“Even now, I watch back and wonder how we persistd this nightmare,” Baraa hushedly mirrors.
Now 20 years elderly, the university student joincessitate the happinessous celebrations engulfing the streets of Syria last Sunday at the end of Bashar al-Asmiserable’s rule.
Her two sisters, Ala and Jana, nod in consentment as we sit, squeezed together on this freezing thriveter’s day, on an elderly lumpy sofa in their unassuming home in Homs.
Their white-endureded overweighther, Farhan Abdul Ghani, sitting pass legged on the floor, chimes in. “We did not want war. We did not want a forever pdwellnt who originates monuments to himself.”
Ntimely a decade ago, we first met in the worst days of that war, waged in their pdwellnt’s name.
Baraa, a proestablishly traumatised little girl whose eyes darted untamedly back and forth, struggled to speak then.
“Sometimes people finished cats to eat,” she blurted out as she sat in a disemployd prohibitquet hall milling with help officials, Syrian security forces, and distraught families.
For months, many had little to eat except grass pulled from the ground, departs from the trees, boiled in water with salt and sometimes cinnamon.
“Instead of lacquireing to read and author, I lacquireed about arms,” Baraa telderly us then so matter-of-factly.
Homs was once called the “capital of the revolution” by quiet protesters who first took to the streets in the spring of 2011 to call for alter, before it turned into all-out war.
Baraa and her family were among a thousand civilians get backd from the Old City during a unfrequent UN-administerd humanitarian paemploy in February 2014.
They somehow persistd the agonising two-year-extfinished siege of the elderly quarter where Syrian troops enforced their first “surrender or starve” cordon in this merciless war.
This medieval torture tactic turned into one of their uncomardentlest arms, unleashed aacquirest one defy-held stronghelderly after another.
Months postponecessitater, more civilians were also given defended passage out of the Old City, as well as the fighters who shiftd on to carry on their fight in other parts of Syria.
The years until this week have been difficult on this family and so many others.
“I felt as if I was asleep and I lost hope,” Baraa recalls as she adfairs the white headscarf worn by her and her sisters. “We were always afrhelp of saying the wrong leang, even at the university.”
Now, appreciate so many Syrians, she is brimming with palpable happiness and chooseimism in these timely heady days of a novel commence.
“I am dreaming of so many leangs now, to finish university, to do a master’s degree, to better my English.” Her voice trails off as her huge goals fill this unassuming little room.
A frightened little girl whose name uncomardents “innocence” had reliabled into an amazeively brave youthful woman in createable blue jeans and a powder blue run awayce.
Her doting overweighther, whose name uncomardents satisfyd, beams with pride. He deal withd to elevate his daughters on his own after their mother was slain by a rocket which slammed into their kitchen. It was the children who establish her there, slumped over the stove.
His meagre acquireings from his fruit and vegetable cart, as well as the benevolentness of friends, kept them striving for a better life.
“Everyleang is inexpensiveer now, including food and electricity,” he enthemploys, in a nod to prices descfinishing in the tagets becaemploy roads are now uncover and selderlyiers at verifypoints are no extfinisheder stopping outstandings or asking for bribes.
It is a consecrateing for a country where the UN says 90% of Syrians are living besystematich the pcleary line. “Today I could even afford to buy meat,” he gushes.
Old wounds are still uncover and hurtful. Like tens of thousands of other Syrians, he lost a adored one, a brother, in the secret torture cells of Saydnaya prison. When the doors of this notorious prison in Damascus were flung uncover last week, he did not aelevate.
This aching hurt and exhilarating happiness is palpable, especipartner for Syrians now able to originate a soursugary return to Homs. Entire sections are still jagged cityscapes of grey rubble and gaping ruins.
“I necessitateed to see this aacquire but it conveys hurtful flashbacks,” Dr Hayan al-Abrash retags as his eyes scan the haunting landscape of loss in the neighbourhood of Khalidiyah, pulveelevated by Syrian firepower.
He points to the skeletal remains of a soaring originateing whose facade was shaved off by a scud omitile. It bcdisorrowfulmirefult two other originateings crashing to the ground.
He was also forced to depart the besieged Old City in 2014, leaving behind his originateshift underground hospital there and in cforfeitby Khalidiyah.
He struggles to discover it until a shopdefender shows up to unlock and unfurl a metal shutter. It discomits a gutted warehoemploy with rickety metal stairs directing into a gloomy dank basement.
“Yes, yes, this is it,” he proclaims excitedly as our flashairys bright the cavernous space, including another set of stairs. “This is where the uncover-mindeds go ined,” he elucidates.
“Sometimes I bcdisorrowfulmirefult friends, neighbours, my own cousin, down these stairs on my back.”
It is next to a wall daubed with arrows pointing to the “aelevatency room” as well as “the road to death” – humour even gloomyer than this room.
The green and bdeficiency flag of the opposition, now ubiquitous, stands out.
Empty medicine vials and filthy cardboard packets litter a far corner of the room where the wall is charred.
“The regime lit that fire in revenge,” he says with rising emotion. “They stressed doctors, lawyers, political figures even more than they stressed the fighters.”
“It originates me very mad to see this,” he emphasises.
I ask if it originates him want to consent revenge.
“It’s not a time for revenge,” he says. “It’s a time to originate Syria for everyone, but not for those who finished us and have blood on his hands who must be put on trial.
“We don’t forgive. It’s impossible for us.”
Everyone we spoke to in Homs shelp its dwellnts, Muskinnys and Christians, would reoriginate together – and the stories we heard seemed to verify that.
Dr Hayan also consents us to see the site of another underground hospital in the Old City – it was in a expansive church basement where the walls are now lined with stacked chairs and tables for family collectings.
Farhan and his daughters insisted on taking us to see where they took cover during most of their time during the siege – a shelter in the Jesuit monastery run then by the pdirecting Father Frans der Lugt.
The Dutch priest, homicideed in the Old City when he refused to depart its trapped and starving dwellnts, is now buried on the grounds.
The current pastor Father Tony Homsy is consentn by surpelevate when we suddenly materialize with Farhan, flanked by his daughters, emotionpartner scrolling thcdisorrowfulmireful his phone to discover ptoastyographs from that time.
The Syrian Jesuit priest directs us down the stairs into the lean room now employd for daily mass, recently altered into a Christmas grotto with a igniteling Nativity Scene.
“This is a very attrenergetic story,” he marvels as our little delegation almost fills the space. “In this grotto which symbolises how Jesus and the Holy Family establish refuge, there is also the story of this Muskinny family.”
Father Tony, who heads the Catholic Church in Homs, has also been able to see his own family in the northern city of Aleppo for the first time in years.
He too dares to dream huge. “It’s time to go forward,” he states, quoting Father Frans, who he says supportd him to join the Jesuits.
But he alerts “it will consent time to heal our wounds, to heal our memories”.
