"Every day we're documenting and seeing these violations, so we're under a lot of pressure. In the end, we are human beings. We get affected, we get hurt. The leaders and the human rights activists, we can't show the people that we're affected and broken from inside. If the people see that we are collapsed internally, what kind of strength will they get from us? Sometimes I get broken from inside, I disappear for a few days, but I try my best to fight depression. I try to keep busy and not think about it."
A Country at a Crossroads
I asked Jihan about the possibility of her own arrest.
"I think that they will target me very soon," she said. "At any time they might raid my home and arrest me." She fears most the possibility of torture. She's documented enough cases to know just what she might be forced to endure. But she adds, "I do believe that getting freedom and democracy for the coming generation is very important, and highlighting the violations that are happening in the country is very important. Freedom is not something easy to get -- we have to pay and to sacrifice for it. Fear of arrest won't stop me from doing my humanitarian job. I won't give up."
Jihan's fellow Bahraini activists are not giving up either. They continue to head out onto the streets night after night, despite the fierce repression they face from the regime and the silent complicity of most of the world. Yet there is reason to worry about where the Bahraini uprising is heading. As Dr. Nabeel Hameed put it, "The situation is getting entrenched, it's getting stagnated. Nobody sees a solution, and this gives loss of hope. And one of the most dangerous positions you can put a human being in is loss of hope. Because when somebody loses hope, he's capable of doing anything."
Juxtaposed with despair, however, is the resilience -- or sumud (steadfastness) -- that could be seen everywhere I looked. It was in the drawings of the children, who defiantly portrayed hands raised in a "V" for victory sign among images of bloodshed. It was in the graffiti depicting the Pearl Monument on walls all over Bahrain, with the stenciled message "We Will Return." It was in the youth we secretly filmed in their villages after midnight spray-painting bus stops and light poles with the colors of the Bahraini flag.
And it was reflected in 13-year old Hussein, who called Jihan two days after being stitched back together without anesthesia to report, to her great relief, that his vomiting had ceased and his appetite had returned.
Hussein tried to thank Jihan for her help, but she would not permit it. "No need to say thanks, habibi [my dear]. I'm only doing my duty."
Jen Marlowe is an author, documentary filmmaker and human rights activist. Her latest book (written with Sami Al Jundi) is The Hour of Sunlight: One Palestinian's Journey From Prisoner to Peacemaker and her most recent film is One Family in Gaza. She is the founder of donkeysaddle projects. You can follow her on Twitter at @donkeysaddleorg.
Copyright 2012 Jen Marlowe
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