In my homeland of Syria, I thought my fame would protect me. But after I received attention for seeming to speak out against the totalitarian and violent Assad regime, being famous suddenly became a curse. It sent me on a punishing journey I never would have chosen but which has had its own unexpected rewards.
I knew everything was about to change when the head of a major Syrian movie studio ordered me to appear on television and apologize for something I would never have dared to say in public. An August 2011 front-page article in the Los Angeles Times had begun by saying I had openly accused Syrian “security forces of torture and corruption.”
Not until the third paragraph did the journalist make her writerly reveal: I was actually delivering a line of dialogue playing the hero in a soap opera whose title roughly translated to “Torn From the Womb.” That it was a character speaking, not me as myself, would not matter to the government.
