Nizar Al Kirtawi

My name is Nizar. I am from the Zahriyeh, in Tripoli.

I was the eldest in a family of seven children. My father passed away when we were still little. I had to quit school while I was still in 5th grade to work and help my mother sustain our family. My uncle had landed me a job at a friend of his, who used to fix cars. I grasped this opportunity, and shortly after my training was complete I managed to open my own small garage nearby the Ghannouma Al Zahriye school.

I had to work hard but was still able to create a balance between work and friends. My friends and I used to gather at night to listen to music and dance to the beats of our two legendary bands: ABBA and the Bee Gees. Alongside my friends, there was also a girl called Hanadi, with whom I was in love. She was younger than me, and her parents were not very satisfied with our relationship, but I was willing to wait for as long as it takes. I was 19 years old, and I believed I still had a long life ahead of me.

On January 1st 1983, I went with a friend of mine to Koura to get the spare piece that his car needed. On our way there, we clashed with armed men who were positioned at the Bahsas-Koura checkpoint. We did not go much further than this. Many witnesses have said that the two of us were taken and detained in a prison in Amioun. My mother had gone to that prison numerous times but was always banned from entering. Nonetheless, she kept going to that place over and over again, until the day they told her that I was no longer there.

However, 19 months after I got kidnapped, someone who had worked with my sister’s husband, visited her and reignited her hope of seeing me again. He had told her that we were cell mates in the Fih, Koura prison, which was also known as “the cave”. He, on the other hand, had been arrested along with his colleagues from their workplace but was released later on.

Yet when my mother went to that prison to look for me, she found nothing but emptiness.

My name is Nizar Al Kirtawi. My story does not end here.