They poured by the thousands into the street outside Lebanon’s main border crossing with Syria, celebrating the toppling of the Assad regime — and their long-awaited return home.
People, many of whom had fled Syria during the country’s 13-year civil war, cheered, honked their cars’ horns and set off fireworks into the air as they inched toward the Masna’a border crossing. Men jumped on top of cars to shout curses at the former president, Bashar al-Assad, and his family. Others hung out of car windows, waving the flag of the Syrian opposition and holding their fingers up in a V for victory.
Songs written during the Syrian uprising to cheer on the fall of Mr. al-Assad blasted from car speakers, their lyrics no longer fantasy.
“I don’t have words for how I feel right now. Joy, joy, all joy,” said Khitam Chiha, 23, standing on the sidewalk as the parade of cars and people passed. Red, green and white eye shadow — the colors of the Syrian opposition’s flag — were painted across her eyelids and she held a large flag in her hand.
Since Ms. Chiha came to Lebanon as an 11-year-old, any time she passed the border crossing at Masna’a, she was seized by a sense of fear, she said. This was the first time she had ever looked back at her homeland and felt hope. Her family planned to wait for the traffic to subside at the border and then head back to their home in Damascus — back to a life that Ms. Chiha barely remembers, she said.
“My parents used to tell me it’s beautiful, it’s like paradise” in Damascus, she said. “I want to see everything in Damascus, everything.”
Ms. Chiha is among the 1.5 million Syrian refugees in Lebanon, most of whom fled during the Syrian civil war in an influx that stoked political tension within Lebanon in the early days of the conflict.
Many are now eager to return home. Salam Maqhribi, 35, stood on the sidewalk near the Masna’a border crossing, a Syrian opposition flag draped over her shoulders. Her house in Damascus was destroyed during the war, but she says she still plans to return as soon as she can and introduce her 7-year-old son to Syria for the first time.
“We will stay, even in a tent, but, most importantly, we will be back to our land,” she said, clutching her son’s hand.
Originally from Damascus, Ms. Maqhribi had spent more than a decade in Lebanon, making a life on foreign land and coming to terms with the possibility that she might never return home. She rented a house with her husband in the Bekaa Valley, in eastern Lebanon. She had her son, who had only ever seen Syria on TV.
Over the past week, she and her family had watched the news of the rebel offensive in disbelief and braced for what she feared would be another chapter of brutal fighting in Damascus. But early Sunday morning, she saw videos that she once thought were unimaginable: The rebels had entered Damascus. The Assad regime was gone.
“It’s like I’m dreaming, I’m dreaming,” Ms. Maqhribi said, clutching her son’s hand. “I never thought this would happen.”
That sense of disbelief was shared among many by the border, some of whom came to celebrate with other Syrians, but were still anxious about the prospect of returning.
“I have hope, but I don’t know,” said Radwan Dirgham, 25. “I don’t know if it’s all over.”
Mr. Dirgham fled his home in Homs, Syria, over a decade ago to avoid conscription in the government army. In the time since, his family has experienced loss after loss in the war: Three of his brothers and one sister were killed in the early days of the uprising. Two of his uncles were arrested and thrown in a prison complex outside Damascus. Their fates, like many others in the prison, remain unknown,
Mr. Dirgham said that his family had resigned itself years ago to the possibility that his uncles had died in prison. But he still clung to some hope that they might still be alive and he could be reunited with them in Syria. Still, Mr. Dirgham said he would not return immediately — the fear of Mr. al-Assad’s regime, drilled into him over more than a decade of war, still loomed.
“I’m scared,” he said. “That fear, it’s still in me.”
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