“They drank coffee, smoked - and tortured us”

In his documentaries ‘Last Men in Aleppo’ (2017) and ‘The Cave’ (2019), both nominated for an Oscar, Syrian director, producer and screenwriter Feras Fayyad shows how his compatriots tried to defy the relentless terror of the Assad regime. Fayyad himself was tortured for months. He fled first to Jordan, then to Turkey – but secretly returned to Syria to shoot his films. Later, he was the first witness worldwide to testify in court – at a trial in Germany – about the horrors in notorious Syrian prisons such as Al-Chatib in Damascus. 

Mr Fayyad, in your documentary ‘Last Men of Aleppo,’ you show how ruthlessly the Syrian regime bombed its own population. The viewer meets Khalid, who, with a group of volunteers known as the White Helmets, tries to rescue people from collapsed buildings. Again and again, we see corpses – including children and babies. Why did you make this film?

What I love about cinema is that it creates space for memories. Films enable us and society to experience the culture and history that shape us through someone else, so to speak, yet in a personal way. Especially in war, it is important to remember that we are not just victims and that there is more to it than just numbers of people killed or arrested. I am interested in a different kind of story. What does it mean to be a father in an extreme situation: for example, when you desperately want to hear your children's voices on the phone – to know that they are still alive – while you yourself are risking your life to save other people's children?

How does war change people?

You can see it in their eyes: they live in between two worlds, that of the living and that of the dead. People like Khalid from ‘Last Men of Aleppo’ took responsibility for the victims they rescued. That sounds crazy, because they did everything and risked everything to save lives. But you still take on that burden. 

You yourself were a victim of the regime. You were imprisoned and tortured.

That's right. It was pure luck that I survived. At times, I lost all faith in humanity. Jean Améry writes in his book Beyond Guilt and Atonement: ‘Those who have been tortured remain tortured. Torture is not like a severe emotional shock from which one can recover.’ With the first slap in the face, one loses ‘one's home in the world.’ Since then, I have tried to regain my faith in humanity with each of my films.

After filming was completed, Khalid died in an air raid.

And once again, I questioned my own survival.

Why?

When I thought about Khalid's death – and the deaths of so many of my compatriots in Assad's torture chambers – I asked myself why I had survived. Sometimes I wished I were dead. I wished I hadn't survived so that I wouldn't have to live with these nightmares anymore.

“I wanted to make films to tell my family's story”

Was that the reason you became a filmmaker, to process your own trauma?

No. I wanted to make films to tell my family's story. One of my uncles was imprisoned for 15 years in the notorious Saidnaya prison near Damascus.

Why was he locked up?

He was a military pilot and refused orders to bomb the city of Hama during a military operation, one of the worst massacres of civilians under Hafez al-Assad. Another uncle was killed by the regime. His body was dragged seventy kilometres from the Turkish border to his village.

You mean they dragged him there tied to a car?

Yes, with a military vehicle.

Why?

He had helped the wife of a family member flee to Turkey. They organised a veritable manhunt, tied him up and dragged him back to the village where my mother comes from. His body was completely destroyed. He could only be identified by his hand and the watch on it. My aunt was forced to look at him. She was pregnant at the time and lost the child due to the shock. Afterwards, his parents were forced to publicly declare that he was not their son. 

That's insane, almost unbearable. 

I grew up with stories like that. That's why I went to Damascus to become a director.

During your time in Damascus, the revolution against the Assad regime began, and you took to the streets to document it. What happened then?

I was in an internet cafe, taking notes and typing emails. Suddenly, someone came in, arrested me and took me straight to a torture prison. You have to understand that the Syrian system was hardly comparable to that of other authoritarian states. They didn't come to your home and arrest you under some legal pretext. People just disappeared – and no one knew what had happened to them. Not even their families.

How old were you when they were abducted?

23 years old, that was in 2011. At first, I was put in a two-man cell with six others. But because I was a director, they wanted to prevent me from hearing what others were saying. So I was put in solitary confinement.

How long did you stay there?

Hard to say, there was no day-night rhythm. The aim was to deprive prisoners of any sense of space and time. There was a kind of mantra that we kept repeating to ourselves: ‘Those who are arrested are lost. But those who are released will be reborn as if by a miracle.’

Were you in custody the whole time?

I was detained twice for extended periods, totalling about a year. But even in between and afterwards, I remained under observation and had to report to various authorities several times a week for interrogation – three to five times a week, for four to eight hours at a time.

“‘There were no windows, no natural light. It smelled of mould, blood and decaying bodies”

And during your detention?

Both times, I was transferred back and forth between different prisons and facilities. Torture took place in each of these places, sometimes even during transport between two facilities. The second arrest took place at Damascus airport, after which I was taken to Section 251 of Al-Chatib Prison, among other places.

The notorious prison in Damascus?

All these facilities were notorious because there was competition between them to be the most brutal centre in order to have a good standing according to the regime's logic. I was taken from Al-Chatib to the National Intelligence Service, the Air Force Intelligence Headquarters and so on. In total, I was held in eleven different facilities during my second imprisonment alone.

Can you give us an impression of what kind of place Al-Chatib was?

From the outside, it looked like a normal building in eastern Damascus. But inside, it was a different world. The cells were located three floors below ground and could only be reached via a very narrow staircase. There were no windows and no natural light. It smelled of mould, blood and decaying bodies. The cells had low ceilings, there were no mattresses, we slept on the concrete floor. In many of the prisons, it was so hot and humid in summer that you almost suffocated, while in winter it was freezing cold, almost below freezing.

What did they want to know from you during the interrogations?

They asked questions that you couldn't answer. Most of us were accused of being spies. Even if you said what they supposedly wanted to hear, it went on. It was, as Hannah Arendt said, the bureaucracy of death, the banality of evil. They came into the office, drank coffee, smoked and tortured – then we went back to our cells.

Every day?

Often several times a day.

In earlier interviews, you said you were beaten, hung by your wrists for hours and sexually tortured. The latter is hardly ever discussed in Syria, especially when it happens to men.

Yes, it is denied, even by Syrian feminists. But sexual violence was an everyday practice, even against men. I was repeatedly raped with a wooden stick. And I wasn't the only one. 

People in Syria were imprisoned and tortured in this way for generations?

Living in Syria meant accepting that torture was part of everyday life. And if you survived it, you had to remain silent in order to continue living. Sexual violence was a central means of achieving this. The aim was to completely destroy people, both physically and mentally.

In 2020, you were the first witness to testify in court in Koblenz in the world's first trial for state torture in Syria about what happened in the regime's torture chambers in Damascus. The main defendant was Anwar Raslan, one of the leading men in Al-Chatib. You were also tortured by him. What kind of man is he?

For me, he is the Syrian Adolf Eichmann.

“I had nightmares, fearing that the regime might publish recordings of the sexual torture”

The SS Obersturmbannführer who was largely responsible for coordinating the deportation and murder of millions of Jews?

Yes, and I say that with all due respect to the Jewish victims. Genocides are not comparable, nor is pain. But the comparison can help people in the West understand the scale of the Syrian horror.

How did you recognise him?

We usually wore hoods during the interrogations. We knelt like animals in front of his desk. Only once was I able to peek out from under the hood for a moment because it had slipped. I recognised his face. 

Were you referred to by name during these interrogations?

No. We were just numbers. 

What number were you?

It changed, but I remember it was six.

What did it mean to you to sit across from Anwar Raslan in Koblenz?

I wanted my life back. I had nightmares and feared that the regime might publish recordings of the sexual torture. I hoped that my testimony would bring me peace. But even after that, I was still accused of lying by Syrian NGOs and Russian trolls on the internet. That only ended three years later, when Raslan was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment.

You once took your then seven-year-old daughter to court with you. What was her reaction?

She said about Raslan: ‘He looks like Grandpa.’ I was shocked. I looked at him and said, ‘You're right. He's a human being – just like us.’ Before that, I couldn't comprehend that.

Your daughter is now eleven years old and has never been to Syria. Do you want to show her your home village?

It no longer exists. The Russians took everything, the roof of our house, even the trees.

The trees?

Yes, they dug up centuries-old olive trees.
I don't know what for. 

“No one who was interned in Assad's prisons ever really came out again. Our bodies did, but our souls remain lost”

What kind of place was your home?

We lived on a farm in a village on a ridge between Aleppo and Idlib in northwestern Syria. It was a true paradise. The village was located on the M5 motorway between Aleppo and Damascus, which is why it later became strategically important to the Russians, who turned it into a kind of military base.

What does this loss mean for your relationship with your homeland?

I believe they tore my heart out along with the trees. I played under those trees, found peace, made up stories. My childhood lay under those branches, and now they have taken everything from me.

Would you say that this is the state of your country: its heart has been torn out?

Some people have got their homes back. Maybe they will find peace. But every place you go could be a mass grave. A former torture centre. An execution site. Your neighbours may have been perpetrators, torturers in the regime's cellars. It's about more than just rebuilding houses. No one who was interned in Assad's prisons ever really came out again. Our bodies did, but our souls remain lost – along with all those people who disappeared into the dungeons and now surround us like ghosts.

There must be something that can be done?

Remember. Give the dead a face. Tell their stories. That is now our pressing task. 

Interview by Ruben Donsbach