Syria is shaking off the deadness that lay upon it

We will not say that life is quickly normalizing in Syria after the overthrow of the occupation and tyranny that lasted sixty years, because during those sixty years nothing was normal, nothing was as it should be. Moreover, Damascus, the pearl of the Islamic world, was far from playing the role it should have played in history and from recording the developments expected of it. It is said that in the Ottoman period there was a price to residing in Damascus, and that this price was paid through a special tax. Damascus is truly a place that holds a different historical depth in each of its corners, that gives the feeling, as one walks about the city, of walking through the streets of history. How many Companions, how many great Islamic scholars have memories, influences, spirits roaming in this city? Moreover, Damascus, with a history extending back to Rome and earlier, was for the last 60 years captive in the hands of a network that did not distinguish between running a country and running a criminal organization. Now it is quickly shaking off the deadness that lay upon it.

WHERE WILL THE RETURNEES SETTLE?

If Damascus is now really returning to normal, perhaps it is preparing to enter its own natural course that it had sixty or even a hundred years ago. Of course here we immediately see that things are not easy. Throughout Syria, destroyed cities, houses with not a stone left upon another, await the return of millions of its people who are outside Syria. At the moment this is in fact Syria's most urgent problem. Those who have had to live for 14 years in many countries find only ruins awaiting them when they return. The rubble of these ruins must be cleared and new houses built in their place. The international aid that has been mobilized for Syrian migrants, especially in the north of Syria, now needs to be set in motion again within a more comprehensive housing mobilization. In fact, such a housing mobilization could also serve as a very strong engine for the economic revival Syria needs.

THE EFFECT OF THE RETURNS AND THE REVIVING ECONOMY

The first effect on the economy of the first wave of Syrians expected to return to the country has been to push housing prices up to exorbitant levels. Where will the returnees settle without the housing problem being solved? They will inevitably bring the money they have saved abroad and invest in housing in the first stage. But the inflation this will create in the housing market carries the risk of a new wave of antipathy rising against those now returning. As if the xenophobia they encountered where they went, those who had to flee the country to save their lives, were not enough, there is now the possibility that they will be subjected to a reaction from their own fellow citizens where they have returned.

Within 9 months after the revolution, an economic dynamism never seen in previous periods in Syria immediately catches the eye. Syrian streets suffer a very serious traffic problem during daytime hours. Even going short distances by car takes a very long time. This results from the large number of vehicles of every quality that entered Syria quickly right after the revolution. Besides the traffic congestion, the dense crowds in the markets and bazaars are also an indicator of a very serious economic dynamism. Even moving along in the Hamidiyya Market, whose exit gate opens onto the Umayyad Mosque, is very difficult.

THE UMAYYAD MOSQUE AND ALL MOSQUES ARE NOW AT THE CENTER OF LIFE

The Umayyad Mosque, historically one of the symbolic places of Sunnism, had been turned in Assad's time into a center of the Shiites' Husayni rituals, and as it were a shackle had been put on its historical identity. In that period the mosque had ceased to be a mosque, and had become a constrained place that people could not easily visit. Now, beginning from the place where the shrine of the Prophet Yahya (John) is located, it is allotted generally to women who come with their children, like a complete space of socializing and festivity.

The pulpit sermons of some preachers, who had been abandoned for quite some time, either before or after prayer, have also been revived. Not only in the Umayyad Mosque, but in all mosques. The Mufti of Syria, Osama al-Rifai, whom we visited in his office, explained that they are conducting a campaign to revive the mosques with all the functions they should have in an Islamic society. Particular importance is given to sermons in the mosques. The multitude of crowds listening to such a sermon at the Nureddin Zengi Mosque, which we happened upon after an afternoon prayer, is a sign of how strong the channels of socialization and cultural depth of Islam are in Syrian society.

At the end of the sermon at another mosque where we performed the Friday prayer, while announcing a mawlid to be held the next day, since the subject had come up, he spoke of how hard it had been in the past even to recite a mawlid, and called on people to give thanks and pray for the blessing of the revolution that had taken place. According to him, in the past, to be able to recite even a mawlid, one had to apply to the security authorities two weeks in advance. In the application, on whose behalf and why this mawlid would be recited, and who would cover its costs, were asked in every detail.

THE TASTE OF LIVING WITHOUT FEAR OF THE MUKHABARAT

Today in Syria, for 9 months people have been breathing an air of freedom they had never experienced in the past. They are aware of what a great blessing this is. Nine months passed without the fear of being followed by the Mukhabarat, of being denounced and suddenly taken to the center over some expression they used in conversation somewhere or some action of theirs, perhaps without even realizing it.

Being able to conduct their trade freely without the worry that their goods and property could be confiscated is also a great blessing. Many of them explain that under the Baath regime, acquiring property or succeeding in trade also carried serious risk. In an instant you become the natural target for collapse of the regime's soldiers or of somebody working in its Mukhabarat.

ASSAD WAS RESPECTFUL TOWARD NO MINORITY, NOT EVEN THE NUSAYRIS

Although the Baath regime relied more on a certain minority and leaned on it, using them in all its dirty work, in the end it was of no benefit to them either. Because the regime did not have a concept of governance based on sharing. It was like a mafia gang that used the state apparatus as simply as possible as a tool for securing its day-to-day gains. An administration with no concern for providing its people with security, peace, or any service at all. This regime, because it trusted them more, brought the Nusayris from the coastal regions to Damascus, settled them there, and made them live in the worst slum conditions. It both made them an accomplice in all the oppression and gave them nothing in return. Perhaps now and then a certain stratum that had grown wealthy emerged from that sect, but it would be wrong to say that the whole of the Nusayri people shared in this.

One expectation of the new regime of Syria was in fact that it would create an order of bloody settling of scores and apply the style of the Baath regime against the people of the old regime or all the other minorities. On the contrary, the new regime is astonishingly far from such a practice. There are scenes that should in fact shame those who insist today on "minority rights," but that is enough for today; we will continue later.