On November 8, 2025, I crossed into Syria for the first time in 14 years with my one-year-old, Raya. This is a dream I never thought would happen for myself, let alone my daughter. Driving from Beirut to Damascus, a road I was deeply familiar with growing up, I was filled with excitement, apprehension, and anxiety all at once. I was sure there would be obstacles along the way, that something would go wrong and I would be turned back. The internalized fear that the Assad regime had instilled in Syrians did not stop at the border; it lingered in the body and seeped into the psyche, even for those of us who had spent years in the diaspora.
Once we crossed the Lebanese border and reached Syrian passport control, my heart was racing, pounding so hard I could feel it in my throat. When I approached the officer, I was immediately disarmed by his polite demeanor and warm welcome. This was not the border experience I had grown up expecting. I showed him my expired Syrian passport, and without hesitation, he stamped my American passport. No interrogation. No suspicion.
When it came to my daughter, he paused. He asked about her father—a Palestinian, a refugee in Lebanon and an American citizen. Because she does not have a Palestinian ID, and because her father is not Syrian, I was told I had to pay $200 for a single-entry visa. It stung deeply. I told the officer how painful it felt that my nationality as her mother did not matter, that she was not recognized as partly Syrian. What surprised me most was not the policy itself, but the fact that I could express this hurt openly. The officer listened, apologized, and said he was only following orders, so I paid. Paying meant Raya was going to Syria.
The idea of home had lived for so long in longing and fear, that actually inhabiting it felt disorienting, even unreal
At the final checkpoint, patrol officers examined our passports. Tears welled in my eyes, and one of them noticed. He looked at me and said, simply, “Welcome back home.” The words cracked something open. I began to cry uncontrollably. I couldn’t believe I was home, and I couldn’t believe how unfamiliar that feeling felt. Home was no longer the unquestioned certainty it once had been. I recognized the geography, the language, and the cadence of people’s voices, but my nervous system lagged behind, braced for something to go wrong. The idea of home had lived for so long in longing and fear, that actually inhabiting it felt disorienting, even unreal.
The last time I had been in Syria was in January 2012, when a bomb exploded in Al-Midan in Damascus. We were just five kilometers away. I remember our apartment windows shaking violently from the impact, followed by a deep, massive boom. We paused for a moment, startled, then continued on with our day, convincing ourselves it was something small—a burst tire, construction, anything ordinary. Deep down, my parents and I knew it was not. But we didn’t allow our thoughts to go there. Later that day, we heard on Al Jazeera that the Assad regime claimed it was a “terrorist” attack, though many believed it was planted by the regime itself to sow fear and doubt in the uprising. That moment—half acknowledged, half suppressed—became frozen in my memory. It was my last physical experience of Syria.
The road to Damascus was thick with memory. My driver pointed out old regime checkpoints along the way. He described what people used to endure there: humiliation, cruelty, fear, and the unpredictability of what might happen based on an officer’s mood that day. The pain felt recent and unresolved, following us rather than staying behind.
I paused, let it settle, and felt the presence of my late father. I wished he were there to greet me and Raya, to witness a return that once felt impossible
The moment I stepped into the parking lot of my family home in Kafarsouseh, a neighborhood in the heart of Damascus, my body recognized it as home, even though nearly everything around me had changed. I hadn’t set foot there since 2012, and the neighborhood itself felt unfamiliar—with new buildings, altered streets, a different rhythm—but that recognition was immediate and physical, as if the years had collapsed all at once. I felt as though I had never left. So much had changed, and yet nothing had. The sense of belonging took me by surprise, especially given that I had only ever lived there during summers. I paused, let it settle, and felt the presence of my late father. I wished he were there to greet me and Raya, to witness a return that once felt impossible.
My uncle and his family had met us in Damascus to drive us to Khattab, a town in Hama. To my surprise, during the drive, my uncle blasted revolutionary songs. For the first time ever, we spoke openly about their participation in the revolution: how they joined peaceful protests, made posters with revolutionary slogans, and then abruptly stopped all activism when friends and family members were detained and forcibly disappeared. These were conversations we could never have over the phone. It was too risky. Having them now, out loud, in the car, and later at a café during our pit stop, felt unreal. My cousin, only 14, sang along confidently. She has only known a Syria shaped by conflict, yet she spoke without fear, demanding her rights from this new government. I grew up outside Syria, but she was the one who felt free. That inversion stayed with me.
Khattab was crowded with memories of those we lost. This was the town my father grew up in, though he left early, so our visits were always about reconnecting with family. It was my first time visiting three of my uncles’ homes after they had been looted and burned. It was also the first time I visited my grandparents’ house, the home my father grew up in, and found it completely empty and eerily quiet after my aunt passed away in August. I thought of my uncle Mohammed, who was killed along with his six-month-old daughter when a rocket landed on his front porch as he rocked her to sleep. I was grateful to return, but the absence of my family members weighed heavily.
I kept wondering about the people who once lived there—who survived, who fled, and who didn’t
After two days of reunions, I left Khattab to visit Aleppo, the city my mother grew up in and where I spent all my summer. It’s the city that means the most to me, where I feel the most at home. The road felt suspended between abandonment and stubborn life. This was the first time I was witnessing the large-scale destruction caused by the previous regime. We passed through Taybet Al-Imam, Ma’aret Al-Numan, and Khan Shaykhun, all towns pummeled by barrel bombs and scarred by chemical attacks. The destruction was staggering: massive concrete slabs hung by exposed copper wires, blown-out apartments stood bare, and roads were cratered by explosives. Laundry lines stretched across rubble-filled balconies. Water tanks perched atop hollow homes. I kept wondering about the people who once lived there—who survived, who fled, and who didn’t.
Entering Aleppo, the scenes continued. Bombed-out residential and commercial buildings stood side by side with functioning shops. The economic impact of the war and Western sanctions was unmistakable. People were depleted, financially, physically, and emotionally. And yet, everywhere I went, people spoke openly. Shopkeepers, taxi drivers, relatives—all with dark circles under their eyes—talked freely about the pain they endured and the relief they felt when the regime fell.
I realized then how much of my family history had been shaped not just by violence, but by the enforced quiet that followed it
I heard stories I had never known. One relative told me, for the first time, that over 20 members of her family were murdered in the Hama massacres of 1982, lined up and shot in front of their families. She said it plainly, without embellishment, as though reciting a fact long stripped of shock by silence. I realized then how much of my family history had been shaped not just by violence, but by the enforced quiet that followed it. These truths had always existed, but they had lived unspoken. Hearing them now felt like meeting my family again, but in a different light.
Despite everything, my grandparents’ neighborhood in Aleppo felt unchanged. The scent of jasmine filled the air. The quiet remained intact. It felt as though time had paused there. But stepping inside their abandoned home brought reality back sharply. I thought of family gatherings, my grandmother’s lunches, and of elderly relatives who died in exile longing to return. The house held memory and loss in equal measure.
Visiting Syria made me deeply sad, for the destruction, for the cruelty, for everything that cannot be undone. But I was equally struck by what endured. Syria feels transformed and yet unmistakably itself: familiar, but altered; broken, but alive. It also rearranged something fundamental in me. I returned not just as a daughter or a niece, but as a mother, carrying a child who walked freely through places that once terrified me.
Syria no longer lives solely in my memory, grief, or exile; it now exists in the present tense of my daughter’s life. I don’t know what our long-term relationship to this country will be, or what kind of future Syria itself will be able to claim. But I know that return is no longer abstract or forbidden. Nothing will go back to what it was, but standing in that uncertainty, I felt, for the first time, that something else, something still unwritten, might be possible for Syria and for us.
Basma Alloush is a humanitarian policy practitioner with more than a decade of experience in strategic communications, policy advocacy, and humanitarian diplomacy to the role.