AMMAN, Jordan — Until last week, the idea of being able to go back home seemed an impossible dream for many Syrian refugees. Now, the fall of Syria’s dictator Bashar Assad has opened the door for their return.
While some have already headed back, many more harbor worries about the future of their country or feel reluctant to leave the lives they’ve built over as much as a decade abroad.
POLITICO spoke to four refugees in Jordan, where more than 600,000 Syrians have taken refuge from the civil war next door. They recounted a range of experiences, decisions and emotions.
Fear
Like everybody else, Manal al-Mouqdad was surprised by the fall of Assad. The news left her in shock and unsure of what to do.
The 36-year-old mother of three and her husband spent 11 years as refugees in Jordan, but in August the husband decided to risk a trip to Europe, traveling to Libya in the hope of making it to Germany and bringing his family over. The plan went awry when the Libyan coastguard intercepted his boat in the Mediterranean Sea and put him in jail.
While he managed to pay his way out, he remains stuck in Libya. Meanwhile, al-Mouqdad doesn’t want to go back to her hometown of Daraa without him. “I’m really afraid,” she said. “Everything has been so quick and sudden that I can’t wrap my head around what is happening.”
If it was up to her, she would wait before packing her suitcases. Her children have either never seen their home country or were too young to remember it. “I’m not very excited to go,” she said. “There are new groups we don’t know about, and it’s hard to know if we can trust them.”
Hope
Hind al-Hariri has already said goodbye to several of her neighbors over the last few days as they left to travel back to Syria. The 36-year-old mother of two is excited to return to her hometown of Daraa, but needs to think about her children first.
Some of her friends are waiting for the school year to end before going back, but al-Hariri faces a more complicated problem: One of her seven-year-old twins was born with developmental issues and is now getting help from special-needs educators from a local NGO that supports women refugees. “It would be impossible for us to go back to Daraa if there were no such centers, and I think this could take some time, maybe a year,” she said.
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.”
The post Fear, hope and bitterness: Syria’s refugees contemplate life after Bashar Assad appeared first on Politico.
