Bashar al-Assad is gone, and Syria is lastly free. Nevertheless, I’m unable to completely rejoice within the long-awaited fall of his regime and the liberation of my nation. It’s because, like so many Syrians, I’ve a gaping wound: somebody I really like continues to be misplaced in al-Assad’s prisons.
My youthful brother Youssef, my soulmate, disappeared in 2018, and I’ve been trying to find him ever since.
Youssef was as soon as lively. His laughter would mild up each room he stepped foot in. He liked music, and dancing the Dabkeh. He raised pigeons, with dedication and care.
The whole lot modified in August 2018. The regime accused him of collaborating in opposition actions in opposition to the regime, they usually detained his spouse, to place stress on him to show himself in.
Anxious that they’d hurt his spouse, he headed south in direction of Sweida from the Rukban refugee camp, the place he was residing. Someplace alongside the way in which, he vanished. And I’ve spent day-after-day since looking for him.
All these years, I pushed myself not to surrender, to not lose hope. However I had so little to carry on to. With each passing day, the glimmer of hope that I had left was fading.
Then, final month, after the collapse of the regime, one brief video from the just lately liberated Sweida jail reignited the fireplace in my coronary heart. Within the footage, there was a person. His face, his posture, and his fleeting smile seemed similar to Youssef’s.
I performed the clip again and again. I despatched it to my sisters. I despatched it to Youssef’s spouse – to everybody who knew him, who might verify that it was certainly him.
Everybody who watched the clip stated the identical factor: “It’s him. It must be him.”
I desperately wish to imagine that it’s him. That he’s alive. That we’ll quickly embrace him once more. I’m as soon as once more filled with hope. However I’m additionally scared. What if we’re unsuitable? What if this fragile hope breaks us yet again?
We lived with uncertainty for thus lengthy. Years of sleepless nights spent looking at pictures, years of empty chairs at our dinner tables, years of unanswered prayers. Years of not realizing whether or not he’s alive or lifeless.
For therefore lengthy, it felt like solutions to our questions have been unattainable to seek out. Al-Assad’s prisons have been impenetrable, the reality was locked away behind concrete partitions and barbed wire. Investigators couldn’t get shut, households of detainees like mine have been denied any solutions, and the world moved on as if our ache didn’t exist and the destiny of our family members didn’t matter. However now, with al-Assad gone and the doorways of the prisons extensive open, we’ve got an opportunity to uncover the reality – if solely we act shortly.
Now because the doorways of prisons and detention centres throughout the nation are being unsealed, we’re looking out frantically amid chaos – digging via scraps of data, following rumours, and in search of names scribbled on torn paperwork.
We can’t let this second slip via our fingers.
Up to now, the search has been too gradual, too disorganised, too insufficient. Worldwide organisations, such because the Worldwide Committee of the Pink Cross, that are alleged to safe proof, give humanitarian aid to prisoners of conscience, and hyperlink them to their households, didn’t step as much as the event. They’re absent in our hour of want.
Each doc, each hint of proof rising from al-Assad’s dungeons is a chunk of a life, and an opportunity for closure for somebody struggling for too lengthy – a father’s final phrases, a son’s remaining whereabouts, a mom’s destiny. We’ve got to carry on to each single certainly one of these traces, these impressions of life, as a result of shedding them could be like shedding our family members yet again.
At the moment, what we’d like are specialists to get to work, to gather, look at and protect proof – we’d like this work to be achieved urgently and meticulously in order that we will discover solutions now, and finally obtain justice within the months and years to come back.
We, the kinfolk of the disappeared, can’t search alone. The trauma of not realizing the place your beloved is, whether or not he’s alive or lifeless, consumes you. Limits your potential to proceed the battle. And uncovering the reality about our disappeared family members isn’t our sole job both. As we seek for our brothers, fathers, husbands, moms and sisters, we’re additionally looking for methods to rebuild, to look after the youngsters who’ve misplaced dad and mom, and to ensure this ache doesn’t devour the subsequent era.
Justice isn’t a luxurious; it’s the solely means we will start to heal. With out solutions, and accountability for many who orchestrated and carried out this nightmare, there might be no peace.
I needed to depart Syria after my brother disappeared. For years, I couldn’t return to seek for him, however now I lastly can. The video of Youssef – or a person who seems to be very very similar to him – has given me hope and a motive to behave. I’m going again to Syria now to observe each lead, to ask the questions I’ve been unable to ask for years, and to stroll into the locations that have been as soon as sealed off. This can be my solely probability to seek out out if he’s alive, or if there’s a grave the place I can lastly say goodbye.
However we, the households of the disappeared, can’t and shouldn’t do that work alone. We’d like assist, we’d like assist. And we’d like consultants and specialists to take the lead.
The worldwide neighborhood and the leaders of this fragile transition, should not neglect the detainees and their households as they chart a brand new path for our nation. We’ve got lived in silence for too lengthy. Now, we’re demanding what’s rightfully ours: solutions, justice, and dignity.
The views expressed on this article are the creator’s personal and don’t essentially replicate Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
