Members of the Free Syrian Army react as they fire a homemade rocket toward regime forces in Deir al-Zor on Sunday, June 16. Tensions in Syria flared in March 2011 during the onset of the Arab Spring, escalating into an ongoing civil war. View the most compelling images taken since the start of the conflict.
(CNN) -- By the time the officer slapped her across the face, she already felt dead.
I'm not getting up. Let him do what he wants.
Samar Yazbek, a woman lauded as one of Syria's most gifted novelists, had fallen to her knees. She was a lump of snot and blood, girding herself for the next blow.
"Well, well, well, what a hero," the officer laughed. "You went down with just one slap. Isn't it awful when such an angelic face gets hit?"
He spat on her and cursed. Her ears rang.
"Get up!" he ordered.
She inhaled, pressing her ribcage against a switchblade tucked under her bra. She'd kept it with her everywhere. It was a tiny thing, really, a laughable defense against a sniper that had, just a few weeks before, killed a young man standing not even an inch from her at a protest.
Still, the blade was a comfort. She liked to imagine plunging it into the necks of men like the officer breathing in her face.
"Cat got your tongue?" he sneered. "Your tongue should be torn out."
Did she not understand family and loyalty? he lectured. She was from a prominent Alawite family. They were the same sect as the president. Where was her pride? Why had she written things against Bashar al-Assad on her Facebook page? he demanded. She had brought shame on everyone around her.
The officer reached out again, this time brushing his palm against her cheek. Tauntingly light, this slap was enough. It ignited a rage in her.
She got to her feet and pulled out the knife.
Wild, she pressed the blade against her own heart.
"What do you want!?" she howled.
Shocked, he stepped back.
Syrian refugees pour into Jordan
Artist captures life inside Syria
Syria's children caught in conflict
"Put the knife down, you lunatic," he said, taking a seat behind his desk.
This is the deal we have for you, he explained: Go on Syrian state TV. Use that famous, pretty face, your prestige as a novelist and noted screenwriter, and pledge allegiance to al-Assad.
No way, she said.
The officer's phone rang, and he walked away to take it.
"This is your last warning," he told her.
A few beats later, two muscled men, both in regular clothes, walked in. They blindfolded her.
"Where are you taking me?!" she shouted.
"Just a short trip," one answered. "So you'll write better."
Disowned
That was a single day of the almost 100 that Samar Yazbek spent defying people ready and willing to end her last year. She recounts it in great detail in her new memoir, "A Woman Caught in the Crossfire: Diaries of the Syrian Revolution."
The 42-year-old writer is a very unlikely revolutionary, certainly an unexpected presence among the Free Syrian Army. Yazbek is the odd branch on her family tree. Her family is prominent in Syria. She's even distantly related to Osama bin Laden.
Throughout much of her life, she moved in a rarefied world. An intellectual, she's been lauded for her poetry, acclaimed fiction and screenwriting. She even hosted a daily television talk show.
Yazbek was part of a community of creative Syrians who, for years, loathed President Bashar al-Assad and his father, Hafez, who took control in 1970. Yet those artists, if they wanted their work to be seen, had to submit to government censorship committees. Either that, or most likely, their work would not be seen.
So when al-Assad's forces began cracking down on anti-government protesters last year, some of those artists moved to Beirut or some other nearby cosmopolitan city.
Who could have known that the months of street violence would have become an all-out horror movie in 2012?
Yazbek couldn't have seen it coming. Like that young man standing next to her at a rally.
"We were at a peaceful protest, standing and suddenly bullets were fired from a sniper, killing a guy -- he was not even one centimeter from me," Yazbek explained through an Arabic translator in a recent CNN interview.
The crowd dissolved into chaos.
"This was my first experience seeing a man getting killed," she remembered, her voice faint. "It was very painful. I carried him in my arms.
"These protesters (were unarmed)," Yazbek said. "They were carrying roses.
"This regime ... they are monstrous people."
Rather than scare her, the experience emboldened Yazbek. She felt she had a job she could and must do: document.
She began to travel around Syria, usually obscuring her face with a headscarf. With the help of brave drivers and friends who risked their own lives, she made it into villages shelled half to oblivion. In one, she hunkered down with the men fighting in the Free Syrian Army. They ate together as bombs exploded nearby.
As we were sitting out on the balcony overlooking an olive orchard, the bombs started falling all around us. Nearby, the town of Taftanaz was being shelled; we could see it from the balcony. I asked the head of the division, who'd prepared dinner for us, "Aren't you afraid that a bomb might fall on your heads right now?" He replied: "We aren't afraid. Death has become a part of our lives."
'No to Death, Yes to Life'
"Crossfire" is a diary of the first few months of the uprising, from March 25 to July 9, 2011, containing interviews with people fighting the regime and innocents caught in the middle.
The reader watches brave women in Damascus who keep hold of signs, "No to Death, Yes to Life" while male security officers attack them. They listen in on conversations among Alawite who meet, in secret, at a friend's home to sing and post anti-al-Assad songs online. They hear the story of a journalist who was in hiding, afraid the regime will punish him for documenting protests and a doctor horrified by not having enough space to store so many dead bodies.
A volunteer in the security forces tells Yazbek that during a siege in Jisr al-Shughur near Aleppo, he got confused about who the enemy was.
"I no longer knew what I was supposed to do. Suddenly I was along amidst the rubble and I started running, trying to hide my identity," he said.
He tried to disappear down an alleyway, but panicked when he saw a man holding a bag walking toward him. As the man got closer, it was clear there was food in the bag.
The man, afraid too, asked, "Are you with security?"
The officer said he was and waited to be killed.
Instead, the man took the officer to his home, hid him and later drove the volunteer officer at a secure location.
"We aren't animals," the man explained, "and I know you're not a killer."
Dear traitor
"Crossfire" is also the novelist's scrapbook. It's heavy and horrible, like so much related to the war. But the book also reminds that Syria is -- was -- utterly beautiful. Yazbek takes us to its mountains. We can smell its lemon trees and ride along its country roads.
Rebels battle for 100 feet in Aleppo
Aleppo civilians struggle with violence
CNN crew helps injured child in Syria
Syrian's duty: Record the dying
We're with her as she swoops a child into her arms who was instantly orphaned at a protest. The child's parents were yanked into a bus and driven off by security forces. The boy, as she and others ran, somehow got away from her and disappeared into the chaotic crowd. The regime claims that "terrorists" are to blame.
Then there was the bare-chested teenager. Among his friends, protesting, he'd stood in front of security forces and ripped his shirt off. He puffed his chest out in defiance, a witness told Yazbek, and was shot.
The boy might not have been older than her own daughter, 17, in 2011. Yazbek had lived in Damascus as a single mom for 15 years. She got on fine. She did it. Her family was a strength.
But publicly speaking in support of those who want al-Assad gone, her family has disowned her.
A childhood friend texted her: Dear traitor even god's with the president and you're still lost
Leaflets were scattered near her home calling her a traitor and urging people to assassinate her. Government websites posted fake, damning stories about her. One story alleged she had a relationship with American agents.
Her Facebook page, on which she wrote support for the opposition, was hacked. Someone left a post that her daughter was in danger.
She answered her phone and heard: "If you don't disappear, Samar Yazbek, I'll make you disappear from the face of the Earth."
Sleep stopped. Xanax helped knock her out, at least for a few hours at a time.
"The murderers will soon fall asleep," she writes, "and we'll remain the guardians of anxiety."
The intimidation tour
Yazbek was arrested so many times, the violation became almost routine. She went with them usually. They bothered to knock on her door. They won't kill me, she began to believe. She was too well-known. It wouldn't be worth the trouble.
But that day in May 2011, she was slapped over and over again. She pulled her switchblade and the hulking men came in to blindfold her.
Just a short trip. So you'll write better.
They dragged her from the officer's room, down a set of narrow stairs, into a pitch-black corridor.
"A faint light seeped in; I didn't know it was from a hole in the ceiling but it produced dim lines of visibility that allowed me to see young men ...their tender young bodies clear under all the blood, their hands hanging from metal clamps, and the tips of their toes just barely touching the ground.
"Blood coursed down their bodies: fresh blood, dried blood, deep wounds carved all over them, like the strokes of an abstract painter. Their faces hung downwards, in a state of unconsciousness, swinging there like sides of beef." One of the prisoners turned in her direction. His nose was gone and eyes swollen shut.
Horrified, she lost her footing.
"C'mon, man," one guard said. "She couldn't handle a single slap!"
"She'd just die," the other said, "if we gave her the tire!"
So they gave her the tour. It's likely Yazbek was in one of several places designed for torture that Human Rights Watch reported in July had been set up around the country.
When the men finally pulled her back into the officer's room, she vomited and passed out.
Eventually, she left, and staggered home, in a daze.
"I wasn't the person I had been before," she writes. "I observed myself ... a woman caught somewhere between life and death. I saw her toss her keys on the table and then light up her cigarette. The woman closed her eyes and put the blindfold back on, as though she were on stage, and those image of the mutilated bodies returned."
A mother and daughter
Yazbek was born in 1970, the year Hafez Assad took control of Syria in a coup. Pictures of Hafez, and later his son -- their matching sloping chins and thin-mustaches -- wallpapered Syria. Grocery stores, restaurants, schools. Yazbek and her classmates would have to sing songs every day praising the president.
"It's like he was God, and he controlled our lives," she told CNN.
When she was a teenager, she became conscious that her friends were disappearing because they had given some lip at some point that the regime didn't like. You could be jailed for saying something against the regime, she said, and the mukhabarat, or secret police, had ears everywhere.
Bashar al-Assad, a trained eye doctor, took control of the presidency in 2000 when his father died. He was rubber-stamped into power by parliament.
Yazbek's own daughter was just a little girl then.
Yazbek divorced her husband when her daughter was 2 and moved to Damascus. A single mom, Yazbek didn't exactly have an easy go. She dealt with traditionalists, conservatives, people who judged her. But Damascus was also becoming increasing modern.
The global arts community lavished praise on the capital and the reform-promising al-Assad and his British-born wife. Asma al-Assad.
Yazbek is careful not to give details about her daughter (her name is not included in the book), but the girl does make heartbreaking cameos -- mostly fights with her mother. The girl pleaded with her mother to stop going to protests.
Yazbek writes about one of their fights:
She tells me impatiently, 'They're going to kill you. In the village, they said they're going to kill you. Everybody's saying that, everybody's cursing you and insulting you, and in Jableh (Yazbek's hometown) they were handing out flyers accusing you of treason!'"
I fall silent and I go to my room and cry. I don't want her to see my tears, even as she continues yelling.
The teen begged her mother to do what the security forces kept asking her to do -- go on television and say she supports the regime.
"I won't do it!" Yazbek snapped.
"And I won't leave with you," her daughter cried.
Yazbek heard her daughter stomped to her room, scream and break things.
"I would be wracked with crying fits in the middle of the night ... the images ...(of) my daughter with her throat slit from ear to ear and bathed in strange colours flickered in front of my eyes as I awoke," she writes.
From a distance
Yazbek says now her daughter has come around. She sees clearer what her mother felt she had to do.
"There were a lot of incidents that she did not understand and she would feel angry about how her life has changed," she answered. "She has read (my book), and (she) changed. I believe she is proud now. She is standing by me."
Yazbek and her daughter now live in Europe. She did not want to leave Syria. But so many friends, even those with an ear close to al-Assad, told her to get out. Luck could only last for so long. She'd done what she could.
It had to be about her daughter, their survival together.
It's so easy for outsiders to say -- Well, just leave. It's more complicated than that.
To leave your country is to give up part of your identity.
"It means shedding my skin," she writes, "casting away my heart and everything I ever wanted to do."
Over the past several months, Yazbek has adjusted to her new city, and her daughter is making friends. But the grotesque footage is always on the news, and she watches it. Of course, her anxiety is still there.
She still cannot sleep.
When asked about her family, she politely says she doesn't want to talk about them, not out of anger but concern for their safety.
Sometimes she talks to her friends in Syria. She doesn't feel watched now, but she knows they cannot say the same.
From this new distance, she has done what she can. She's worked with refugees, especially women, and tried to record their stories.
Does she want to go back, go home?
She lingers a little, then says no.
Will Asma al-Assad take a stand or stand by her man?
CNN's Tracy Doueiry contributed to this report.
© 2013 Cable News Network. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Syrian rebels leave their position in the northwestern town of Maaret al-Numan on Thursday, June 13. The White House said that 
Forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad are seen near Qusayr on Thursday, May 30.
Syrian rebels take position in a house during clashes with regime forces in the old city of Aleppo on May 22.
Syrian army soldiers take control of the village of Western Dumayna north of the rebel-held city of Qusayr on Monday, May 13. Syrian troops captured three villages in Homs province, allowing them to cut supply lines to rebels inside Qusayr town, a military officer told AFP.
Rebel fighters fire at government forces in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo on Sunday, May 12.
Searchers use a flashlight as they look for survivors among the rubble created by what activists say was a missile attack from the Syrian regime, in Raqqa province, Syria, on April 25.
A Kurdish fighter from the "Popular Protection Units" (YPG) takes position inside a building in the majority-Kurdish Sheikh Maqsood area of Aleppo, on Apri. 21.
People walk past destroyed houses in the northern Syrian town of Azaz on Sunday, April 21.
Free Syrian Army fighters take positions prior to an offensive against government forces in the Khan al-Assal area, near Aleppo on Saturday, April 20.
Men inspect damage at a house destroyed in an airstrike in Aleppo on April 15.
Syrian and Kurdish rebel fighters walk in the Sheikh Maqsud district of Aleppo on April 14.
A female rebel monitors the movement of Syrian government forces in Aleppo's Sheikh Maqsud neighborhood on April 11.
A rebel runs to avoid sniper fire from Syrian government forces in Aleppo on Thursday, April 11.
Syrian rebels observe the movement of Syrian government forces around Al-Kendi hospital in Aleppo on Wednesday, April 10.
Rescue teams and security forces check out the scene of a deadly car bomb explosion in Damascus on April 8.
The fighting has taken a toll on buildings in Aleppo's Saladin district, seen here on April 8.
A Syrian rebel runs for cover in Deir ez-Zor on April 2.
A rebel checks for snipers across the street toward the Citadel in Aleppo, Syria, on Saturday, March 30, in this photo taken by iReporter Lee Harper.
A Free Syrian fighter mourns the death of a friend in Aleppo on March 30, in this photo taken by iReporter Lee Harper.
A Syrian opposition fighter runs for cover from Syrian army snipers in Aleppo on Wednesday, March 27.
A Syrian girl covers her face to protect herself from fumes as a street covered with uncollected garbage is fumigated in Aleppo on Sunday, March 24.
A Syrian man and his family drive past damaged buildings in Maarat al-Numan, on Wednesday, March 20.
Syrians carry the body of a Syrian army soldier during a funeral ceremony in Idlib province on Tuesday, March 19.
Syrian rebels take position in Aleppo, the largest city in the country, on March 11.
Syrian men search for their relatives amongst the bodies of civilians executed and dumped in the Quweiq River on March 11.
A Free Syrian Army fighter looks back as smoke rises during fighting between rebel fighters and forces loyal to Syria's President Bashar al-Assad on the outskirts of Aleppo on Saturday, March 2.
Residents read Shaam News newspapers published by the Free Syrian Army in Aleppo on March 2.
A member of the Free Syrian Army reacts to the death of a comrade who was killed in fighting, at Bustan al Qasr cemetery in Aleppo on Friday, March 1.
A rebel fighter throws a home-made grenade at Syrian government forces in Aleppo on February 16.
A member of the Free Syrian Army stands with his weapon as he looks at a rainbow in Aleppo on February 16.
A Syrian woman looks through a bus window in Aleppo on February 14.
Free Syrian Army fighters walk through a dust-filled stairwell in Damascus on February 7.
A Syrian rebel gestures at comrades from inside a broken armored personnel carrier in Al-Yaqubia on February 6.
A rebel fighter throws a hand grenade inside a Syrian Army base in Damascus on February 3.
People stand in the dust of a building destroyed in an airstrike in Aleppo, Syria on February 3.
Free Syrian Army fighters run as they enter a Syrian Army base during heavy fighting in the Arabeen neighborhood of Damascus on February 3.
An unexploded mortar shell fired by the Syrian Army sits lodged in the ground in Damascus on January 25.
Fighters from Fateh al Sham unit of the Free Syrian Army fire on Syrian Army soldiers at a check point in Damascus on January 20.
A Free Syrian Army fighter walks between buildings damaged during Syrian Air Force strikes in Damascus on January 19.
A Syrian rebel fighter tries to locate a government jet fighter in Aleppo on January 18.
Syrian rebels launch a missile near the Abu Baker brigade in Albab on January 16.
A Syrian boy walks near rubbish next to tents at a refugee camp near the northern city of Azaz on the Syria-Turkey border, on January 8.
Syrians look for survivors amid the rubble of a building targeted by a missile in Aleppo on January 7.
A father reacts after hearing of a shelling by forces loyal to Syria's President Bashar al-Assad in Aleppo on January 3.
A patient smokes a cigarette at Dar Al-Ajaza psychiatric hospital in Aleppo on December 18, 2012. The psychiatric ward, housing around 60 patients, has lacked the means to function properly since fighting broke out there in July.
Syrians mourn a fallen rebel fighter at a rebel base in the al-Fardos area of Aleppo on December 8.
Members of Liwa (Brigade) Salahadin, a Kurdish military unit fighting alongside rebel fighters, monitor the area in the besieged district of Karmel al-Jabl in Aleppo on December 6.
A member of Liwa Salahadin aims at a regime fighter in the besieged district of Karmel al-Jabl in Aleppo on December 6.
Two young boys sit underneath a washline in a refugee camp on the border between Syria and Turkey near Azaz on December 5.
The bodies of three children, who were allegedly killed in a mortar shell attack that landed close to a bakery in Aleppo, on December 2, are laid out for identification by family members at a makeshift hospital at an undisclosed location of the city.
Smoke rises in the Hanano and Bustan al-Basha districts in Aleppo on December 1 as fighting continues through the night.
Damaged houses in Aleppo are seen after an airstrike on November 29.
A Syrian rebel mourns the death of a comrade in Maraat al-Numan on November 20.
Syrians protesters stand on Assad's portrait during an anti-regime demonstration in Aleppo on November 16.
A Syrian rebel takes cover during fighting against Syrian government forces in Aleppo on November 15.
Syrian opposition fighter Bazel Araj, 19, sleeps next to his pistol in Aleppo on November 11.
A rebel fighter fires at a Syrian government position in Aleppo on November 6.
A Syrian rebel leaps over debris left in the street while running across a "sniper alley" near the Salahudeen district in Aleppo on November 4.
Rebels hold their position in the midst of a battle on November 3 in Aleppo.
A man cries while being treated in a local hospital in a rebel-controlled area of Aleppo on October 31.
A man is treated for wounds after a government jet attacked the Karm al-Aser neighborhood in eastern Aleppo on October 31.
A Syrian rebel interrogates a handcuffed and blindfolded man suspected of being a pro-regime militiaman in Aleppo on October 26.
Smoke rises from a fuel station following a mortar attack as Syrian women walk on a rainy day in the Arqub neighborhood of Aleppo on October 25.
A Syrian rebel fires at an army position in the Karm al-Jabal district of Aleppo on October 22.
A wounded Syrian boy sits on the back of a truck carrying victims and wounded people to a hospital following an attack by regime forces in Aleppo on October 21.
A man lies on the ground after being shot by a sniper for a second time as he waits to be rescued by members of the Al-Baraa Bin Malek Battalion, part of the Free Syria Army's Al-Fatah brigade, in Aleppo on October 20.
Syrian army soldiers run for cover during clashes with rebel fighters at Karam al-Jabal neighborhood of Aleppo on October 20.
Smoke rises after a Syrian Air Force fighter jet fired missiles at the suburbs of the northern province of Idlib on October 16.
A Syrian opposition fighter stands near a post in Aleppo on October 11.
A Syrian man mourns the death of his father, who was killed during a government attack in Aleppo on October 10.
A rebel fighter is carried by his friends and laid on a gurney to be treated for gunshot wounds sustained during heavy battles with government forces in Aleppo on October 1.
Syrian rebels help a wounded comrade to an Aleppo hospital after he was injured in a Syrian army strike on September 18.
Free Syria Army fighters are reflected in a mirror they use to see a Syrian Army post only 50 meters away in Aleppo on September 16.
A Syrian man carrying grocery bags tries to dodge sniper fire as he runs through an alley near a checkpoint manned by the Free Syria Army in Aleppo on September 14.
A woman walks past a destroyed building in Aleppo on September 13.
Free Syrian Army fighters battle during street fighting against Syrian army soldiers in Aleppo on September 8.
A Syrian man wounded by shelling sits on a chair outside a closed shop in Aleppo on September 4.
A woman sits in her wheelchair next to her house, damaged by a Syrian air raid, near Homs on August 26.
Members of the Free Syrian Army clash with Syrian army soliders in Aleppo's Saif al-Dawla district on August 22.
A man mourns in front of a field hospital on August 21 in Aleppo.
Wounded civilians wait in a field hospital after an air strike on August 21 in Aleppo.
People pray during the funeral of a Free Syrian Army fighter, Amar Ali Amero, on August 21.
A man cries near the graves of his two children killed during a recent Syrian airstrike in Azaz on August 20.
A Syrian woman holds her dead baby as she screams upon seeing her husband's body being covered following an airstrike by regime forces on the town of Azaz on August 15.
A Syrian rebel runs in a street of Selehattin during an attack on the municipal building on July 23.
Syrian rebels hunt for snipers after attacking the municipality building in the city center of Selehattin on July 23.
Members of the Free Syrian Army's Mugaweer (commandos) Brigade pay their respects in a cemetery on May 12 in Qusayr.
Syrian rebels take position near Qusayr on May 10.
A Free Syrian Army member takes cover in underground caves in Sarmin on April 9.
Rebels prepare to engage government tanks that advanced into Saraquib on April 9.
Men say prayers during a ceremony in Binnish on April 9.
A young boy plays with a toy gun in Binnish on April 9.
A Free Syrian Army rebel mounts his horse in the Al-Shatouria village near the Turkish border in northwestern Syria on March 16, a year after the uprising began.
Syrian refugees walk across a field before crossing into Turkey on March 14.
A rebel takes position in Al-Qsair on January 27.
A protester in Homs throws a tear gas bomb back towards security forces, on December 27, 2011.
A man stands under a giant Syrian flag outside the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus on December 24, 2011.
A member of the Free Syrian Army looks out over a valley in the village of Ain al-Baida on December 15, 2011.
Members of the Free Syrian Army stand in an valley near the village of Ain al-Baida, close to the Turkish border, on December 15, 2011.
Displaced Syrian refugees walk through an orchard adjacent to Syria's northern border with Turkey on June 14, 2011, near Khirbet al-Jouz.
A Syrian man holds up a portrait of President Bashar al-Assad during a rally to show support for the president in Damascus on April 30, 2011.
Syrians rally to show their support for President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus on April 30, 2011.
A screen grab from YouTube shows thick smoke rising above as Syrian anti-government protesters demonstrate in Moaret Al-Noman on April 29, 2011.
A screen grab from YouTube shows Syrian anti-government protesters run for cover from tear gas fired by security forces in Damascus on April 29, 2011, during the "Day of Rage" demonstrations called by activists to put pressure on al-Assad.
Syrians wave their national flag and hold portraits of al-Assad during a rally to show their support for their leader in Damascus on March 29, 2011.
A woman sits by the hospital bed of a man allegedly injured when an armed group seized rooftops in Latakia on March 27, 2011, and opened fire at passers-by, citizens and security forces personnel according to official sources.
Syrian protesters chant slogans in support of al-Assad during a rally in Damascus on March 25, 2011.
|