Slideshow: Syrian Cartoonist Not Silenced by Attack |

Slideshow: Syrian Cartoonist Not Silenced by Attack |

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They broke off his car door and started beating him inside his car. Then they pulled Ferzat into their car and continued beating him while they drove around Damascus. “They put a plastic bag over my head so I couldn’t see anything and they told me, ‘This is so you won’t draw against your masters and against your president.’” The beating lasted forty-five minutes.

Afterward the men threw him out of the car while it was still moving, leaving him on the airport road several miles outside of Damascus. He needed to get a ride back to Damascus but he was left on the lane heading to the airport so he first had to crawl across the median strip so he would be on the road heading back into the city. Then came the challenge of getting a car actually stop to help him.

“No one dared to stop because of how I looked,” Ferzat said. “I was all bloody, my face was swollen, my eyes were bruised, my shirt was off. I was barefoot. No one would stop to pick me up.”

Finally a pickup truck pulled over to fix a flat tire. The driver gave Ali Ferzat a ride back to Damascus, using side roads to avoid security checkpoints. The security guard at his apartment building took him to the hospital.

These days, his hands and fingers are still not strong enough to draw, but Ferzat is not worried. “As soon as I finish treatment and my hands heal, I will go back to Syria and of course I will keep drawing these cartoons.”
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