This weekend brought the extraordinary news from Syria that rebel forces had successfully reached the capital and toppled the Assad regime. Social media spread news of freed prisoners, toppled statues and fleeing officials.
As I read these reports, my mind immediately went to the summer of 2020, when we published interviews with a number of Syrians living as refugees in Lebanon. Their profiles were diverse—a precocious young saxophonist, a mother learning a trade, a photographer unable to attend his parent’s funeral—but the precariousness of living in exile was evident in each of their stories, even as they drew on strength and ingenuity to forge a path forward.
“In Aleppo, our old traditional house, not far from the citadel, would swarm with people all the time; but that was long before the war,” said Mona Zeitani, one of those interviewed. “I had never realized how beautiful it looked until we left for Lebanon.”
The brutality of the Assad regime and the civil war it prompted has brought extraordinary suffering to millions. More than 12 million people are currently displaced, including over 6 million living as refugees and asylum-seekers. The magnitude is hard to fathom. So too is the overwhelming impact of these events on each of the individuals whose lives, plans and aspirations were transformed as a result of the conflict.
In her essay for Stranger’s Guide on the experiences of Syrians living in the Zata’ari refugee camp in Jordan, Zarlasht Halaimzai notes:
War tests ordinary people in a way that is not useful for everyday life. Very few skills learned when trying to survive a conflict such as those in Afghanistan or Syria add value to your life if you make it out alive and end up working in a foreign city. Normal life has little space for ruthless pragmatism, detachment and sporadic bursts of extreme emotion. It demands a degree of nuance that is pointless in wartime.
Below are stories from normal people who had to learn such wartime skills, several among the millions whose lives were irrevocably upended.
What lies ahead is murky and uncertain, but clearly Syrians are now facing a new chapter. I continue to think of people like photographer Ammar Abed Rabbo who promised, “If I had to do it again, I would do the exact same thing again. I believe in change, and I am sure that one day I will return to Damascus, and a free city it will be!”
I hope his certainty may be rewarded and that he and his fellow countrymen will have an opportunity for a safe return.
—Abby Rapoport
“Voices in Exile” from Stranger’s Guide: Mediterranean
Ahmad Alsaleh
Social worker
The scariest moments were at sea, and in the Libyan desert—after six hours, the driver got lost. When we got out of the vehicle, hyenas started approaching us. They’re used to eating humans out there.
I’d been living in Damascus, Syria, working with the Ministry of Agriculture at a training center for farmers—particularly aimed at helping women in the countryside start their own projects.
During the civil war, I started providing information to the government in exile, passing information to news channels like Al Jazeera and the BBC and helping displaced people from Homs find medical assistance—which the Assad regime considered to be working against the government. I was jailed for six months as a political prisoner, but they interrogated me numerous times, found nothing against me and eventually let me go. This was in 2012. I ended up living on a farm for a year and a half, but it was too dangerous, and I knew I had to leave Syria.
My father found a general in the army who, for $3,000, got me a passport and took me to the border with Lebanon. Through a Facebook group for Syrian dissidents, I found the phone number of a trafficker in Zuwara, Libya, which is where most of the boats leave for Italy. If you don’t get to Zuwara, you don’t pay, so traffickers have to make sure we make it. We crossed the border from Algeria to Tunisia illegally, then crossed into Libya, where the coast guard started to shoot at us. The journey from Algeria had taken eight days, and there were loads of cars with dead bodies inside. In Libya, one of the traffickers stole our mobile phones at gunpoint.
You normally have to wait up to 15 days in Zuwara for the boat to cross the Mediterranean, but one was ready to take us the next day. I paid $2,300 for the boat trip. It was an 8-meter- long fishing boat, and there were 320 of us—Syrians, Africans, Pakistanis. The Syrians paid $400 each for a life jacket; the others couldn’t afford them.
I put my identification documents and $3,000 in cash in my underwear. After a few hours, we had to throw our food in the water because people were fighting for it and we thought the boat would sink.
The trip was supposed to take 12–14 hours, but it took three days. After nine hours, [the boat] stopped in the middle of the sea because there was a problem with the engine. It should have been the scariest moment but I couldn’t feel anything; it was like a dream.
Our boat didn’t make it to Italy. On the third day, two Zodiac inflatable boats operated by activists approached and said we were still in Libyan waters, so they pushed us for two hours into Italian waters, [where] we boarded a larger boat that was guarding oil wells. That ship took us to Sicily.
Taym Safsafi
Student, as told to Action for Hope
When I first came to Lebanon, I was four years old. I am from Sahnaya in Syria, and I now live in Zahle. I attend the Maksa public secondary school. I was at the age of 10 when I got accepted to the Action for Hope music program. My father wanted to run this prank on me. He came home and said to me, “Unfortunately, you weren’t accepted.” I was very sad then. I told him that I wanted to be part of the school, but he didn’t respond. He then went to bed and forgot to tell me he was teasing me. When he got up, I asked him if I could apply again. He realized that he forgot to tell me he was joking. When I knew I was accepted, I could not believe it. I started jumping and dancing from joy.
I felt the lessons were difficult when we first started, theories and history of music, which was a bit difficult. Additionally, as you can imagine, I was a little shy at the beginning before I got more comfortable, started making friends and getting closer to the teachers. With time, things got easier. At first, they teach you all the instruments, and then you are required to choose one as your major. I chose the saxophone.
We went on to perform in several Lebanese areas. We played in major venues in Beirut, such as Metro al Madina, Zoukak and the Sunflower Theatre. The concerts in Beirut were especially wonderful. When I see the audience engaging and applauding us, I feel happy in a way that is indescribable, which is reflected in my performance. Sometimes my parents’ friends ask me to play my saxophone at their parties. When I do that, I hear them exclaiming “Praised be!” in admiration.
After studying, I was able to play oud, saxophone, accordion and different percussion instruments such as the tambourine and derbake (and, to a lesser extent, the buquq). The one I love the most, however, is the saxophone, probably because my dad always loved learning it and because I’ve always listened to it on YouTube. I communicate with a professional saxophone player via WhatsApp and I learn through video.
My father and I practice all the time.
In recent months, we were supposed to go to Norway and play with a Norwegian band. I was so sad because I could not travel—we did not get the visas.
Mona Zeitani
Embroiderer and fabric printer, as told to Patricia Khoder
I remember my loneliness when I arrived here in Lebanon. I stayed for over a year, getting lost in the streets, without neighbors, almost without going out. I was afraid of everything: afraid to talk to people, afraid to take a taxi. I was frozen by fear. I didn’t dare leave my house, [which] was very different from our family home in Aleppo. I was alone and scared, and I couldn’t afford to do anything. I couldn’t even send my elder daughters to school.
And then we moved to a house that was closer to town. I plucked up the courage and joined the NGOs that give courses to women to help them learn a trade. I found one that taught embroidery and printing on fabrics, and the teacher thought I was gifted and encouraged me. She, too, was from Aleppo, also a refugee like me, but she was a great artist. Things were easier for her than for me.
In Aleppo, our old traditional house, not far from the citadel, would swarm with people all the time; but that was long before the war. I had never realized how beautiful it looked until we left for Lebanon. I remember the inner courtyard and its hexagonal fountain and how people waited to see my mother-in-law, who was an embroiderer. My husband had a sewing shop. He made a good living. Aleppo is the city of crafts, traditions and good food. Aleppo is the city of all flavors. A saying that comes directly from Aleppo is: “when you have a craft in your hand, you will never go hungry.” Today, I realize how true this is, because it is in my exile that I learned to work with my hands.
When I was in Aleppo, I never learned the Aghabani technique. I remember when I stood in front of a sewing machine for the first time in Lebanon. It came right away. I think it was thanks to my mother-in-law, whom I used to watch working, that I learned the technique. I also learned the technique of printing on fabrics. I even set up an NGO, “Our Story,” with two other Syrian women, and so far we are successful in selling our products.
Before coming to Lebanon, I had never worked; I didn’t need to. My husband provided everything. He had always made a good living. After we left, things got very difficult financially. My husband found work, but everything was so expensive. When I started working, things got a little better. It was weird at first to realize that I was bringing money home. Today, my husband is sick. Diabetes made him lose his sight. He can no longer work and so I, alone, am the breadwinner of the house; I pay the rent and the subscription to electricity and the internet.
Ammar Abed Rabbo
Professional photographer, as told to Patricia Khoder
All the mothers where I come from say to their children, “Ya To’borneh,” which literally means in English: “I wish that you’d bury me,” and which actually means “I love you so much that I want you to be there when I die.” Ironically, when my mother died and when she was buried, I was not present.
The day of the funeral was a Sunday. I spent my day walking up and down the seafront in Beirut, going back and forth and thinking about that phrase you say to people you truly love: “Ya To’borneh.” Well, I wasn’t there. Death only happens once; you can’t postpone it, it doesn’t wait. And when my mother died, I was in exile and missed the rendezvous.
That day, my wife had come from Paris; she was afraid I would leave for Damascus and put my life at risk.
I had simply chosen my side, and I had chosen the taste of freedom. When Bashar al Assad succeeded his father in 2000, it was like an air of Glasnost blowing upon Syria, and we nearly believed it. But a few years later, we realized that things will not change. With the March 2011 revolution, I immediately chose my camp.
I remember my last time in Damascus: it was in April 2011. The city was in a feverish state. We could feel the winds of change coming, and we really believed it. I remember one evening on this last trip, as I was walking around, I met a group of friends in town. We knew we were the witnesses of history. One of them, a childhood friend, told me that “perhaps this is the last time we will meet. Perhaps we will have to leave, that we will be forced into exile.” I found what he was saying weird, almost impossible. Funny enough, today I live between Beirut and Paris and he emigrated to Australia.
I was born in Damascus, but I left Syria very early, when I was two years old. My father was a journalist, and we moved with him to Libya, then to Lebanon and then to France. I was 12 years old when we left Beirut for Paris.
We left Lebanon under the bombs in 1978. I remember that, too. But circumstances dictated that I would return there after 2011 by settling in Beirut. Before the war in Syria, I lived in Paris and traveled to Damascus five to seven times a year. In my exile, I live between Paris and Beirut, because it is more convenient for work and the Lebanese capital is closer to Syria, physically speaking… even if I cannot go there.
I managed though to go to Aleppo several times, crossing the border on the Turkish side. I spent time with the rebels and took a lot of pictures. I published a book about it: Alep A Elles Eux Paix. I set up several exhibitions, including one at the Beiteddine festival in Lebanon, entitled “Syria, My Country that No Longer Exists.”
Damascus is to me the scent of jasmine, a scent I haven’t smelled anywhere else in the world. Damascus triggers in me sensual memories such as the taste of fresh licorice syrup or that of milk cream and gum Arabic ice cream.
In Damascus, as everywhere else in Syria, you cannot but feel the sense of history. The city is so old that if one of its dwellers told you they had run into Saladin the day before, you’d believe it. I don’t think I could ever live in a place that doesn’t have a touch of history.
When you live in exile, no matter how successful your life is, there will always be someone who will remind you that you are a foreigner, that “you are not from here.” Always. For example, this happened to me recently in Lebanon with the uprising in October 2019. I was so eager about this movement that I pitched a tent in downtown Beirut, where I displayed the photos I took of the demonstrators. Many said to me, “but what do you have to do with this revolution? You are not Lebanese.”
I have no regrets. If I had to do it again, I would do the exact same thing again. I believe in change, and I am sure that one day I will return to Damascus, and a free city it will be!
In my life, I have chosen freedom, always.
