Syrian refugees sound off.

• Author: Enders, David

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Daraa, Syria, is a city just over the border from Jordan. Early in the rebellion against the regime of Bashar al-Assad, Syrian security forces repressed dissidents here.

As peaceful protest turned into armed revolution, Daraa became a locus of support for the Free Syrian Army, the loose coalition of army defectors and volunteers who protect demonstrators and, although outgunned, carry out attacks against the military and security forces.

It also became a point of departure for some of the tens of thousands of Syrians who have fled the conflict.

"Our family left in three groups," says Abu Hamed (a pseudonym), whose eldest son was paralyzed by a sniper's bullet while demonstrating in December.

Another son, sixteen-year-old Yehyia, was arrested four times before the family left. Yehyia says he was tortured with electric shocks, stripped naked, and held in stress positions for days at a time. But he remains committed to the revolution.

"I still want to go back and join the demonstrations," Yehyia says.

Rima Flihan wants to go back, too.

"We used to have a normal life," says the thirty-six-year-old screenwriter and mother of two. "I never dreamed we'd be refugees."

A Syrian television channel is airing a series she created last year, which makes the fact that she is no longer in the country even more surreal.

Flihan left Syria in September after the government issued a second arrest warrant for her because she had participated in anti-government protests. She had already been arrested and beaten once. With two children, thirteen and fourteen, she decided it was too risky to stay, so she sent her children out of the country legally, before illegally crossing into Jordan herself.

"When you cross the border, there is a small hill," she recalls. "When I got to the top, I froze. I got caught in the wire. There was a voice behind me shouting, 'Run, run!' but I couldn't breathe. All I could think about was that this might be the last time I see my country."

The transition has not been easy.

"At first, when I would go to sleep, I would wake up and wonder where I was," she says. "We are learning what depression is."

Flihan, a fierce defender of women's rights, belies the Syrian government's caricature of the opposition as made up of hardline Islamic militants. So does Salam al Basha, a pseudonym for a twenty-six-year-old former music engineer who was finishing his mandatory military service in Daraa when the uprising began. His...