28 hours, $2100, and a taxi ride is all it took to take me back in time and deliver me, a scared, estranged little girl, to my childhood home.

I have arrived. Breathe little girl, breathe.

The journey was rough. From traversing across continents following altered flight paths to avoid certain “problematic” and “dangerous” air spaces, to landing in a completely unfamiliar place, jetlagged and pumped full of adrenaline, and crossing the Lebanese-Syrian border by land because you can’t easily fly into Damascus. But that didn’t matter, because I would have given everything just to walk down those old streets and climb the stairs to my childhood home.

The little house at the end of the staircase

As we drove away from the border towards Dimashq, visions of a past life tenderly revealed themselves to me. Unknown streets and neighbourhoods became familiar, ever so vaguely, like a distant dream, until we reached the edge of my old neighbourhood.

Turning around the corner into our street, the memories were much less subtle now. My sister held my hand tight; I fell completely silent. I felt cold and frozen. I’m here.

Every fibre of my being relaxed, my mind quietened, and I entered a trance-like state. As I stepped out of the taxi, I saw my aunty waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs. Let me pause for a minute here to tell you a little story about those stairs. 

For years after I left home, many nightmares terrorized me, but the most prominent one was about the staircase that leads to our house. I would dream of climbing those stairs for what felt like hours, looking down at my bare feet climbing one broken step after the other, but I never reached the top. I would never reach our wooden front door. Instead, the staircase would tighten around me as the spiral closed in from above. I would wake up in sweat and tears.

My journey home begins and ends at the bottom of that staircase.

The day I arrived, as I stepped onto the first step with my pack I told myself, the this ends now. The nightmare ends now. It can no longer terrorize me. I climbed the stairs with all our luggage, every step a little closer, a few steps left now… stands between  Fear, nostalgia and exhilaration whirled in my blood and carried my body, light as a feather, tears flowing down my face, to the top, and delivered me into the embrace of my grandmother.

As a side note, and perhaps as a sign of what’s to come, our street was completely dark when I arrived. I wanted to carry my luggage  and have a dramatic home coming moment the elevator I couldn’t use the elevator even if I wanted to. Time to check my privilege.

Burnt Diesel & Urine

The next day felt like a dream. Every corner I turned, every tree, street sign, shop, every smell and sound around me opened a portal into a world I didn’t realise still existed. The sound of a call to prayer in the distance, the smell of dirt and wild flowers mixed with urine and burnt Diesel, the face of our old grocer who I used to buy chocolate from when I was three. My senses were lazer focused, my mind was at ease. It turns out that the smell of burnt Diesel and urine give me comfort. The smell of home.

Walking around those streets, as old as time, memories flooded my brain. People and places I thought I’d forgotten about were ever so clear in my memory. They were lying dormant, waiting for something to trigger them. At first glance, everything looked the same. My friends had the same smile they did 10 years ago, their faces slightly more wrinkled, they now had soft white hairs protruding their thick, brown mane, they hugged the same, they loved me just as much. But much like the buildings they live in, what you see isn’t necessarily what you get. You can’t judge a book by looking at its cover.

While at first glance the buildings stand, a closer look reveals bits of broken glass, missing bricks and countless deserted homes. A testament to the hardship and war that fell upon this place and continues to impact the everyday life of those who survived.

Equivalently, if you spend enough time with the people and look behind their generousity and loving smiles, you’ll see that their soul is very tired, distorted, battered. Everyone is just surviving, just like the buildings, they’re barely standing, frozen in time, waiting for a change that might never come. So it’s no wonder that most of the people I knew have already left, and those still living here are racking theirs brains and using every pound they have left to get a ticket out of this place. It seems there’s nothing left here but painful memories and wasted dreams.

Paradoxically, the city of Dimashq’s beauty is more astounding than ever before, a wise old warrior woman that refuses to give into the absurd wars that men have inflicted upon her for thousands of years. If her old walls could speak, they would tell endless stories of war, famine, disaster, uprising and repression that have been thrust upon her citizens. Governments overthrown, borders drawn and redrawn, colonisers booted and land bought and sold, yet she stands defiant to the toxic masculinity, greed and religious extremesim that have lead us here.

Though most of us now live on new soil and breathe a new air, our hearts haven’t left our home. Though we’re spread out across this earth, we are not divided. Though they’ve tried to take everything from us, they have not and cannot take our collective power and free throught. A wise friend once told me that when the hurt within is so deep, the healing can only come from without.

As long as these walls stand, so can we. We may never see the fruit of our work, but we must keep the hope alive because hope is resistance in the face of dispair and decay.

A Damascan Mosaic

There is so much to uncover here, so much to learn. So I’ve decided to extend my stay by a few weeks to learn more about how I can best support my people with the level of privilege that I’ve accumulated.

I’m slowly collecting fragments of my past life, and in the true art of local Dimashq mosaic making, slowly and tenderly, I’ve started to glue them back together. One piece of broken glass after the other, the artifact is forming and taking shape. It doesn’t look quite the same as it was before, it probably never will, but somehow, I think it’s more beautiful.

More whole.

More unique.

love and solidarity, 

Nathalie 

Written from: Damascus, Syria

Next stop: Athens, Greece