Assad is gone. However can Syrians go dwelling?

GAZIANTEP, Turkey — After greater than a decade in exile, Syrians all over the world are asking themselves a as soon as unthinkable query: Is it lastly time to go dwelling?

When the civil conflict broke out in 2011, thousands and thousands fled Syria. No nation took in additional refugees than neighboring Turkey, which opened its doorways to almost 3 million Syrians, based on the U.N. refugee company.

However that welcome has in some instances worn skinny. In recent times, many Syrians say they’ve felt more and more solid out of Turkish society — blamed for the nation’s financial troubles and handled as scapegoats in political discourse.

Nonetheless, many stayed. Some needed to stay near dwelling. Others believed their exile could be quick.

A number of weeks of ready turned months. Then years. At a sure level, the concept of returning started to really feel unattainable.

That modified in December 2024, when President Bashar al-Assad fell from energy: After 24 years, his regime collapsed in a matter of days. The door to a brand new period creaked open.

Now, with a transitional authorities in place, hope is stirring — however so is worry. Greater than half 1,000,000 Syrians have returned, based on the U.N. refugee company. However going again requires a leap of religion.

Sectarian violence has flared in current months. Sanctions are beginning to carry, reconnecting Syria with the worldwide economic system, however roads, railways and houses stay in ruins. Years of battle have decimated primary companies. Electrical energy and water are nonetheless unreliable in lots of areas. And doubts persist about Syria’s interim chief, Ahmed al-Sharaa, who was as soon as linked to al-Qaida.

So how are Syrians weighing the dangers of return? Can dwelling ever actually be dwelling once more after such devastation — after family and friends have been tortured or killed, after childhood houses have been looted or destroyed?

NPR spoke with 4 Syrians and their households in southern Turkey, every standing at a crossroads.

After leaving one life behind, are they ready to do it yet again?

Adham Aljamous, 32. “Your dreams are just dreams.”

An economics scholar, 32-year-old Adham Aljamous speaks extra like a poet.

“Even the things you hate,” he says, “once you’re forced to leave your home — you start to love and miss.”

From the rooftop he shares together with his mother and father in Gaziantep, a metropolis in southeastern Turkey close to the Syrian border, Aljamous leafs by a plastic bag of outdated household images — one of many few issues his household carried once they fled Syria in 2014.

The pictures seize golden afternoons and household gatherings overflowing with meals — the form of recollections, he says, that solely grew sweeter in exile.

The household got here to Turkey after his older brother Tamam, who ran a humanitarian group in Syria’s capital of Damascus, was focused by the Assad regime. The household thought they’d be gone for a couple of weeks. That was 11 years in the past.

Aljamous nonetheless has one other 12 months of faculty earlier than ending his grasp’s at a college in Gaziantep.

However he says the query he as soon as requested — will I ever return? — has shifted. Now it is how, and at what price?

“When the circumstances are suitable,” he says, “there will be a return to homeland. Inshallah,” God keen.

However appropriate is a excessive bar. Cities are shattered. Infrastructure is unreliable. And whereas the USA and Europe are lifting most sanctions on Syria, the economic system is a catastrophe.

It is nonetheless unclear what sort of chief Sharaa will form as much as be within the coming months, and years.

None of that deters Aljamous.

“When the regime was in control,” he says of the previous authoritarian Assad authorities, “I would have followed the devil if it meant overthrowing them. They were worse than the devil.”

He is prepared to present Sharaa an opportunity.

However when requested about specifics, he admits he would not have any set plans but for his return.

He appears down at his ft, and quietly reveals his largest worry — going again to a rustic he barely acknowledges.

“Sometimes, I just sit and try to think who’s left [in Syria] — literally no one from my friends. I don’t know anyone there. So if I go back, I think it’s going to be a big problem for me,” he says.

“Your dreams are just dreams.”

Bushra and Hasan. Surviving the revolution, however dwelling with ghosts 

In a special nook of Gaziantep, a pair is navigating comparable questions, with recollections formed by conflict, and a relationship solid within the struggle in opposition to it.

Bushra Ajaj and Hasan Ajam, each 35, met within the early days of the rebellion.

She was a college scholar organizing protests. He was a part of the identical underground community. They shared a mission and, ultimately, a life.

“We met through the revolution,” Ajaj says, smiling. “We survived it together.”

Right this moment, they reside in Gaziantep with their two younger kids. The new Syrian flag hangs of their lounge — a logo of each delight and ache.

Each have been arrested for his or her activism. Each misplaced family and friends. They fled Syria greater than a decade in the past, and have every returned briefly since Assad’s fall.

Neither one acknowledged the nation they left.

“I visited Syria twice,” Ajam says. “But I haven’t stepped inside my old house.”

Right this moment, Ajam works with the Caesar Households Affiliation, a gaggle searching for justice for many who disappeared in regime prisons in Syria. The group is called after a forensic photographer, recognized by the pseudonym Caesar, who smuggled out greater than 55,000 images documenting torture and loss of life earlier than fleeing to the U.S. in 2013.

5 years in the past, Ajam recognized his brother’s physique in a type of images — affirmation of what his household had lengthy feared. Now, he is decided to return to Syria to seek out the place the place his brother was buried.

For Bushra Ajaj, returning in April meant dealing with ghosts of her personal. Her household dwelling was in ruins. However what shattered her most was seeing her college once more — the location of so many protests, and of her finest pal’s loss of life

“I cried so much,” she says. “The memories just came back.”

Their kids, born in Turkey, communicate Turkish extra fluently than Arabic.

“Sometimes I think it’s good,” Ajaj says. “They feel at home here.” However the considered shifting to Syria raises new fears. “What if they feel like strangers there?”

In the event that they ever return for good, Ajaj hopes it will not be to her tiny, broken village. Perhaps it will be town of Aleppo, in northwestern Syria. Perhaps someplace new. Someplace they will construct contemporary recollections.

Ahmad al-Taleb: Betting every thing on Aleppo

One man who’s already made his choice is Ahmad al-Taleb.

A 33-year-old civil engineer — and part-time occasion clown — from Aleppo, Taleb fled Syria in 2014 after ISIS took over his metropolis.

On the time, he was documenting human rights violations, work that put him and his household in danger. His brother was arrested. Taleb fled to Turkey.

Since then, he is constructed a life in Gaziantep — studied, married, launched an organization, and have become a father.

However in October, when his lease is up, he and his spouse Sahar, together with their 3-year-old son Kamal, will pack their issues and return to Aleppo for good.

“I feel much safer now,” Taleb says, sipping juice constructed from oranges his mom picked in Latakia, alongside Syria’s Mediterranean coast. “I’m afraid, of course. But I’m also optimistic. It’s time to rebuild.”

Taleb is underneath no illusions. Aleppo remains to be in ruins. Rents are hovering. Companies are patchy.

Sahar, who by no means completed college, hopes to renew her research, however there isn’t any assure she’ll have the ability to.

“Still,” Taleb says, “we belong to Syria. Turkey is our second home, but it’s not where we belong.”

He remembers the euphoria of Assad’s fall final 12 months, which he and Sahar watched unfold from their sofa into the early hours of the evening. Feeling stressed watching the celebrations unfold in Damascus on their TV display, Taleb bought in his automobile and drove straight to the capital metropolis.

When he bought there, he was overcome with a mixture of jubilation and agony.

Reminiscences got here flooding again of the massacres he documented. Associates misplaced. Airstrikes he noticed kill harmless girls and youngsters.

“It was a mix of feelings. Victory and grief.”

Armed with a giant smile, Taleb says he is protecting a constructive thoughts in regards to the future. He believes within the promise of the transitional authorities, and in his function as a civil engineer in rebuilding Syria.

“I just hope my son never asks me, ‘Why did you take us back?'” he says. “But if he grows up where he belongs, maybe one day he’ll understand.”

Mohammed Jamil Alshammary. Dwelling is asking — however is his household prepared?

On the eve of a visit to Damascus, Mohammed Jamil Alshammary is virtually giddy — reciting couplets aloud.

“Like up high in the glorious skies, my angel’s heart shyly lies. To her so sweet, celestial sound brought me down to the ground.”

At 44, Alshammary is a seasoned interpreter and literature buff who’s labored in boardrooms from Geneva to Paris, translating for presidents and humanitarian leaders alike.

He quotes the linguist Noam Chomsky, references the film The Hours, and casually drops George Michael lyrics into the dialog.

Regardless of job gives in Canada and Europe, he selected to remain in Turkey for the previous 15 years for his household.

“My wife didn’t want our daughters raised in a foreign culture,” he says. “Turkey felt closer to home.”

Now, Alshammary says he is prepared to assist rebuild Syria, albeit cautiously.

“Security first. Then economy,” he says. “Even if I were paid $1,000 a day in Damascus — if it’s not safe, I won’t bring my family there.”

Alshammary is aware of the challenges that await him. Rents in Damascus have skyrocketed due to housing shortages. His kids, fluent in Turkish, danger cultural displacement in the event that they return.

“I’m middle class,” he says. “What about the rest? Most Syrians can’t afford rent or tuition.”

Nonetheless, he says he is able to carry one foot again into Syria, the place he hopes to open a translation company in Damascus.

“We must not clone the past,” he says. “No more corruption. No more exclusion.”

This story was supported by a grant from the Pulitzer Heart.

Mahmoud Al Basha contributed reporting from Gaziantep, Turkey.