Even so, she remains hopeful and determined to move back, although she’s aware of the challenges that lie ahead. “We still have a house but it’s just a building, everything has been stolen or destroyed. There’s not even a door so there will be a lot of work to do,” she said.
Indecision
Shereen Mankash had come to accept she’d never be able to return to her country, but now everything has changed for her.
The 43-year-old Damascan has spent the past week cycling through an array of emotions: elation, shock, fear. Added to those has been a sense of dimming hope, as she constantly checks her phone for news of friends and relatives who had disappeared into the Syrian regime’s brutal prisons. “We are happy but we’re also confused,” she said. “What are we going to do? Leave? Or are we going to stay?”
She’s been buoyed by images from Syria after the fall of the regime. “It’s been looking peaceful, and people have been cleaning up Damascus, and they put songs in the streets and look very happy.” But her family — once tight-knit but now scattered among Jordan, Dubai and different parts of Canada — has lost its home in Damascus.
She’s worried about what will happen next. “Of course, in the end, we all want to go back to our beloved country,” she said. “We are happy that he’s gone, but we are waiting for the new government. Who will [it] be, how will the rules be?” she asked
Bitterness
Mohamed Adnan Kadadihi was a teenager when he fled his bombarded hometown of Aleppo in 2014 with his family after being arbitrarily arrested on the road between Homs and Hama and jailed in gruesome conditions for several days.
Being forced to flee disrupted his schooling and derailed his dream of becoming an architect. His family, once upper-middle class, lost all its money, and he’s still traumatized by the conditions he endured in jail. Ten years after he first stepped foot in Jordan, the 27-year-old is staunchly opposed to moving back. “My country stopped my dreams, stopped my future and made me a refugee, and I got strong enough to forget it all and move forward,” he said while sipping on a coffee in Amman. “They killed the soul of Syria.”
His brother, no longer fearful of being conscripted into the Syrian armed forces, is packing his bags to move back to Aleppo to be with his father, who returned in 2021. But Kadadihi has no plans to follow. “Most people who want to go back are elderly people who want to die in their home country, but people from the age of 20 to 35, they want a good job and salary,” he said. “Maybe war will happen, you can never trust the future.”
