Syria: I joined the joyous one-year anniversary of al-Assad’s ouster but fearful whispers and murders abound

DAMASCUS – I sat on a curb along with tens of thousands of others waiting for a military parade to commemorate the second happiest day in Syria in the last 14 years. I jotted down notes of all the new Syrian flags the smiling people flew. I translated the chants they roared all around me.

A young man approached and tapped me on the shoulder. Abd Alhadi Alsouqi, 23, had handsome features and what seemed like a $100 haircut. He looked like the medical student that he is.

He pointed to the sky. Two military helicopters with the Syrian flag emblazoned on the bottom flew overhead – low over our heads.

Alsouqi said, “In the past, they kill us. Now they’re here to protect us.”

Journalists are often compared to vultures and pond scum – and that’s just in locker rooms. In a war zone, they can be viewed as threats. But last week in Damascus, I was treated with reverie. Syrians nearly stood in line to talk. I walked by people who said in accented English, “Welcome to the new Syria!” Total strangers said nothing but just wanted to shake my hand.

That’s because Dec. 8 was their second happiest day in 14 years – topped only by Dec. 8, 2024, the day ruthless dictator Bashar al-Assad fled the country, ending a near 14-year revolution that the downtrodden masses and the Islamist rebel forces won.

“He’s like a rat. He ran away,” said Abed Al-Bekaai, a 17-year-old at the parade.

In the poll of most blood-stained legacies, al-Assad’s will forever rank among the worst in the 21st century. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), an estimated 660,000 people were killed in the near 14 years of al-Assad’s reign. That includes more than 26,000 children. Another 300,000 have gone missing. 

He starved the masses. He imprisoned the innocent. He tortured the imprisoned.

His iron hand led to worldwide sanctions that left Syria’s economy in tatters and their monetary unit nearly as worthless as the country’s former flag. What started out as peaceful pro-democracy protests for basic human rights in March of 2011 turned into a full-scale civil war that left Syria broken and ostracized.

But in the four days I spent in the Syrian capital, I saw a country healing and excited. It is embracing a new world that it hopes embraces it back. I ate great in Damascus’ restaurants. I wandered for hours in the souqs and mosques. And it’s cheap, albeit due to a broken economy.

Yet behind the smiles and happy chants and new flags filling the sky are worrying whispers. Some in Syria fear the new regime, led by Ahmed al-Sharaa, may be too fundamentalist Muslim for Syria’s own good.

Al-Sharaa is a former al-Qaeda henchman who was classified as a “global terrorist” and was imprisoned by the U.S. military for five years. The Druse, a religious minority, and the Allewites, al-Assad’s religious sect, are being killed in southern Syria. A bomb hit a Damascus ministry building just last month.

It was in these crosshairs that I pulled into Damascus with a backpack and a notepad full of questions.

The arrival

Why did I come to Syria? Besides the morbid curiosity of what life was like in a war-torn country, it was convenient. My Travelers’ Century Club, for travelers who’ve been to at least 100 countries and territories, had our annual Mediterranean Chapter meeting in Beirut Saturday. Damascus is only 65 miles (110 kilometers) east of Beirut.

I planned to arrive in Beirut enough days early to make the two-hour trip. However, rules governing the border crossing confused me. Seeking an answer, I contacted Saiga Tours, the terrific adventure tour company I took to Turkmenistan in September and which also covers Syria.

Turns out, Saiga had a four-day trip over the exact days I would visit. I tossed my notes and signed up for another tour stress free — other than visiting a country at war, of course. For four days, we were about the only Westerners I saw in the capital.

We could tell the change in Syria before we even crossed the border. At the crossing, an al-Assad billboard, only slightly smaller than the marquee at Caesars Palace, had been replaced with a “WELCOME TO SYRIA” sign and the new flag. The new regime replaced the red stripe, representing blood from the revolution in 1946, with a green stripe, representing Islam.

As we drove to Damascus, posters of al-Assad lining the highway had been crudely erased or torn down. On one set of posters, he was replaced with an ad for dairy products.

We parked at the edge of Damascus’ Old Town and walked the 10 minutes to our hotel. Tourism had obviously not made a foothold during those 14 years of bloodshed. Unlike the medina in Fez, Morocco, or the souqs in Dubai, Damascus’ Old Town is crude. Dull, stone blocks with electrical wires hung from concrete walls. We walked on cracked pedestrian alleys. 

A man sold corn on the cob on a small burner. Men smoked the shisha water pipe outside scruffy cafes. A muezzin’s scratchy but melodic call to prayer floated through the windy alleys. And new Syrian flags flew everywhere. 

I loved it. Damascus remains real and raw, a little rough around the edges and untouched by commercialization. I didn’t see a single souvenir shop on the way to our hotel.

The elegant Dar Al Mamlouka hotel lobby looks like an open-air courtyard. A lemon tree stands next to a fountain where resident cats play. We were greeted with two welcoming gifts: a glass of mango juice and socks emblazoned with al-Assad’s face on the souls – so you walk on him with every step.

I asked, “You have any al-Assad toilet paper yet?”

Owner Tony Mezannar opened the hotel in 2010, three years after he opened the Beit Al Manlouka around the corner. I asked how business was during the 14 years of civil war.

“I had a German shepherd dog,” Mezannar said. “I played with him 20 hours a day. We closed many times. But tourism is coming again. People are happy.”

Bespectacled and lean, Mezannar is a Christian, part of Syria’s 3 percent minority. It was never an issue, he said, until al-Assad made it one.

“He always said, ‘Be careful of Islam. Be careful of terrorists,’” he said. “But we had no problem with Islam; Islam had no problem with Christians.”

He said he’s looking forward to the United States re-opening its embassy here after closing 14 years ago. Some talk of Israel opening an embassy even though it has recently bombed Syria to establish a bigger buffer zone since al-Assad’s downfall.

“We want to live as normal people,” Mezannar said. “I have three children. I want them to have an education, to travel the world, to have friends. People just want peace.”

Touring Old Town Damascus

For decades, tourists poured into Damascus to see the world’s oldest capital. Established between 8,000-6,000 B.C., it has been ruled by everyone from the Arameans to the Romans to the Ottomans. Despite the blood just recently dried on its stone walls, Damascus still has the same points of interest worth seeing.

Our local guide was Tambi Ibrahim, a wiry, 40-year-old whose 26-year-old brother was killed by al-Assad’s troops in 2012. He showed us a video of bombs destroying his neighborhood in Homs, Syria’s third-largest city. He never stops thinking about him. Carrying the green flag with the gold eagle of the post al-Assad Syria, he told me, “I looked at his face this morning. He once said, ‘We will end this war, my bro. One day we will wave this flag.’

“Then they killed him.”

Tambi took us to St. Anania’s Church. The oldest church in Damascus was built in the 1st century A.D. under an old house where the kindness of the Syrian people was first on display. In that 1st century, a Roman general named Saul came to the gate of Damascus to arrest Christians in Rome’s quest to stamp out the religion.

The general fell off his horse from a blinding light, allegedly sent by God, and was badly injured. Anania took him in, saved his life and baptized him St. Paul. Yes, that St. Paul. Saved by the woman he came to arrest, St. Paul became one of the apostles who helped transform Christianity into a world religion.

We went to the old arched Roman gate where poor ol’ Saul fell. Standing guard were three policemen, all carrying Kalashnikov machine guns – and smiles. They posed for pictures. They shook our hands. They talked.

“I am happy you are here to see our city,” one said. “We will rebuild it.”

With a beard, stocky build, kind eyes and a beige stocking cap under his black hoody, he called himself Adam. He told me he lost a brother to al-Assad’s army in 2012 and another in 2015. I asked him what’s the biggest difference he has seen in the last year.

“I feel I am back to my country again,” he said.

He said Damascus is safer today. While it hasn’t suffered the wholesale carpet bombing of Aleppo and Homs to the north, Damascus has fallen off the world radar as a tourist destination. I asked about the future.

“It’s very bright,” he said. “The economy is a lot. There is technology. I’m a marketing manager. I was working in Turkey for three years and I came back to Syria so I have things to do here and there are a lot of people like me. So we can do a lot of things.”

Seemingly the only Westerners, we were as big curiosities as the Syrians were to us. Everywhere we went, Syrians came to shake our hands. “Welcome to Syria!” rang in our ears.

When we walked through the market, one shop keeper of sweets had placed four pictures of al-Assad’s face on the concrete. If you stepped on all four of them, he gave you a candy.

A man on a motor scooter sporting a Syrian flag gladly agreed to pose for a picture. His name was Mohammed Mohammed and said the new government has given the people so much hope.

“It’s slow but it’s good,” he said. “We want a long time for big change but it’s already good.”

Damascus’ restaurants do not need upgrades. Great ones are spread throughout the city and Syrian cuisine is excellent. Grilled meats. Healthy salads. Fresh bread with hummus. For lunch we dined at Ararat, a big, homey place with wicker balconies and vines hanging down.

I had crispy chicken and a fresh berry smoothie for all of $10. The owner, Vrej Gouroumlian, is an Armenian who’s great grandfather escaped the Ottoman’s genocide and settled in Damascus. Gouroumlian has heard his share of national suffering and wants Syria to rejoin the world.

“They just want to live in peace.” he said. “They’ve suffered too much for an empty cause. We want to make relationships with all the countries in the world. We don’t want to live alone like North Korea.”

Tambi led us to a sprawling indoor hall that 400 years ago served as a trading center for horse and camel dealers. They’d bring their animals into the hall and sleep free in apartments upstairs. Today instead of camels, you can buy coffee and snacks.

Aver Alrati is an elementary school English teacher who is a huge fan of the new president. Under al-Assad, one cross word heard by any of his thousands of spies could land you in Sednaya Prison where SOHR says 30,000 Syrians died from torture, mistreatment and mass executions.

Today?

“It’s a lot better,” she said. “There is freedom to talk. You can express your feelings. You can express your politics. You can express your sides. You can express anything you want.”

We stopped by an art store where beautiful framed oil paintings showed Damascus street scenes in their most romantic form. Mosque minarets glistening in the sun. Archways in Old Town. Fruit venders on corners.

Could Damascus return to this? With people celebrating the one-year anniversary of al-Assad’s ouster, not everyone is convinced, namely the art store’s French-Syrian owner.

“We’re waving Taliban flags,” she said. “We’re shooting guns. It really scares me. Maybe we shouldn’t talk politics.”

Ahmed al-Sharaa

Or maybe we should.

Ahmed al-Sharaa, the man to whom 26 million Syrians have entrusted with their salvation, does not have the resume that inspires visions of AirBnBs and wine bars.

Born in Riyadh to a Syrian Sunni family, al-Sharaa grew up in Damascus and joined al-Qaeda just before the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. He fought the insurgency for three years before the U.S. arrested him and put him in jail from 2006-2011.

He was released just in time to create the al-Qaeda-backed al-Nusra Front to topple al-Assad. After al-Assad fled to Moscow on Dec. 8, 2004, al-Sharaa was named de facto leader and then president one month later.

Now rubbing elbows with world leaders, he has exchanged his long hair and keffiyeh head scarf for a neat crewcut and tailored suits. He has vowed to restore Syria’s international relationships, integrate military fronts, restore the economy and return Syrian refugees to their homes.

Meanwhile, in the last year, government-affiliated troops have massacred an estimated 1,500 members of al-Assad’s Alawites Muslim sect in southern Syria, according to Reuters.  Dozens of Druse, who have opposed al-Sharaa, have been killed by Bedouin tribesmen, their long-time rival whom the Druse attacked regularly during the revolution. Some Druse families were forced to the top of their apartment buildings and thrown off.

According to the United Nations, since al-Assad’s ouster, 400,000 Syrians have been displaced. 

Then on Nov. 10 in Washington, Pres. Trump met al-Sharaa, dressed in a sharp suit and red tie, to strengthen the countries’ ties. Trump also announced he’d lift sanctions for six months. In June, Syria sent its first SWIFT transaction since being thrown out of the international financial system in 2011.

Few would discuss the recent killings. One man shrugged it off, saying, “Things are pretty intense now.” Tambi said the Bedouins are acting independently and al-Sharaa is trying to stop it

But since the rise of al-Rashaa, Damascus has definitely leaned closer to the Islamic flame. Ben Crowley, Saiga’s co-owner and brutally objective guide who has been to Syria countless times, said before this year, many Syrian women wore Western clothes, much of it bordering on sexy. Last week, nearly every woman I saw wore a head covering.

Damascus’ main attraction is the Great Umayyed Mosque, a sprawling architectural wonder built in 715 after the Muslim conquest of Damascus. Giant crystal chandeliers hang inside the giant prayer hall. Beautiful mosaics cover tall arched entryways. A 77-meter (253-foot) minaret can be seen from around the city.

The women in our group had to wear full length robes but when they entered the prayer hall with us, some men complained. The women had to enter through their designated entrance.

“It wasn’t divided a year and a half ago,” Ben whispered to me. “We were all together. If someone complained they would be told to leave.”

At night we went down Basha Street, Old Town’s bar street. Ben said, “Damascus used to be a real proper party town.” But numerous businesses were dark. Alcohol is still served in Syria but an estimated 60 percent of the bars in Damascus have closed.

One night, we dined around the corner from our hotel to a restaurant where I had chicken tawook shish, succulent marinated chicken cubes put on a skewer. However, the establishment curiously no longer serves arak, Syria’s potent licorice-flavored whisky, much to our chagrin.

The owner said, “In the new Syria, many people don’t like alcohol anymore.”

The one-year anniversary celebration

Our van dropped us off under a bridge that was already packed with pedestrians for a military parade scheduled to start in an hour. Police carrying Kalashnikovs lined the street. They were in a good mood, smiling for pictures and talking to Syrians.

Tambi, who seemed to know everyone in Damascus, talked to one and got us inside the guardrail with prime viewing spots on the curb. People were lined up two deep behind us. But everyone was eager to talk. Everyone had a story – and a name for al-Assad.

“He’s a donkey!” one young woman told me.

Melika Darkl, 17, wore a hijab and a smile as she leaned over my shoulder.

“Finally, Bashar al-Assad is out of Syria,” she said. “We have a good government and a good president. And they are working so hard to make Syria great again, to make the people in Syria happy.”

I asked what’s the worst thing she saw al-Assad do.

“Bashad al-Assad took all the fuel for himself and his family and not let the people take any of it,” she said. “Literally, there was a cord. You’d go to the station and wait for your name until they give your name. Maybe you wait two months. Literally with bread, too.”

I looked into the crowd. People carried pictures of their lost loved ones. They wrapped themselves in the new flag. Most of the people I interviewed had lost at least one family member to the al-Assad regime.

“We have a lot of work to do because it’s been a tough 14 years,” said Mazen Aarkoura, 28. “We can build Syria. We have to work with the minorities. We must unite Syria. Rebuild the construction, rebuild the roads, then rebuild the cities that the al-Assad regime destroyed.”

The military parade started with an endless procession of troop platoons all in various battle fatigues but all wearing camouflage black facial paint. Following them were the military vehicles: Heavily camouflaged trucks. Halftracks. Armored people carriers. Rocket launchers. Bigger rocket launchers.

Then came the chants.

“God is with this army!”

“God is greatest! Louder! Louder!”

“Prophet Mohammed is our leader! And he will be forever!”

A member of our group aptly noted one consistency: Every chant was about God. I wondered about what the silent minority in Syria is thinking. One woman told Ben quietly, “We have traded one dictator for another.”

One 30ish man talked to me while wildly hugging his white flag with the black Arabic lettering. It’s the same flag that flies atop the highest flagpole in Kabul which is controlled by the Taliban. The man told me, “Please explain Islamaphobia. This is the new flag of Islam.” 

I started scanning the crowd for the ISIS flag, similar to the Taliban’s but black with white lettering. Instead, after the hour-long parade ended and the crowd began to move toward Umayyad Square, I saw a lot of al-Assad pictures hung in effigy, his ears laughingly large like a cartoon character.

Then it got scary.

Ever been in a crowd of 60,000-70,000 wildly crazed people? We were jammed cheek to cheek and I’m not talking just butts. The street was jammed with human flesh. I looked down the street and all I saw were heads all the way to the horizon.

It was pickpocket heaven. I held my zippered jacket pocket with my wallet with one hand and my cell and notepad with the other. We plowed through people. Our group frantically looked for travel partners, temporarily lost.

The mood was festive. People kept shaking my hand as I bulled past them. However, one teenager showed me his cellphone. His screen saver was Osama Bin Laden. He made a motion with his finger resembling a plane going into a building.

Another had a photo of Donald Trump.

A conclusion

After we finally got spit from the crowd, we were exhausted. On my last night in Syria, I crashed early. I woke to walk the market, shockingly quiet after a week of chants and flag waving. The city had returned to normalcy. Men smoked the nargile and drank tea in cafes. A man dressed like a jester poured coffee for passersby. Shopkeepers sold Iraqi flags and costume jewelry.

I couldn’t help drawing a comparison with another regime change in my lifetime. In 1979, Iran ran off Mohammad Rez Pahlavi, the brutal Shah of Iran who killed hundreds during his reign. Taking over was Ruhollah Khomeini, the revolutionary they called the Ayatollah who turned Iran into a far right Islamic republic rife with human rights violations.

Maybe al-Rashara has indeed changed as he says. I vowed to return in a year before making judgment. Damascus’ food is great. The people are friendly. And how many bars do you really need?

Then I saw a news photo from the celebration that continued the night before. I saw a photo of a man with a black hood over his face. He waved a flag from atop a car.

It was the black and white flag of ISIS.

If you’re thinking of going …

How to get there: Independent travel is difficult. Few cities outside the Middle East fly directly to Damascus. It’s better to fly to Beirut then take a shared taxi two hours to the border, cross then take another taxi an hour to Damascus. You also need a visa before crossing the border. It’s best to take an organized tour and ease the confusion. I went with Saiga Tours which I paid $895, including transfers to and from Beirut, visa processing, hotels, breakfasts, guides and entries to all sites. I paid €332 for a round-trip ticket on Pegasus Airlines from Rome to Beirut.

Where to stay: Dar Al Mamluka, G876 +3QQ, 953-11-543-0445, https://www.almamloukahotels.com/dar_al_mamlouka/about-us, info@almamlouka.com. Beautiful hotel with big, finely decorated rooms in the heart of Old Town. Helpful, English-speaking staff.

Where to eat: Mona Lisa, Bab Touma St., 963-955-449-907, https://www.facebook.com/MONALISA.SYRIA, 9 a.m.-1 a.m. Monday-Saturday, 9 a.m.-midnight Sunday. Cool restaurant with French motif and fake balconies serving traditional Syrian fare. I paid €8 for chicken with potatoes.

When to go: While Damascus isn’t a popular tourist destination, still avoid it in summer. It’s hot. Average high in July and August is 98. During my visit last week it was in the 40s and 50s.

For more information: Syrian Ministry of Tourism, https://www.facebook.com/p/Syrian-Ministry-of-Tourism-SAR-100064481360306.