There is a woman who lives alone in Hama, Syria. She has been in mourning for thirty-two years, tormented by memories of her survival. One night in February 1982, when she was a young woman in her twenties, military forces raided the basement where she and the women in her family had been hiding, huddled with their neighbours. They had thought they were safe, sheltered from the mass murders and arrests that had become everyday occurrences in the historically quiet and conservative city.