Diana of Damascus | We call her Emma Ep2

Amazon Music has everything you'd like to hear. Music, podcasts. And yet, Herbücher. All is in Ina App. Amazon Music unlimited.

Herbücher, inclusive. [MUSIC PLAYING] Tortoise investigates. Tortoise investigates. Just a quick warning before we start,

“that we're going to report on some graphic things in this episode.”

We're including them because they're an important part of the story.

But this episode isn't always an easy lesson.

[MUSIC PLAYING] Can I ask on the way over, as you're sort of sitting on this fly? Would you know if the president and his wife-- If I can use this graphic language, I was literally

sitting on the plane thinking, what the fuck do I say to a president of a country? In the early 2000s, Brooks Niemark was a conservative politician here in the UK. His main job to represent the people of a large, mostly rural

part of the English countryside. So I can only imagine that if you were to place a bear on the day of his election, he probably wouldn't have been odds on favorite

to be invited to meet a dictator.

So I wrote an article in it.

“I wrote to Pelosi, becomes a little lazy”

if all you do is talk to your friends. When Brooks wasn't dealing with the needs of his constituents, he'd sometimes turn his hand to writing. And in one particular article, he made the case that countries like the UK

need to rethink how they do diplomacy. Sometimes it's best to speak with hostile states, even if that means sitting down with your enemy. It wasn't a particularly popular idea at the time. We must confront regimes that continue to harbor terrorists

and pursue weapons of mass murder. Syria. In the years after asthma arrived in Damascus, President Bush put Syria on his list of rogue states. But Brooks did find someone who appreciated his article.

One day his phone rings and it's the Syrian ambassador in London. He said, well, I just want you to know the president read your article and was very impressed with your willingness to engage and everything. And he would like to invite you to meet with him

when can you come? Brooks is a bit freaked out, but at the same time, he feels like he has a unique opportunity here. If he gets this right, he can make good on his theory. So he says, yes, it sounds like quite a gamble, though.

Brooks didn't have any particular expertise in Syrian politics. I'd literally, and I promise you, I'd pulled out a paper napkin, and I drew a picture of the Middle East,

“and trying to remember what country surrounds Syria.”

All of this is swirling in his mind on his way to meet the president. When he gets to Damascus, he surprised to find the meeting isn't at the palace, but it's a Bashar's apartment in town.

And he's ushered into a library room. And Bashar then walks in just by himself, and greets me, shakes my hand.

And first thing I noticed is he's got quite a sweaty hand.

And I'm thinking he's clearly a little bit nervous so I'm meeting me or something. And so I didn't even have to go to my mental map at this stage because we sat down, and I immediately get like a 40-minute monologue from Bashar

as to why having a relationship with the UK is important that he spent two years working the UK, his wife is British. It turns out all his anxieties were overblown. The two men, the dictator and the British MP,

will they end up talking for over three hours? - I felt it was more of a therapy session for him than anything else, 'cause it was like, he felt he could get all this stuff off his chest that he couldn't really do in a slightly more diplomatic session.

And so, at the end of it, he says I've really enjoyed this with his list, when can you come back? - And so begins an unlikely relationship. Brooks ends up going back to Damascus around twice a year for the next few years.

And it's on one of those visits that he meets the president's English wife, Asma. - And I got invited to her cottage.

in which I had a very, very, I thought a very good conversation with her. - How did you find out, would you think of her? - I've got to say I, on a personal level, I liked her, I thought she was clever.

I thought he was very lucky to have a wife that smart. And that savvy, you know, she wasn't a, I would say the typical Middle East wife, you know, to be kept in the background in everything else. She was, I felt very much an equal.

I probably, well, definitely smarter than him, but certainly he is equal. And I think she felt that too. - It's during that meeting that she says something to Brooks,

but he's never known what to make of.

- So she said, I think she was talking about democracy and openness and stuff like that. I said, well, you know, if you want democracy, surely,

“you need to create some form of succession.”

And she says, well, she says something like, I hope that, you know, if my husband does one or two more terms than that will be it, and he will then be able to pass over to somebody else to take over.

I got the sense from her that she didn't want her husband to be president forever. - Whatever Bashar claims about reforming the country, he's the head of a dictatorial regime. And traditionally speaking, those kinds of leaders

don't just step down or hand over power without a fight. Brooks must have been thinking the same thing when he was sat in front of Asma, but in that moment, he felt that she was sincere. Perhaps she really thought she could change things.

I guess a lot of people think like that

when they first get married, their partner isn't perfect,

but they hope that with time, they can shape them.

“And maybe Asma thought she could change Bashar,”

and along with him, the well-willed machine that had kept his family in power for decades. - When you're in the moment, and you're with somebody, you think, no, he's quite human, Hitler likes dogs, Hitler must be a good guy, you know?

I felt I had this superpower when I was able, unlike anybody else in the world, to connect with this person, which of course was completely diluted in man. - And actually, looking back now,

I wonder if in their own ways both Brooks and Asma when I leave. - I think there's two sides of Bashar. There's the one side, which is the people, please, or Bashar, which is what he was dealing with with me.

And then there's the family man, has to protect the family, has to ensure that, you know, protecting the regime

is the most important thing.

- Did he use that term? - Yeah, he used that word. - He used that phrase, regime survival. - God, the most important thing to me. I hadn't quite really understood

when he'd said that to me quite early on in my meetings, I hadn't really understood what that meant. I was chombed by Bashar, into thinking, no, this guy definitely wants a good relationship with everybody. - Brooks was only half joking, when he told me

he was daydreaming about a future when he'd be lorded for making huge strides in global relations. - Did this sort of lunatic way I'd persuaded myself, I was getting through to him.

In a way, nobody else could. I'm gonna get a Nobel Peace Prize for bringing peace. Here I come. - And when Asma was preparing to leave London for Syria, it seems like he was also daydreaming.

Picturing herself as the queen of a modern nation, one that she would help reform. So did Asma picture herself as a Western savior? The former banker with her progressive ideas about the economy and female empowerment.

Did she think she would be the one

“to persuade Bashar to turn Syria into a new democracy?”

It took several years for Brooks to realise his mistake. How long would it take for it to dawn on Asma? - And I think the reality, increasingly over time, even probably before the Civil War, was starting to kick in.

I got the sense that if she tried to leave, she felt she'd be knocked off or something. It's very easy for us to the West to say, people like that have a choice, but I don't think she had a choice.

I think she was a prisoner of what she bought into, which was the regime. (upbeat music) - I'm Chloe Hadjima Thoe

This is "We call her Emma."

“Episode two, Asma, the Diana of Damascus.”

(upbeat music) (upbeat music)

- Here's what Brooks and Asma were really up against

when they set out to make their mark on Syria. Bashar's father, Hafiz Al-Assad, died in the summer of 2000. After almost three decades in power, the brutal paranoid tyrant was dead. This was a man whose reign was defined by,

among other things, the Hammer Massacre. In 1982, there was an uprising in a city three hours north of Damascus. The large Sunni challenge scared Hafiz Al-Assad and his al-Awaite clan.

So the president turned the might of the Syrian Air Force against Hammer. Some estimates put the number of dead at 40,000 people. Most of them had nothing to do with the uprising. The massacre was one of the deadliest acts of violence

perpetrated by any Arab state on its own population. Ever.

“It's seared into the collective memory in Syria.”

A crystal clear reminder of what the regime was prepared to do to anyone who dared defy it. (speaking in foreign language) Hafiz Al-Assad, Bashar, or he's so much softer an eye doctor, a man of logic and medicine.

This was the beginning of a new leadership under a fresh young president. It was a time when people dared to feel optimistic and Bashar said all the right things. (speaking in foreign language)

But he'd stamp out corruption and move the country towards democracy, allowing more space for opposition voices. Bashar, who is a qualified doctor, has been working hard since he came to power to modernize and reform the country here in heritage.

(speaking in foreign language) It's not inconceivable that Asma has bought into all the optimism along with the rest of the world. In the months after Bashar takes office,

“the couple are engaged, but her names not yet publicly tied to his.”

I've been told that Asma spent her first few months in Syria touring the country. At this stage, no one knew what she looked like. A princess in disguise, getting to know her subjects. I wanted to get out, I wanted to talk about the issues,

but talk about the issues, as I said, on my own terms. So what did you do? Went out in jeans and mingled with the people? Absolutely, absolutely, and they had no idea who I was. And that's where the frankness came in

and that's where the dialogue came in. And six months after he becomes president, a small article appears in the state run newspaper, announcing Bashar's marriage to a Syrian woman, born and raised in England.

The wives of leaders aren't big stories in the Middle East back in 2000. Traditionally, they've been kept out the public eye, but that wasn't Asma's style. OK, so you were schoolgirl in West London.

You're an investment banker.

You are now one of the most powerful women in the Middle East.

How have you coped with that transition to life in the public eye? Now, of course, excuse me for saying this, but the media thought that this is another woman who's going to be oppressed, and is not going to have

an active role in the Middle East. That wasn't the case. I wanted to get out. I wanted to talk about the issues. Asma would be first lady for a full decade

before the war started, more than enough time for a person to evolve, mature, and for their values to shift. A new Asma would emerge from these her formative years in a new country in a new powerful role. During that time, she became a mother to a girl and two boys.

I've spoken to lots of people who cross paths with her during this time. All of them have a story to tell, but there are a handful that I think provide the most useful clues to who she was

and how she thought during those years. I've been in a room with Princess Diana, watching the effect she has on people, and she was just extraordinary.

The most critical, hard-hearted people

were just go completely soft. And I have to say, Asma had a very similar effect. I've been speaking to someone who moved from Europe to Syria to work for asthma. They didn't want their real name or voice used here,

so I'm calling the Maria, and what you'll hear of them is based on notes I took during a couple of long conversations we had. Maria was working on a series of organisations set up by Asma.

to focus on social issues she cared about.

Eventually, all her various NGOs would come under the umbrella name of the Syria Trust for Development. The Syria Trust offered schemes for the empowerment of women, loans for new businesses, and initiatives

for children and young people. She said, this is a little revolution, which given what happened later was perhaps a slightly unfortunate turn of phrase, but she was feeling very upbeat about the way things were going.

Back in those days, the Syria Trust seemed very obviously to be a force for good. Years later, it would be accused of being involved in something very dark,

of hurting the most vulnerable in society,

the very people it profess to be helping, but all that would come after the war. In those early days of hope, Asma seemed to have a vision for the next generation of Syrians, and Maria was completely convinced by it.

60% of our population is under 25.

“And some often say to me, how are you going to deal with this challenge?”

I don't see it as a challenge. I see it as our biggest opportunity, but that population needs to be empowered. It needs to be involved in the change. She knew she couldn't persuade the adult population

of Syria to change their attitudes, because they were set in their ways.

They'd been born, lived, and grown up in a world

which worked a particular way. So she was skipping a generation and looking to a younger generation and saying, what can we do to enlighten and empower them? But the more Maria tells me about this,

the more it starts to sound like Asma created a little bubble, sealed off from the reality of living under an oppressive regime. I don't know whether there was a bit of what was going on in Syria that she just didn't want to know anything about. Because for decades, there had been two serious.

The one on the surface literally up on street level, a bustling, vibrant society, with everyone going about their business. Places like Al-Hatee branch, the headquarters of the General Intelligence Service, they look normal at this level. I've seen the building.

It was in the centre of Damascus and it was like any other government office. There was a sportswear shop across the street and a cafe nearby, but there was another parallel Syria. One that existed often underground.

In dungeons where unimaginable torture was routine. Below the clean ordinary offices of Al-Hatee branch, deep in the basement, was one of the most notorious torture facilities in the country, a night-marish dungeon where people vanished for years,

sometimes forever. Asma must have known about that other Syria, even if she rarely came into contact with it. But every now and then, a crack would appear. And that darker Syria would seep into Asma's world.

There's this one time Maria remembers when she was in the south of Syria working for the Syria Trust and speaking with teenage boys. That day, they were talking about violence. And one young lad got up and told us he'd been taken in

“by the secret police and been made to strip”

and then sit on a bottle, which, you know, after an hour or so, inevitably starts going up his ass. And then he's made to keep sitting and the bottle being bottle-shaped gets wider. I have no reason to believe this boy was lighting.

And now, as far as I'm concerned, this is something that somebody should be looking into. Maria feels close enough to her boss to tell her about it. And she assumes Asma will be as horrified as she is. She said, "I'll get it looked into."

And we taught later, and she said, "Yeah, well, the commanding officer, he's been dismissed and we've put this to bed." The implication is that it's one bad egg out in the countryside that's now been rooted out, that this isn't part of a bigger issue. One bad egg. Well, that's the way it sounded.

To my own shame, I just thought, "Well, okay, fine, but at least something's been done about it."

“An example's been made. Now, the truth is that”

I don't know whether an example actually was made at all. But, you know, we like to think things are as we want them to be. The reason this memory makes Maria so uncomfortable now is probably because the torture in Syria was well documented by the time Asma and Maria were working there.

Both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, two of the world's leading human rights organizations, had documented systemic torture inside Syria's detention facilities for decades.

The accounts of former prisoners that they published, included

“electrocution, being hung by the arms or legs for hours or days”

and sexual violence. Of course, all this would get much worse later after the revolution, but it was definitely there before too. And if any journalist in the world was able to look this stuff up online, well, then presumably so could Asma. So she must have known that the case Maria brought to her

was part of something much more widespread.

Perhaps the first lady felt there wasn't much she could do about it.

Either way, she didn't acknowledge any of it, to Maria. And along with Asma, the rest of the world seems comfortable focusing on the positives too, especially when they're being sold to them with grace by a glamorous woman.

“Her looks, learning and style have made her an icon in Syria.”

She's been compared to Princess Diana and Jackie Kennedy. Asma Asad is different than darling of Damascus. But in Damascus in the house of Asad, the palace at the top of the hill, her in-laws were less impressed. There were lots of rumors flying around that Bashar's sister and mother

didn't like Asma. They were doing all that they could to hold her back. Lots of people have told me that Bashar's mother Anisa couldn't come to terms with the fact that her son hadn't married into the Alla White clan. And she was old-fashioned. She believed the president's wife should be behind closed doors, securing the airs to the throne, not mucking around with business conferences and NGOs.

But in public, Asma never let on about these tensions.

"Do you have a good relationship with your mother and mother?" "To the very special one." Meanwhile, Bashar's trying to get to grips with what he's inherited, the controls to a vast security intelligence complex, an intricate machine that his father built, and one that only he really understood.

President Hafiz was a paranoid man determined to hold on to power. So much so that he had multiple intelligence agencies all spying on each other as well as on ordinary Syrians. This was a country where even people in Hafiz's favor feared that the walls had ears. And that doesn't disappear overnight. Syrians elites who for decades had pledged unwavering allegiance to Bashar's father,

those who had benefited from his patronage and who had erected statues and banners of their president, they were all still there. They just shifted their cult-like devotion from one leader

to the next. So even though at first Bashar tells people that he doesn't want his portrait

and statues everywhere. As the month passed, he begins to enjoy the adulation. At one point, he even glutes to his biographer, "My people, they love me." There's an Arabic phrase that goes something like, "The son of a duck is going to float." In other words, like, "Father, like son." And Bashar, he takes to this new position like, "Well, like a duck."

My name is Zekimashi. I'm Syrian, actually. Yeah, currently I live in London. Zekimashi doesn't mind using his real name. He's been living in exile outside Syria for more than a decade now. He distanced himself from the regime and from asthma a long time ago. But back when he was an ambitious 26-year-old, he was offered a job working on the first lady's

projects. We thought that she was trying to do something positive. Of course, within an authoritarian context. I get that Westerners were impressed with asthma. She knew how to charm that audience. She understood the codes, what to say and how to say it. But I wanted to know how that translated for the Syrians who worked for her. Zekim was no fan of the regime, but he also thought there might be a way to change things to liberalise Syria slowly. And he thought that working for

“asthma might be the best way to do that. But I remember many discussions with colleagues and friends”

we thought why not support her in doing this kind of reform within this authoritarian context. And gradually, we can move towards more transparent and inclusive institutions. And jobs that the Syria Trust was sought after, asthma paid well, and she'd gathered a large number of smart, capable people. We all noticed that okay, she cared a lot about her image, particularly in Western

people. She wanted to do something positive. How did you get the sense that her image was

“really important to her? What was it that made you think that? So it was too much photos when she”

did any field visit, too much photos and media and articles about how modest she was about how efficient she was. So we thought okay, I used to tell my friends at that time that she's so much we filled that she was so much affected by Lady Diana. She wanted to be something like her. This makes sense. asthma would have grown up watching Princess Diana on her screen each night and seeing her on the front cover of every newspaper. Britain had been gripped by its love for the

beautiful wounded Princess of Wales until her untimely death in 1997. Like asthma, Princess Diana had married into a rigid, dynastic institution, the British monarchy. But she'd focused her efforts on comforting the needy in the sick. She wasn't trying to change the country from the ground up, like asthma said she was. The problem or the issue was in the approach of doing this. Asthma depended a lot on imposing or on adopting Western mechanism on the Syrian contact,

which was not that effective. The whole system was so corrupt and rotten that offering people new museums or microfinance loans to start small businesses were it was like trying to stick a plaster

on a critical bleed. At the same time you have 17 security branches in the country.

Syria was very secretive and closed off. No one talked about corruption openly. So it might have taken this potentially naive young British woman, especially one living in a palace. It might have taken a while to work out how the country really worked. But whether or not her projects were offering

“any real change in Syria, I think they were useful in another way.”

"President of Syria, that Mrs. Al-Basal, did you master?" It was all part of the effort to cultivate her brand on an international level. The beautiful caring first lady accompanying her husband around the world, including a return to London to meet the Queen. "You're not the new one." "Hello, for instance, hello to you." "You've certainly been having a very busy time." And you can hear it in the news coverage at the time. The very fact of her being there somehow helps soften Basha

and makes him more palatable. "On the right is the president on the left, a doctor's daughter from Acton in West London. He's the Paddington I, doctor-turned president of Syria. She's the suburban girl who's now the toast of the Middle East." She was proving useful to Basha on the diplomatic

level. But back in Damascus, her status as first lady also meant that, like it or not,

there would be pomp and ceremony everywhere she went. "Zaki remembers this one time they derived a head of asthma at a female empowerment event." So when we went there, there was this guy who is a government employee. He was there with like

“50 women ordering them. An important person is coming to visit you. So you don't answer anything.”

You don't say anything. I'll say everything. So this was the kind of context that asthma used to work within. Even when she wanted to interact with real people on the ground, she couldn't. It was all like set up. They prepared the scene for her. Not based on her order, but they prepared the scene for her, based on their knowledge of how they should act with an authoritarian regime. It wasn't a real experience. It wasn't a real experience. Not only was everything that she was

seeing stage managed, but people also saw her as little more than a connection that might help

them get ahead. Everyone looked at her as a first lady, not as someone who wanted to be part of

her form. And this was a big issue. Well, it wasn't she both those things. They saw only the part of the first lady.

to break the ice and basically relax the environment and comfort everyone.

When Assad, our actually met Asma, he was studying a couple of hours away at the American University in the Lebanese capital Bay Route. In case it's confusing, I should say his name sounds similar to the ruling families, but he's no relation. One day Assad's phone rings and it's someone from Asma's office. And I'm like, okay, and he's like the first lady would like to meet with you tomorrow at the presidential palace. What? So Assad can't imagine what the president's wife

might want with him. I've spoken to other people who had similar calls, being summoned or invited depending on your interpretation, to meet Asma at her personal office near the presidential palace. She's interested in a Syrian cultural club he's involved in at university and she wants to talk to a whole group of them. Assad and some of his Syrian classmates. So the students all drive back to Damascus and head to her office and they spent four hours there alone with the first lady.

I don't remember very much the content of it except two things that really stayed with me. One was a question she asked out of the blue completely out of context when she said, "What's your opinion on what happened in Hamar in 1982?" That's that deadly massacre when Hafez al-Assad's forces killed tens of thousands of civilians

“in the 1980s. What you need to understand is what happened there? It's never spoken about in public.”

History books never mentioned it. The words "Hammer" 1982 are completely taboo.

So when Asma asks this question, it feels like a test. What she's basically saying is, "What do you think of the brutality of the regime?" And there was a silent, you know, there was this 30 seconds to one minute of awkward silence because you're doomed, whatever you say, right? So there was absolute silence and we're also looking at each other and then she eventually changed the subject. So no one answered. No one answered. Wait, we just avoided the question.

I told a Syrian friend of mine about this and she said that in that situation,

if the first lady asks, "What's your opinion on what happened in Hamar?"

The only correct answer is, "What happened in Hamar?" Do you think now that that was quite an naive question? Do you think she didn't understand how it would be received? No, no, no, she was a message. It was, you know, it was an indirect threat, I would say, that, you know, if you cross certain deadlines, you will end up in the same fate as those who tried whatever it should. That's my thinking now, but then I found it the weirdest thing on earth.

“It must have felt terrifying to the students sitting in front of her, but that wasn't the only thing”

that stuck with Assad from that meeting. And then she asked us, you know, you're graduating soon, are you planning to come back to Syria or not? This time, he immediately knows the correct patriotic response. And we all, in fact, have said, of course, we want to come back, we want to contribute to the reform movement that you and the President are leading, we're very excited. And he's not making it up. He really feels this way. Passion of students who think they're

going to change the world around the stage. And when we have a young presidential couple and life will look rosy. And her reaction was also mesmerizing. She said, I love your energy, I love your enthusiasm. This is really good, but I don't think Syria is ready for you. Don't come back. Go find a job somewhere else and when Syria is ready for you, we'll call for you to come and

“we're like, wow, okay. What does that mean? So what does that mean?”

I was like, is she threatening you and saying, don't come back here because we don't want you? No, it wasn't an threatening totally. It was more in a motherly tone, right, where we don't think me and Bashar, me and the President don't think that Syria is ready for your qualifications, go, get a job and experience somewhere else. And when we, as the presidential

interesting. But do you think she was saying you're too progressive and educated and intelligent for Syria? I think, well, I don't know what to think about it now. Now that the war's over, he means. At the time, he felt she was telling the young people sitting in front of her that she recognized that they had creative ideas about how to shape the

“nation and that she shared those ambitions. That's what she was trying to implement with the”

Syria Trust, but that she'd realized that that wasn't possible in a dictatorship at that time.

In this one exchange, Asma seems to have presented two sides of herself, the tough first lady

towing the regime's line on hammer, and then something closer to a soft mother of the nation type, offering advice acknowledging the regime's shortcomings to this young and ambitious group. A couple of years into his presidency, it's already obvious that the promises Bashar made to allow freedom of speech and to move towards democracy. None of that was true. Reuters intellectuals and civil society activists who believed him and who

relaxed enough to speak publicly about a new Syria. Many of them had been rounded up and put in prison.

“Then on February the 14th, 2005, an enormous explosion shakes the capital of Lebanon by week.”

The former Prime Minister of Lebanon, Raffik Hariri, has been assassinated. A massive carbon, 1,000 kilograms of TNT, leaves his vehicle an unrecognizable mangled mess. Lebanon had been under the effective control of Syria for years. Hariri had dared to defy Bashar, and now almost everyone in the international community was sure Bashar had given the orders. At the funeral, his supporters were already accusing Syria's president Assal of ordering the killing,

few months earlier Assal had threatened him for questioning Syria's right to dominate Lebanon. Bashar's left tarnished. His regime's beginning to show itself both at home and abroad for what it really is. Asma might have taken solace in the fact that back home, Bashar has

“come through with a few reforms, liberalising parts of the tightly regulated economy.”

Now there are private universities and media companies and reforms to the banking sector. The country is going through remarkable change across all fronts. Economically, the economy is opening up. We are diversifying just a couple of years ago, private banks didn't exist. Recently, a stock exchange has opened. We are the only country in the Middle East to have legislation that regulates microfinance and microcredit. So across

the economic front, many, many changes are happening. An unusually, for a first lady, Asma's

been involved on the margins, her background in finance and top international banks is hugely respected in Syria. In 2005, she hosts an international women in business forum in Damascus, attended by first ladies an impressive, high-powered women from around the world. I spoke to someone who told me a couple of stories about Asma from this time that really seemed to provide an insight into her growing influence and authority.

They told me this one time Asma called several ministers to attend the meeting of the Syria Trust. Then she set about telling them what she thought they needed to do. They were furious

that the first lady thought she could order them around. It's not an official government position

after all, and some of them walked out. They also told me that Bashar wants called up one of his ministers and told him that Asma wasn't happy with the interest rates he'd set. The minister was apparently taken aback and he told him that either he was running the economy or she was, and that there wasn't room for both of them at the treasury. Bashar apparently backed down after that. By this point, in the mid 2000s, her staff had begun to notice that the first lady had changed.

In the early years, she'd been approachable. We used to have this margin of discussion. Zackie remembers she used to welcome her staff making honest suggestions about what was and wasn't working at the Syria Trust. Not anymore. And she adopted this approach of, "Please, let's

So if you want, she started to become more and more towards an authoritarian, real-first lady

“of a dictator. So nobody would ever challenge her or push back on her.”

Definitely not. It's almost like what happens to famous people after a while when they're in a bubble and they're just disrounded by Yesman. Exactly. When people approach you as a first lady, not as an activist or not as a director of an NGO, you will believe that you can do anything or you can do whatever you want without any accountability. It's all, it's very complex. It's not the fact that she's bad or she's good. It's the fact that there are different factors

that formed her personality to become like that, to become very alienated from the people.

So it was not her intention, but she ended up like that. Do you think it would have been possible for her to not end up like that? Is there a person that could have resisted that? Or is that just what happens to anyone? All of us no matter how moral we are when we start. If we're in that position, we get sort of tainted by it. We get changed by it.

“I think it's very difficult to when you are in her position to confront or to fight against”

the institutions. So it's a combination of personal interest, power, money, authority, image,

at the same time she did not have a lot of alternatives or safe alternatives. I know what

in those days at least, what she wanted to do, where she wanted the country to be and what she saw the future as. Maria had been so sure in the early years that asthma's intentions were honest, but when I spoke to her on the phone, I could hear that she's still wrestling with what to believe about the woman she remembers, compared with the asthma that she's read about since the war. It's something that rather haunts me. Unless I've got it completely wrong,

“she was genuinely trying to put this civic society in place, and that's what she saw as the future”

of the country. But maybe I've just been juupped or just incredibly naive, and this is all just a great big show. When Maria left Syria in 2010 for a new job back in Europe, the war hadn't started yet. Bashar and asthma had kept a relatively low profile, and all the accusations that asthma was some kind of monster that she was helping to prop up a barbaric regime while profiting from its murderous spoils. All that was still to come.

I don't buy quite a lot of what is actually being formed as the narrative. It seems to me completely odds with the person that I dealt with in Syria, and what I'm reading now in Wikipedia. She was nothing like that. She absolutely was nothing like that. I can't believe I would have got her so wrong. And this is why I sort of keep going back to these possibly slightly naive ideas, but I'm more minded to believe that she wanted to get out, but actually had a gun put

to her head and was told the children would get it if she didn't stay. Because when the war starts, asthma won't be able to sit on the fence anymore, or at least a pierty. She'll be forced to make a choice, which version of asthma al-Assad will she be, the reformer or the conformer. That's next time on "We call her Emma." You are either with the authoritarian regime or against the authoritarian regime.

You know where she is trying to go to London for her home. This series is reported by me Chloe Hadjima Thoe. It's written by me in the producer Gary Marshall. The field producer was Sarah Dodish. The development producer was Jess Wimbern. This episode was fact checked by Katie Gunning. Sound design is by Carla Patella. Our theme music is Yamo from the Syrian band Schoon. Podcast artwork is by Lola Williams and Eliza Boner. The executive

This podcast was supported by a grant from the Pulitzer Center.

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