All my dreams were shattered upon my arrest, and as soon as I began to realize what was going on around me, the horror and magnitude of the catastrophe became clear to me little by little.

And what was going on in the prison cells and detention centers is only a small part of that situation in this country.

It was a dirty war in every sense of the word. Houses were destroyed and crumbled over their inhabitants, and entire families were disappearing under the rubble of buildings in a blink of an eye.

The barrel bombs were spreading terror everywhere, and the chemical weapons had done their share of killing.

My mother was killed by a stray shell that landed on our village without warning. It fell not far from our house, and it took with it two little girls, who were our neighbors’ children, who were on their way to Abu Hussein’s grocery store.