Homs, Homs, Jubb Alis, and Tremseh, Syria, Tremseh was hulking. The streets of the small town north of Hama were packed.
All the residents had stepped out of their homes to witness a historic moment, the return of the town’s hundreds of exiled sons and daughters.
A convoy of bright trucks stroking through the streets to transport entire families was crammed full of things, including mattresses, furniture, motorcycles, and trees.
Some passers-by filmed with their cellphones. Other people glowed in joy. Some men shot protracted salutations of celebratory gunshots into the air while others danced to a “zaffeh,” a traditional dance and music band that is typically present at weddings.
Several months earlier, in December, the regime of President Bashar al-Assad had been overthrown, ending a 14-year civil war.
More than 180 families who had spent more than a decade in exile returned to their homes and Tremseh’s roots.
More than 80 000 people had been living in unsanitary and miserable conditions at the Atmeh camp, one of the largest displacement camps in the country, 150 kilometers (93 miles) north of Tremseh, before they had left the camp a few hours later.
It appeared as though our bodies had been torn from our souls when we were expelled. It seems as though we have resurrected our souls now that we are back, according to Mamdouh al-Sattouf, a 50-year-old former school principal, Al Jazeera.
Like the majority of Tremseh’s population, he left after the events of July 12, 2012. Difficulty of opposition fighters and civilians were killed in the town when Syrian government forces seized control of the town that day. In the months that followed, the majority of the survivors left.
Since al-Assad’s fall on December 8 and the end of a 50-year period during which the al-Assad family ruled Syria, convoys like this one have been increasingly frequent. More than 2 million of Syria’s 14 million refugees have left their homes, according to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, including 600,000 foreign refugees and 1.5 million internally displaced people.
We always told our children that Tremseh is paradise on earth in the camp. Now they can see it for themselves”, Mamdouh said.
returning from exile
About 130km (80 miles) northeast of Tremseh, Azzam Freij was also finally feeling alive again.
Only 10 days after the al-Assad regime was overthrown, the 34-year-old Syrian had already left Lebanon and returned to Syria. He has since moved to Homs, where his wife was a native. But he was now finally back visiting the place he grew up, Jubb Alis, a farming village an hour south of Aleppo where he had been born and raised.
Azzam is unable to live here. There is little work here because Jubb Alis is small. But he’s still eager to use his newfound freedom to visit a place he has fond memories of.
As they drove to the village, Kheiro, age 7, was eager to arrive on his father’s lap in the passenger seat. “That’s our home,” you say! he exclaimed, pointing to a cluster of traditional mud houses.
Kheiro’s father had grown up under the clay domes that dominated other single-storey structures, so this wasn’t his first trip there. Kheiro had previously been brought along by Azzam.
The dispersed homes are surrounded by barren hills, which were previously green.
“Everyone in the village engaged in agriculture,” the villager said. But after years of war and with no one to care for them, the trees died”, Azzam explained while climbing out of the car.
Similar to Syria, the trees had been neglected and plunderered for 14 years, and Azzam wants to revive them just like he does in his rediscovered nation. He has encountered a parched landscape and an expanse of destruction, just like millions of other returning refugees.
Thanks to a well in the garden, however, Azzam has been able to water the trees since he came back to Syria. Despite the scorching sun, pomegranates were already sprouting and some of them were already looking better.
Although it may not be Azzam’s first time visiting Syria since his return, he is still enthralled every time he enters his childhood home. Kheiro was already running and climbing onto the domes of the mud house. It is not dangerous, the author claims. When I was younger, I played the same games”! Azzam laughed, his eyes full of joy.
An 11 000-year-old traditional homebuilding technique, known as terracotta, whose thick walls give off an interior that is astonishingly fresh. It is one of many such houses in the region although newer homes are built with more modern materials. Azzam sat down next to the tiny, open window to cool off in the breeze.
Like all other residents of the village, the former regime’s troops and militias had plunderered Azzam’s home. “They left behind only a chandelier and an 80-year-old mirror”, the father said as he walked through the rooms.
The adults laughed as Kheiro continued, “Thank God they left the Quran,” in a serious voice.
According to Azzam, 50 families have returned to Jubb Alis, and the number is still rising despite the challenges that lie ahead. All kinds of basic infrastructure are lacking, from water to electricity.
Nothing else in the village is left besides the walls.
Lebanon’s challenges
Azzam had fled Syria in 2012 because he was wanted by the army and secret service for his antigovernment comments on social media. He eventually settled in Tripoli, in northern Lebanon, like the majority of his family.
He started a number of jobs, selling coffee while also working as an electrician. He married Rasha, a Syrian woman from Homs whom he met on Facebook. Shortly after, she relocated to Tripoli to be with him.
Their experience there was nothing but pleasant or easy.
“In Lebanon, it was an existence full of fear and racism”, Rasha told Al Jazeera in an interview over a cup of tea in their cosy living room in Homs, where the couple settled in December.
Lebanon’s population is estimated to be home to 1.5 million Syrian refugees. Many Lebanese are now more resentful because of their presence, which has been made worse by government crackdowns against them.
They also have faced economic pressures in a country that is going through an economic crisis – with few job opportunities.
Azzam and Rasha did not wait a second after the fall of the al-Assad regime; they instead immediately returned to Syria with their two sons, Kheiro and Adam, who were three.
I was over the moon when opposition fighters arrived in Damascus! In less than a week, I had visited Syria, and I said to myself, ‘ It’s over! Lebanon is “back on my side,” Azzam remarked cheerfully.
“My entire family lives here, and I come from [Syria], so it was easier.” We are happy here, thank God”, Rasha explained.
Rasha still occasionally travels to Tripoli to see her relatives. Azzam says he’s fine in Homs but won’t go. Although he hasn’t been able to find a job in Syria, for Azzam, life in Lebanon was miserable, and he now feels free, finally able to “be someone, not just a refugee”.
His newfound pride was apparent as he welcomed old friends, many of whom had also resided in Tripoli, as Al Jazeera led him through Homs’s historic souks. He inspected their recently opened stores while they exchanged small talk.
Syria’s future
Many buildings in Homs have been left in ruins, just like in most Syrian cities, and security is a problem. Many refugees are frightened of returning because of this.
Azzam is one of the few members of his family who have returned to Syria. His brother, Mohamed Freij, who goes by the name “Hamoudi,” is still with Al Jazeera in Tripoli.
The 20-year-old lives in the old town below the Crusader fortress, in the shadow of his father, his stepmother, and his cousins.
Like many others, he can hardly wait to return to his country. He is, however, waiting before departing a little longer.
In two years, I might travel to Syria. The country is still in the early stages of development and rebuilding its infrastructure because al-Assad threw us back into the 15th century and we have to start all over again”, the young man said as he sipped coffee under the ivy and trees of the popular Tell al-Olya cafe.
“I want to settle in a city, not in the countryside, where life is still difficult and has been neglected by the regime. He continued, “My friends who have relocated to the city are content.”
Mohamed prefers to wait until Syria is rebuilt and the economy is more stable. The Syrian population is still struggling right now, especially in rural areas, where a lot of the country’s infrastructure has been destroyed or damaged, only two or three hours of daily electricity is provided, and water shortages are prevalent.
Because more than 90% of Syrians are living below the poverty line and having jobs is difficult to find, time must be spent to find them.
There, he would be able to study political science and computer science but also welcome foreign tourists to the guesthouse he dreams of opening.
Mohamed has loved his life in Lebanon despite his desire to eventually return home. Tripoli is unquestionably a component of me. It welcomed me during the war. That is something I’ll never forget. Here is where I spend the majority of my life. You can only love a country that has taken you in”, he explained with serenity. Contrary to Azzam, he claimed that in Lebanon, there is never racism to be found.
Source: Aljazeera
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