In 2011, Marwan Hisham and his two friends-fellow working-class college students Nael and Tareq-joined the first protests of the Arab Spring in Syria, in response to a recent massacre. Arm-in-arm they marched, poured Coca-Cola into one anothers eyes to blunt the effects of tear gas, ran from the security forces, and cursed the countrys president, Bashar al-Assad. It was ecstasy. A long-bottled revolution was finally erupting, and freedom from a brutal...