The Return | Yassin al-Haj Saleh, Yasmine Seale

My darling Sammour,

After years of silence, I started writing you a letter final October. I gave it the title “Guardian of Hope,” since your absence is certain up with my sense of hope, each private and public, slowly eroding for the final eleven years. However I ended after a couple of traces, for there was nothing I may let you know concerning the scenario. You’re the scenario. What may somebody who has no half in your absence let you know about your self? Solely you skilled all of it, and solely you’ll be able to present full testimony. All this whereas I’ve made each effort, Sammour, one way or the other to neglect your disappearance, in order to not spend each minute in its firm. Nonetheless, it will assault me unawares at odd moments, snatching me away simply as you had been snatched away eleven years in the past. 

But now I’m taking on this letter once more, writing with what would have been the very best information had you been with me. The regime has fallen! Bashar al-Assad fled to Russia! With out a single phrase to his supposed constituency or to Syrians at giant. Inside days a rhyme started to flow into: “Our leader till doomsday/skedaddled on Sunday!”

One thing astonishing occurred, Sammour: Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, or the Al-Nusra Entrance because it was nonetheless referred to as whenever you disappeared, launched a navy operation in tandem with different insurgent teams to reclaim areas managed by the regime, although amongst them had been the deescalation zones set out within the settlement of 2017 between Russia, Turkey, and Iran. The fighters quickly gained management of Aleppo and moved on to Hama, which fell into their arms after some resistance, and from there to Homs after which on to Damascus, which was liberated on the morning of December 8, 2024, at 6:18 AM, as one can see emblazoned on stickers on the windscreens of individuals’s automobiles—which is to say, a day earlier than the anniversary of your disappearance. An unimaginable leap of braveness, throughout in only twelve days. It was marked by good coordination, self-discipline, and restricted violations. 

I used to be afraid that, because the rebels set out from Hama towards Homs, a serious bloodbath would happen and what remained of the town can be destroyed, however none of that occurred. Individuals who left Homs for worry of sectarian violence and reprisals, together with a few of our family members, returned after two or three days. Your sister Najat and her daughter Lulu stayed within the metropolis and didn’t encounter any bother. I point out solely them as a result of Afif sadly handed away a couple of months in the past. How I want he may have witnessed the day of liberation! And I didn’t let you know that Dr. Munif died immediately two years earlier than that. Afif misplaced the desire to dwell after he misplaced his brother, after his two eldest daughters needed to go away the nation, and after a decade throughout which the nationwide temper had festered into despair.

Waad was in a position to go to Homs to say goodbye to her father and stand by her mom and sister. Juju couldn’t. I visited her in Kemnitz to pay comfort. Did I ever let you know that Juju has been dwelling in Germany these final years? That she married a loving Palestinian man, Fajr, and that they’ve a daughter referred to as Tamara, now about three years previous? Thaer and Waad have a son who is nearly 9 in the present day, named Assi. They had been lastly in a position to transfer to Berlin after years of precarious dwelling in Beirut. The regime fell shortly after they arrived. 

Issues moved shortly, driving Bashar al-Assad, his brother Maher, and his intelligence chiefs to flee every in their very own manner. Folks thought that they noticed Ali Mamlouk, head of the Nationwide Safety Bureau, boarding a dinghy at Arida to cross over into Lebanon, as if he had been a Syrian refugee heading to Europe from the coast of Turkey or North Africa. It appeared later that it was one other officer, a much less essential one. And the highest brass of the killing machine appears to have scattered throughout Russia, the Emirates, and Lebanon. 

The brand new rulers made each effort to be accepted each at house and overseas, though neither the Arab nations nor the main worldwide powers had been proud of the upheaval. Had they’d extra time, I believe they might have stepped in to take care of the blood-soaked establishment, as they’ve performed since 2013. The miracle that transpired was not merely the overthrow of a regime of fifty-four years however its lightning velocity—it occurred earlier than anybody realized what was happening. I think about the brand new rulers themselves hardly anticipated the regime to break down, however they held their nerve and took cost of the 4 main cities, the spine of the nation, in file time and with only a few losses.

I used to be in France when all this occurred, Sammour. I had a ebook printed in French, and the writer organized a stunning night for the event in a Parisian bookshop, with a lot of our associates and family members in attendance. I used to be additionally making preparations, with the assistance of others, for the second iteration of the prize that bears your identify. I haven’t advised you about this but. The concept is to have fun a girl from the Arab or Mediterranean world who’s doing one thing essential within the discipline of literature, artwork, or human rights activism and who isn’t already well-known. The primary 12 months, 2023, we held the ceremony on Worldwide Girls’s Day and gave the award to Reem al-Ghazzi, a Syrian documentary filmmaker. You realize her identify no less than, I’m positive. 

This final time the occasion passed off on the anniversary of your disappearance—and that of expensive Razan, Wael, and Nazem. Two folks shared the award: Neama Hassan, a poet and novelist from Gaza, and Garance Le Caisne, a French journalist who wrote two books, one about the Caesar recordsdata and one other about Mazen al-Hamada, the younger activist from Deir ez-Zor who was arrested and subjected to brutal torture that left him with profound bodily and psychological scars. After his launch he travelled round Europe to boost consciousness concerning the destiny of detainees within the regime’s prisons, however he mysteriously returned to Syria in 2020. His physique was present in a hospital morgue after the autumn of the regime, and it seems that he was killed solely days earlier than. Garance additionally made a movie about European residents of Syrian origin attempting to hunt justice for family members who had been killed or disappeared by the regime. Along with the 2 honorees we included a particular point out for Zeinab al-Ghunaimi, a lawyer and human rights activist from Gaza.

As a result of the ceremony passed off two days after Bashar fled, and since it was understood that his escape meant the regime’s whole collapse, the temper shifted from a solemn remembrance of you and your comrades to a joyful live performance that includes Abo Gabi, a Palestinian-Syrian singer and musician, and the singers Rasha Rizk and Harith Mouhaidi. Amongst these current had been your pals Wijdan, Afaf, Hind, Doha, and Lina. This was a celebration of the autumn of the regime. It went on for about three hours, women and men eagerly becoming a member of within the singing and dancing. The night introduced collectively Samira and Syria, no less than one in all whom gave the impression to be getting back from her absence.

For my very own half, Syria is not going to return for good with out you, Sammour. This leaves me nearly paralyzed. I share within the pleasure of my associates, however one thing sticks in my throat. 1000’s have been launched from Assad’s horrific prisons, however so long as your absence continues, part of Syria is not going to be liberated. This considerations not solely you and me, or your companions in absence, however tens of hundreds of others, over 113,000 folks whose destiny is unknown, in line with essentially the most dependable human rights sources.

Probably the most astonishing scenes after the autumn of the regime was the liberation of detainees from Sednaya Jail. They had been barely 1,500 in whole—dangerous information. It meant that the killing machine had been working at most capability for years and that the households who got here looking for their family members had no selection however to hunt by means of mass graves. Probably the most wrenching story of such merciless hope was that of a mom in her seventies. Discovering no signal of her disappeared son, she took away a noose stained with blood, as if to carry onto the very last thing her martyred youngster was prone to have seen. Footage present her with the rope draped round her shoulders. The issues hearts should bear!

An acquaintance of mine from Damascus wrote to say that the very first thing he did upon returning to his native metropolis was to go to the grave of his father, who died twelve years in the past. After that he went to what was once the Violations Documentation Middle in Douma, the place you and Razan Zaitouneh had been working once I left Jap Ghouta for the final time, and the place you had been each later kidnapped with Wael and Nazem. The person stated that the door had been changed and that nobody answered when he knocked. This door, riddled with shrapnel and bullet holes, has lodged in my thoughts, stored there by an image of you opening it from the skin, a white scarf draped round your shoulders. The picture turned well-known after you disappeared, and even appeared on banners and posters.

I need to go there, to make a pilgrimage to the final place you cared about. In a couple of days I’ll be in Damascus, Sammour, after almost eleven years and 9 months away from the town of our shared life, our love, our first kiss, our marriage. The town the place we had been needed by the key police. We all know they began to hunt you down solely after you left the town on April 3, 2013. We appear to have earned—you and I, together with Thaer, Waad, and Dr. Munif—a safety report ordering our arrest earlier than the top of 2012, however for some purpose they didn’t start looking for you till Thaer was arrested, simply after I used to be smuggled out to Jap Ghouta. You’ll by no means guess how I discovered that out. Within the first days after the autumn of the regime, a Syrian journalist working as a correspondent for an American newspaper was in a position to enter Department 215 of Army Safety, a detention heart that had been an emblem of terror. He noticed the report, photographed it, and despatched me photos of its pages. That such a factor may occur was nicely and actually an indication that the regime had fallen.

The report takes us into the jungle of Assad’s safety branches. The primary pages are addressed to Department 261, requesting that they supply Department 294 with a replica of their letter No. 128148, dated 11/18/2012, “relating to the so-called Yassin Haj Saleh and his co-conspirators.” Then the signature of the top of Department 294. 4 of the 5 names talked about within the report—you, Waad, Thaer, and me—are preceded by the adjective “so-called.” Dr. Munif, exempted from this sobriquet, is referred to by his title: The Physician. 

The report claims that you simply and I share concepts, and that we reside exterior the nation, although a safety verify on the border revealed that we had neither left nor returned. In fact we hadn’t. The report additionally states that we work “for armed groups in Qatar” and that we’re energetic “on behalf of Gulf newspapers on the Internet and on social media.” What’s extra, we obtain “financial support from abroad in exchange for incitement and mobilization.” The handle at which we obtain this monetary assist is a hyperlink to my Fb web page. The report consists of your mobile phone quantity, not mine, which was not within the possession of the writer, whose identification we all know in the present day. As for Thaer and Waad, they’re “furiously active on behalf of the armed groups.” 

The funniest a part of this mix of the banal and the tragic was the story that I used to be dwelling on the American embassy in Damascus with different dissidents. Do you bear in mind, Sammour? Once I was in Jap Ghouta, I acquired some questions from a journalist I didn’t know, and had it not been for the report, I might not have remembered his identify. He requested concerning the allegation that I had stayed on the American embassy in Damascus, which was closed on the time as a result of suspension of American and Syrian relations following the regime’s brutal suppression of peaceable protests. You’ll keep in mind that a fourth-rate Assadist journalist had unfold this story as early as 2011 with the aim of slandering me and different dissidents—amongst them Razan and Riad al-Turk—and trivializing our trigger. By the best way, expensive Riad died on the primary day of 2024, on the age of ninety-three. How I want he may have witnessed today! 

Once I learn the e-mail I used to be irritated by this query and was about to disregard the journalist and his web site, Asia Information. Then it occurred to me to play the sport and switch it towards the questioner. You absolutely bear in mind this interview, because it was printed in late Might 2013, simply days after your arrival in Jap Ghouta. I replied, as you already know, that I needed for nothing within the embassy of the good energy, the place we had been blessed with uninterrupted electrical energy and Web, glorious services, and the corporate of different well-known dissidents. The interview precipitated a uncommon scandal. Opponents of the Syrian revolution learn it as an admission that we had been brokers of the Individuals. A few of our associates had been mystified. I had responded in a tone of full seriousness, however utilizing uncharacteristically pompous language whose sarcasm was laborious to overlook. 

The intelligence report dealt with the story in a confused method. It quoted my authentic reply with out remark and in addition talked about what the web site had reported concerning the perplexed reactions of dissidents and loyalists. The explanation for this, for my part, is that members of the celebration that managed the life and loss of life of Syrians had been neither licensed nor certified to assume for themselves nor to rationally choose the validity of the fabric they acquired. They had been merely gatherers of knowledge. Naturally they didn’t ask themselves whether or not the Individuals would actually hand over the keys to their shuttered embassy to a bunch of Syrian dissidents. In reality not a single query was requested, but it turned a narrative to inform.

After eleven years, eight months, and twenty-six days away, I crossed the Lebanese border and arrived in Damascus within the afternoon of December 29, 2024. With me had been two associates, Leyla Dakhli, a Franco-Tunisian tutorial dwelling in Germany, and Justine Augier, a French author, in addition to Joseph, a French journalist from Mediapart. I hadn’t been so near you since we parted on that depressing day, July 10, 2013, once I left for Raqqa, 5 months earlier than you disappeared. To the extent that it was a time of pleasure and celebration, Leyla and Justine had been eager to share it with me, however part of me held again. Syria is not going to be liberated so long as the higher a part of her, you, stays a hostage of this long-drawn-out captivity. 

That night the 4 of us went to Al-Rawda Cafe, which you already know nicely, and which I used to frequent earlier than the revolution. There I met Azza Abo Rebieh and different associates in a festive environment, dense with singing and cheering, hookah smoke, cameras and telephones snapping away, and tears.

What strikes one first in Damascus is the state of dilapidation and disrepair. You see it within the streets, the buildings, the taxis, and within the lodge the place we stayed. Time and neglect have teamed up towards the oldest inhabited metropolis on this planet. Then there may be the widespread poverty, embodied by giant numbers of beggars, together with girls and kids, and by the numerous business stalls which have popped up in every single place and make strolling nearly not possible in some areas. Syria suffered below a tyrannical regime of uncommon selfishness and corruption, totally devoid of patriotism, whose clique had a bottomless urge for food for cash, energy, and materials issues. It additionally suffered from worldwide sanctions, which as a substitute of harming the regime immiserated nearly all of civilians, like all related precedents. 

Damascus in the present day has very polluted air, which extended the cough I used to be affected by earlier than I arrived. This air pollution, in line with some, has been exacerbated by the huge numbers of automobiles which have come from Idlib and the liberated areas within the north. The town is now so congested through the day that the automobile that introduced us from the Lebanese border took half an hour to get from Umayyad Sq. to our lodge, Burj al-Firdaws, a journey that will have taken ten minutes prior to now. 

One of many first issues I did, with the assistance of a younger good friend, Shirine Hayek, was to acquire a Syrian cell phone quantity and purchase a small shoulder bag during which to hold cash. Money can not be carried in pockets—that’s how a lot the lira has depreciated. On the day we arrived 100 {dollars} was price 1,300,000 Syrian kilos, or 260 five-thousand-pound notes, the best accessible invoice. On the ubiquitous cash changers you see bricks of money wrapped in rubber bands, price half one million lira apiece. A joke I heard: Bashar promised to not go away energy till each Syrian turned a millionaire. He stored his promise and left. 

The next day the 4 of us headed to Sednaya, which had turn out to be a guarded safety website. Joseph managed to accumulate the particular permission wanted to enter, although one thing was off: the allow stated it was for press protection in Quneitra and Latakia, not Damascus province—public administration was in disarray and clearly lacked expertise. Even so, we had been ultimately permitted to enter that horrible fortress. 

We noticed the collective dormitories, every containing ten cells. They jogged my memory of Aleppo Central Jail, Al-Muslimiya, the place I spent eleven years and 4 months within the “political wing” between 1980 and 1992. However a superb variety of these inside partitions had been product of steel, not of cement, and the doorways too had been product of strong steel, not the grid of iron bars we had in Al-Muslimiya. I can’t discover a higher phrase to sum up Sednaya than what Umm Hazem, who misplaced her husband and two brothers, would later say when she made her personal method to that human slaughterhouse: “A foul smell, damp, blood, and no one around.” 

The impression given by this walled, closely guarded space, of which the jail itself represents not more than 5 p.c, is the impression one will get from Assad’s Syria as an entire: a mix of shabbiness and carnage, of dilapidation and cruelty. The place is depressing, however it’s sealed off by robust partitions and defended with weapons. You realize that its inmates had been starved and there have been weekly executions. It’s a place of absolute despair, a spot to desert all hope, like Dante’s Inferno. 

What involves thoughts, Sammour, as I stroll in the present day earlier than the Basic Workers constructing, fenced spherical and guarded, or the navy administration websites in Damascus, or the closely defended safety headquarters, or the radio and tv constructing, fortified like a fortress, is that the regime was taking precautions towards the potential of an armed raid on these nerve facilities. However no battle passed off. The regime collapsed with no bullet being fired in Damascus. It had turn out to be a paltry factor, worn out from inside, missing a reason for any type. It merely melted away, whilst regional and worldwide powers seemed to be normalizing relations with it once more, regardless of its file of horrific crimes. 

On the primary day of the 12 months I used to be on the door of the Violations Documentation Middle. Some associates and I had referred to as for a two-hour sit-in in entrance of this workplace, the place a younger household now made their house. The place had been renovated and seemed extra livable than earlier than. However the door on the constructing’s entrance hadn’t modified, opposite to what I had been advised; it had simply been painted sugar-white.

I knocked on the workplace door. With me had been Lina Sinjab, whom you already know and who nonetheless works for the BBC, a British photographer who works together with her, and Lulu. A younger man barely in his thirties opened the door, and I defined the scenario to him. He had solely moved in seven months earlier than and knew nothing about your case, however he was type sufficient to let the photographer, Lulu, and me go searching, apart from one room, which had been Razan’s workplace, the place his spouse had hidden herself away. The home had been utterly refurbished, however its construction was intact. The lounge the place we labored had new, elegant furnishings, and our mattress was not within the interior room. The yard the place we might all sit in the summertime evenings was nonetheless there, but it surely too had been revamped.  

Outdoors the home a superb variety of folks had assembled, together with your good friend and fellow prisoner Buthaina and her husband, Nizar. We held up posters with photos of the 4 of you collectively, and particular person photos of you, of Razan, of Razan and Wael, and of the duvet of your ebook, Diaries of the Siege in Douma 2013, which I’ve advised you about earlier than. 

There have been many journalists and media professionals from throughout: Syrians, Arabs, Europeans… I believe I gave twenty interviews earlier than, throughout, and after the sit-in. I advised your story and named the accused celebration, Jaysh al-Islam, whose leaders have returned to Douma by the best way, together with its non secular chief, Samir Kaakeh, the essence of evil. I’m not positive whether or not the second-in-command, Omar al-Dirani, is among the many returnees. That they had been displaced since 2018 to the Al-Bab space in northern Syria. I stated within the interviews that we had been trying ahead to studying the total fact about what occurred to you and to reaching justice by holding the perpetrators accountable. I stated that your destiny was the measure of progress on the trail to justice in Syria, and the difficulty of enforced disappearance basically, because it was essentially the most excessive type of impunity on this damaged nation of ours. 

After 9 days in Damascus I headed as much as Homs with Najat and Lulu in a automobile they rented. It was not misplaced on me, Sammour, that this was my first go to to the town with out you. We arrived round three within the afternoon. Najat determined that I ought to stick with Fatima and Bassam that day in order that she and Lulu may put together the home, from which they’d been away for some time; I might be part of them the next day. Seeing your youthful sister Fatima was emotional: we cried on one another’s shoulders. How a lot you resemble her! We stayed up till after one within the morning, speaking and consuming arak. You, your absence, stuffed our lengthy conversations. 

Solely after you had been gone for years did one in all my most painful discoveries steadily emerge: the story of your disappearance isn’t well-known, and there was a bent amongst a few of our family members and acquaintances to carry me chargeable for it with out asking me questions or studying something I wrote concerning the case and about you, and even studying your ebook, all of that are simply accessible. Conflicting political positions, private discord, the rotten path the revolution took after you disappeared—this stuff had conspired to show the matter towards me. Now, although, we spent 9 hours speaking, and our hearts had been cleared. However it got here house to me, after the exhaustion of the day and the lengthy dialog and the issues left unsaid, how merciless it’s that I needs to be held to account on your disappearance. 

The next day Bassam took me for a drive alongside the outskirts of the destroyed Baba Amr neighborhood, the road between the previous and new clocks, and Brazil Avenue. The town was bustling with life. Eating places and cafés had been fairly busy, automobiles crawling the streets, and nearly all people was smoking. What was new to me was the comparatively giant numbers of bikes—gas was dear, I used to be advised. Like Damascus, Homs is in a sophisticated state of shabbiness and dilapidation. 

Bassam had organized a gathering for some women and men he knew to debate public affairs; I needed to return and he warmly agreed. Throughout the road from his store, which sells natural merchandise, soaps, ointments, and lotions that he produces himself, we sat on the sidewalk within the January solar, a few of us on chairs and a few on cement blocks, discussing what had occurred, what was occurring, and what was to be performed. We had been three older males in our sixties, all former political prisoners, and three younger girls and three younger males, all of their twenties. This small open-air convention on January 8, 2025, one month after the autumn of the regime, was attribute of the brand new scenario and would have been not possible a couple of weeks earlier. 

The younger folks need to do one thing. They want orientation and group, they usually assume we may also help. After this sidewalk convention we went to the home of amida Najat, who determined we should always all spend the evening: Lulu, Fatima, Bassam, me, and Thaer, who had arrived from Berlin after visiting his father in Yabroud. Now it was Thaer who wept—this was the primary time he was seeing this home in Afif’s absence. 

Murad was there too, and he advised us a superb story. Strolling by means of Homs, the place he was born, after greater than ten years in Germany, he was overcome by emotion. He took off his sneakers to honor a vow he had made if he ever returned, and sat on a sidewalk along with his head in his arms. A younger man got here as much as him, pondering he was homeless—comprehensible, given Murad’s bohemian look. The person provided to assist, however Murad stated he was simply exhausted after a protracted absence. The place had he been? “Germany,” Murad replied. The person retorted: “then it is you who should give me money!” 

We stayed up till two within the morning, speaking politics, consuming arak, and telling our tales. The overall feeling within the nation, in line with Abed al-Rayyes, a younger good friend from Homs, was aid, respite, and deliverance from worry. He invited me to talk to a small viewers on the Jesuit Fathers Monastery, which I did for about two hours on January 9. It was a dialogue on concepts, politics, and the function of intellectuals. Lulu is now an activist in a newly fashioned group involved with civil peace in Homs, a metropolis whose struggling you knew one thing about earlier than you disappeared: many casualties and widespread injury to the city areas, particularly to the social cloth of the town, not least between Sunnis and Alawites. The Alawite neighborhoods had simply been combed for weapons, needed individuals, and proof of attendance at an Alawite demonstration throughout which sectarian slogans had been chanted (adopted the subsequent day by a Sunni demonstration throughout which sectarian slogans had been chanted). This sweep had ended the day earlier than we arrived, however issues stay fragile and unsafe, and the streets of the Alawite neighborhoods are empty after sundown. Destruction stays widespread within the Sunni neighborhoods, however these that aren’t destroyed are busy till near midnight.

That is all in distinction to Latakia, the place I went after three days in Homs. Through the first half of the journey we handed a number of armed checkpoints; at two they requested for the motive force’s ID and mine. As soon as we had been requested to open the trunk of the automobile and as soon as if we had been carrying weapons. The one different checkpoint was on the entrance to the town, and the only gunman who manned it didn’t cease us. The driving force defined that there have been gangs of thieves and kidnappers within the countryside west of Homs, whom the checkpoints had been focusing on. (Just a few days later fifteen former regime troopers had been killed within the city of Fahil, although apparently they didn’t resist and a few had been retired.) The safety scenario is clearly risky, with seemingly no established guidelines for coping with the issues that come up. 

In Latakia I stayed with Haitham and Zubeida in the identical room you and I used to sleep in after we visited. The night I arrived we met Haitham and the novelist Nabil Suleiman in a small bar within the American neighborhood; Dr. Munif’s son Amer al-Marei, his younger girlfriend, and different associates had been there as nicely. We had been joined for some time by a singer from Latakia named Samer Ahmed. He has a satirical tune about Bashar al-Assad referred to as Allah yarihna minno—“God deliver us from him.” It’s a phrase he stated he had been utilizing for years earlier than it turned an anthem sung within the Syrian dialect. 

The next morning Amer organized a gathering for me with about thirty folks inquisitive about public affairs, and we shared our assessments of what was occurring and attainable paths ahead. I stated that, due to the nondemocratic structure of the brand new ruling celebration, we weren’t transferring towards democracy, however I dominated out the chance of an Islamic state. A extra possible consequence was a form of rule of notables, during which varied communities—confessional, ethnic, or tribal—can be represented by their natural leaders, as was the case for years after Syria’s independence in 1946. Such a coverage would exclude from the general public sphere these, like us, who symbolize actual pluralism, or no less than restrict our presence in it. My view, I stated, is that we should always push for legal guidelines banning torture, which in our historic expertise has been related to the brutalization of not simply people however the society, with sectarianism, and with the final word collapse of the nation. 

The attendees had been various in gender, age, and background, and the prevailing spirit was optimistic, each towards one another and relating to the nation’s new circumstances. You sense folks’s favorable outlook of their normal interactions. This may occasionally partly clarify why there has not been widespread violence within the cities, regardless of the chaos and turmoil. A way of aid expands the general public sphere amid all of the poverty and deterioration. 

After two days in Latakia I returned to Damascus. Farouk Mardam-Bey, Subhi Hadidi, and Ziad Majed had arrived within the capital simply earlier than me. Farouk was visiting his metropolis for the primary time in half a century. Subhi was returning to Syria for the primary time in thirty-eight years. They had been welcomed in entrance of the Umayyad Lodge by a marching band taking part in the aradah shamiya, a standard wedding ceremony dance. One of many singers lifted Ziad onto his shoulders amid chants for Syria and freedom and towards the Assads. On the invitation of the Damascene girl who had organized the dance, the 4 of us had dinner together with the journalist Zeina Shahla, the author Colette Bahna, and two activists from Idlib, all of whom had stayed within the nation by means of the horrible years after 2011. On Zeina’s arm is a tattoo: 12/8/2024!

The subsequent morning I headed to the Shaalan neighborhood to make a pilgrimage to the home the place I hid for a couple of 12 months, most of which you had been with me. I couldn’t acknowledge which entrance led to the condo, so I took photos of all three and despatched them to our expensive Rashad, who had lent me the home, owned by his sister, at nice threat to his security. Rashad, by the best way, has married a Syrian girl as stunning and succesful as he’s, and an artist as nicely; they dwell in Troyes, France. Inside minutes he replied that not one of the three entrances was proper. He jogged my memory of one thing I by no means ought to have forgotten: that behind the condo was a mosque. I went there the subsequent day and took an image of the doorway—that’s the one, stated Rashad. However once I rang the bell nobody answered. The constructing seemed deserted. Rashad stated his sister had bought the condo, and he didn’t know who owned it now. 

Whereas nonetheless in Shaalan I seemed for the Stefanel clothes retailer the place Adnan M. labored twelve years in the past. You used to purchase my garments there, making the most of the reductions he provided, to the purpose that I turned recognized for my class amongst our associates. However I couldn’t discover it now—one other firm is there as a substitute. Adnan disappeared after the revolution and remained in hiding along with his household for 5 years earlier than they had been smuggled to Lebanon. They had been then granted refuge in Germany, and remained for 3 years in a heim, in circumstances so appalling that he requested to be returned to Syria in protest. However issues improved after that, and the household settled in an honest home with good neighbors in a city not removed from Munich. 

I couldn’t discover the primary place I hid, both. Do not forget that on the night of March 30, 2011, after Bashar al-Assad’s first speech, which was a declaration of battle, I took my laptop and some garments and started a lifetime of hiding that I by no means anticipated would final greater than two years. I didn’t say goodbye to you correctly then, and in any case you knew the place I used to be, and we met each few days.

You realize that my sense of place is as impaired as my sense of time is acute. But our good friend Farouk, now eighty, managed after fifty years away to search out the homes that he lived in or had been acquainted to him in his youth. Frankly, Sammour, I received’t attempt to discover the home we lived in for 3 months in Al-Muhajireen; that neighborhood is simply too unfamiliar. By the best way, Hani and Salma, who lent us that home, are right here in Damascus. One night in January, as Abdul Hay Al-Sayyed and I had been discussing the query of justice and forgiveness at an occasion on the Al-Rawda Café, I noticed Hani sitting alone within the viewers. The corridor overlooking the road was stuffed with all kinds of individuals, and I whispered to Abdul Hay that it was the primary time I had spoken earlier than a Syrian viewers in Syria. Then I remembered that the truth is I had spoken to 1 on the Atassi Discussion board in December 2004. Three months later I used to be heckled and overwhelmed on the street in entrance of the previous Palace of Justice on Nasr Avenue by Baathist college students; the discussion board itself was closed shortly after.

On Friday, January 17, I went to Sweida with Ula Ramadan and the psychiatrist Jalal Nawfal, each of whom had been additionally within the nation for the primary time in additional than a decade. We headed straight for Al-Karama Sq., the place folks have been protesting since August 2023 and celebrating since December 8. There we met your good friend and fellow prisoner Wijdan Nassif, now a pacesetter within the girls’s political motion, and my good friend and fellow prisoner, Akram Marouf. After two hours within the sq. and lots of photographs, we had been invited to the house of a widely known determine in Sweida, Adnan Abu Assi, one of many “square activists.” He insisted it will solely be for a fast cup of espresso, however you already know the generosity of the folks of Sweida. The espresso led to fruit and good wine, and pleasant dialog for over an hour. There have been about twenty folks. 

Then on to the home of the Wijdan household in Shahba, the place we had been served fatayer: spinach, chickpea, and potato. On the recommendation of Tawfiq, a former political prisoner and one in all your comrades, we returned to Damascus earlier than sundown as a result of there was a stretch of the street that was not protected. Tawfiq, who was driving, recalled the way it was through the regime: “There was a bad checkpoint here, and there was a worse one here.” And that was earlier than we handed the brutal “Palestine Branch,” probably the most infamous navy safety headquarters, fenced spherical on all sides like a fortress.

The next Sunday I went with Abu Luay—our good friend Adnan, you bear in mind him—to the final home we lived in earlier than my lifetime of disappearance, the one home I may name house after the one the place I spent my first eleven years, within the care of my mom. You and I rented this home in 2004 and stayed there collectively till March 30, 2011, and also you stayed there intermittently whenever you didn’t be part of me in one of many 4 homes I hid in. This was till the owner threatened to throw our belongings on the street if we didn’t vacate the place. However by then, the final month of 2013, you had disappeared, and I used to be in Istanbul.

There I used to be on the entrance after fourteen years away. The buzzer wasn’t working due to an influence outage. As I took some photos of the constructing with my telephone, I seen that there have been extra automobiles now within the reverse yard, and that the wooded space separating this yard from the road was stunning and stuffed with bushes. Then the constructing’s entrance gate opened and Samer, our neighbor, acknowledged me straight away. I might not have acknowledged him. We embraced, and he invited us into his home. I met his spouse, Samar, and his youngest daughter, Zeina, who was now nineteen. Maya, the eldest daughter, was at work in a medical heart. As we drank espresso I seen the sofas we had been sitting on, which appeared acquainted. Embarrassed, I requested Samar, who stated: “They are your sofas! Samira told us to take them after you left.” Samar stated in addition they had a carpet, a rug, and an electrical heater of ours, and that they had been holding them for us. 

I despatched Juju some photos from Samer and Samar’s home, and our eyes welled up. Oh this absence, the way it hurts the center, Sammour! 

I requested Samer to speak to the neighbor so I may check out our previous condo. The person agreed, but it surely was clear that he didn’t perceive why a former tenant would care to see the place he had lived in all these years in the past. He allowed me to see the doorway and the visitor room, which had modified lots. It appeared that the household dwelling there now was well-off, and that our previous house, Sammour, was extra luxurious than it was in our days; I didn’t get to see the room that had been my workplace. From exterior the constructing I had seen that the balcony was now surrounded by a glass wall. There you’d sit with a few of our friends, particularly Iyad, consuming mate. The kitchen window overlooking the road on the opposite facet was now product of bluish glass, and seemed out onto an unbuilt space, and past that to the mountain the place snow would settle in late December or early February.

From there we returned to the market closest to our previous home, which was the one market within the suburb till 2011. It was once just some outlets; now it’s a actual market, and fairly a busy one. The suburb, which was extra populated, appears to have flourished, in contrast to the neighborhoods I had seen within the coronary heart of the capital. Its air is clear, in contrast to the air of Damascus. A part of me was indifferent from the nice firm of Abu Luay, Samer, Samar, and Zeina—an offended, resentful half. In Abu Luay’s automobile, as we had been driving again to Damascus, I advised him that there was just one particular person on this planet whom I assumed I may kill: Samir Kaakeh, the non secular chief of Jaysh al-Islam, the person primarily chargeable for kidnapping you, Razan, Wael, and Nazem. The world can be a much less squalid place with out that vicious particular person. Abu Luay made no remark. I believe he doubted my capacity to kill that wretch.

The three days I spent in Aleppo, the place I studied and was imprisoned, had been an train in respiratory straightforward and strolling freely in a metropolis the place I had lived for 3 years earlier than jail and three years after. You realize the sensation when a spot is cramped, when the environment is hostile and even harmful. I believe it’s the feeling that girls in our nations have in some public locations the place they’re harassed and stared at. We had lived in such an environment, besieged by fixed, hypermasculine abuse. Have we lastly closed this ugly chapter, Sammour? It’s troublesome to say. 

On the bus to Aleppo two Egyptian associates and I struck up a dialog with a younger girl, an area journalist masking social affairs, who appeared to welcome the brand new environment. She invited us to share the taxi that was ready for her, just for us to find later that she had paid for the entire journey. 

The subsequent morning I walked to the general public park the place I used to like to walk. I requested the espresso vendor for a cup—and realized that I had left behind my Syrian cash. “Don’t worry about it!” he stated. Then I remembered I used to be carrying some Euros and paid him what I may. The generosity of Aleppans is charming, they usually like to point out it off, in distinction to the supposedly stingy folks of Damascus. 

I used to be upset to see that there was now a slender steel door to the general public backyard that gave the impression to be closed at evening—prior to now it had at all times been welcoming. Elsewhere, too, the doorways have grown narrower, just like the nation did within the bloody years after 2011.

That very same night Marcelle Shehwaro and I had been in dialog on the Cultural Middle in Azizieh. As we stood exterior to greet the viewers, a person of my era seemed me within the eye and requested, Do you acknowledge me? I checked out him for a couple of seconds and regretted I didn’t. He stated, I’m so-and-so. We fell into one another’s arms. It had been almost thirty-four years since our final assembly. He was my comrade in Aleppo Central Jail, launched after eleven years. Once I was launched 5 years after that, I made an effort to see these of my fellow prisoners who would agree to fulfill me, however this man was not amongst them—understandably. He needed to keep away from any complications the regime would possibly make for him, and maybe for his household, if he stored up relations along with his fellow jail graduates. However on the first alternative after the autumn of the regime, there he was, attending a public occasion during which his previous good friend was participating. That is our complete story, Sammour. Tyranny divided folks from one another and compelled them into small, closed circles—now opened up by the loosening of its grip. He and I had been in our early thirties when he received out of jail. We’re in our mid-sixties now.

You realize Marcelle Shehwaro by identify. She was one of many revolutionaries of Aleppo and its college. Her life and activism are a wealthy story that will probably be advised in a ebook in English quickly. That night we talked onstage about the way to restore politics in Syria. She put a lot of the inquiries to me, and I put a couple of to her. Then we started a dialog with the viewers that stuffed the 2 halls of the middle, many standing. So encouraging and transferring, Sammour! I needed you had been there, although in fact you had been current all through—in my introduction, within the questions associates and acquaintances put to me, and within the content material of a few of my solutions. 

This was the primary such public occasion in Aleppo for the reason that liberation, also called “the fall.” Folks use one or the opposite of those phrases, “liberation” to suggest that the regime was a colonial energy and “fall” to emphasise that Bashar fled shamefully. I really feel sure that you’d favor the previous. Bakr advised me that Tuhama corrects him each time he says the autumn, urgent for liberation as a substitute. They’re nonetheless in Gaziantep, Turkey.

The subsequent day I went to jap Aleppo with Nisma and Halim, a younger activist couple. They confirmed me the al-Quds hospital, which was the final functioning medical facility within the space when it was reoccupied in late 2016 by the regime and its allies: the Iranians (headed by Qasem Soleimani), Hezbollah, and the Russian air drive. The final docs and activists debated whether or not to burn down the five-story constructing as they had been displaced, in order that enemies wouldn’t use it, or to depart it protected with the hope that some civilians would profit. Because it occurred, the least secure particular person amongst them set the hospital ablaze. Near 9 years after these days, you see the grey coloration of previous fireplace marks on its facade.

In the entire space, the destruction was overwhelming, stirring a mixture of grief and despair. How can all this rubble be cleared? How can the destroyed houses of individuals dwelling in camps be rebuilt? The poverty within the jap a part of the town is heartbreaking.

I returned to Damascus with Marcelle on the morning of January 24. She was attending a convention on justice during which a number of Syrian organizations had been taking part. Half of the attendees had been girls, she advised me within the night. A few of the members had returned from their exile in nations close to and much, whereas others got here from contained in the nation. This can be a polarizing level amongst secular activists that must be addressed rigorously. The return house of these coming from overseas is spectacular, however the insiders aren’t happy with being much less seen: they really feel they’re being written out of the story. You sense a buried rigidity and an issue in speaking between the 2 events. One thing related occurred in Palestine after the Oslo Accords, and earlier than that in Spain after Franco left, and in Greece after the junta fell. How alike persons are, Sammour!

The alternative could also be true for the Islamists. The insiders have a narrative to inform—of toppling the regime and liberating the nation. The outsiders, the Muslim Brothers, appear to be excluded from the scene, which in fact they don’t like.

Each day in Damascus there are new actions held at resorts or cafes, particularly Al-Rawda, or at cultural websites that had been much less energetic earlier than the liberation. I’m wondering if the town isn’t probably the most energetic on this planet in the present day on the extent of public debate, movie screenings, lectures, conferences, and seminars. Our good friend Osama Mohammed screened his movie Stars of the Day for the primary time in Damascus, and the place was packed. In Jaramana, Our Horrible Nation was screened. You and Razan are in it.

Whereas in Damascus I met associates and journalists. I additionally purchased souvenirs, together with socks with an image of Hafez al-Assad in his underpants, flexing his muscle tissue, and a caricature of Bashar along with his lengthy neck. Within the chaos of the primary days after the autumn of the regime, some folks obtained photos of the household, together with two photos of the daddy and son in briefs, and printed them on social media. The household was nicknamed the Underpanters.

On the morning of January 29 I went to Sweida once more, with Wijdan Nassif and Jalal Noufal, to conduct a seminar. Our host there was Akram Marouf, who had turn out to be an engineer after his launch from jail and had married and had three kids, two of whom, a son and a daughter, now dwell in Germany. Our first meal within the metropolis was mleihi: giant items of lamb on the bone and rice beneath, all cooked in yogurt, which can be served on the facet, together with fried kibbeh filled with minced meat. 

About fifty folks attended our seminar, together with seven girls. The attendees had been largely older, of their fifties no less than, apart from one girl in her twenties, a widely known activist in Sweida. Within the night we had been invited to a soirée at Adnan Abu Assi’s home with oud, music, and domestically made wine. Adnan, his spouse, and their kids are all dissidents, among the many most energetic in Al-Karama Sq. since early August 2023. One of many sons was arrested for some time when he was sixteen.

That night we realized about Ahmed al-Sharaa’s assembly with the navy factions that determined to dissolve and be part of the brand new military. This information arrived shortly after that of the dissolution of the Baath Celebration, the Folks’s Meeting, and the earlier military; of al-Sharaa’s appointment as interim president; and of his warrant to decide on a brief legislative council. We appear to be going through a transitional dictatorship, which may flip right into a everlasting dictatorship. In Umayyad Sq. that very same evening, the loyalists of the brand new authorities chanted: “Jolani forever/in spite of you, Assad!” This appears to be mainly directed towards the previous, but it surely may set up a harmful future, an Assadist future with out Assad. 

The subsequent morning, after a big breakfast, we returned to Damascus. At 4 o’clock, Jalal was to talk with a fellow psychiatrist at Al-Rawda Café about present political and psychological issues in Syria. Wijdan was following the scenario with the same old Syrian mixture of glee and apprehension. She stated what bothered her was that, within the face of recent difficulties, so many people had been fast to throw our arms up and complain. I agreed together with her utterly.

On my final day in Damascus I went with associates to Douma once more. We hung a small signal on the entrance to the constructing that was the final place the place you, Razan, Wael, and Nazem had been free: “In this building lived Razan Zaitouneh and Samira Khalil, then Wael Hamada and Nazem Hamadi, until they were kidnapped on the night of December 9, 2013.” We knocked on the doorways of the residences within the constructing asking for permission to hold the signal, which Moawia Hamoud—a person in his forties from Moadamiyeh—and Shirine Hayek had helped me order a couple of days earlier. Not all of the residents appeared, however none of those that did objected, and Moawia went forward. It was an odd scene, about fifteen women and men climbing the steps, outfitted with cameras, microphones, and cellphones. Maybe some forty folks stood on the sidewalk exterior, documenting the second.

I requested Shirine to take an image of me strolling out the steel door riddled with shrapnel, my hand raised as if in assist, imitating the image of you in the identical place. I have to admit that your image is prettier, and your motion as you seem to depart, bringing with you the sunshine that shines by means of the holes, offers the image a singular high quality. Mine is the alternative: the peepholes look into the darkness and the sunshine comes from exterior.

You realize, the sugar-white coloration of the door is just like the colour of the satchel that you simply introduced with you to Jap Ghouta on the afternoon of Might 18, 2013. Dr. Muhammad Kattoub delivered it to me in Gaziantep in 2018. He was delicate sufficient to depart shortly after handing over that heavy burden: for the primary time I had one thing of yours in my arms. It contained your ID card, a doc stating that you simply labored on the Violations Documentation Middle, some jewellery, papers, photos of you and me in a small pockets, beads, hair clips, and even a worn-out tissue that I left within the bag, which I deal with as holy—or like a bag of dynamite. Don’t be offended at me, Sammour. I’m afraid of opening it, sure it will unleash sorrows that I’ve tried to bury for years. Nothing hurts greater than this sacred, explosive relic that embodies your distance and your absence. I maintain the bag excessive up, out of attain in my Berlin condo.

As we put the enroll close to the door, there have been plenty of journalists, Syrian and overseas, taking photos. A few of them knew nearly nothing concerning the case and hadn’t bothered to search out out. Others knew however didn’t have the mandatory sensitivity to the households of the disappeared, of whom I used to be the one consultant current. Of their pursuit of fabric, they failed to understand how draining it may be to speak a couple of case like ours. I couldn’t maintain again my agitation within the face of uninformed or inconsiderate questions. A journalist from a French right-wing platform stored attempting to direct the dialog towards the European proper’s favourite topics: Islamic fanaticism, the combat towards terrorism, and minority rights. He had been on good phrases with the Assad regime for years, and requested how issues had been going for me. I answered with a single phrase: superb.

Shirine and I left for Beirut within the early morning to keep away from the border congestion. On the Syrian facet I used to be advised that I had been positioned on a “departure ban.” I stated I knew and volunteered that it dated again to September 2004. Do you keep in mind that ban, Sammour? I used to be touring to Beirut then to take part in a convention, once I was stopped and given a paper referring me to the Officers’ Affairs Department in Damascus. You might also keep in mind that I by no means discovered the rationale for the ban, nor may I’ve it lifted. 

The clerk on the border stated that he couldn’t determine on the matter and that I ought to anticipate the officer to reach. Lower than ten minutes later I used to be directed to the desk of one other worker, who stamped a particular card on which I had written my identify, my mother and father’ names, and my place and date of delivery. This man gave the impression to be aware of my case. In accordance with our Lebanese driver he was one of many skilled former border individuals who had been reinstated. I nonetheless don’t know if the ban has been lifted for good. The brand new administration is struggling to do its work, and it’ll doubtless take a while earlier than issues get again on observe.

Just a few days earlier than this journey to Beirut I met a European journalist who advised me that he couldn’t cross the border into Syria for some purpose I didn’t perceive, and that he had lastly gotten in by means of the previous mechanism. Bribery? I requested him. Sure, he stated.

At present, February 2, is your birthday. I bear in mind it within the morning over espresso at Samer and Livia’s home in Beirut, the place I arrived yesterday. You bear in mind them: we had been wedding ceremony friends after they married in 2004 in Aleppo, in an attractive previous home referred to as Khan al-Shuna. Livia is an American who speaks fluent Arabic, and Samer is a Syrian from Aleppo. At present they’ve three kids. 

I’ve celebrated your birthday alone all these years, recalling your loving presence, your monumental tenderness, your beneficiant spirit, and our evenings with associates on February 2 or February 1, my alleged birthday, sooner or later earlier than yours. The truth that my actual birthday is unknown, and that the one recorded isn’t real, by no means bothered you. You really liked that we had been registered on consecutive days, and also you at all times needed us to have fun with associates at house, with a glass of purple wine or gin and lime that I might put together for you, and arak for me and most of our associates.

You have got now been gone for so long as we lived collectively, a little bit greater than eleven years. How I’ve struggled with this lengthy, silent absence, Sammour! We expertise presence with distracted consideration, we’re absent to some extent, and so when actual absence like yours returns we remorse that we didn’t refill on presence as a lot as we should always have. We’re perpetually working to summon it up, and perpetually it slips out of our arms. It’s as if presence had been the results of absence, and as if we had been solely actually current in our absence. 

I formulate this thought as a normal concept, not solely as a result of I can’t bear to confess that this has been my private expertise together with your presence but in addition as a result of I’m attempting to provide you with some kind of information. All these years I lacked one that may assist me deal with this ordeal, a way of orienting myself. There isn’t a doubt that many have proven solidarity and assist, however the mixture of my very own exile and the violent collapse of our nation has left me going through your absence alone, defenseless. 

Your absence is an authentic expertise within the strongest sense of the phrase, an expertise with no precedent. I’m not positive I understand how to place it into phrases. I really feel I’m in the identical scenario as moms who’ve misplaced kids and don’t discover sufficient assist from these round them, missing language to precise what they really feel. Like that mom who was draped within the red-stained noose, which can have been the final witness to her son’s life. Such authentic experiences are insufferable; they will kill. Moms die of grief, and fathers, too. However these experiences dwell on, if we all know the way to derive that means, legal guidelines, and pointers from them. Your husband has tried to make that means out of your lengthy, silent absence. He succeeds and fails.

On February 2 I’m in a good friend’s home in Beirut, pondering like a survivor. It falls to the survivor to relate. To not cease speaking and remembering, so long as absence persists.

I returned to Berlin by way of Paris after about forty days on the street in Syria and Lebanon. With no routine of any type I missed my every day routine, my “cell,” as I advised associates. I would like time to course of and arrange what I witnessed in these unusual weeks—the spirit reviving in the present day within the physique of our dilapidated nation. 

A day and a half after my return a query got here to me: Why didn’t I keep in Syria? What am I doing in Berlin? Why did I go away you alone and are available again to the far nation? It was as if I wanted to return to Berlin with a purpose to understand that I needed to return to your facet. To remain there to collect info, to analyze the paths of justice for you. Why is my residence in Berlin the place of “ordinary life”? Why do I select an atypical life when you could have been disadvantaged of each life and loss of life, and when I’ve the ability to decide on?

Kisses to you, my coronary heart,

Yassin