When Zaher raised the Syrian flag in Antarctica last December, he was not yet aware that, some 8,000 miles away, a revolution was culminating in his native Syria.
Zaher recalls that upon learning that President Bashar al-Assad had fled to Russia and the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) rebel group had stormed into Damascus, he felt cautiously hopeful, sailing among the icebergs.
“Of course, I was happy for my people, because Assad’s terror was over,” he told me from his kitchen in Denver, Colorado, in March. Suddenly, while sprinkling zaatar onto flatbread, his face darkened. “But I still feel concerned. Very concerned. None of us know if what comes after Assad will be any better. We are a very diverse people. So, we want — and we deserve — democracy that represents all of us, not just some of us. Syrians don’t want theocracy.”
His main worry? That Syria’s new president, Ahmad al-Sharaa, ends up being a bearded version of Assad. In other words, a different side of the same authoritarian coin.
He’s not alone. As part of Syria’s Druze community — a religious minority in the Middle East — Zaher is among many who worry that, even with Assad gone, conflict still lies ahead. For the Druze diaspora now living abroad, peace still feels like a pipe dream. Fresh violence between armed Druze men and the new government, blood being spilled along the coast and Israel vying for control of the Druze-majority south — each headline pushes the dream of returning to Syria further out of reach. People like Zaher are starting to wonder, even post-Assad, if their long-overdue homecoming isn’t just delayed, but doomed.
Civil war erupted in 2011, and Zaher bid farewell to his beloved Syria two years later, in 2013. After stints in Qatar and then Poland, he eventually wound up in the United States after falling in love with an American woman at a wine bar where he was working in Warsaw.
Since coming to Colorado as a refugee, Zaher has done many notable things. He found work as an Amazon delivery driver, bought a food truck in the hope of starting his own Syrian-style catering business one day, and then found different work selling high-end wine. He also married the aforementioned American woman, became a naturalized U.S. citizen, raised two Australian shepherds and has had far-flung travel opportunities that have taken him to Greenland, Argentina and Antarctica, to name but a few.
But for all his colorful experiences since fleeing Syria more than a decade ago, there’s one thing he still hasn’t done: gone back.
“February marked 13 years since I last saw my mother,” he told me.
Nibbling zaatar bread in Zaher’s kitchen in March also marked five years of us knowing each other. We met in March 2020, in the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic and Denver’s citywide 8 p.m. curfew, imposed to curb mass demonstrations protesting the murder of George Floyd. Zaher, then at Amazon, delivered a package to my house. I happened to be sitting outside, and so we struck up a conversation.
Initially, Zaher seemed reluctant to disclose where he was from — largely because, while working at Amazon, he was often subject to racist name-calling, like “Baghdadi” and “Bin Laden.” Eventually, however, he told me he was from the Middle East; more specifically, Syria.
Seeing my interest in his country, and in line with true Levantine hospitality, Zaher invited me to his home for dinner. For some reason, I accepted. Five years later, our lives remain intertwined.
Since meeting Zaher, I’ve been needling him to go back to Syria, with the caveat that I join him. But for most of that time, Assad clung on to power. It was this — as well as the deep uncertainty inherent in any conflict zone — that kept Zaher away.
“You never know with Assad. Maybe you go, and it’s fine. Maybe you go, and end up in Sednaya,” he once told me, referring to the regime’s infamous prison nicknamed the “human slaughterhouse.”
Yet everything changed last December. With Assad’s key allies Iran and Russia busy with Israel and Ukraine, respectively, the rebels seized their chance. Within days, major cities began falling to the rebels — first Aleppo, then Hama, and soon Homs, before they finally took Damascus, forcing Assad to flee to Moscow.
As these headlines were emerging, I happened to be housesitting for Zaher while he and his wife, Dana, were on their Antarctic cruise. A few weeks later, I picked them up from the Denver airport and asked, once again, if he’d be willing to go back, given that Assad was finally gone.
“Maybe,” he chewed his lip, looking out the window. “It’s still too early to say.”
Zaher, a Druze, hails from Sweida in the country’s south. He was among others I spoke to from Syria’s Druze community who’ve been living in self-imposed exile as refugees abroad, harboring cautious optimism that, after Assad, a visit home to see family would be more feasible and less risky.
Dima and Tala Wahbi are two such people facing a similar dilemma. Twin sisters who are also Druze from the south, they both emigrated from Syria roughly a year after Zaher did.
“We went to Amman,” Dima told me last year, when I met her in Jordan. The pair returned home twice during the war to see relatives who had stayed behind. “The uncertainty of Assad made both trips stressful,” she said. “There was also the threat of Daesh [the Islamic State group], which was an equal stress for Tala and I.”
Like Zaher, the Wahbi sisters held wary hopes for the prospects of the new, post-Assad Syria. Still skeptical of al-Sharaa and his group’s hard-line roots, the Wahbis decided to “wait it out” and “see how the situation evolved” before committing to a visit back.
January passed. They saw reports of mass celebrations on the streets, burnings of propaganda posters of Assad and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, celebratory feasts, dancing in Damascus.
Then came February. Things, again, seemed stable, even hopeful.
“I was feeling like I was missing out,” Dima recalled. “Everyone seemed to be so happy and celebrating.”
That is, until an Israeli flag appeared at the Ankoud roundabout near the Wahbi family home in Sweida. It’s unclear who hoisted the flag, which was promptly pulled down and burned by residents.
For the Wahbis, as well as Zaher, it suddenly complicated everything.
“We saw the video, and I looked at Tala and was like, ‘We cannot go back. Not if the Israelis are coming,’” she said.
Ever since, Druze-majority areas in Syria have been taut with tension. Gunfights, reportedly between Druze and members of Syria’s new transitional government, have broken out in the Damascus suburb of Jaramana. Meanwhile, whispers of Israeli-backed fighters intentionally destabilizing the new government abound. All the while, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to “protect” Syria’s Druze — drawing ire from local activists, who accuse Netanyahu of using them as political pawns “to justify stealing more Arab land” — which has added to the mounting suspicion among Syria’s Druze that Israel is angling for control of huge swaths of the south. Now, a new armed group — calling themselves the “sons of the south” — has emerged, pledging to resist Israeli expansion at all costs.
“Home used to be so safe,” Dima told me. “I wonder if it ever will be again.”
Primarily concentrated in the Sweida governorate of southern Syria, the Druze community has taken a page out of Switzerland’s playbook, maintaining neutrality throughout most conflicts. Generally speaking, Syria’s Druze were neither fully aligned with Assad nor allied to opposition or jihadist groups during the Syrian civil war.
“We weren’t really on either side,” Dima told me over WhatsApp after Assad fell. “We just wanted the violence to be over.”
The Druze religion and, by extension, the Druze people permeate the Levant and have done so for over 1,000 years. The religion has origins in a branch of Islam, though Druze do not generally identify as Muslims today. In fact, the Druze faith is a philosophical amalgam of Christianity, Ismailism, gnosticism, Hinduism and even Buddhism.
“We are a unique religion,” Zaher explained. “We don’t have holy days or fasting, like Islam and Christianity.”
As an Abrahamic faith, however, the Druze do revere many of the Muslim, Christian, and Jewish prophets: Jesus, Muhammad, John the Baptist, Moses and Khidr, for instance. They also strongly esteem a number of ancient Greek philosophers, including Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and even Alexander the Great. The Druze’s most revered figure, however, is Moses’ father-in-law, Jethro.
At a bus station near Jaramana in March, I met Rami al-Talhouni. A Druze poet “in between jobs,” who spoke stellar English complete with a slight British accent, he revealed a bit about his somewhat secretive faith.
He admitted that, at least in terms of official religious tenets, the Druze are a private people.
“We believe in God,” he began, while waiting for his bus. “We also believe in reincarnation. In our religion, a Druze soul only reincarnates into another Druze body. This continues and continues until the soul is ready.”
“Ready for?” I asked.
“Ready to join God,” he replied. He also added that if a Druze soul is not ready to unify with the divine, it goes to China. Before I could ask why, al-Talhouni’s bus, headed south, arrived. He gave me an incomplete WhatsApp number and told me to send him the article when it came out.
Another interesting feature of the Druze faith is that, since 1043, it has rejected converts. Similarly, interfaith marriage is all but forbidden. As far as holy books go, the Druze enjoy a religious charcuterie board, so to speak; they draw from both the Old and New Testaments, the Quran, the works of Plato and their own scripture, “The Epistles of Wisdom.”
It is, generally, a pluralistic religion void of any evangelical undertones. Again, that’s because the Druze faith, which accepts no converts, is seclusive.
There are an estimated 700,000 Druze in Syria, in addition to some 230,000 in Lebanon, 25,000 in Jordan and roughly 150,000, by the last count, in Palestine-Israel, where most, despite being Arab, hold Israeli citizenship. The situation is more complicated in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights — a majority-Druze area — where most of the residents, who consider themselves Syrian, have repeatedly rejected offers of Israeli citizenship.
Israel’s Druze make for an interesting ethnic and religious dynamic. Druze men have been conscripted into the Israeli army since 1957. And while Druze make up less than 2% of both the Israeli population and military, they have the highest rate of enlistment, with 80% signing up, often for combat units.
The particular place of the Druze within Israel has led Netanyahu to try and leverage the connection with the community in Syria, justifying incursions and attacks as “defending” the Druze beyond Israel’s borders. There are, of course, numerous other reasons for Israel to seek control of territory in southern Syria, including control of the region’s water supplies and as a bargaining chip in future negotiations.
Regardless of his true intentions, what Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz have been saying about Syria’s Druze is largely incongruent with what the Druze themselves are saying.
Al-Talhouni, during our brief conversation, described his reaction to Netanyahu and Katz instructing the Israeli army to “prepare to defend” the Druze-majority suburb of Jaramana in March, where he was born and raised and now lives.
“That is just bullshit,” he practically growled. “Ask me. Ask my brothers, my sisters, my father, my uncles — none of us want to be a part of Israel. We are Syrians. We are not Israelis. And we never will be.”
Since Assad’s ouster, Israel has been emboldened in its encroachment deeper into Syria. At a military ceremony in February, Netanyahu said, “We demand the complete demilitarization of southern Syria, including the Quneitra, Daraa and Sweida provinces.”
The Israeli military wasted little time after Assad fell, seizing a shared buffer zone between the two countries on the Syrian side of the border. Initially, Israel told the world that its presence in southern Syria’s buffer zone was merely temporary, as well as a necessary national security measure. Katz, however, has since said that troops will remain in the area’s nine army posts within the region “indefinitely.” Syrians in the south responded by protesting en masse. Demonstrators demanded an immediate withdrawal of Israeli forces from the buffer zone.
It’s clear that Israel sees the Druze as a convenient political piece of a wider jigsaw puzzle. Netanyahu has tried to exploit the ethnic and religious link between the Israeli Druze and those in Syria. Reports claim that Israel is drafting a pilot program to allow Syrian Druze to work in Israeli towns in the Golan Heights, particularly in the construction and agriculture sectors.
Alongside this attempt to justify encroachment, Israel is also using brute force. Eyewitnesses have reported to several local Syrian outlets that, on an almost daily basis, shepherds in Quneitra are targeted by the Israeli army. Their livestock are either confiscated or killed. Reports have been published alleging that Israeli soldiers have killed entire flocks of sheep and goats — which, if true, hurts Syrian farmers’ ability to make a living, especially in a grim, war-ravaged economy kneecapped by international sanctions.
The Israeli military is also reportedly partnering with various Israeli tour companies, offering Israeli tourists private visits to occupied Syrian territory over Passover.
“If that is true,” al-Talhouni had told me, “it is like giving a big middle finger to the local population.”
Having captured additional Syrian land, Israel has built on Israel’s existing occupation of the Golan Heights, which is illegal under international law, despite being officially (and wildly controversially) recognized by President Donald Trump’s administration during his first term in office.
But Israeli troops aren’t just encroaching on territory or slaughtering local shepherds’ livestock — they’re also killing civilians. Since December, Israeli aggression in Syria has killed at least 29 civilians and one Syrian soldier, according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights. Israeli drone and artillery strikes have also wounded more than 60 others.
I had dinner with Zaher and Dana in December, a few days before they headed south, en route to Antarctica. That night, Zaher seemed preoccupied, even tense. While he was in another room, Dana explained that Zaher’s family was subject to daily Israeli airstrikes. Zaher, she said, had been waking up every morning “wondering if his family was still alive.”
Interestingly, Israel’s incursions — likely emboldened by Trump’s return to power — have been met with, at best, tepid resistance from the new government in Damascus. Instead, President al-Sharaa has tried to tactfully de-escalate, likely aware that a full-blown conflict with Israel would hamper his attempts to consolidate his fractured country and perhaps hurt his larger ambitions of convincing international powers — namely the U.S. and European Union — to lift sanctions.
“We do not want any conflict with Israel or any other party, and we will not allow Syria to become a platform for attacks,” he said in December, in the wake of Israel’s first round of bombings. “The Syrian people need a period of stability. Therefore, the strikes must stop, and they should withdraw.”
While al-Sharaa’s hands-off approach is understandable, the lack of resistance to Israel has created a vacuum in southern Syria, including among Druze communities. So far, efforts to deter the Israeli forces have been organized as grassroots, sporadic clusters that locals refer to as “fazaa.” Fighters, mostly young men, have armed themselves with small arms and handguns in an attempt to fend off Israeli troops.
I was told by several people in Damascus’ southern suburbs — all of whom requested anonymity — that Israeli forces have been threatening civilians, warning many of them not to speak with local or international media.
“It isn’t surprising that some of our boys are fighting back,” one woman told me. “It’s self-defense.”
Israeli airstrikes have hammered several parts of the south, especially in Daraa. There, protesters coalesced on April 3, honoring the 10 Syrians killed in Israeli bombings by chanting “martyrs of freedom,” as well as “martyrs of Gaza” — referring to Israel’s simultaneous and ongoing killings of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, which are regarded by many experts and nongovernmental organizations as part of a genocide.
Within southern Syria, including in areas mostly inhabited by Druze, a new armed group initially calling itself “Jabhat Tahrir al-Janoub” (the “Southern Liberation Front”) announced its formation on Jan. 9 via the Telegram messaging service. According to the group, it was formed as a direct response to “the Israeli occupation’s advance into our lands in southern Syria — specifically in the governorates of Quneitra, Daraa and the western countryside of Damascus.”
Two days later, the group underwent a self-imposed makeover. It changed its name and logo, referring to itself instead as “Jabhat al-Muqawama al-Islamiya fi Suria — Uli al-Bas” (UAB), or the “Front of the Islamic Resistance in Syria — Those of Great Military Might.” The name change was “due to the existence of multiple fronts with the same name,” according to an official statement posted to Telegram. The new logo bears a strong resemblance to those of militias linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, including Lebanon’s Hezbollah. The phrase “those of great military might” — a quote from the Quran — has also featured in recent speeches by Hezbollah’s leader Naim Qassem.
The group, which emphasized that it “is not directed by any party, faction or state,” also referred to itself as “the sons of the south.” The Wahbi sisters mentioned that part of their ongoing postponement of traveling home is because of both Israeli aggression and the militant response it has sparked.
“Israeli bombs and now a new [militia] group. It makes the situation very unstable, which is why we’re not sure if we can go back, even though Assad is gone,” the sisters said.
Because of the influx of weaponry during the civil war, many Syrians are armed. As a result, people are defending themselves from Israel either independently or in small, poorly organized groups. UAB, on the other hand, appears to be the most organized — and explicitly political — resistance faction in southern Syria at the moment. On Jan. 13, it said it was sending light armored vehicles and fighters to Quneitra, Sweida, Daraa, Damascus and areas of nearby countryside. Then, four days later, it “officially” announced online “the launch of our military operations” against Israel’s presence in the south.
UAB’s first attack was posted online, on Telegram, on Jan. 24. According to the group, its fighters shot down an Israeli drone in the Tal al-Ahmar area, part of the countryside of Quneitra province.
A few weeks later, the group announced that two of its highest-ranked members — Mohannad al-Buqari and Mohammed Mansour — had been killed, supposedly by the Israelis.
A Syrian activist, Rabiah Mustafa Saliba, told me in Damascus that UAB represents a worrying political schism in Syria.
“We face Zionist occupation in the south. Druze men have been resisting this. So has [UAB]. But it is impossible to resist the Zionist forces if we are divided, and the Druze don’t seem totally interested in collaborating with al-Sharaa, and UAB is actually fighting al-Sharaa. So it is actually very bad,” she said.
This cycle is feeding itself, say analysts, because Israeli aggression begets armed resistance, which Israeli officials, in turn, use to justify even more aggression. For instance, a small group of young men who were fighting against Israeli incursions was struck by an Israeli drone on April 2. Ten were killed and upward of two dozen injured.
“The [Israeli army] is prepared to stay in Syria for an unlimited amount of time,” Katz said during a visit to a military outpost atop Syria’s Mount Hermon in late February. “We will hold the security area in Hermon and make sure that all the security zone in southern Syria is demilitarized and clear of weapons and threats.”
Back in Denver, Zaher told me that it feels like the revolution that began in 2011 is “incomplete, because nothing has really changed. Instead of Assad’s brutality, we have Israel’s brutality. Instead of the jihadists, we have [the new government]. Now there are these different militias popping up. I think, for my people, peace is still far away.”
Israel isn’t the only one facing armed resistance in Syria. So, too, are al-Sharaa and his new government.
Three different militia groups, each of which claimed allegiance to Iran’s “Axis of Resistance,” announced that they would be cooperating with UAB to fight the new government. The announcement came in the form of a video appearing online on Feb. 21. In the video, a masked man, who identified as Miqdad Fatiha, the commander of the newly established Liwa Dir al-Sahel — and, it should be mentioned, a known former army officer loyal to the Assad regime — said: “We hereby announce full cooperation and coordination [with UAB] in combating apostate terrorist organizations and the de facto government in Damascus until victory is achieved across all parts of the Syrian Arab Republic.”
The video was reposted by the UAB Telegram channel shortly thereafter. It also marked another shift: Beyond Israel, UAB was now taking aim at al-Sharaa’s new government as well.
In the days that followed, more content was posted online, including a video featuring around 25 fighters clad in both paramilitary and civilian clothes while brandishing a mix of weaponry, including rocket-propelled grenades.
As clashes between Assad loyalists and the new government erupted along the Syrian coast, particularly in Tartus and Latakia, UAB made another interesting claim on March 6: It was launching a joint operation, not against the Assadists, but against the new government.
“At this moment, the Islamic Resistance Front in Syria — Uli al-Bas and the Syrian Popular Resistance — Dir al-Sahil Forces are engaging and clashing with terrorist gangs on multiple fronts across the occupied Syrian Arab Republic,” the online statement read. Meanwhile, UAB also claimed it was launching simultaneous attacks against the Israeli army in Quneitra.
UAB and its apparent allies aren’t alone. In March, a separate group of Druze fighters clashed with government security forces in Jaramana. As a result, the new authorities — former HTS members — have set up a series of security checkpoints throughout many neighborhoods. Security in Jaramana was tighter than elsewhere in Damascus, I thought.
The skirmishes, reports have said, killed two security officers as Druze fighters took to the streets and rooftops. Al-Sharaa’s government, in response, gave the armed groups a five-day ultimatum to hand over their weapons and disband.
Sheikh Laith al-Balous, a prominent Druze leader, said in a public statement that the clashes were simply personal disputes, not an organized rebellion against the new government.
“The clashes in Jaramana did not start as a confrontation with public security forces; they began as a personal altercation,” he said. “We don’t need foreign guardianship. We seek a united Syria.”
His telling of events didn’t match what the Israelis were saying, however, which has led Fatinah Nasr Adil — a primary school teacher and frequent protester against the regime and against Israel, whom I met in Damascus’ Old City — to believe that the Israelis are intentionally trying to sow division online. Though this may sound conspiratorial, it isn’t far-fetched at all; Israel has been actively lobbying the Trump administration to keep Syria “weak.”
“You know, you see these headlines in the media saying that the Druze are being killed, or there is a genocide or whatever,” Adil told me. “The situation isn’t good, that’s true, but these things online aren’t true either. It is helping Netanyahu divide us.”
While sowing division among Syria’s Kurds may be slightly more challenging, especially after al-Sharaa struck a deal in March to integrate the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces into the official military, Israel still has its eyes on the Druze in Syria as it seeks to stoke internal resentment toward al-Sharaa’s new government. After the fighting in Jaramana simmered, both Netanyahu and Katz instructed their military to “protect the residents of Jaramana,” threatening the new government with military intervention if it were to harm the Druze community.
Not long after, a delegation of Druze elders from Sweida traveled to Jaramana. There, the group worked to mediate with security forces and dissolve tensions. As of now, these negotiations are ongoing, with the primary goal being the disarmament of local Druze groups and the establishment of a permanent security apparatus, in partnership with the new authorities, throughout Jaramana.
I asked Zaher after my trip what his take was. He told me that the delegation’s engagement with Syria’s new authorities is clear evidence that they don’t want Israel to intervene on their behalf.
“We are Druze. We can manage ourselves,” he said. That seems to be the mainstream sentiment among Druze community leaders. In the immediate aftermath of Netanyahu’s comments, Druze leaders issued an outright rejection that doubled down on their Syrian identity.
“The people of Jaramana are proud Syrian Arabs, deeply connected to their land. We did not ask for protection from anyone,” read a statement from a neighborhood committee. “The residents of Jaramana will not allow themselves to be used as pawns for Netanyahu’s political ambitions.”
A community elder from Jaramana, who requested anonymity, told me: “Ultimately, we are partners with Sharaa. Building a new country without Assad is not a Sunni mission — it is a Syrian mission.”
Unlike the Kurds and Druze, the Alawites — the sect to which Assad belongs — remain a demographic potentially more susceptible to separatism, which could give Netanyahu a way in. Just before I arrived in Syria in March, the Assadist insurgency mounting on the coastline, which was violently put down by al-Sharaa’s soldiers, had reached its climax. Things had spun out of control, with over a thousand reportedly dead.
Things were churning online as well. I was seeing posts on Instagram and X alleging that a “Christian genocide” was unfolding inside Syria, and at the hands of an “Islamic terrorist government,” no less.
“Why no outrage from the government and mainstream media?” one X user wrote on the platform. “More than 1,000 Christians have been killed since Thursday and no one cares!”
Scores of other users began calling it a genocide of Syria’s Christians. Eventually, Elon Musk responded to the accusation, writing on X: “Is that what happened?”
The answer is no, that is not what happened. Regardless, many Syrians worry that fake news of a “Christian genocide” could ironically spark sectarian violence between minority groups — Christians and potentially even Druze — and Syria’s new rulers.
“Right now, Israel doesn’t want Alawites and Christians and Sunnis and Druze to be unified,” Adil, the activist, told me. “Which is why this sort of propaganda is very, very dangerous. If it bleeds into the local populations, it could create real division.”
On July 8, 2018, the Wahbi sisters clambered into a shared taxi in Amman headed for Syria. It had been four long years in Jordan, away from family and from home, so they decided to swallow their worries and head back into their war-torn country.
“Of course, it was so nice to return, to see everybody,” they recalled. “Nothing happened, either. Not until we left.”
About two weeks later, fighters from the Islamic State launched a coordinated attack on Sweida. Suicide bombers and gun-wielding men would kill over 250 people and kidnap dozens of women and children. Among the dead was one of Tala Wahbi’s best friends.
“This is why I am worried about the new government,” Tala said. “Maybe not all of them, but many of them are connected to Daesh. Daesh killed my friend. So, I don’t really know if we, as Druze, can trust them yet.”
Caught between Netanyahu’s Israel, UAB, armed Druze fighters, Assadists, and the new government with Islamist roots, the Druze are living through a political purgatory.
During Assad’s rule, many young men refused military conscription. Some Druze leaders even negotiated local self-defense arrangements, forming militias that operated independently of the Syrian Army, some of which remain active today. Those militias stayed in place to defend the Druze from jihadists, like those from the Islamic State, throughout the war. The emphasis on self-defense that prevails today reveals the profound levels of distrust Syria’s Druze harbor toward virtually every political entity surrounding their community, including Israel.
While wandering the Old City of Damascus in March, I met Ziad al-Amine, a Druze. In 2016, he was supposed to be conscripted for his mandatory military service.
“I did not want to fight for Assad,” he told me. “No way.”
Instead, he headed into Lebanon, where he lived with his uncle for a little over a decade. Al-Amine hadn’t returned to Syria for many years. When I met him in Damascus, it was his first time back since leaving in 2016.
“It is crazy to be back. I wouldn’t be here if Assad still was,” he said.
For Druze people like Zaher and the Wahbi sisters, observing Syria from the outside remains a puzzling endeavor. How exactly to read al-Sharaa — especially the sincerity of his political makeover from jihadist insurgent to moderate, suit-clad politician — and his new government remains unclear.
The new Syrian president has given mixed signals since taking power in December, further compounding the Druze’s uncertainty. He has appointed loyalists to key positions in security, defense, military intelligence and the administration itself.
The brutality that unfolded on the coast gave the Druze another reason to be skeptical. It suggested that either al-Sharaa doesn’t have control of all his allies or that he unleashed them in a deliberate effort to crush a mounting insurgency, both of which have implications for minority groups’ sense of their own security.
Since the constitutional decree that made al-Sharaa president for five years, he has also given himself dictatorial power when it comes to appointing his Cabinet. Yet at the same time, his appointments have been relatively pluralistic overall; of the 23 new ministers, one is Yarub Badr, an Alawite who was named transport minister; the other is Amgad Badr, a Druze, who heads the agriculture ministry. Al-Sharaa has also appointed several women to key positions, like Sweida’s new governor, and has integrated the Kurds into the military.
Sitting in Zaher’s Denver kitchen after my trip, I watched him prepare an impromptu Levantine feast for me — homemade baba ghanoush, zaatar bread, makdous. Hospitality has always come easily to Zaher, perhaps because he’s Syrian, but also because, for him, hospitality is an art. And many years ago, it was his livelihood.
Thanks to his language skills — French, Arabic and English — he was transferred from the Four Seasons Damascus to the Four Seasons Qatar in 2007, where he worked as a server in the hotel’s Italian restaurant. There, Zaher hosted the likes of former Qatari Prince Hammad bin Khalifa, Madeleine Albright, Condoleezza Rice, Tzipi Livni, Bill Clinton (for whom he poured black coffee), Jimmy Carter and even Bashar al-Assad.
“I served Bashar soup,” he chuckled, shaking his head.
Eventually, he was transferred back to Damascus. Even during the financial crisis, the Four Seasons remained very successful. But then, in the spring of 2011, the Arab Spring came to Syria.
Zaher was changing buses en route to work, near the Faculty of Mechanical Studies building, when men with Kalashnikovs stormed the campus and began gunning down students. Zaher hid behind a fence and sought shelter in a nearby Palestinian refugee camp.
This happened again in 2012, when Zaher was caught between government forces and armed protesters. During his daily commute, Zaher found himself in the middle of five violent clashes before ultimately deciding to leave.
After four near-death experiences, leaving Syria had never crossed Zaher’s mind. That is, until May 2012. On his way to work, Zaher was near the airport highway. Above him was a bridge where two trucks hauling bags of cement were crossing. Little did he or anyone else know, but the bags were also loaded with explosives. When the two trucks passed each other on the bridge, they detonated. Zaher was under the bridge when they did.
He recalls huge plumes of cement dust, ringing in his ears, bodiless heads, exploded cars, limp bodies, screaming. In Denver, recounting the horror, he shows me the scar on his forehead. I know that, deep down, he has other scars, too — ones that are etched not just into his skin, but his psyche.
After spending nine days on oxygen to rehabilitate his lungs from the cement dust he’d inhaled, Zaher returned to work. At this point, war was tearing Syria apart, and for the first time, the Four Seasons was feeling it. Layoffs began, and the once-steady flow of illustrious international guests had slowed to a mere trickle.
“I asked myself: ‘Why am I still here?’” he said.
Over a decade later, Assad’s ouster reignited Zaher’s hope of returning to a Syria that might be at least slightly more peaceful. But now, with a seemingly ravenous Netanyahu angling for control of Syrian land, and amid uncertainty over al-Sharaa’s ability and drive to unify and rebuild, Zaher wrestles with an ugly question: not when he will return, but if.
Zaher’s dilemma is that of many living abroad, who have been dreaming about their long-overdue homecoming.
“One day, we will go to Syria, but only when the situation is perfect, when it’s totally safe,” has been his mantra since I met him in 2020.
Before I went to Syria in March, I asked if he wanted to come with me.
“Not until there’s no more conflict,” he replied.
I reminded him, gently, that the conditions may not ever be ideal, that things may not ever be totally safe. And that if he wants to see his mother again, he’ll have to accept that some risk, unfortunately, may be unavoidable.
“I know,” his eyes dropped when I mentioned this. “And that breaks my heart.”
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