It was a rainy Friday afternoon in the summer of 2011 in Damascus, Syria. For 20-year-old college student Hesham Moamadani, shuffling through the soaked crowd of over 1,000 alongside his older brother Ghiath \u2014 whose name, in Arabic, also stands for rain \u2014 was a typical ritual at this time of week. Immediately after Friday prayers at the local mosque was the only time when Moamadani and his brother could be amidst such a large crowd of people. For Bashar al-Assad, the totalitarian dictator who had ruled Syria for nearly 10 years by 2011, large public gatherings were a sacrilege; a mass could be potent, dangerous.
This time around, though, something was different. Moamadani and his brother were a part of the Shield of Daryya, one of many online Facebook groups that emerged from the boom of internet activism during the Syrian Revolution. Like many other online resistance networks, they organized protests directly beneath the nose of the Assad regime\u2019s stringent censorship. The crowd had assembled that day with a knowing conviction. In a defiant move, someone had begun chanting \u201churriya\u201d \u2014 freedom. Moamadani and his brother followed. The crowd chanted hurriya repeatedly, fists pumping in the air, entranced by their neighbors\u2019 hope-drenched vigor. Then, the buses full of men arrived, and the bullets, too, began raining from the sky.
***
When I saw Moadamani for the first time in Berlin, Germany, nearly a year after the fall of the Assad regime, the weather was eerily similar to that fateful afternoon 14 years ago in Damascus, a coincidence he described as \u201cbeautiful.\u201d Even in the dreary humidity of the rainy day, the scent of tobacco wafted from his shirt when he embraced me like an old friend from another lifetime.
In March 2011, the embers of Syrian dissent against the Assad family\u2019s nearly 50-year-long reign of terror had erupted into the flames of the Syrian Revolution. Darayya, a small suburb West of Damascus and Moamadani\u2019s hometown, stood as a flashpoint of anti-Assadist resistance and pacifist protests. Now 34, Moamadani betrayed little of his harrowing life in his handsome face and the toothy grin that seemed to accompany him in perpetuity. \u201cHe\u2019s incredibly friendly, incredibly generous,\u201d said Mada al-Zoabi, a friend of Moamadani and a senior at Bard College Berlin, who recalled her first impression of him. \u201cHe\u2019s also just so funny.\u201d
In between bites of his chicken shawarma, Moamadani recalled his life under Assad\u2019s violent dictatorship. We were sitting at a Levantine restaurant in Neuk\u00f6lln, Berlin\u2019s well-known Arab neighborhood. \u201cThe death toll was almost 2,000 people a day,\u201d he said.
Moamadani, who lived with his parents, siblings, and half-siblings in Darayya throughout his childhood, recounted that war never occurred to him as even a remote possibility. \u201cYou don\u2019t think it\u2019s possible, until it happens to you,\u201d he said. By the time the war broke out, Moamadani was 20, studying law as an undergraduate at Damascus University. His education informed his commitment to anti-Assadist resistance, which he engaged with for nearly 2 years after the start of the war. \u201cWhen I was [studying] law, the first thought that came to my mind was, what\u2019s the purpose of my law degree under a strict dictatorship?\u201d he said.
But by June 2012 \u2014 almost one year after the start of the Syrian Civil War \u2014 the situation had significantly worsened. Around 3000 Free Syrian Army (FSA) soldiers, a decentralized insurgent rebel group, had made Darayya their stronghold. By August, however, the suburb underwent heavy shelling by the pro-Assad militias, and the rebel groups withdrew. Faced with little resistance, the military began a rampage, indiscriminately carpet bombing residential neighborhoods and executing any townspeople suspected of being rebels. By August 25, nearly 300 townspeople had been killed by the military, with around 80 of the dead identified as civilians according to Reuters. (Moamadani suggests a number closer to 1500).
\u201cI would go and hide with other activists and move from apartment to apartment,\u201d Moamadani said. \u201cThey would divide the city into blocks, then [clear] it block by block, [planting] snipers then moving to the next block.\u201d After jumping from block to block in hiding, Moamadani recalled spending nearly six hours in the middle of the night attempting to return home, which was less than two miles away. While it was safer to move at night when most militia members were asleep, snipers bedecked the roofs of residential buildings and shot at first sight. \u201cYou had to walk over the dead bodies [strewn] across the street,\u201d he added.
Moamadani was reaching a breaking point. He was terrified for his own and his family\u2019s safety, perpetually in jeopardy from his activist history. So he left, paying an acquaintance to drive him to Lebanon. He eventually made his way to Egypt, where he would attempt to enroll in an Egyptian university to complete his law degree. He was too late \u2014 the academic year had begun in August, and he\u2019d arrived in September.
That dejected 20-year-old Moamadani never could have imagined that it would take him nearly 3 years and a trip back to Syria before setting foot in Germany. Destitute and jobless in Egypt, Moamadani had few remaining options but to return to an even more war-torn Syria, where it took him nearly 6 months to return home due to the extensive siege of major Syrian cities by the Assadist government.
By the time he finally returned, he already wanted to leave. \u201cIt was unlivable,\u201d he recounted.
***
It was Hesham Moamadani\u2019s third time ever swimming in the ocean.
The first two instances occurred in Latakia, Syria, a coastal city in Western Syria facing the Mediterranean. It was the highlight of a family road trip before the war had begun. This time, though, the entirety of his belongings \u2014 his passport, phone, some valuables, candy bars \u2014 had been dropped in a plastic bag and wrapped in nylon. Unlike his road trip to Latakia, Moamadani didn\u2019t know if he could return home \u2014 or where \u2018home\u2019 even would be, should his journey be successful.
Moamadani had embarked on the longest swim of his life: eight hours, from the shores of \u00c7e\u015fme, Turkey, to the Greek Island of Chios, alongside a stranger he met named Feras Abukhalil less than 24 hours before. After a \u201cmiraculous\u201d arrival in Chios, Moamadani trod on foot through Macedonia, Serbia, Hungary, Austria, and then eventually to Germany, where he would settle for the next decade of his life.
After obtaining a full-ride scholarship to Bard College Berlin and graduating in 2021 with a degree in Economics, Politics, and Social Thought, Moamadani became a journalist at Mnemonic, an NGO that provides an open-source database for war crimes and rights violations in Syria. In 2024, he became a Civic Engagement Officer at his alma mater. Albeit continuing to grapple with his complex past and trauma, he finally felt like he was settling into life in Berlin. Then the Assad regime fell.
\u201cI got my German citizenship the same week the dictatorship ended,\u201d he said, recalling the surreal moment his two nationalities \u2014 one by birth and the other by naturalization \u2014 emerged at a crossroads. It was a climactic moment for an identity crisis and a lingering sentiment of guilt that, according to Moamadani, had plagued him since his departure.
After Assad\u2019s fall, Western countries have implemented a string of updates to their migration policies, urging Syrians to return home. Last September, the United States suspended the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program for Syrian refugees, which had allowed Syrian nationals to work and live in the U.S., but wasn\u2019t a direct path to citizenship. The German government escalated attempts to repatriate Syrian refugees to their home country. \u201cThe only people who want to leave Syria now are criminals,\u201d said Anwar Bunni, a Syrian lawyer and human rights activist.
But for many Syrians like Moamadani, the idea of a permanent return generates hesitance. \u201cIt\u2019s not like the country was taken by Assad and [by] December given [back] to us,\u201d he said. \u201cThere was a release of tension [when] the dictatorship was over. But there are consequences: they still discover graves, memories, [and] you\u2019ve changed as a person.\u201d Moamadani\u2019s friend, al-Zoabi, who is also Syrian, reiterated this sentiment. \u201cThe international consensus seems to be, well, \u2018that\u2019s solved\u2019, you know. But [Syria] is obviously in a state of instability,\u201d she said.
Moamadani once \u201cdreamt\u201d about the day the war would be over. If that day, he thought, would ever come, he imagined that Syrians \u2014 including himself \u2014 would pack their bags immediately and \u2018return home\u2019. But for a nation with an infrastructure in ruins and a raw history of stark suffering yet to be reckoned with, it\u2019s easier said than done. And in the decade since the beginning of the war, Syrians have established new lives in their communities that are now reliant on them. To some, then, \u2018home\u2019 is where they are now. But to others like Moamadani, \u2018home\u2019 no longer exists. \u201cThe term \u2018never going home\u2019 applies, because it is not there, [and] it is not here.\u201d<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It was a rainy Friday afternoon in the summer of 2011 in Damascus, Syria. For 20-year-old college student Hesham Moamadani, shuffling through the soaked crowd of over 1,000 alongside his older brother Ghiath \u2014 whose name, in Arabic, also stands for rain \u2014 was a typical ritual at this time of week. Immediately after Friday<\/p>\n