Old wounds and new energy in Syria’s ‘capital of the revolution

“Even now, I look back and wonder how we survived this nightmare,” Baraa quietly reflects.
Now 20 years old, the university student joined the joyous celebrations engulfing the streets of Syria last Sunday at the end of Bashar al-Assad’s rule.
Her two sisters, Ala and Jana, nod in agreement as we sit, squeezed together on this cold winter’s day, on an old lumpy sofa in their humble home in Homs.
Their white-bearded father, Farhan Abdul Ghani, sitting cross legged on the floor, chimes in. “We did not want war. We did not want a forever president who builds monuments to himself.”
Nearly a decade ago, we first met in the worst days of that war, waged in their president’s name.
Baraa, a deeply traumatised little girl whose eyes darted wildly back and forth, struggled to speak then.
“Sometimes people killed cats to eat,” she blurted out as she sat in a disused banquet hall milling with aid officials, Syrian security forces, and distraught families.
For months, many had little to eat except grass pulled from the ground, leaves from the trees, boiled in water with salt and sometimes cinnamon.
“Instead of learning to read and write, I learned about weapons,” Baraa told us then so matter-of-factly.