Adham Aljamous, 32, and his father Nouruldeen, 72, on their rooftop in Gaziantep, Turkey. They fled Syria over a decade in the past. Now, with an opportunity to return, they’re uncertain what’s left of house.
Rebecca Rosman for NPR
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Rebecca Rosman for NPR
GAZIANTEP, Turkey — After greater than a decade in exile, Syrians world wide are asking themselves a as soon as unthinkable query: Is it lastly time to go house?
When the civil conflict broke out in 2011, tens of millions fled Syria. No nation took in additional refugees than neighboring Turkey, which opened its doorways to just about 3 million Syrians, in line with the U.N. refugee company.
However that welcome has in some instances worn skinny. In recent times, many Syrians say they’ve felt more and more forged out of Turkish society — blamed for the nation’s financial troubles and handled as scapegoats in political discourse.
Nonetheless, many stayed. Some wished to stay near house. Others believed their exile can be brief.
A couple of weeks of ready turned months. Then years. At a sure level, the concept of returning started to really feel inconceivable.
That modified in December 2024, when President Bashar al-Assad fell from energy: After 24 years, his regime collapsed in a matter of days. The door to a brand new period creaked open.
Now, with a transitional authorities in place, hope is stirring — however so is concern. Greater than half 1,000,000 Syrians have returned, in line with the U.N. refugee company. However going again requires a leap of religion.
Sectarian violence has flared in current months. Sanctions are beginning to raise, reconnecting Syria with the worldwide economic system, however roads, railways and houses stay in ruins. Years of battle have decimated fundamental providers. Electrical energy and water are nonetheless unreliable in lots of areas. And doubts persist about Syria’s interim chief, Ahmed al-Sharaa, who was as soon as linked to al-Qaida.
So how are Syrians weighing the dangers of return? Can house ever actually be house once more after such devastation — after family and friends have been tortured or killed, after childhood properties have been looted or destroyed?
NPR spoke with 4 Syrians and their households in southern Turkey, every standing at a crossroads.
After leaving one life behind, are they ready to do it over again?
Adham Aljamous’s childhood images from Syria, the one bodily recollections he has of his previous.
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Adham Aljamous, 32. “Your desires are simply desires.”
An economics pupil, 32-year-old Adham Aljamous speaks extra like a poet.
“Even the belongings you hate,” he says, “when you’re compelled to depart your own home — you begin to love and miss.”
From the rooftop he shares together with his dad and mom in Gaziantep, a metropolis in southeastern Turkey close to the Syrian border, Aljamous leafs by means of a plastic bag of previous household images — one of many few issues his household carried once they fled Syria in 2014.
The photographs seize golden afternoons and household gatherings overflowing with meals — the type of recollections, he says, that solely grew sweeter in exile.
The household got here to Turkey after his older brother Tamam, who ran a humanitarian group in Syria’s capital of Damascus, was focused by the Assad regime. The household thought they’d be gone for a number of weeks. That was 11 years in the past.
Aljamous nonetheless has one other yr of college earlier than ending his grasp’s at a college in Gaziantep.
However he says the query he as soon as requested — will I ever return? — has shifted. Now it is how, and at what price?
“When the circumstances are appropriate,” he says, “there can be a return to homeland. Inshallah,” God prepared.
However appropriate is a excessive bar. Cities are shattered. Infrastructure is unreliable. And whereas america and Europe are lifting most sanctions on Syria, the economic system is a catastrophe.
It is nonetheless unclear what sort of chief Sharaa will form as much as be within the coming months, and years.
None of that deters Aljamous.
“When the regime was in management,” he says of the previous authoritarian Assad authorities, “I’d have adopted the satan if it meant overthrowing them. They have been worse than the satan.”
He is prepared to present Sharaa an opportunity.
However when requested about specifics, he admits he does not have any set plans but for his return.
He appears down at his toes, and quietly reveals his largest concern — going again to a rustic he barely acknowledges.
“Generally, I simply sit and attempt to suppose who’s left [in Syria] — actually nobody from my buddies. I do not know anybody there. So if I’m going again, I feel it will be an enormous downside for me,” he says.
“Your desires are simply desires.”
Bushra Ajaj and Hasan Ajam of their lounge in Gaziantep, Turkey, with the brand new Syrian flag hanging behind them. The couple met in 2014 whereas protesting in opposition to the Assad regime in Syria.
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Bushra and Hasan. Surviving the revolution, however dwelling with ghosts
In a unique nook of Gaziantep, a pair is navigating related questions, with recollections formed by conflict, and a relationship solid within the combat in opposition to it.
Bushra Ajaj and Hasan Ajam, each 35, met within the early days of the rebellion.
She was a college pupil organizing protests. He was a part of the identical underground community. They shared a mission and, finally, a life.
“We met by means of the revolution,” Ajaj says, smiling. “We survived it collectively.”
Right this moment, they stay in Gaziantep with their two younger youngsters. The new Syrian flag hangs of their lounge — an emblem of each pleasure and ache.
Each have been arrested for his or her activism. Each misplaced family and friends. They fled Syria greater than a decade in the past, and have every returned briefly since Assad’s fall.
Neither one acknowledged the nation they left.
“I visited Syria twice,” Ajam says. “However I have never stepped inside my previous home.”
Right this moment, Ajam works with the Caesar Households Affiliation, a bunch looking for justice for individuals who disappeared in regime prisons in Syria. The group is called after a forensic photographer, recognized by the pseudonym Caesar, who smuggled out greater than 55,000 images documenting torture and demise earlier than fleeing to the U.S. in 2013.
5 years in the past, Ajam recognized his brother’s physique in a kind of images — affirmation of what his household had lengthy feared. Now, he is decided to return to Syria to search out the place the place his brother was buried.
For Bushra Ajaj, returning in April meant dealing with ghosts of her personal. Her household house was in ruins. However what shattered her most was seeing her college once more — the location of so many protests, and of her greatest pal’s demise
“I cried a lot,” she says. “The recollections simply got here again.”
Their youngsters, born in Turkey, converse Turkish extra fluently than Arabic.
“Generally I feel it is good,” Ajaj says. “They really feel at house right here.” However the considered shifting to Syria raises new fears. “What in the event that they really feel like strangers there?”
In the event that they ever return for good, Ajaj hopes it will not be to her tiny, broken village. Possibly it could be town of Aleppo, in northwestern Syria. Possibly someplace new. Someplace they’ll construct recent recollections.
Ahmad al-Taleb, 33, plans to maneuver to Aleppo together with his spouse and 3-year-old when his lease in Gaziantep runs out in October.
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Ahmad al-Taleb: Betting all the pieces on Aleppo
One man who’s already made his resolution is Ahmad al-Taleb.
A 33-year-old civil engineer — and part-time social gathering clown — from Aleppo, Taleb fled Syria in 2014 after ISIS took over his metropolis.
On the time, he was documenting human rights violations, work that put him and his household in danger. His brother was arrested. Taleb fled to Turkey.
Since then, he is constructed a life in Gaziantep — studied, married, launched an organization, and have become a father.
However in October, when his lease is up, he and his spouse Sahar, together with their 3-year-old son Kamal, will pack their issues and return to Aleppo for good.
“I really feel a lot safer now,” Taleb says, sipping juice created from oranges his mom picked in Latakia, alongside Syria’s Mediterranean coast. “I am afraid, in fact. However I am additionally optimistic. It is time to rebuild.”
Taleb is underneath no illusions. Aleppo remains to be in ruins. Rents are hovering. Companies are patchy.
Sahar, who by no means completed college, hopes to renew her research, however there isn’t any assure she’ll be capable to.
“Nonetheless,” Taleb says, “we belong to Syria. Turkey is our second house, but it surely’s not the place we belong.”
He remembers the euphoria of Assad’s fall final yr, which he and Sahar watched unfold from their sofa into the early hours of the evening. Feeling stressed watching the celebrations unfold in Damascus on their TV display screen, Taleb received in his automotive and drove straight to the capital metropolis.
When he received there, he was overcome with a mixture of jubilation and agony.
Recollections got here flooding again of the massacres he documented. Mates misplaced. Airstrikes he noticed kill harmless ladies and youngsters.
“It was a mixture of emotions. Victory and grief.”
Armed with an enormous smile, Taleb says he is retaining a constructive thoughts in regards to the future. He believes within the promise of the transitional authorities, and in his function as a civil engineer in rebuilding Syria.
“I simply hope my son by no means asks me, ‘Why did you are taking us again?'” he says. “But when he grows up the place he belongs, possibly someday he’ll perceive.”
Mohammed Jamil Alshammary is raring to arrange his personal translation enterprise in Damascus, however his youngsters — all born and raised in Gaziantep — name Turkey house.
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Mohammed Jamil Alshammary. House is asking — however is his household prepared?
On the eve of a visit to Damascus, Mohammed Jamil Alshammary is virtually giddy — reciting couplets aloud.
“Like up excessive within the wonderful skies, my angel’s coronary heart shyly lies. To her so candy, celestial sound introduced me all the way down to the bottom.”
At 44, Alshammary is a seasoned interpreter and literature buff who’s labored in boardrooms from Geneva to Paris, translating for presidents and humanitarian leaders alike.
He quotes the linguist Noam Chomsky, references the film The Hours, and casually drops George Michael lyrics into the dialog.
Regardless of job gives in Canada and Europe, he selected to remain in Turkey for the previous 15 years for his household.
“My spouse did not need our daughters raised in a international tradition,” he says. “Turkey felt nearer to house.”
Now, Alshammary says he is prepared to assist rebuild Syria, albeit cautiously.
“Safety first. Then economic system,” he says. “Even when I have been paid $1,000 a day in Damascus — if it isn’t secure, I will not convey my household there.”
Alshammary is aware of the challenges that await him. Rents in Damascus have skyrocketed due to housing shortages. His youngsters, fluent in Turkish, threat cultural displacement in the event that they return.
“I am center class,” he says. “What about the remainder? Most Syrians cannot afford lease or tuition.”
Nonetheless, he says he is able to convey one foot again into Syria, the place he hopes to open a translation company in Damascus.
“We should not clone the previous,” he says. “No extra corruption. No extra exclusion.”
This story was supported by a grant from the Pulitzer Middle.
Mahmoud Al Basha contributed reporting from Gaziantep, Turkey.
