Syria’s Homs looks to rebuild but old wounds remain open | Global News Avenue

“Even now, I look back and wonder how we got through this nightmare,” Barra reflects quietly.

The 20-year-old university student took part in the joyful celebrations that swept the streets of Syria last Sunday as Bashar Assad’s rule ended.

As we sit on a lumpy old couch in their modest home in Homs on this cold winter day, her two sisters, Alaa and Jana, nod in agreement.

Their white-bearded father Farhan Abdul Ghani interjected, sitting cross-legged on the floor. “We don’t want war. We don’t want a forever president who builds monuments to himself.”

We first met nearly a decade ago during the worst days of the war waged in the president’s name.

Bala was a traumatized little girl, her eyes moving wildly back and forth and struggling to speak.

“Sometimes people kill cats to eat,” she blurted out As she sat in an abandoned banquet hall, she was surrounded by aid officials, Syrian security forces and distraught families.

For months, many had little to eat except grass pulled from the ground, leaves picked from trees, boiled in salted water, and sometimes cinnamon.

“Instead of learning to read and write, I learned to use weapons,” Bala told us matter-of-factly at the time.

Homs was once dubbed the “capital of the revolution” by peaceful protesters who first took to the streets in the spring of 2011 to call for change, which later turned into all-out war.

In February 2014, Barra and her family were among 1,000 civilians rescued from the Old City during a rare UN-supervised humanitarian pause.

They had somehow survived a harrowing two-year siege in the Old City, with Syrian forces enforcing a “surrender or starve” cordon for the first time in the ruthless war.

This medieval torture tactic became one of their most brutal weapons, launching attacks on rebel-held strongholds one after another.

Months later, safe passage out of the Old City was also given to more civilians, as well as fighters traveling to other parts of Syria to continue fighting.

The years leading up to this week have been difficult for the family and many others.

“I felt like I was falling asleep and losing hope,” Bala recalled as she adjusted the white headscarves she and her sisters wore. “We’re always afraid of saying the wrong thing, even in college.”

Now, like many Syrians, she is filled with palpable joy and optimism during those first exciting days of a new beginning.

“I’m dreaming of many things now, finishing college, pursuing a master’s degree, improving my English.” Her voice trailed off as her lofty goals filled the small, humble room.

A frightened little girl whose name means “innocence” has grown into an impressively confident young woman wearing stylish blue jeans and a powder-blue cardigan.

She dotes on her father, whose name means joy, with a proud smile on his face. He managed to raise his daughters alone after their mother was killed by a rocket that crashed into the kitchen. The children found her, slumped over the stove.

The meager income he earned from his fruit and vegetable truck and the kindness of his friends allowed them to strive for a better life.

“Everything is cheaper now, including food and electricity,” he enthused, a nod to falling market prices because roads are now open and soldiers at checkpoints no longer intercept goods or demand bribes.

That’s a blessing for a country where the United Nations says 90 percent of Syrians live below the poverty line. “Today I can even afford meat,” he gushed.

The old wound remains open and painful. Like tens of thousands of other Syrians, he lost a relative, a brother, in the secret torture cells of Saidnaya prison. When the doors to Damascus’s notorious prison were opened last week, he was not there.

The painful hurt and exciting happiness are palpable, especially for Syrians who are now able to make the bittersweet return to Homs. The entire area remains a jagged urban landscape of gray rubble and cracked ruins.

“I need to see this again, but it brings back painful memories,” said Dr. Hayan Abraash, his eyes scanning the haunting landscape of loss near Khalidiya, devastated by Syrian fire .

He pointed to the remains of a towering building, its exterior walls shaved off by Scud missiles. It also caused the collapse of two other buildings.

He was also forced to leave the besieged Old City in 2014, leaving behind a makeshift underground hospital there and in nearby Khalidiya.

He struggled to find it until a shopkeeper appeared and opened the metal shutters. It reveals a ruined warehouse with rickety metal stairs leading to a dark, dank basement.

“Yeah, yeah, that’s it,” he said excitedly as our flashlights illuminated the vast space, including another set of stairs. “This is where the patient comes in,” he explains.

“Sometimes I would carry it down the stairs with friends, neighbors, my own cousin.”

The wall next to it is covered with arrows pointing to the “Emergency Room” and the “Road to Death” – even darker humor than this room.

The green and black flags of the opposition are now ubiquitous and conspicuous.

Empty pill bottles and dirty cardboard packages were scattered in a corner of the room, and the walls were scorched.

“The regime has lit this fire of revenge,” he said emotionally. “They fear doctors, lawyers and politicians even more than they fear soldiers.”

“It makes me very angry to see this,” he stressed.

I asked if that made him want revenge.

“Now is not the time for revenge,” he said. “Now is the time to build Syria for everyone, but not for those who killed us and have blood on their hands, they must be judged.

“We don’t forgive. That’s not possible for us.”

Everyone we spoke to in Homs said its residents, Muslims and Christians, would rebuild together—and the stories we heard seemed to confirm this.

Dr. Hayan also takes us to see the site of another underground hospital in the Old City – it’s in a spacious church basement, the walls now lined with stacked chairs and tables for family gatherings.

Farhan and his daughters insisted on taking us to see the place where they hid for most of the siege – a refuge in a Jesuit monastery run by the charismatic Father Frans de Lugt. Place.

The Dutch priest was murdered in the Old City and is now buried in the ground after refusing to leave his trapped and starving residents.

Current pastor Fr Tony Homsey is startled when we suddenly appear with Farhan, accompanied by his daughters, emotionally scrolling through his phone looking for photos from the time.

A Syrian Jesuit priest led us down the stairs into the narrow room now used for daily Mass and recently converted into a Nativity Grotto, complete with a glittering nativity scene.

“It’s a very beautiful story,” he marveled as our little delegation filled nearly the entire space. “In this grotto, which symbolizes how Jesus and the Holy Family took refuge, there is also the story of this Muslim family.”

Father Tony, the head of the Catholic Church in Homs, also met his family in the northern city of Aleppo for the first time in years.

He also dared to dream. “It’s time to move forward,” he asserted, quoting Father France, who he said inspired him to join the Jesuits.

But he warned that “it will take time to heal our wounds, to heal our memories.”