Imagine a balmy, mid-October night on the Mediterranean coast in 2022. You’re in a van, trying to soothe your six-month-old daughter to sleep. The windows of the van are cracked open to let the fresh air in, but with it comes dozens of mosquitos, which create a constellation of red spots on your daughter’s warm cheeks. When she finally sleeps, the border guard comes knocking on the van window. The driver rolls it down and the guard speaks loudly: “The boss is asleep, he will wake up at 9 and then we can ask him how to proceed.”
As your daughter wakes up crying, you realise you’ll be stuck here for another seven hours. Your family’s visas to enter Syria were approved weeks ago, but the man who must accept your border crossing bribe won’t report for duty until 9am. In the background, a building-height portrait of a man in a suit with a weak chin looks over at you.
This is what it looked like to visit family in Syria under the Assad government.
I met my husband, Bashar, while I was teaching English in Istanbul in 2016. He was one of millions of Syrians living in exile due to the war. We got married just three months after meeting, knowing Turkey was one of the few places where an American and a Syrian could live together – and given the politics in Turkey, that situation was tenuous at best. We moved to the US in 2019, and by 2022 we were happy to bring our daughter Leyla into the world.
We were extremely privileged to even be able to consider visiting Syria. It meant Bashar’s family did not have political issues with the government, that he was able to pay his military fee after four years abroad and that his family was willing to take the risk to notify the immigration office about a foreign visitor.
As the only member of his family living abroad, my husband always prioritised visiting and supporting his family in Syria despite the risks. And our need to be close to family only increased when our daughter was born.
We knew we would need to come to Latakia because it would be impossible for his family members to get a visa to visit us in the US. The Syrian passport, despite being the most expensive to obtain, affords little mobility.
After 12 hours at the border, we made it to Latakia and my in-laws were finally able to meet their granddaughter. Seeing my mother-in-law hold Leyla in her hands with tears of joy running down her face made the arduous entry process worth it. But our journey was just beginning.
Syria under Bashar Al Assad suffered (and still suffers) from very little electricity. My in-laws cannot afford to install solar power panels, so they rely on homemade batteries for lights and internet and the inconsistent one hour of electricity every five hours for the refrigerator and water pump.
Each winter, the humid cold gnaws at your bones, and it is difficult to heat your home. We strategically chose October, when the weather is more pleasant, for our visit, but bringing my daughter into this environment was still stressful.
How did my sister-in-law raise her two children in a place with so few resources? For us it was two weeks, for millions of Syrians, this was life.
Opening a window at night meant bringing in fumes from the gas canisters my in-laws had to store on their small balcony, or the exhaust from neighbourhood electricity generators. Bashar and I started to doubt whether we would be able to make consistent visits in the future.
The routine for securing a visa for a visiting American spouse required my in-laws to meet with the local immigration authorities several weeks beforehand. It also required a home visit by shadowy Syrian intelligence officials ahead of time, and again on the first or second day of my visit. A seemingly pleasant chat takes place in the living room, with a bribe usually being the determining factor of a successful security analysis. They came for another check-in after our departure. Any wrong move or word and the entire family's future could have been jeopardised.
We tried to register our marriage in Syria to overcome the visa issue, and to register Leyla in Bashar’s family book. But somehow that bureaucratic process always failed. At first, it was because Bashar had failed to get the army’s permission to marry, and after that it was because of my lack of religious certificate. Bureaucracy in Syria was designed to be impossible.
Leaving Syria after that visit, we didn’t know when we would be able to go back. The trip was too tough for a baby. My own mother’s worry over our trip and her granddaughter's safety and health was balanced against a sense of shame at wanting to keep Leyla away from her father's family and culture.
Leyla is now almost three years old, and she has seen her paternal grandparents only twice. The second time happened after my husband and I moved to the UAE, where they could visit us.
Our life path became entirely centred around getting my in-laws out of Syria. We had extensive five-year and even 15-year plans for his parents, siblings and nieces. Then all of a sudden, this month everything changed when the Assad government fell. In the lead-up to December 8, my family was glued to the news, watching in anticipation and disbelief. When it finally happened, my husband and my in-laws started to do something they had never done before: they started to dream about the future.
Would it now be possible to have a better life in Syria? Could my brother-in-law, always a hard worker with multiple jobs, be able to plan for his daughters’ future? Could Bashar and I pass through the border for a visit and not worry about him being taken away?
To be able to dream of a normal life – the possibility of it, even if premature – has been the most unexpected gift.
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