Only Five Minutes: Nine Years in Syrian Prisons — A Testimony of Suffering and Human Resilience
Only Five Minutes: Nine Years in Syrian Prisons (Vetëm pesë minuta: Nëntë vjet në burgjet e Sirisë) by Hiba al-Dabbagh is an autobiographical account of political imprisonment told from a woman's perspective. The title captures the tragic contradiction between the promise of a brief detention and the long years of deprivation of liberty that followed. Through her recollections, the author bears witness to the violence of the Syrian security apparatus, while also illuminating the solidarity, faith, and human relationships that enabled imprisoned women to endure.
The narrative begins in late 1979 and early 1980, against the backdrop of escalating confrontation between the Syrian regime and the Muslim Brotherhood. Hiba, a young woman from a large family in Hama, was studying Islamic sciences in Damascus. Surveillance of her and her housemates by the security services eventually leads to their arrest. Accused of membership in the organisation, an allegation she denies, Hiba is also pressured to provide information about her wanted brother. Her imprisonment thus takes on the character of hostage-taking, serving as an instrument of coercion intended to secure his surrender.
The author portrays a world in which suspicion alone is sufficient to strip individuals of their rights, and where family relationships become grounds for punishment. Throughout the detention centres and prisons in which she is held, she encounters mothers, sisters, and wives arrested because of their relatives. Her personal experience consequently develops into a collective testimony concerning women drawn into the machinery of repression, even in the absence of political involvement.
Her transfers from the security branches to Kafr Sousa Prison and subsequently to the women's prison in Qatana mark the principal stages of the account. Torture and repeated interrogations are accompanied by inadequate food, poor hygiene, overcrowding, illness, and persistent uncertainty. A hunger strike emerges as an attempt to defend the most basic conditions of existence. Even when treatment improves somewhat following her transfer, everyday life remains subject to the arbitrary decisions of prison administrators and guards.
One of the most painful dimensions of the work is the intersection of imprisonment and familial loss. News of the assault on Hama and the killing of family members who had remained there deepens Hiba's suffering. Prison walls prevent her from being with those she loves, while news from the outside world makes confinement still more difficult to bear. The deprivation of freedom is thus compounded by bereavement and the impossibility of mourning alongside her family.
Nevertheless, the narrative remains attentive to the differences between individuals. Among prisoners of varying convictions and backgrounds, solidarity, distrust, and conflict coexist, while even the smallest act of kindness acquires extraordinary significance. Conversations, mutual care, reading, and the memorisation of the Qur'an become sources of resilience. Even the presence of a cat, cared for collectively by the women, creates a small space of tenderness within the harshness of prison life.
The strength of Only Five Minutes lies in the immediacy of its testimonial voice and its attention to the everyday experiences of imprisoned women. Through her own suffering and the stories of her fellow prisoners, Hiba al-Dabbagh preserves the memory of a violent historical experience and demonstrates how dignity can survive through the smallest gestures of solidarity, faith, and resistance to submission.
