On the fifth anniversary of the revolution, one cannot help but reflect on what we have survived. Our collective Syrian lives, no matter what you believe in, the people or the propaganda, are split forever into before and after the revolution.
It seems that there is nothing in the world imaginable, nothing, that we have not witnessed or experienced. From the most evil and inhumane to the most courageous and generous acts. Sorrow and pain and horror and despair and grief and hope and resilience and compassion and faith and love. We have felt it all and more. Often at the same time.
We have all become different people after the revolution. Our choices created paths that branched into directions we never expected. For some, these paths grew and expanded to create bonds with people and places in ways we also never expected. But others froze in place, also by choice, and watched their ancient worlds and beliefs vanish right before their eyes. Strangers became family, families unravelled, and nothing was the same again.
We have all redefined what home was and is, no matter where we settled and resettled. I suspect, like everyone who has lost something that can never be recovered again except in frail memory, we will never stop redefining home. That is our destiny.
We will always live with regret and conviction battling within us. To never be able to let that raging war rest, is also our curse. Because the burden of truth is too painful to carry all the time.
Last year in Turkey, a bright young man in high school named Ali - who had missed many months of school at a time on his journey of displacement - told me, “Four years for you is nothing, four years for us is a lifetime.” His profound words have lingered in my mind for many months. Over the last few days of reflection, they finally sunk in and I realised he was wrong.
http://www.acimimmigra.org/
It seems that there is nothing in the world imaginable, nothing, that we have not witnessed or experienced. From the most evil and inhumane to the most courageous and generous acts. Sorrow and pain and horror and despair and grief and hope and resilience and compassion and faith and love. We have felt it all and more. Often at the same time.
We have all become different people after the revolution. Our choices created paths that branched into directions we never expected. For some, these paths grew and expanded to create bonds with people and places in ways we also never expected. But others froze in place, also by choice, and watched their ancient worlds and beliefs vanish right before their eyes. Strangers became family, families unravelled, and nothing was the same again.
We have all redefined what home was and is, no matter where we settled and resettled. I suspect, like everyone who has lost something that can never be recovered again except in frail memory, we will never stop redefining home. That is our destiny.
We will always live with regret and conviction battling within us. To never be able to let that raging war rest, is also our curse. Because the burden of truth is too painful to carry all the time.
Last year in Turkey, a bright young man in high school named Ali - who had missed many months of school at a time on his journey of displacement - told me, “Four years for you is nothing, four years for us is a lifetime.” His profound words have lingered in my mind for many months. Over the last few days of reflection, they finally sunk in and I realised he was wrong.
http://www.acimimmigra.org/