The renowned Syrian actress Mai Skaf, a constant thorn in the side of Bashar al-Assad, has died aged 49. The death was confirmed via Arab media. 
 
 The National said she had died following a heart attack. The Lebanese newspaper L'Orient Le Jour also reported the death but said the cause has not been confirmed. 
 
 Born on April 13, 1969, Skaf was a French literature graduate from Damascus University. She was well-known in her country for her television and film career and starred in the film Echoes of Slides. 
 
 She also starred in the historical TV series The Last Days of Al Yamama, about the rise and fall of the Arab tribes Tasam and Jdais (via IMDB). She was also known for her role in Khan al Harrir, in which she played a woman who led demonstrations. 
 
 She was one of the first Syrian celebrities to criticize President Assad and was blacklisted by the regime. 
 
 ZAKARIA ABDELKAFI/AFP/Getty Images 
 
 She addressed a rally in 2011 and joined protesters in calling for Assad to be removed. She was subsequently arrested, interrogated and charged with treason. 
 
 She was detained in Damascus several times during the Syrian revolution. After being warned that she would have to flee otherwise she would be killed, she left for Jordan in 2013 and then Paris, leaving behind her teenage son, the Associated Press reported. 
 
 From outside the country, she continued to lobby against the regime, oppose Assad and join pro-revolution protests. In 2015, she told the Saudi broadcaster Al Arabiya that she rejected the claim that Assad defended minorities. 
 
 Syrian artist Faris el-Helou wrote on his Facebook page that she had died of a heart attack. Many responded with expressions of condolences. 
 
 One wrote on Facebook: "Condolences to her family, friends and loved ones.I pray to God to bless her and accept her." 
 
 Egyptian blogger Zeinobia described her on Twitter as "The artist who paid the price of supporting the revolution." 
 
 On Saturday in what appeared to be her last Facebook post, she wrote: "I will not lose hope; I will never lose hope. It is the Great Syria. It will never be Assad's Syria." ||||| On her last Facebook post on Saturday, she wrote: “I will not lose hope; I will not lose hope. It is the Great Syria not Assad’s Syria.” 
 
 This is how the brave Syrian actress Mai Skaf bid life farewell under “mysterious circumstances,” as her relative Dima Wannous said, in her Paris exile in an apartment far away from Damascus streets, squares and theaters and far away from Barada, Dummar and Al-Hamah. 
 
 She died with her hope and her pain in the French waiting station, just like the old Syrian immigrant, the great writer in this paper, Ghassan Imam. 
 
 In one of her television interviews, she narrated what she told a security officer when she was detained in 2013. The interrogator asked her what the point of her active involvement in the revolution was and what she wants out of this. She told him: “I do not want my son to be ruled by Bashar al-Assad’s son!” Mashari Althaydi 
 
 Some may accuse Skaf, the nationally pure, of political innocence or naivety. She was not terrified by the intimidations of those who lectured about the alliances of sects and minorities. Skaf, a Christian from Damascus, frankly announced that Syria does not deserve to be inherited by Hafez to Bashar, and by Bashar to another Hafez! 
 
 Strong opposition, determination 
 
 In one of her television interviews, she narrated what she told a security officer when she was detained in 2013. The interrogator asked her what the point of her active involvement in the revolution was and what she wants out of this. She told him: “I do not want my son to be ruled by Bashar al-Assad’s son!” 
 
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 She declared her opposition of the Assad regime and she was detained in the summer of 2011 along with other Syrian intellectuals and artists who were getting ready to hold a peaceful protest in Damascus. She was released a few days later and she later snuck out of Syria with her son and headed to Jordan then managed to attain asylum in France. 
 
 Before that, she was detained, trialed and accused of treason by Bashar’s regime more than once, but she did not surrender. She was determined to be loyal to the dream until the last day in her Parisian apartment, alone with no one by her side. She paid a huge price for opposing the regime. Due to her political activity, the popular committees in Syria seized her apartment in Jaramana in Damascus’s countryside. 
 
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 She could have been hypocritical with Bashar and his security generals or resort to implicit sectarian defense, like Duraid Lahham, Ghawwar, and others like him did or she could have presented herself as a soft face of a tattered militant bloody reality like many actresses who support Assad did. 
 
 I want to praise the presence of figures like Mai Skaf and novelist Samar Yazbek within the ranks of the Syrian people against this strange regime. It’s true that these voices do not have fighters, militias and international relations but they at least guarantee that the Syrian anger, at the beginning before it was contaminated by Al-Nusra, ISIS, Turkey’s wolves, Syria’s bears, Qatar’s foxes and Iran’s hyenas, was spontaneous anger that emerged from all Syrian rivers and springs without any sectarian, religious or ethnic taints. 
 
 Mai Skaf.. a white Syrian page. 
 
 This article is also available in Arabic. 
 
 ____________________ 
 
 Saudi journalist Mashari Althaydi presents Al Arabiya News Channel’s “views on the news” daily show “Maraya.” He has previously held the position of a managing senior editor for Saudi Arabia & Gulf region at pan-Arab newspaper Asharq al-Awsat. Althaydi has published several papers on political Islam and social history of Saudi Arabia. He appears as a guest on several radio and television programs to discuss the ideologies of extremist groups and terrorists. He tweets under @MAlthaydy. 
 
 Last Update: Wednesday, 25 July 2018 KSA 11:44 - GMT 08:44 ||||| When she was interrogated after one arrest, she said, an officer demanded: “What do you want? Do you want freedom?” To which she said she replied, “My wish is that my son will not be led by the son of Bashar al-Assad!” 
 
 Ms. Skaf was born on April 13, 1969, in Damascus to a Muslim father and Christian mother. Survivors include her mother and her son, who was a teenager when she fled and later joined her. 
 
 She studied French literature at Al-Sham Private University in Damascus. Encouraged by an uncle, Saadallah Wannous, a well-known playwright, she began acting while still a student. 
 
 In 1992, she starred in a Syrian television version of Agatha Christie’s novel “Sleeping Murder.” She was cast in her first film, “Echoes of Slides,” in 1993; appeared in the TV series “The Silk Bazaar” (1996) and “The Last Days of Al Yamama” (2005); and in 2008 returned to film in “Damascus: The Smile of Sadness” (2008). One of her last appearances was in “Orchidia,” a 2017 Syrian soap opera shot in Tunisia and Romania. 
 
 Before Ms. Skaf left Syria, she also ran a theater group that gave performances and acting classes. 
 
 She staged her first protest against the Assad regime in 2011 and was detained. A few years later she was told to fear for her life. 
 
 “They dared not do anything to me,” she said in a 2016 interview in Paris with the website toutelaculture.com, “because they pretend to fight the terrorists, and I am not one of them.” 
 
 Supporters drove her to Beirut, where she was reunited with her son. When she reached Paris, she continued her political advocacy.
– A prominent Syrian actress who became even more well-known as a voice of opposition to Bashar al-Assad has died in exile in Paris at age 49. A colleague tells the New York Times that Mai Skaf had a heart attack, though her cousin, author Dima Wannous, cites "mysterious circumstances," per al Arabiya. The latter's headline refers to Skaf as a "Syrian scream of hope." Skaf first joined the opposition while living in Syria in 2011 and had been "a constant thorn in the side" of Assad ever since, as Newsweek puts it. She served time in jail, regularly endured harassment, and left the nation for good amid death threats in 2013. She continued her anti-Assad work from abroad. "I will not lose hope," she posted to Facebook two days before her death. In a TV interview, she once recounted being detained in Syria in 2013 and telling her interrogator why she had gotten involved with the opposition. “My wish is that my son will not be led by the son of Bashar al-Assad!” she said. Skaf had been a familiar face in Syria as a TV and film actress, with her role in the 1993 movie Echoes of Slides one of her biggest. She is survived by her son, who followed her into exile.