Despite the longevity and the relative simplicity of the concept of a ceasefire, there has been little agreement, and much confusion, around their nomenclature. This chapter is primarily devoted to better understanding and interrogating these definitions. It moves away from the conventional view of ceasefires that focusses primarily on their success at reducing violence and battle related deaths or their ability to lead to a peace agreement, and instead traces the genealogy of the literature on conflict resolution and the state to the scholarship on the construction of order beyond the state to argue that ceasefires should not only be considered military tools but types of wartime order that have statebuilding implications.

This chapter offers context to the primary case study of this book – the Syrian civil war. It does this by elaborating more fully on two broader topics – on the one hand, a historical overview of the Syrian regime and the onset of the revolution; and on the other hand, a summary of the major ceasefires used during the civil war. These two subjects are of course inexorably interconnected. By providing an overview of some of the important aspects of Syria’s recent political and social history, we gain a better understanding and appreciation of two themes of relevance for this book: firstly, the nature of the Syrian state, in particular the structure and essence of the Assad regime; and secondly, the ramifications of this for how ceasefires have played out during the Syrian civil war.

In this chapter I recreate the earliest memories of the birth of a child into a faith that defines their character and culture. With the birth of every child, the world is recreated and repeated anew, and the myth of origin is reenacted. God of every Holy Book comes to revisit humanity. I am drawn to the story of the first creation of our humanity in the Qur’an and its sublime rendition by Najam Najm al-Din Razi in his Mirsad al-Ibad, for in it I imagine my own birth, the birth of my brothers, cousins, our parents, and grandparents, all the way back to the birth of every child on this earth; all the way back to Adam and Eve as we imagine them in our Qur’an. We were all born with that breath of God breathing life into the body of Adam. To be born into Shi’ism is one such birth; thus, to be born into a passion, an epic, a moral imperative, a deeply inflicted wound, a martyrdom, a guilt. I was born to Shi’ism, long before a gang of revolutionary reactionaries kidnapped my love and passion and happy, healthy, and robust Shi’i childhood to build a gaudy and reactionary Islamic republic with it. I detail this birthing of a humanity anew in this chapter.

In this chapter I describe in some detail the earliest signs of puberty and emerging adulthood. But perhaps more pointedly, I describe how toward the end of my high school years at Dr. Hesabi, a certain degree of impatience and vague anxiety was settling in me, for which I had no explanation, or even full consciousness. I always thought I needed to be somewhere else than where I was. The more books I read and the more movies I watched, the farther I moved away from our neighborhood and my family and friends. I was with them and continued to be what I was. But a sudden distance had started to settle in me between where and what I was and where and what I thought I should be. The age of puberty was creeping up on me, and the distance between where and what I was and where and what I thought I should be had by now become palpable. I was always a stellar student and continued to do my assignments like a robot. But my agitations came from somewhere else. I was reading like termites eating through books and buildings, drawn to both Russian and American literature as much as to Persian. I had no taste or patience for European literature – French, English, or German. Russian literature was a major staple of the Iranian literary scene since the early twentieth century, but after World War II, American literature had become as compelling. Mark Twain, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, and John Steinbeck were being actively translated into Persian. These recollections become the premise of how I marked the last few years of my childhood and my sudden entry into adulthood.