have planes.

Last year, they shelled the market on the holiday at the end of Ramadan. People left the market. Half an hour later, everyone returned and went back to buying and selling.

Once, I helped do a surgery to remove a bullet near a young man's heart. The electricity was out so we did the whole surgery by the light of our cell phones. The doctor who performed the surgery was a veterinarian.

We spent eight months living in different places. Sometimes we found places to rent and sometimes we didn't. It was like a vacation, but with bombing.

I lived under ISIS rule for a year and a half. ISIS forced us to go out and watch them cut off people's heads. It was scary for kids at the beginning, but then they got used to it.

Then another ISIS fighter stopped me on the street one day. He said, "You can't look like that here." He was from Belgium. To me it was funny. You come here and are going to tell me what to wear? He said, "This is Islamland." I said, "No, this is Syria.

Our cell was near the women's cell, and sometimes they'd come for a specific girl, calling out her name and the name of her town. We knew that they were raping her, because they always took her during the shift of a particular officer.

Another time, one of the other guys called his girlfriend and said, "Sweetheart, I'm out of minutes on my phone. I'll call you back on Amin's phone." After a while she called me asking about him, and I told her that he'd been killed.

The second massacre was the chemical weapons attack.