[Editor’s note: This article is the third in a series published in collaboration with Mada Masr to mark the tenth anniversary of the Egyptian revolution. It is also available in Arabic.] In the experience of Syrians’ dispersal and our diaspora—and before it, during the revolution, with its territorial shifts from one region to another in Syria—we were offered a paradox and rare opportunity. This was for Syrian groups…

In the small German city of Koblenz, at the intersection of the Rhine and Moselle rivers, half way between Frankfurt and Bonn, a landmark trial of historic significance for the Syrian conflict has been underway since April. Colonel Anwar Raslan, the former head of investigations at the Syrian regime’s “Branch 251” detention center in Damascus (better known as the “Khatib Branch”), faces multiple charges of…

The time is 10pm. Darkness enshrouds me as I write these words, after the last candle ran out half an hour ago. Electricity outages mean a lack of Internet, the information artery connecting me to the virtual world outside. I’m cut off from my physical surroundings, forbidden to leave my house by the curfew imposed after 6pm each day; a curfew that came after persistent…

They told me I had cancer in my tongue. Just like that. I don’t know how. Neither did they. I toured Aleppo’s hospitals one after another: al-Razi; Salloum; al-Jamia; al-Salam. After various high-tech tests were conducted with laryngoscopes, X-rays, and other equipment, they also found a second lump in my throat. “He who seeks the Lord will find him”: this seems to be the oncologist’s…

[Editor’s note: This article was first published by Amnesty International. It is also available in Arabic.] I listen to your favorite song: “Oh dawn, when you rise,” in the voice of Nahawand, and I think of you. Wake all people / my beloved before all! I cannot stop myself from wondering as those who believe in fate do: Why did all this happen to us? Could…

Earlier this year, between the summer and fall, I spent several months in Turkey following up on the case of the “Douma Four” activists—Samira al-Khalil (my wife), Razan Zaitouneh, Wael Hamade, and Nazem Hammadi—who were abducted and disappeared in Douma, east of Damascus, in December 2013. My aim was to interview as many as possible of the people forcibly displaced from Douma and Eastern Ghouta…

[Editor’s note: The below article was produced as part of Al-Jumhuriya’s 2017 Fellowship for Young Writers. It was originally published in Arabic on 9 August, 2018.] Whether it’s in conversations between public transport passengers, friends, relatives, or buyers and sellers at the market, the prevailing public discourse today clearly condemns the phenomenon of ta’fish (the looting of the homes of Syria’s forcibly displaced civilians). At…

[Editor’s note: The below article was produced as part of Al-Jumhuriya’s 2017 Fellowship for Young Writers. It was originally published in Arabic on 6 July, 2018.] In the city of Qudsaya, about ten kilometers from Damascus and 45 minutes from the center of the capital, there is a walled area of approximately 5,000 square meters. Today, around 140 children are confined within its perimeter. They…

[Editor’s note: This article is the third in a series of four originally published in Arabic by Al-Jumhuriya during the siege and bombardment of Eastern Ghouta, Damascus Province, and the subsequent forced displacement of over 100,000 of its residents. The first and second in the series may be read here and here. The original Arabic version of this article, published on 9 April, 2018, may…

[Editor’s note: This article was produced as part of Al-Jumhuriya’s 2017 Fellowship for Young Writers. It was originally published in Arabic on 29 March, 2018] To live today in half a city; to live confounded between death and life, between the Damascus of the regime and the Damascus besieged by the regime, means being overwhelmed by guilt about your safety, and your obligatory silence in…

[Editor’s note: This article was originally published in Arabic on 22 March, 2018] DOUMA, Eastern Ghouta: “Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.” (Matthew 7:14) The military campaign against Eastern Ghouta has imposed its terms locally on civilians, creating a compounded siege pressing them from four sides: The military pressure practiced…

[Editor’s note: This article was originally published in Arabic on 29 November, 2017. The author is a former political prisoner currently living in besieged East Ghouta, where he is a nonviolent civil society activist. The artworks used in this article were created by Dima Nashawi.] EAST GHOUTA, Damascus Province – Many are the cities and neighborhoods that have been besieged in the past, in Syria…

Fearful of the emergence and spread of dissident Islamism, the Syrian regime has encouraged apolitical Islamic movements. It has permitted certain religious leaders within its political circles, such as the former grand mufti Ahmad Kuftaro and sheikh Said Ramadan Al-Buti, to establish halaqas (religious study circles) for Islamic education within sharia institutions and in mosques. It was from the midst of those halaqas, and with…

Marwa and Zahra climb onto the minibus, which is supposed to take them from Hameesh bus stop to Al-Salam Mosque within Barzeh district, east of Damascus. Awaiting the bus to fill with passengers before continuing on its way, Zahra becomes restless. She occupies herself by watching the women getting on the bus and arranging the items and supplies they carry. Marwa chuckles as she looks…

Whenever I talk about my Damascene neighborhood, al-Midan, I struggle against myself and my own mind as not to forget its features. Any omission of these memories would mean my true estrangement, and this is what I attempt to escape. To me, al-Midan was not only the place I was born and lived in, but has always constituted an identity and belonging, and left its…

I pack my suitcase and prepare to leave. Among the things I carry with me is the smell of blood and gunpowder, which has pervaded my every breath for three consecutive days. I also carry with me sounds that haunt me and drown my memory in grief and pain, in addition to many unfinished stories. Using my phone’s camera and its limited memory, I capture…