This sea,
As blue as it could be,
The sky takes it hand in hand—
Is ours,
Again, as it used to be
And will always be.
The sea was there when we cried,
The first cry
Out loud,
And left our moms
With memories floating in the air,
Separating us from our destiny.
In silence,
Silenced we spoke
By the sea because it took us by word, and here we are.
The sea is there as we cry,
With memories floating in the air,
Memories of the now.
This sea is now nothing but home
For the years of emptiness,
Choking our words.
Now these words are optional,
Yet we choose to say them
And hope is our way
To remember
And be remembered.
– 08.12.24, for my hometown Jableh
In times when we are expected to envision utopias and heavens, can we take a moment to rewrite a Syria of the past? What if we think beyond trauma? What if we call it a process of marginalization of both memory and the self to the extent that we embody what has passed, yet force ourselves to forget we lived it?
Coming from Syria, we find ourselves misplaced in a story with no clear beginning, starting mid-narration—easier to label as tragedy or misery than to fully comprehend. Our memory, shaped by fear, mistrust, and control, has become a battleground, caught between “trauma porn” and modern tactics of erasure and forgetting. A rainy cloud dominates our minds. It feels vivid to us, yet incomprehensible to those around us. We know what we know, but how do we truly remember?
Memory
The collective memory of Syrian society has undergone various phases of distortion from the onset of the era of Hafez al-Assad – the Assad father – in 1970 until the first moments of the 2011 revolution and continues to this day. During my childhood and adolescence in Syria, I was not accustomed to hearing comprehensive answers to my questions. The responses were constrained by the policies of collective memory, which were shaped by conspiracy theories targeting the Syrian Arab nation and its cause.
The concept of collective memory is attributed to the French philosopher and sociologist Maurice Halbwachs (1877–1945). He relied on it to interpret how individuals understand the past and its connections to the present within their social environment. Consequently, the formation of individual memory and history becomes a product of factors provided by the surrounding environment, such as interactions with others, language, place, and time in their political dimensions.
Collective memory, in turn, represents a system that includes selected elements from the sum of individual memories, arranged to narrate a past that aligns with its current reality. When I look at Syria now, I have a question that is not new: How can we resist the present in the presence of the constant struggle with forgetting, oblivion and distortion, not only at the level of Syrian society at home and abroad, but also on international and Arab levels?
Are we allowed to call things by their true names?
My impressions of living inside Syria are profoundly shaped by the overwhelming support I witnessed among many people on the Syrian coast for Bashar al-Assad. Some are neighbors, relatives, friends of friends and schoolmates. Amid their criticism and complaints about the ever-worsening living conditions, expressions of loyalty and resignation emerged all the time.
What is particularly interesting, is the generalization of convictions: “We are the poorest, we are the weakest, we are the oppressed in this equation.” Among them are those who have been brutalized by the Assad regime and others who hesitantly formulate meaningless ideas and incantations such as: “May God help us all.”
Everyone remembers what pleases them and eases their conscience to avoid the discomforts of reality or taking responsibility for themselves and those around them. Political passivity is not the primary trait in Syria; rather, it is fear. Fear and the desire to be free from this fear are the underlying drivers of people’s movements and attitudes.
Either you are part of the apparatus of fear or among those rebelling against fear and the fearful! A duality that aligns with the regime’s propaganda and the mindset of its followers: “Assad or we burn the country”. In this statement, the initial threats –despite their seriousness– were later concealed or downplayed in the regime’s official narrative of combating terrorism were hidden: a medieval fantasy about burning evil souls that disturb the serene kingdom. Well, Assad has eventually run away, and Syria remains wounded. However, we haven’t yet been defeated.
Marginalized memory
Before or after prison? My cousin answered his kindergarten teacher’s question about what he wanted to become in the future. A few years later, I noticed that this family memory no longer existed for him, as if it had been replaced by absolute silence. The collective memory enforced by the Assad era was governed by fearing the unknown and filled with narratives resembling those of superhero movies., The main character was the regime itself: the only force capable of confronting imperialism. At the same time, Assad was practicing other sorts of imperialism, reinforcing the idea that any change could only have been part and parcel of that imperialism –the one threatening Syria– and inevitably leading towards the destruction of the nation.
This memory transformed the loud cries for freedom in the country’s streets into indicators of Western dominance and the unquestioning support for Assad into signals of resistance. This distortion transcended the system’s ideology and its media’s conspiracy theories, becoming a life philosophy deeply ingrained in Syria’s DNA. Even our youngest lived within this memory, fighting enemies they only knew from the tales of their teachers of socialist national education at school—or whatever it was agreed to be called.
Our mothers, fathers, and their comrades referred to their prison time and friends with code words and among their adopted names hid the narrative of marginalized memory.
One of the habits of Syrian society, adhering to Assad’s memory policies, is mocking pain and ignoring it if necessary, especially if its nature is politically inevitable. During my first years of exile, I noticed that most of those I met from my generation responded only with incomprehensible jokes or sarcasm when discussing the experience of imprisonment within our families.
Many looks followed me and others, disbelieving as I continued talking about the societal stigma I endured long before the revolution with my family. We are the children of these times and places, yet we are unable to remember or believe, I thought to myself. An internal rejection prevails among us, as if our memory has forgotten the existence of what came before us.
In my adolescence, I was searching for justifications for our fear and silence, where fear was, and still is, greater than memory and recollection. But what is the reason now? Are these just mere reactions?
Forever No More
In March 2011, the voices of neighbors echoed phrases like: “We have always lived together without any problems.” I have often asked myself, who are those who lived in peace? And how was their life so problem-free? I can only recall stories of prisons, constant policing and words of assault.
I asked and ask myself about the thousands killed in the Hama massacre of 1982, the constant oppression of Kurds in Syrian narratives, about those displaced all over the world and in refugee camps, about those who left us forever, about those who have been forcibly disappeared until now or those who have been absent from participating in the details of daily life even after their formal release, and about everyone who committed to the policy of self-isolation and rejection, silently or loudly.
All these stories were censored by the Assad collective memory. Those influenced by it recount tales of the leader as the builder of dams and the defender of frontiers, and his soldiers as victims of saboteurs and terrorism. Or they fabricate stories of a revolution with no known past. Even the term “terrorism” has lost a clear meaning in the Syrian context—not because it is inaccurate, but because of its multiple sources and causes. To be frank, the regime has not hesitated to claim the top ranks in terrorism, killing, and destruction, utilizing state organs, supporting militias, and even assistance from Russia and Iran.
Counter-memory
Memory policies within Syria erupt sporadically and cannot be confined to narrow narratives that exclude others. The diversity of the Syrian landscape—politically, religiously, and ethnically—reflects a variety of oppressive scenes and their accompanying narratives. Yet, none of this alters the regime’s oppressive narrative, which has been consistently excluded from the memory of the present. A memory that forgets violent episodes and even justifies the oppressive mechanisms of the regime itself.
This marginalization extends beyond Syria, affecting many outside the country and across the political spectrum, where political memory and its revolutionary agents have been overshadowed by various propagandas. Counter-memory is, therefore, a necessity—one that has always been hidden in children’s questions and the cries of demonstrations. Essayism, what, for me, is reflective, exploratory mode of writing that blends personal, sociopolitical, and analytical perspectives, offers a tool to build a foundation for this counter-memory.
There exists a living, non-static memory that the regime’s ideology has intermittently suppressed, only for it to resurface in vain. With the fall of the Assad regime today, we cannot deny that there is a complete rebellion against various narratives and the expectations of the multitude of political parties in Syria.
Meanwhile, we face the added challenge of asserting agency against intervening imperial powers. Not blinded by the moment, we cannot place trust in parties that have played brutal roles in the war, waged over the bodies of the revolution. Yet, maintaining hope remains our moral obligation—to mobilize, organise, and ensure political change for all.
This text was written prior to February 2025. The text is part of the dossier “Eternity Unwoven,” curated by Veronica Ferreri and Inana Othman.
The dossier is a collaboration of Archivwar with Untoldmag and Arabpop
Graphic project: Greg Olla
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe Resarch and Innovation Programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 101064513 “ARCHIVWAR – Archives in Times of War: Scattered Families and Vanishing Past in Contemporary Syria” Funded by the European Union.
Views and options expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Execute Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
