Faces of Conflict

IOWA CITY — Crouched in the back of a jeep with a shirt pulled over his head and government forces beating him, Monzer Shakally remembers hearing his father's voice. He was crying. He was shouting.

'Let him go,' the man yelled. 'He didn't do anything.'

He did, actually. It was 2012 in Syria — a year after the start of the revolution in March 2011 — and Shakally, as with many other Syrian teenagers living in Damascus at the time, had joined the protests. His involvement was peaceful. He marched. He waved flags. He burned tires. He wrote on walls.

He wasn't armed, but security forces were, and they would fire on protesters — forcing Shakally daily to accept his mortality. But he believed in the cause, and he accepted the risk.

'The immediate reasons that got me to get involved was mainly other people being killed,' said Shakally, who today is a University of Iowa sophomore studying biology and awaiting political asylum — hoping eventually to gain citizenship and pursue a doctorate with the College of Dentistry.

'I felt like I had a responsibility for my country and for my people,' he said. 'I knew that eventually it's going to come my way. I'm going to get killed or shelled, and if I don't stand up for those who are being shelled right now, no one is going to stand up for me when it happens to me.'

Shakally said every time he protested, he accepted the fact he might not make it home. But, he said, 'I was happy and proud to do it.'

The more Shakally protested, the better he got at it. Shakally developed skills in burning tires, which became an important part of the protests — in that they kept away security forces longer. That became his job.

'I wasn't feeling like I was doing something wrong,' he said. 'I was committing a crime to the government. But I wasn't committing a crime to society and to my morals.'

Shakally comes from an educated family, steeped in the health care field. His mom is a dentist, his dad runs a hearing-aid business. They live in a well-off neighborhood, next to the presidential palace. And that spot, near Shakally's home, was one the opposition chose in 2012 for a tire-burning protest.

It was a bold move, Shakally said.

'It was a slap right to the face of the regime,' he said.

Shakally, who was 16 at the time, donned a mask with his fellow protesters to avoid identification and capture, and they took to the streets. A nearby agent quickly started shooting, Shakally said. And they fled. Shakally recalled he eventually had to take off his mask so not to stand out.

Someone must have recognized him. Because his name ended up on a wanted list, forcing Shakally to flee the city.

'I called my mom and told her to burn everything I have,' he said. 'Erase my hard drives. Burn the revolution flags I have — anything that could connect my family or me in any way.'

After several days without suspicious activity at his house, Shakally set out to return. But before reaching his house, an officer stopped him at a supermarket and arrested him.

Country ties to Faces of Conflict

*Source: Council on Foreign Relations. Other country profile information from CIA World Factbook. Map by John McGlothlen / The Gazette

'When you get caught, it's not happening in a low-key fashion,' he said. 'It's happening in a way to make other people that are there scared.'

The officers shoved Shakally into the back of a Jeep and forced his face down, pulling his shirt over his head. They launched into an interrogation, beating him and searching him.

'Confess,' they said. 'So we can make this easier for you.'

Shakally said he knew better. Word had spread among the protesters of the government's treatment of those who did fess up: It only got worse. They took them to something like a 'concentration camp,' he said.

'There were stations all over the country,' he said. 'It was just not a place you wanted to go.'

Meanwhile, a friend who had witnessed the arrest called Shakally's father, who raced to the scene and scrambled to find help. He pleaded with government higher-ups he had served through his business to vouch for his character.

When Shakally saw his dad crying and heard his voice, he felt regret for the first time.

'That was when I felt like I shouldn't have done that,' he said. 'Just because I felt like my dad was being tortured more than me.'

Officers agreed to let Shakally go that day on the condition he return to the station a few days later talk to authorities. Shakally and his father discussed the idea of not going. They talked to friends.

'A lot of people were just like, 'Why would you ever go? You are taking yourself to hell,'' Shakally said.

But they went anyway, for what Shakally described as a day of emotional torture. The government eventually let him go, but they blacklisted him, taking his photo and fingerprints. And they ordered him to serve as an informant, charged with ratting out others planning to oppose the government.

One month later, Shakally was protesting again. Not because he wasn't scared but, Shakally said, his conviction for the cause was greater than his fear.

'If this was enough to stop me, than this revolution is not worth anything,' he said. 'Why did I even bother with it?'

Shakally's older brother got involved as well, and it wasn't long before he was arrested, too. Shakally saw it happen but had to make the excruciating decision to leave him. To not intervene.

'I was leaving him for torture, pretty much, but there wasn't really anything I could do,' he said. 'I knew that I would rather go back to my mom and have one kid instead of zero.'

Shakally said the family didn't know where officers took his brother. A week went by.

'It was one of the most stressful weeks that any family could go through,' he said.

One day his brother walked through the door. Torture marks covered his body. The family took photos and sent the images to human rights workers. Shakally's dad made his sons flee to Egypt, where Shakally applied for a student visa to the United States.

His older brother had moved to Iowa years ago, and Shakally — through Skype interviews and testing — landed a spot at Dowling Catholic High School in Des Moines. Once here, he applied for political asylum, a process that is continuing today.

As a Muslim refugee, Shakally said he worried about stereotypes he might face at a Catholic high school in Iowa.

'I was worried about racism,' he said. 'I worried about making friends.'

But it was easier than he thought.

Shakally had been acquiring English skills his entire life, mostly through movies and video games. And he did well in school, earning admission to the University of Iowa.

Here, Shakally is in a fraternity. He dates. He hangs out with friends. He feels integrated, and he just returned from a spring break road trip to the Gulf Shores. He communicates with his family daily by phone, text and Skype.

Shakally wants to continue in his mother's footsteps by earning a doctorate in dentistry. That, however, requires an update on his asylum status.

After arriving in the United States on Dec. 21, 2012, Shakally waited two years to get an interview with immigration officials. Most people are interviewed within six months, but the large influx of refugees has created a backlog, according to Shakally's immigration attorney based in Omaha, Bassel El-Kasaby.

UI international students

4,540 international students in fall 2015, including 2,651 undergraduates, 1,469 graduate and professional students, and 420 students in post-graduation training

Source: University of Iowa. Chart by John McGlothlen / The Gazette

Shakally expects news on his asylum any day, but political rhetoric around banning Muslims and barring refugees causes him concern.

'At the same time I know it's more of a concern for people that aren't here,' he said.

His eventual goal is to become a citizen, setting up to practice dentistry in the United States. With his minor in international relations, Shakally said he one day could pursue work on the international stage to help improve conditions in Syria and countries like it.

But he doesn't ever want to move back. It wouldn't be the same if he did. Although his parents, one brother, and one sister remain, many of his friends, neighbors, and classmates either have been killed, captured, or forced to flee.

'There is really no one in Syria left,' he said. 'There isn't a household in Syria that hasn't suffered.'

His hope, however, isn't that more countries would open their borders to refugees. Ideally, he said, international powers would do more to end the Syrian crisis and create a safer environment for residents.

And he doesn't blame Americans — or anyone else — for fearing refugees. He understands it, in fact, and takes it as a personal responsibility and challenge to represent the true character of most Syrians — of most Muslims.

'I think it's a responsibility we have to show who we really are,' he said, 'that we're not different.'

Shakally said he feels lucky to have been young enough to pursue an education in the United States. But there are some things he misses about Syria.

His family, of course. The food.

'I do have dreams sometimes of walking down the streets,' he said. 'I miss my house. The way it smelled. The way everything was arranged. Things you wouldn't really think that you would miss.'