from Ashes to Belonging..
"December 8th, 2024 — The time is now 6:18 PM, Damascus time: Syria without Bashar al-Assad." It took fourteen years. Fourteen years of dreaming of freedom, then fearing it. Of daring to hope, then being silenced. Of imagining a future, then watching it drown in blood, injustice, and darkness. For years, I thought I had lost every last piece of passion left in me, every sense of belonging to a country that no longer looked like me, nor I like it. Syria, once a symbol of warmth and familiarity, had become a scar, blurry and distant. And so, I told myself I no longer cared. At least… that’s what I believed. Until the day it happened. Until the chains broke, the prisons opened, and the birds flew free. The moment I heard the news "Syria is Alassad free" I couldn’t breathe. Every memory, every hope, every idea I had buried deep within me came rushing back to life. Dreams I had wrapped in silence and tucked away into the darkest corners of my soul, they resurfaced like ...