Syrian actor speaks at Damascus demonstration

My friendship with Mohamad began on the second day of a trip to Syria I made in January this year. Following a televised speech by President Bashar al-Assad at Damascus university on January 10th, a contingent of western journalists that arrived at the same time as me were determined to fulfil the reason for their visit: to find anti-government protests and dissidents who would slam the Syrian government. But as they eagerly plotted trips to the Damascus district of Douma, with the day ahead of me I wanted to orientate myself around city and get a sense of where I was. I headed out of the doors of that contingent’s hotel where we had watched the speech, and began my directionless wandering through the capital. Very soon, the sounds of distant chanting would draw me to its direction and in Sabaa Bahrat Square I would find their source. In front of the Central Bank, in the middle of the day about a thousand people had seemingly spontaneously gathered as a response to the President’s first public address in months. The contingent of western journalists were nowhere to be seen, but with the protesters clinging to posters of the President, it seemed to be the opposite of what they were desperately looking for. I was intrigued, and set about trying to get people to agree to speak on camera in English about why they were there. After several “we don’t speak English”, in apparently perfect English, I got the picture. As a westerner, I symbolised what was working to tear their country apart and what they were standing against. After interviewing him briefly, he pulled me up onto the stage and requested the chanting crowd to say something in English. The reply was unanimous "fuck you Al Jazeera....fuck you BBC". I fantasised about the faces of the western journalists had they been amongst the crowd.