The Alkhawaja family is the subject of an extra­ordinary documentary, We Are
the Giant, made by Greg Barker, an American former war correspondent turned
filmmaker. He tells the stories of three uprisings of the Arab Spring – in
Libya, Syria and Bahrain – through the experiences of ordinary citizens:
Osama, who describes how his 21-year-old son, Muhannad, who was brought up
in Virginia, went back to Libya, the country of his birth, to fight
Gaddafi’s forces in Benghazi; Ghassan and Motaz, who try to remain committed
to peaceful resistance even as Syria becomes an increasingly violent place
in which to live; and Maryam and Zainab.

^{Abdulhadi Alkawaja (far right) with his four daughters. PHOTO: Bahrain
Centre for Human Rights}

Barker knew he wanted to make a film about the Arab Spring as soon as the
protests began to grow. ‘I felt that we were witnessing a revolutionary
moment, which comes in waves across history, and this was the Middle East’s
time,’ he said.

Unlike Libya and now Syria, Bahrain has not been the subject of Western
government intervention. Barker said this was partly because Bahrain is a
key Western ally – a US naval base is located on the north-eastern side of
the island, as close to Iran as the US can get – and partly because there is
a strong pro-Bahraini lobby in both Britain and the US. ‘There are a lot of
powerful forces who don’t want this story to be told,’ he said. ‘That’s why
we had to do it.’ Since We Are the Giant premiered at the Sundance film
festival in January, the Bahraini
government has joined the US-led coalition against Islamic State.

Abdulhadi Alkhawaja first got into trouble with the Bahraini authorities as a
student, when he was studying in London in the late 1970s. He participated
in demonstrations in reaction to the arrests of pro-democracy campaigners;
when some of his fellow protesters returned to Bahrain in 1980 they were
arrested and tortured. Abdulhadi decided to stay abroad, in self-imposed
exile. He met Khadija al-Mousawi, a former teacher who had been forced to
leave Bahrain, and they married and moved to Syria, before being granted
political asylum in Denmark in 1991, where they lived for 10 years.

^{Zainab at a protest. PHOTO: AP}

During their exile (‘we thought of ourselves as refugees,’ Maryam told me,
‘the intention was always to go home to Bahrain’), their father read books
about Bahrain to his four daughters (Maryam is the third, Zainab the
eldest). ‘He taught us always to ask questions and understand why we were in
exile.’

The title of the documentary takes its name from an anecdote Abdulhadi would
tell the girls when they were growing up, Zainab explains in the film. ‘He
said the people are the giant and the government is like a small man. But
why is it that the little man controls the giant and keeps him in
handcuffs?’

In 1999, after the death of his father, the English-educated Hamad bin Isa
al-Khalifa took power in Bahrain and oversaw reforms that included releasing
political prisoners and allowing those in exile to come back to the country.
So in 2001, when Maryam was 14, the family returned to Bahrain. But the wave
of liberalism wasn’t to last.

^{Maryam PHOTO: Susannah Ireland/ EYEVINE}

Abdulhadi, who had co-founded the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights (BCHR) while
in Denmark, continued to campaign. (‘He always told us that doing nothing
wasn’t an option,’ Maryam said.) As a result he was regularly intimidated.
He was assaulted by government forces in 2002, arrested and beaten in 2004,
sustained more injuries in 2005 during a protest (photographs of his back
show long red marks from the beating he received) and arrested again in 2007
after a pro-democracy rally (his offences included ‘promoting change to the
political system through illegitimate means’).

Like her father, Maryam studied abroad, spending a year in the US on a
Fulbright scholarship at Brown University. When she returned to Bahrain in
mid-2010 she worked for the BCHR. In August that year there was a government
crackdown on dissidents; prominent activists were arrested and allegedly
tortured. ‘By September my father heard that I was next on the list. He told
me to leave the country,’ she said. Maryam moved to London.

In February 2011, inspired by the successful protests in Egypt and Libya,
Bahrainis started calling for a day of peaceful protest; when the Bahraini
authorities tried to block a popular Facebook page calling for a revolution,
the ‘likes’ almost doubled from 14,000 in a few days. (In the documentary,
tweets from the time pop up on screen – both from Maryam, who has 102,000 followers
of her account @MARYAMAlkhawaja,
and Zainab, who tweets as @angryarabiya
– highlighting the importance of social media to the uprisings.)

‘As soon as I heard the calls to protest I had to come back,’ Maryam said. She
returned on February 9 2011. Two days later President Mubarak stepped down
in Egypt. ‘It gave us hope,’ she said. ‘Hope is the reason for all of these
revolutions in the so-called Arab Spring; they didn’t cause each other, they
inspired each other.’

After the killing of 21-year-old Ali Abdulhadi Mushaima in Manama on February
14, protesters camped out on the Pearl roundabout for three days, making
speeches calling for justice, peace and change. Abdulhadi Alkhawaja was one
of many who spoke. In the film we see him appealing for justice, dignified
and reasonable. ‘We ask that someone be held responsible for this murder,’
he says (the documentary splices together footage filmed on camera phones at
the time, as well as interviews by the filmmakers). Maryam is also seen on
camera that day. ‘Any government that kills its own people is a government
that deserves to go,’ she says.

The government response was swift. Security forces used tear gas, rubber
bullets and birdshot to break up demonstrations, and arrested protesters.
Because Maryam had been so visible at the protest her father told her again
to leave Bahrain; she moved back to Copenhagen on March 2, not knowing if
she could ever return.

Meanwhile, Zainab and Abdulhadi kept up their peaceful protest (the Alkhawajas
are religious – Maryam and Zainab wear headscarves, along with skinny jeans
and heavily kohled eyes – and say that their fight for freedom must be
non-violent). There is a touching moment in the documentary where Abdulhadi,
armed with only a red carnation, hands it to a policeman in riot gear.
Shortly afterwards, the police receive orders to fire. In the ensuing panic,
Abdulhadi is shot in the hand and Zainab forces him to go home.

On March 14 about 2,000 troops from Saudi Arabia and UAE arrived in Bahrain,
along with tanks, to help quell the protests. The following day the king
declared martial law and a three-month state of emergency. On March 18 the
authorities demolished the symbolic Pearl roundabout.

^{Protestors clash with riot police in Manama, Bahrain. PHOTO: AP}

The Bahraini section of We Are the Giant was filmed by Barker’s co-producer,
Razan Ghalayani, on a series of secret missions into the country on a
tourist visa; she smuggled footage out. Ghalayani told me about going out to
protest with Zainab and seeing the power of peaceful resistance for the
first time. ‘I went to a teachers’ union gathering,’ she said. ‘It was in a
small courtyard in front of a mosque – very casual; mostly women and
children. A tear-gas canister fell to the ground nearby. We looked over to
the left and there were about 50 riot police officers standing aiming their
guns at us. The riot police started to walk towards us and with each step
they took the crowd would just cheer, “Yasqut Hamad” [down with Hamad] over
and over again. It was very scary. Zainab and Nabeel Rajab told the crowd to
calm down and ushered everyone into the mosque’s front yard. It was my first
encounter with a non-violent resistance. I’ll never forget the calm in
Zainab’s eyes that day.’

On April 10, in the early hours of the morning, ‘five or six’ police officers
raided Zainab’s apartment and attacked her father – one holding his throat
while the others beat him. They dragged him down the stairs by his legs, his
head banging on the steps as he went, leaving a trail of blood. His two
sons-in-law were also arrested, ‘even though they have nothing to do with
politics or human rights,’ Maryam said, ‘they’re just connected to our
family.’

^{Zainab protesting. PHOTO: Centre for Bahrain Human Rights}

The family was told nothing of Abdulhadi’s whereabouts. On April 17 Zainab,
who was still breast-feeding her daughter, Jude, went on hunger strike for
10 days in an attempt to force the police to allow the family contact with
Abdulhadi. Finally, after Maryam made sure his plight was reported
worldwide, Abdulhadi was allowed a one-minute phone call home.

In Denmark on August 3, Maryam received a call from Rajab, who needed her to
write up a report for the BCHR of allegations of torture in a Bahrain
prison. He dictated it to her: a man had been tortured so badly that his
face was unrecognisable; he had been physically, psychologically and
sexually abused; when he realised that his guards were trying to rape him,
he banged his head against a wall until he fell unconscious. At the end of
the dictation Rajab told Maryam that the man was her father.

‘I could feel tears coming down my face, but I stopped myself and got back to
work,’ she says in a startlingly matter-of-fact way in the documentary. How
did she manage to stay so controlled, I asked her. ‘I think in our situation
you normalise everything, because if you can’t then you don’t survive,’ she
said. ‘You normalise feeling hurt or panicked or scared – just about
everything.’

^{Demonstrators in Bahrain’s captial, Manama, show their support for the
jailed human rights protestor Abdulhadi Alkawaja. PHOTO: Getty Images}

Her father’s torture continued. After a 110-day hunger strike in 2012 he was
force-fed with tubes.

In August this year he started another hunger strike – until ‘freedom or
death’. A slim man before he went to prison, he was now perilously
emaciated. By August 29 Maryam heard that he was close to death. His blood
sugar had dropped to two (normal levels are 4.0-5.9) and his blood pressure
was at a dangerously low 90/55. She decided to return to Bahrain. ‘I wanted
to make sure that if the worst were to happen, that I had seen him,’ she
said.

She knew she risked arrest when she boarded the plane on August 30. At the
airport she was met by police officers who told her she was no longer a
Bahraini citizen. They took her into a room and beat her so badly that she
tore a shoulder muscle and ‘my whole body ached’. She was put in prison for
19 days (she was charged with assaulting a police officer, which she
vehemently denies).

Desperate to see her father, she started a hunger strike of her own. After
four days the authorities relented and the whole family was allowed to visit
Abdulhadi on September 15. ‘When I saw him I was really, really scared,’
Maryam said. ‘He was just skin and bones. I never cry, but when I saw him I
had tears in my eyes. But mentally he’s still a very strong man and pretty
soon he was joking around. He said to me, “What are you doing here?” and he
was laughing. I said it wasn’t fair that he’d lost more weight than I had.’

Two days after we spoke Maryam was allowed to leave Bahrain, and she travelled
first to Denmark and then on to London. ‘I can’t do my work with the
restrictions that exist here,’ she said. Her work – raising awareness and
documenting human rights abuses – is seemingly endless. When I called to
speak to her she was in the middle of writing yet another urgent report at
9pm; she travels continuously between 10 countries, documenting abuse and
lobbying politicians around the world. ‘I have two or three days a month at
home [in Denmark] and they are not always consecutive days,’ she said. It’s
a lonely existence. ‘Since I left Bahrain [in 2011] I’ve spent most of my
time on my own. My life is the revolution. I don’t have time for anything
else.’

^{Zainab and Maryam. PHOTO: Bahrain Centre for Human Rights}

The documentary shows her very politely ambushing Hillary Clinton on the red
carpet before an event (pursed lips, Clinton nods politely as Maryam talks,
but does not reply). She is also filmed lobbying MPs in Britain. They listen
to her, but nothing is ever promised.

Maryam understands the political situation they face. But it infuriates her.
‘Is a Bahraini life not as valuable as a Libyan or a Syrian life?’ she said.
‘When the West says that human rights is the cornerstone of foreign policy
there’s a massive double standard. The point of my work is that it doesn’t
matter what passport you carry, what nationality you are, what gender, what
religion, as a human being you have rights that are guaranteed to you by
international standards and those rights have to be respected by everyone.’

As a 12-year-old, Maryam remembers having had three ambitions for when she
grew up. ‘One, to be a taxi driver, so I could drive any car I wanted,’ she
said, laughing. ‘Two, to be a teacher, and three, to be a human rights
activist like my father. I think the taxi driver might have been easier.’
But she has no plans to switch professions. ‘Being an activist is a blessing
and a curse,’ she said. ‘It’s a blessing because you feel like you’ve
dedicated your life to serving people and it gives your life meaning, but
it’s a curse because I don’t think you can ever come out of it. Even as an
activist I suffer from a sort of survivor’s guilt – that I’m not doing
enough. Imagine if I decided not to do anything – how would I feel then?’

Maryam regularly receives death and rape threats on Twitter, which, she said,
she takes ‘very seriously’. The charges against her – the alleged assault of
a police officer and insulting the king – are still active, so she can’t
return to Bahrain to see her family. Zainab, now eight months pregnant, is
facing a sentence of up to seven years (she has been in and out of prison
for the past year). In the documentary there is a heartbreaking moment when
Zainab talks about her daughter, Jude, who has begged her not to go back to
prison.

^{Zainab and her daughter Jude. PHOTO: Bahrain Centre for Human Rights}

Why, you have to wonder, does this family keep protesting when they seem to be
making such little progress? ‘We do it partly for our people and our
country, but also we do it for our family,’ Maryam explained. ‘A lot of
people say Zainab should be at home with her kid, but she’s doing it for her
kid. Same for me. I don’t want my nieces and nephew to grow up in a country
where if they speak out they go to prison, or if they demand dignity as
human beings they are beaten down. I want them to enjoy the same human
rights that I enjoyed growing up in Denmark.’

Barker, who followed Maryam for nearly four years over the course of the film,
described her as ‘amazing’. ‘It’s really humbling to be around people like
her who act out the ideals that we all think we stand for but that are so
rarely tested,’ he said. ‘All the people we read about – Aung San Suu Kyi,
Nelson Mandela, Rosa Parks – they were all ordinary people who faced an
extraordinary challenge of their time and ended up becoming extra­ordinary
themselves.’ Ghalayani agrees. ‘She is an incredibly strong woman and she
has a fierce sense of humour,’ she said. ‘Her laugh is infectious and she
always, no matter how dire the situation, finds a way to laugh. I think this
is her secret strength.’

I got a glimpse of Maryam’s dark sense of humour when, describing her time in
prison, she said, ‘It was dirty, the toilets didn’t flush, and we were
sharing four to a cell; it was like the Arab version of Orange Is the New
Black.’

We Are the Giant ends with Zainab talking about the spread of revolutions
across the Middle East. ‘There are dictators using violence to put fear back
on the streets and make people go back into their homes,’ she says. ‘But
what they’re doing is the opposite. They’re creating heroes. Everyday
heroes.’

She is not talking about herself or her sister, but she should be.

• We Are the Giant is released on November 14