The last time I set foot on Syrian soil was in 2017, when I went to the town of Khan Sheikhun to report on a chemical attack carried out by the now-deposed regime of Bashar al-Assad. I remember sitting next to a man named Abdul Hamid al-Youssef, who had buried his wife and two infant children a day earlier. They had choked on poison gas while he rushed to help the wounded, fainting and waking up in a nearby hospital.
One of those attending their memorial service told him a story from one of the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad. On Judgment Day, all people will have to cross a bridge called “al-Sirat” that stretches over hell and leads to paradise. Evil people will stumble and fall while, for the good, that bridge will widen into an avenue to cross at their leisure. But for those who lose their children young and persevere, their little ones will be reincarnated as winged angels who fly them across the bridge.
Al-Youssef emerged from his grief-induced stupor: “And my wife will be there too? And their cousins?”
As I stood afterward in front of the cinnamon-colored earth of the hastily made family graveyard, I thought back to that story. I felt almost ashamed that I had spoken to him of his grief, because I knew in my heart of hearts that he was never going to experience justice in this world. He would have to wait until the afterlife. That was the true succor of that story. Only in death, and only if there is a God, would justice be served. Too many unknowns. I hadn’t the heart to contemplate it. I wrote the essay and moved on, as I had done countless times, after speaking to refugees, victims of barrel bomb attacks, victims of the Islamic State group, victims of one of the most brutal totalitarian police states ever conceived by humanity.
Now, though? Now? The very prospect that justice is conceivable, that the arc of the moral universe endures, that there is a light that was always there at the end of the tunnel, if only you squinted amid the enveloping dark? I cannot quite conceive of the words.
What are words anyway? They are supposed to convey meaning, but how do you distill the meaning of what happened in the last 10 days, as Syria’s rebels staged the greatest insurgent comeback in history to end 60 years of Baathist rule? How do you distill the liberation of Aleppo, one of the world’s oldest cities? How do you describe the freeing of Hama, a city that has been so thoroughly traumatized by Rifaat al-Assad’s rampage in the 1980s that it has waited 40 years to grieve its men, women and children? How do you capture the emotional resonance of watching church bells ring in Christian Sahnaya to the tune of “One, one, one, the Syrian people are one?” Or the sonorous tones of the deceased prominent rebel and former goalkeeper Abdel Baset al-Sarout singing the revolutionary song “Jannah Jannah” echoing in the heart of Umayyad Square in Damascus? The chants of hundreds of thousands gathered in Assi Square in Hama and around the Homs Clock Tower?
How do you capture the tears of a mother or father seeing their son for the first time, exiled for a decade and returning as a liberator, the military prowess shed at the door as he kneels to kiss his parents’ feet and weep with abandon?
The sheer joy and suffering on the faces and in the eyes of the thousands of detainees freed from Assad’s dungeons after 10, 15, 20, 40 years without a breath of fresh air, robbed of dreams, robbed of meaning, in the service of … well, nothing in the end. Assad fled. Not a word to his followers who fulfilled their pledge of burning their country in pursuit of maintaining his criminal narco-state.
They really did burn the country. Half the population displaced, countless people held in a network of Stalinist dungeons augmented by a toxic surveillance state that pitted wife against husband, brother against sister, father against son. A punitive system that invented over 70 different ways of torturing prisoners. Over 400,000 dead. Thousands killed in chemical attacks. Thousands more killed with barrel bombs, barrels filled with TNT that were so inaccurate they had to be dropped far behind rebel lines on civilians in bread lines so they didn’t accidentally kill their own troops. Persistent and paralyzing fear. A refugee crisis that reshaped Western politics. Created the conditions for the establishment and flourishing of the Islamic State. It is very difficult to conceive of something worse that could come after.
For now there really are no words. My wife is from Aleppo, and the past couple of days have felt like a dam built of emotional wards and walls has crashed in a violent cascade. I overhear a lot of her conversations with family back home and Syrians all over the world who are chomping at the bit to go home, to begin to reclaim what was lost. They are conversations that alternate between disbelief, euphoria and free-flowing tears.
“He’s gone! He’s gone! He’s gone!”
Word association.
“Home! My house! He did so much to us! What has he done to us! Home! My God! We’re free!”
I keep reaching, myself, to find the words, and they fail me. Nothing seems to capture the moment. I wrestle with the recesses of my mind for the words, and then I see a photo of a detainee and I break down and start over. I’m not even Syrian. Just someone who was fortunate to take part briefly in their journey. Why does my heart feel like it will burst?
I found something. Assad’s supporters had a chant: “Qaedna lel abad [our leader forever], Bashar al-Assad.”
“Forever is over,” Syrians chanted over and over.
The end of forever. That was a beautiful capstone.
Then I saw a poetic line posted by Fairouz, the legendary Lebanese singer, who tweeted it as dawn rose over a free Damascus. I love the English language, but the moment I read her line, I felt great sorrow for those who do not know Arabic, because they will never experience the beauty of the line she posted in its original form. But for now, only a cheap imitation of a translation will do, which is appropriate because my words are also a cheap imitation of a deep ocean of emotional euphoria and turmoil. Thus spake Fairouz:
“My eyes are on you, O Damascus, for it is from you that the morning flows.”
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