It took almost ten years for me to drink a cup of Arabic coffee in my mother’s kitchen. There, where the warm sun of my homeland rises and where the city is swallowed by darkness each evening when the electricity cuts out. There, where the walls are filled with pictures of the missing, the disappeared, and the murdered—replacing the portraits of the president that once loomed over every street.
A long part of our lives passed in waiting—waiting for the war to end, for the tyrant to die or disappear, for us to return.
Until December 8, 2024, my life had been fragmented, a wound that felt eternal—the wound of exile, of alienation.
In Europe, and in many cities before it, I raised two children alone. I dreamed, countless times, that my mother could hold them with me, that my family could have a home in the same city as mine. I longed to spend weekends with my parents and to cry in their arms.
I wished that fourteen years had not passed with such loneliness.
But here we are, in a historic moment. I am still trying to comprehend it. Syria survived. And Assad fell.
The Journey to Damascus
My plane landed in Beirut, and we followed the road to Syria. Snow fell thickly on the way—just as it had on the day I left Damascus for the last time.
At the Syrian-Lebanese border, my heart stopped beating for a moment. I remembered my fear of arrest, of disappearance. I remembered the friends who had vanished at this very checkpoint. I crossed safely. There was no trace of the regime’s security apparatus.
Some pressing questions linger: Why did all of this happen? Why did so many lives have to be lost, so many people tortured in the slaughterhouses of a tyrannical family? Why didn’t the world stop at the first massacre committed by Assad? There are no logical answers to these questions.
I finally saw my mother and father in the house where I grew up. I hugged them tightly, and we cried for a long time.
That night, I surrendered to sleep in my childhood bed, surrounded by my school books, my sister’s and my old stories, and a few of our toys. The cold was biting, my bones trembled, but my heart was warm as burning wood.
I think in my bed: Our lives were stolen away —not just our homes and loved ones, but entire years of our existence.
The First Morning in Damascus
I looked out the window I had dreamed of for years at an old church and a mosque, a palm tree heavy with tender red fruit, a garden, and Damascene rooftops now covered with solar panels—the only power source for families who could afford them.
By the window, I reclaimed my memory, my life. Time has changed. And many of those I once knew are no longer alive.
My mother took me to Old Damascus on my first day. This had always been our path—my mother’s and mine. We shopped, we drank coffee, we walked endlessly under the ancient ceiling of Souq Al-Hamidiyah. Between the pigeons of Khan As’ad Pasha, we sat in silence.
What could be said about everything that had happened? Nothing.
For moments, I felt joy—before the weight of destruction, cruelty, and poverty crept back in. Hunger had faces in Damascus—faces sculpted by years of siege, deprivation, and oppression, skin sunken over fragile bones.
But dignity had faces in Damascus too—in the will to continue living, in the hope clinging to justice, in the love that embraced those returning from forced exile.
I inhaled the scent of Damascus—a mixture of diesel smoke, car exhaust, spices, and tea.
That night, I did not sleep lightly. The city’s pain weighed on me, and I cried for all I had lost.
With each passing day, the cold seeped deeper into me. With water and electricity available for two hours a day, life seemed harsher than one could ever imagine.
A New Chapter
For the past eight years, I have worked with feminist organizations supporting Syrian women, documenting the violations they endured under the weight of war and the suffocating grip of patriarchy. The war has weighed most heavily on women’s lives.
But they persevered.
Even after bombings, displacement, exile and imprisonment, Syrian women kept fighting.
When the regime finally fell, I felt that everything we had worked for had meaning.
I did not come to Damascus for a personal journey only. I came to meet women recently freed from prison, to document their stories. To ask: What fuels their bravery? To explore the stigma they face after their release and to witness firsthand how our partner, Women Now for Development, is supporting them.
Malak, who was released on the day of Assad’s regime collapse, shared her story with me. She had been imprisoned for six months. One night, while walking with her 11-year-old son, a car carrying armed men approached them. They arrested her in front of him and left him alone in the street.
Malak was taken to a cell and faced numerous accusations. As a lawyer, she had been working with a Syrian organization based outside the country, documenting corruption and illegal practices by judges under Assad’s regime. During her six months in detention, she endured severe conditions and mistreatment.
Yet, when she was finally released, she emerged stronger—determined to continue her work despite the stigma and isolation imposed by society. And despite the darkness, I see hope in her face.
Hope?
I asked myself over and over in Damascus: what does hope mean? Is there a reason to hold on to it?
I realized—we have no other choice. What else do we have but hope to keep us alive?
Last night in Damascus
I pack my bag at night, between my mother and father, on the woolen rug, near a small diesel heater. I chose my favorite book by Isabel Allende, Of Love and Shadows, to take back with me to Berlin.
In that book, I first learned about mass graves— which was shocking to me at the time. I never expected that one day, I would walk in my beautiful city over mass graves, graves that might hold the bones of my school friends, and children who never had the chance to know the taste of bread and thyme.
My mother murmurs to herself:
"Like a dream... You coming home was like a dream."
I open the last page of Of Love and Shadows and read:
"In the golden light of dawn, they paused to look at their homeland for the last time.
Irene whispered:
"Will we return?"
Francisco replied:
"We will return."
"And this word would shape their destiny for the years to come:" "We will return. We will return."
Zeina Kanawati has been in exile due to her activism and work in support of Syrian women's rights against Al-Assad's regime. She is now a Senior Communications Officer at Women for Women International.