When Mariam Aabour learned of the chief of Syrian leader Bashar Assad, his tears of joy shed. But when the time came to return to her homeland from Lebanon – where she had fled years before, Aabour felt torn.
She was happy about the homecoming, but sad to leave a boy and a stepson behind who stayed in Lebanon to work and pay off family debt. Months before her return, Aabour’s father died in Syria without seeing him. Her Syrian home was destroyed and there is no money to rebuild, she said.
So it is bitterly what her first Ramadan – the Muslim holy month – has experienced since her return.
“We all lost loved ones,” she said. “Even after our return, we still cry about the tragedies we went through.”
While spending their first Ramadan in their homeland in years, many Syrians who recently flew back from abroad celebrate the end of the Assad family’s reign in December after a quick rebel offensive. They like new freedoms and enjoy some old traces of the lives they once knew.
They enjoy family reunions, but many also face challenges because they adapt to a country that has been ruined by a long -term civil war and is now struggling with a complicated transition. As they do so, their personal and common losses are grieving: loved ones dead and missing, strengthening their absence during Ramadan. Houses destroyed or damaged. And family gatherings crushed by the exodus of millions.
Ramadan, a time for daily fasting and increased worship, also often sees joyful gatherings with family members about food and juices.
Aabour – one of the more than 370,000 Syrians, the United Nations Refugee Agency, UNHCR, said he has returned to the country since Assad’s autusus – he loves the call to prayer of the mosques that indicates the end of the daily quickly. In her Lebanon neighborhood, she said, there was no mosques in the area and relied on phones to know when to break the fast.
The hardest part, she added, is to sit for the fast -pacing meal known as “Iftar” without some loved ones, including her father and a son, who, according to her death before the family fled from Syria.
She very much remembers how her child, who she believed was about ten when he was killed, held a rice and pea dish to Iftar and would energetically help her to carry dishes out of the kitchen.
“I told him,” You’re too young, “but he would say,” No, I want to help you, “she said, sitting on the floor in her in -laws that her family now shares with family members.
Faraj Al-Mashash, her husband, said he is not currently working, who has accumulated more debt and takes care of a bad father.
The family borrowed money to fix his father’s home in Daraya. It is damaged and looted, but still stands.
Many Daraya houses are not.
Daraya was part of the rural Damascus and known for its grapes and furniture workshops and was one of the centers of the uprising against Assad. The conflict sustained in armed rebellion and civil war after Assad, which began as largely peaceful protests; This Ramadan, Syrians, was the 14th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War.
Daraya sustained murders and saw massive damage during fights. It endured years of government siege and air campaigns before an agreement was concluded in 2016 between the government and rebels, which led to the evacuation of fighters and civilians and ceded control to the government.
In parts of Daraya, children and others walk past walls with gaping holes in crumbling buildings. In some areas, a garment or brightly colored water tank offers a glimpse of lives that unfold between debris or charred walls.
Despite all this, Al-Mashash said, it’s home.
“Was Daraya not destroyed? But I feel like I’m in heaven. ‘
Still, “there’s sadness,” he added. “A place is just beautiful with its people in it. Buildings can be rebuilt, but when someone is gone, they do not come back. ‘
In Lebanon, Al-Mashash struggled financially and was homesickness for Daraya, for the famous faces greeting him on his streets. Shortly after Assad’s old man, he returned.
This Ramadan, he laid some traditions again, invited people to Iftar and invited and prayed in a mosque where he cherished memories.
Some of those who left Daraya, and have now returned to Syria, say that their homes have been wiped out or that they are no condition to stay there. Some of them live elsewhere in an apartment complex that previously housed military officers of the Assad era and now shelter a few families, mostly who have returned from internal displacement.
The majority of those who have returned to Syria since the removal of Assad are coming from countries in the region, including Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey, Celine Schmitt, the spokeswoman for the UNHCR in Syria.
An important safety fear of returns is uneasowned mines, Schmitt said, and the UNHCR offers ‘mining awareness sessions’ in its community centers. It also provides legal awareness for those who need IDs, birth certificates or property documents and provided free transport for some who came from Jordan and Turkey, she said.
The needs of returned, so far a fraction of those left are diverse and large – from work and basic services to home repair or construction. Many, Schmitt said, hope for financial aid to start or rebuild a small business, adding that more financing is needed.
“We appeal to all our donors,” she said. “There is now an opportunity to solve one of the largest displacement crises in the world, because people want to go back.”
Many of those who have not yet returned call economic challenges and ‘the major challenges they see in Syria’ as some of the reasons, she said.
In January, the UN Commissioner for Refugee Philippo Grandi said living conditions in the country should improve for the return of Syrians to be sustainable.
Umaya Moussa, also from Daraya, said she fled to Lebanon in 2013 and recently returned as a mother of four, two of whom have never seen Syria.
Moussa, 38, remembers at some point an area fled while she was pregnant and scared, carried her daughter and held her husband’s hand. The horrors haunted her.
“I would remember so many events that couldn’t sleep me,” she said. “If I close my eyes, I would scream and cry and have nightmares.”
In Lebanon, she lived in a camp for a while, where she shared the kitchen and bathroom with others. “We were humiliated … but it was even better than the fear we went through.”
She craved the usual Ramadan family meetings.
For the first IFTAR this year, she broke herself quickly with her family, including brothers who, she said, had previously moved as fighters against the Assad government to the rebel-controlled Idlib province.
Her father was missing from the Ramadan dinner who died while Moussa was away.
Like Moussa, Saeed Camel is intimately familiar with the pain of an incomplete joy. This Ramadan he visits the grave of his mother who died when he was in Lebanon.
“I told her we had returned, but we didn’t find her,” he said and wiped away tears.
And it wasn’t just her. Kamel was hopeful that they left with Assad, they would find a missing brother in his prisons; They didn’t.
Kamel promised to never return to a Syria ruled by Assad, saying he felt like a stranger in his country. His house, he said, was damaged and looted.
But despite any problems, he expressed hope. At least he said, “The next generation will live with dignity, God will.”
Kamel lovingly remembered how – before their worlds changed – his family would exchange visits with others for most Ramadan and neighbors, Send Iphtar dishes.
“Ramadan is not nice without the family meetings,” he said. “Now one can hardly manage.”
He cannot feel the same Ramadan spirit as before.
“The good thing,” he said, “is that Ramadan came while we were freed.”
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Associated Press Religion cover receives support through the AP’s collaboration with the conversation us, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is only responsible for this content.
