I don’t know how hope weaves its threads from our souls in this manner. Little by little, we are numb. We move, weighed down by anger and hoarse screams, in a land where we neither live nor die. A country where wars live.
The face of this country has changed. It doesn’t look like the one we knew as children. We feel lost, as if our childhood was a forgotten film. We look for it when we feel nostalgic, when reality becomes too much. But we can’t find it, and we can’t forget it either.
Sometimes I find that film in my dreams. I wake up with a confusing mix of feelings, scared, happy, and sad all at once. I feel my surroundings like someone returning from a foreign place.
I felt a profound spiritual alienation. I visited my old neighborhood in Tel Kochar—a small city on the border with Syria and Iraq. It had been many years since we moved to Qamishli. I asked myself: Isn’t this the neighborhood where I played hide-and-seek with the neighbors’ girls? The place felt so strange.
No, this isn’t our neighborhood. This is the place that was attacked by terrorist groups, causing everyone to flee. Other people have lived here for years since it was liberated.
I walked past an old neighbor. She lived through all that violence. I don’t know if her face has truly changed, or if my shock at the place has changed even my memory of her.
I remember her complaining about the neighborhood kids. They would pick pomegranates from the low-hanging branches outside her wall, especially during the midday heat. They would fill their pockets and then run away.
We move, burdened with anger and hoarse screams,
We are in a land where we neither truly live nor die, a land where wars thrive.
During our conversation, she complained that the pomegranates now just fall to the ground, uneaten. Everyone has abandoned the neighborhood. Those with black turbans passed through here.
My beautiful memories called out to me, but the cry was frozen. Some of our neighbors’ mud houses have turned into rubble since the migration. Wars don’t erase sweet memories, but they distort them. That’s what it seemed like to me.
I passed by our elementary school. The pictures of Hafez al-Assad and Bashar al-Assad were torn, some of them thrown next to the toilets.
A phrase on the wall caught my attention: “Student, keep the toilets clean.” It felt strange to read the name “Hafez” not as part of a slogan like “forever” or “yes.” Just above it, recently written in red, were the words: “Down with Bashar and his failed regime.”
I wasn’t used to reading the phrase “Down with Bashar.” I never expected to write it in my own literary or journalistic work.
Two writings, separated by only a few hours, marked two distinct events. It was like a barrier between two different eras.
My steps stopped. I was shocked by the removal of the picture of Issam Zahreddine. He was a former officer in the Republican Guard of the ousted President Bashar al-Assad. The huge photo had dominated the Sabaa Bahrat roundabout in the city of Qamishli.
My eyes finally found rest from his sharp gaze. My mind found rest from the images of his victims, which have been hung in my imagination.
.
The executioners and the victims are gone.
The victories and the defeats are over.
We have all fallen into the darkness of our painful memories.
The executioners and the victims are gone. The victories and defeats are over. We have all fallen into the gloom of our painful memories.
But the story didn’t end there. The sectarian wars have started again. Factions affiliated with the Syrian government, led by Ahmed al-Sharaa, are now committing massacres. They are targeting Alawites on the Syrian coast and Druze in Sahnaya and Sweida, and there was an explosion at the Mar Elias Church.
There’s nothing new in Syria but ruin. Violence leaks pain from every direction.
We’ve become one of two things: either a victim on the verge of a fall, or an executioner who enjoys waiting for that fall. In our country, the different “other” is always wrong.
It’s as if being born into a different sect is an original sin.
I never knew one person could occupy another and live inside them, just like someone possessed.
I never knew that snipers on rooftops in the coastal areas, for instance, would boast about their shots. They brag about the precision of their bullets as they pierce a victim’s forehead, posting the videos on social media. This war is consuming our lives.
ears of war have changed our features and our imagination. Five of my siblings have migrated to Europe since the start of the war in Syria.
I don’t know why we burst into tears the moment we meet after years of separation, at least ten years.
“My God! My mother’s wrinkles weren’t this deep on our video calls,” my brother said with tears in his eyes.
But I saw something different. Her wrinkles were overflowing with tears of joy, like furrows filling with water after a long drought.
There's nothing new in Syria but ruin.
Violence leaks pain from every direction.
For a few moments, silence falls. We exchange smiles like it’s a first meeting. I stare at their faces, and our sweet memories flash before me as if they happened just yesterday.
Migration has made us lose the addresses we used to frequent our friends and relatives. The migration continues, and a war pounces on everything that comes.
We have reaped only futility in our search for freedom. We are not okay in this country.
Who will hide the traces of those who have migrated? We are still following the trail of their memories, those gatherings filled with laughter and conversation.
Now, I feel a tightness when I pass the same places. They are narrow and confined in my mind. They no longer contain me.
Beautiful beginnings are waiting for us. That’s the nature of life. It’s because we have exhausted every long path of despair and pain.
We will plant gardens again. Our hearts are ready for madness, and to dance to the rhythm of any music.
