After being forced to leave Lebanon as the Israeli army intensely bombed Beirut where we had settled a year earlier; after yet another forced displacement, my husband started to long even more for going back home to Syria. It was October 2024 and when he told me about his dream to buy a house in his hometown of Daraa, I wondered aloud who would ever live in this house since we might not be able to access the country until our late fifties! Yet, a couple of months after this conversation, on December 8, 2024, the Assad regime fell and it all changed.
What does it mean to return home after a defeated revolution and a decade of war? What does it mean to regain hope in a (revolutionary) future and to end a forced exile one did not think might end before one’s lifetime? But also, what does it mean to do ethnographic work in the context of extreme political violence?
Going back home
Following the downfall of the Syrian regime, my interlocutors, friends, family and I could finally enter Syria without fear for the first time after a decade-long forced displacement in Turkey and Lebanon.
This photo essay is a deeply personal one, as it proposes to follow my family – my husband’s return to his hometown, and my discovery of it with my kids – after thirteen years of exile. This visual journey through the city of Daraa (Southern Syria) shows a devastated land – one in ruins, marked by urbicide and despair – but also a transformed landscape, with revolutionary emblems and symbols quickly replacing those of the fallen regime, and showing signs of hope and a new beginning. The ruins are bursting with life.
It documents homecoming, reuniting with family and introducing those born in exile to those who stayed in the homeland. It is a journey to the personal and familial past, as well as to the revolutionary past; it is also a personal and political journey that brings the viewer to the cityscape through the eyes of a family that was scattered by the violent repression of the 2011 revolution.
This text focuses on the city of Daraa, considered the birthplace of the revolution by many, for it saw the first significant protests in the country on March 18, 2011, following the arrest, detention and violent torturing of boys who had dared to write on their school’s wall,“the people want the fall of the regime” and “it’s your turn doctor”, echoing the Egyptian revolution’s slogans. The protests that started in Daraa al-balad were directly met with violent repression, and protesters were shot at with live ammunition, causing the death of several people from the first days.
Heading 2
- Going back home
- Going back home
- Going back home
- Going back home
Heading 3
- Going back home
- Going back home
- Going back home
- Going back home
