Opinion

At 5am, my husband shakes me awake. The Syrian regime has fallen

Assad’s withdrawal ignites a tiny spark of hope. We don’t know the rebels’ agenda but everyone from all religions and backgrounds seems united

Syrians gather in a guard tower at the infamous Sednaya prison: Dark videos of secret prisons are still emerging. Photograph: Daniel Berehulak
Syrians gather in a guard tower at the infamous Sednaya prison: Dark videos of secret prisons are still emerging. Photograph: Daniel Berehulak
Suad Aldarra
Wed Dec 11 2024 - 06:00

Twelve years ago, I left my shadow in Damascus. I took a taxi with my husband and crossed the Syrian border. We didn’t know what future awaited us, but we knew what horrors we were leaving behind, and that was enough to keep us going straight into the abyss on a one-way ticket.

During those years, we learned how to let go, to be hopeless and homeless. We lived with our identity crisis and got used to our new faces and names misspelled. We accepted the bitter reality of losing the war of freedom. While some people welcomed us with open arms, others complained about the intolerable weight of our sheer existence and the oxygen we stole as we inhaled the shared air.

Then things changed.

Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, is being taken over by the rebels overnight. I watch us Syrians trending again on breaking news alerts, like a deja vu, like a movie on repeat. Who opened the Syrian Pandora’s box? Who are those people?

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I try to ignore the out-of-my-control news and look for normality, but I’m trapped in the schizophrenic life of a Syrian who has to go through their daily life knowing their homeland is being shattered, for what seems like the millionth time.

[ Arab rulers fear Syria could slip into factional chaos ]

The updates from Syria become too fast and scary yet too mesmerising to ignore. The TV is on day and night. My seven year old is asking a lot of questions. I always shielded him from the Syrian tragedy but he is curious. I tell him about home, about the books I left behind, about the evil president and the Russians and the Iranian soldiers and all the baddies that are messing with Syria. “I’m sorry for what’s happening in your country,” he says with a sad face. He keeps referring to Syria as my country. He can’t relate to it and is convinced he is Irish. He shows me his Irish passport to prove his point, “See, it says born in Galway.” And I let him be Irish; he’s lucky to be one, hoping that one day he’ll read my memoir and know the story. I wrote it for him after all.

Another Syrian city has its destiny changed. There is a map now with live updates and coloured spaces. This seems more significant than we thought. The regime’s withdrawal ignites a tiny spark of hope, like the flame of a candle in a dark cave. It makes me nauseous, and I try to put it out, but it doesn’t go away. We don’t know the rebels’ agenda, but the first thing they seem to do in every place they take over is open the political prisons, and there were many. The real criminals and serial killers are free and living in mansions. The confused faces of recently freed prisoners tell a story of multigenerational trauma. Some have already lost their memory, haven’t seen the light in ages, or didn’t know that Hafez Assad – the late brutal father of Bashar al-Assad – was dead. Women and kids were in those prisons, too. Some of those kids were born behind bars.

[ Checkpoints and guard posts burned or abandoned on the road into Syria ]

On Thursday, December 7th, I finally allow myself to hope, to believe that going home might be possible. We follow the news until the late hours of the night. The rebels are near my city, Damascus, but they still seem far from winning. My eyelids are giving up after many sleepless nights, so I decide to surrender to sleep. My husband is too hyped up and decides to stay watching the news. At 5am, I feel his hands shaking me gently out of sleep: “You have to see this.”

What strikes me the most is the sense of humour Syrians have as they break into the presidential house and make jokes about everything they find

I follow him drowsily to the living room with the TV showing the biggest red breaking news alert: the Syrian regime has fallen.

I collapse on the couch and read the line over and over. Oh, how long we waited for that line. At that moment, I realise that we are no longer refugees or displaced. We are free and have a home to return to and show our kids that it’s not an imaginary place. We can visit the graveyards of our dead people.

Videos keep emerging from Syria: free prisoners, destroyed statues of the old regime and torn pictures, celebrations everywhere. What strikes me the most is the sense of humour Syrians have as they break into the presidential house and make jokes about everything they find. While the nation survived poverty and famine, the president and his family enjoyed luxurious lives with high-end brands, full fridges, medicines, and 24-hour electricity that was taken away from the people. Tears get mixed with laughter. We’ve been through hell, and we have a thousand traumas to heal, but our sense of dark humour kept us going.

[ Israel steps up Syria air strikes, sends troops deeper into country ]

Darker videos of secret prisons are still emerging. We were living our daily lives in Syria on top of an underground prison full of tortured souls. Emergency teams are desperately trying to find their way through high-security prison. They have found a control room with monitors showing prisoners no one can reach, like a scene in a horror movie.

Shortly after the celebrations, Israel started bombing critical weapon storages in Syria. There was some chaos, with looters trying to take advantage, but the new regime seems well able to control it. There is an unusual mood in Syria of solidarity and peace. Everyone from all religions and backgrounds seems united and wants to rebuild this country with no intention of revenge. No scenes of extremist slogans. Syria is for everyone is the slogan now. A new government announcement reinforces personal freedom, forbidding anyone from interfering with women and asking them to cover up.

Will the other countries let us live now? We’ll have to wait and see, but we are optimistic after ending a dictatorship. The only sad thing is that it took that long.

Suad Aldarra’s memoir, I Don’t Want to Talk About Home, was published in 2022