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February 11th, 2014 
David Schulberg World View: With jihadis at their door, terrified Maysoun, Nizar, Karim and Bishr reached for grenades rather than face torture and inevitable death at the hands of Jabhat al-Nusra.
It is a terrible story but it throws a grim light on the terrors of the Syrian war. It is told at first in a calm, precise voice by Nusair Mahla, a middle-aged government employee, until he finally has to choke back tears as he speaks of the last moments of his sister Maysoun Hala and her husband Nizar along with their two children, Karim and Bishr. He says that many other Syrians have suffered similar tragedies, but in few cases is it known so precisely what the victims themselves thought about their fate.
Nusair, a neatly dressed man in a brown suit, says the first he knew about his sister’s family being in danger was an early morning phone call. He recalls it came after 6.30am and was from neighbours who said that insurgents, whom he invariably calls “terrorists”, had entered the industrial town of Adra 12 miles north of Damascus and were taking hostages. This happened on 11 December when fighters from the al-Qa’ida affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic Front, another jihadi group, had captured the main employees’ residential complex at Adra using an old sewer to outflank government forces.
Nusair recalls: “I immediately called my sister and told her to get out and come to my house in Mezze.” Nizar worked as a public relations specialist for the state oil company while Maysoun had qualified as an engineer at Damascus University and was a housing manager at Adra. As state employees they were at risk of being killed by jihadi rebels, but what made their execution certain was that, though very secular in life-style, they belonged to the Alawite sect, a variant of Shi’ism to which President Bashar al-Assad and many of the Syrian ruling elite belong.
Source Article from http://friendsofsyria.co/2014/02/10/syria-conflict-an-ordinary-family-a-terrible-war/
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