Asma’s choice | We call her Emma Ep3

**Chloe Hadjimatheou** (0:10)
Just a quick warning before we start that we're going to report on some very graphic things in this episode. We're including them because they're important to the story, but this episode isn't always an easy listen.

**Zaki Meshi** (0:23)
I don't know if I told you this story. I went with Asma as an expert.

**Chloe Hadjimatheou** (0:30)
Zaki Meshi spent quite a lot of time with Asma when he worked with her at the Syria Trust, including this one time in 2008 when he travels abroad with her. During a break in their busy schedule, they retreat to the hotel.

**Zaki Meshi** (0:45)
And Asma invited me and a colleague to her suite.

**Chloe Hadjimatheou** (0:53)
The three of them are sat around a table together and Asma's phone starts to ring. It's her husband, Bashar, the president of Syria.

**Zaki Meshi** (1:04)
She looked at the mobile, Bashar, she answered, yes, no, wait for me. And she closed the door.

**Chloe Hadjimatheou** (1:19)
Zaki's laughing here because what she'd done, it felt so insane to him. Syrians spent their whole lives pledging allegiance to their country's leader. His portrait hung in every classroom, in every government office, in shops, in homes, and on huge billboards on the streets. People were so fearful of the regime and Bashar, that someone once told me she was too afraid to curse the president, even in the safety of her own head.
And although Asma isn't just any ordinary citizen, Bashar is still his excellency, the supreme leader.

**Zaki Meshi** (2:04)
Obviously, she was in control, definitely she was in control.
He was the president, and she ordered him to wait, and without any, I mean, in front of her employees. And this was like, we were like very shocked.

**Chloe Hadjimatheou** (2:23)
So when Zaki first told me this story, I wondered whether this could have just been an unguarded moment. A wife feeling mildly irritated with her husband for calling about something unimportant when she's busy. But Zaki says he remembers everything about this incident exactly because of what it showed him about Asma.
The Asma he knew was so controlled, so aware of the fact that she was always on show, that she could never have slipped up.

**Zaki Meshi** (2:53)
Okay, you trusted us that much or you wanted to send us this message or to give us this message that you are in control.

**Chloe Hadjimatheou** (3:03)
It seemed to Zaki a clear signal at the time about the dynamics of her relationship with her husband and who had the highest status.

**Zaki Meshi** (3:13)
So, these small stories, you can say, you can build on them and understand that she was not that weak person within the palace.

**Chloe Hadjimatheou** (3:23)
That's what Zaki took from it back when it happened. She had an influence over her husband, which in just a few years' time, when the war starts, will matter more than ever.
Then she'll be forced to decide how to use that power, whether to use it to protect the Syrian people, or herself.

**Zaki Meshi** (3:45)
You are either with the authoritarian regime or against the authoritarian regime. And I think she would have taken a huge risk if she was against Bashar al-Assad. They could have killed her very easily.

**Chloe Hadjimatheou** (4:18)
I'm Chloe Hadjimatheou, and from Tortoise Investigates and The Observer, this is We call her Emma. Episode three, Asma's Choice.

**Osama Othman** (4:43)
First of all, this wasn't a war, it was a revolution.

**Chloe Hadjimatheou** (4:47)
This is Osama Othman, and the story that will eventually connect him to Asma starts back when he's in his mid-forties, living in a town a short drive from Damascus. He has all the ingredients for a happy life, a nice home, a wife he loves, children, and a great job as an engineer, but he can never be truly content because there's always something hanging over him.

**Osama Othman** (5:11)
Every day there was this gnawing dread and paralyzing fear of the regime's security apparatus that never left us. It was always there meddling in every detail of our daily lives.

**Chloe Hadjimatheou** (5:24)
He told me his story in Arabic, so we asked a Syrian actor called Majd to interpret for us.

**Osama Othman** (5:30)
I was never, not even for a moment, optimistic that Bashar al-Assad's coming to power would actually result in any meaningful improvement in the daily lives of the Syrian people, not in the slightest.

**Chloe Hadjimatheou** (5:43)
Osama is right, of course. Not only has Bashar failed to be the reformer he promised to be, but this soft-spoken man who says he can't stand the sight of blood, will end up being far more brutal and murderous than his father.