Bashar al Assad is finished

Forgive me, I’m feeling rather hopeful these days.

I wanted to write yesterday, but I couldn’t because I was busy celebrating the end of the Syrian regime.

It started around 2 AM, London time. I randomly woke up to a very excited Salem (my husband, for those of you who don’t know me from the book!)

“He’s over! Bashar al Assad is finished!”

“I need to see it,” I protested. “I need to see it b-eyeooni.” I felt fragile. I couldn’t handle feeling hope only to have it be dashed. Not after this year. We watched the news, split into six screens. There were prisoners running from Sadnaya prison—the notorious slaughterhouse where political prisoners spent their lives wasting away. Quiet streets in Damascus. And there it was, the slogan of the Syrian revolution from fourteen years ago, actualized as breaking news: the Syrian people have overthrown the Assad regime.

It’s hard to stop the emotional rollercoaster long enough to manage to even begin to put into words what this moment means for so many people. But I will try.

For one, it’s seeing the prisoners freed. Literally, the Syrian rebels are breaking the locks and telling people to run. These aren’t ordinary prisons—you know the kind where you can visit, and know that your loved ones are alive, and might be released on X date, once they’ve served their time. These are labyrinths where people fucking disappear just because they dared to challenge the Assad regime; their loved ones do not know if they are alive or dead.

Many of them thought they would be in these jails for the rest of their lives. Some have been in jail for so long that they think that Hafez al Assad is still President, that Saddam Hussein’s army liberated them. People who have missed the past thirty years of human existence because they’ve been locked in a dark labyrinth with no sunlight, no access to anyone besides their fellow prisoners—unless, of course, they’re in solitary confinement—starving to death as they’re fed as little as an olive and small piece of bread for meals.

I know this intimately because my partner—the one and only Salem, the love of my life, the ridiculous and hilarious inspiration for Love Across Borders—was one of them. (And yes, this, like everything in this life, it is something that he is able to make jokes about—please see page 9 of Love Across Borders if you don’t believe that my husband is the most hilarious person on earth). Ordinarily, people wonder about what would have happened if they never went to the fateful bar or party—or swiped right—on the person who became their one and only, the father to their children cat, the person they couldn’t imagine life without. I also wonder what would have happened if it weren’t for the Syrian revolution that brought two wild-minded journalists together on the streets of Istanbul, but I also wonder what would have happened if he had never been freed. How many people missed their great love—missed the right to living their lives, to have children, to see sunlight?

Many of these people are now free—and the Syrian rebels are working their way through the labyrinth of these jails (some are so secret that no one but Assad and the prisoners know where they are, it will still be an enormous challenge to find all of the jails). Knowing how many reunions are happening—the mothers seeing their sons, the women who thought they were widows seeing their husbands—is a beautiful, beautiful thing.

Which brings me to the way that this war has affected so many of us. First, there are the revolutionaries, who went to the streets to dare to dream even when people were being slaughtered in the streets. People who picked up guns or wrote articles that told the truth about the regime and were imprisoned or killed, while their loved ones were bombed. I remember the interview that I did with Raed Fares—may he rest in power—where he told me that the Western media was missing the entire story of the revolution, and meeting Syrian civil defense workers who saved people who were buried under rubble. I talked to many, many, many refugees in camps and in transit, some of whom were excited about a new life, others of whom were terrified, some of whom would have never met the loves of their lives if it weren’t for the Syrian revolution, others who lost the loves of their lives because of it. Some of these were formal interviews, but mostly it was breaking bread and becoming friends—and standing in solidarity while trying to begin to fathom what this does to people. Is this what it means to fight for freedom? Is this what it means when the world turns away? Is it worth it?

I saw the way that it affected relationships. What happens when the trauma sits differently, when the tensions boil over? I saw so many break ups. Men stewed. Women reinvented themselves. What would have happened if it weren’t for the revolution that became a war, the spiraling injustice, the way it makes people give up hope? Escaping to another country seems like the best route to freedom, but what is it like when no one understands what you’ve been through? You’ve witnessed the best and worst of humanity—your friends have been kidnapped and killed, not just killed but beheaded and tortured and slaughtered—but you’re stuck in an asylum system trying to prove that you’re not a terrorist. Borders separated people—they forced people to take tiny boats and drown when there were plenty of planes flying every day, just because western governments like to afford some people more dignity than others.

What does this do to people? I don’t have answers (though with everything I write, I try), but I can tell you that in the past week, I have had different questions. What does it mean to never give up? Yesterday, in the pub a group of us wondered aloud: “What is the opposite of doomscrolling?”

“Joy scrolling? Collective joy?!”

What does it mean to be hopeful? Lots of people seem to think that being cynical makes you clever, or at least right. What would it mean to be hopeful instead?

Lastly, it has come to my attention that a number of capital L Leftists have no Syrian friends, or sense of joy and have taken it upon themselves to be armchair activists and warn the Syrian people—who have been through hell and back, both before this revolution and during it—that “no one knows what tomorrow will bring” and “what about HTS?” (we love a jazzy acronym! its the new LGBTQIA!) and I could tell you “fuck off,” but I will attempt to be more intelligent. So, here is my take:

I think this is a powerful moment to learn what happens when outside powers stop supporting an oppressive regime. A large reason why this was able to happen when it did is because Putin is distracted asserting his power in Ukraine (and therefore could not arm Bashar al Assad with the barrel bombs that once destroyed Aleppo) and Hezbollah is exhausted by fighting Israel in Lebanon. And yes—Russia is wreaking havoc in Ukraine and Israel is literally the worst and I’m not disputing either of those things—BUT their lack of support weakened Assad to the point that the Syrian rebels—and not just the fighters, but the activists, the community leaders, everyone who played a role in this revolution—were able to overthrow an oppressive regime.

Some of you are saying, “What about Palestine?” and to that I say let’s take this as a lesson—this is what happens when outside powers stop supporting tyrannical, diabolical regimes. Instead of wringing our hands in our arm chairs, let’s double down on stopping weapons shipments to Israel. Say what you want to say about Trump (I say a lot!) but he’s anti-intervention, and yes Israel is his little sweetheart, but what if it were reframed supporting Israel as meddling in foreign affairs that have nothing to do with us? I realize this is hopeful thinking—but forgive me, because I’m feeling rather hopeful these days. ;)

No one knows what tomorrow will bring, but Syria has shown us what is possible. Thank you, each and every one of you who played a role in making this moment happen. Thank you for showing us what it means to be hopeful instead of cynical.

Thank you for showing us what it means to never give up.