Damascus: ‘Pandora’s Box’ Opens for Its People and the World

Visitors to Damascus today can’t miss the city’s busy, fast-paced rhythm. Traffic jams clog the main entrances, intersections, and markets, while schoolchildren dart around their parents, backpacks in hand, at the end of the school day. These scenes bring a sense of normalcy, showing that daily life continues despite the challenges.

Cars with license plates from across Syria—Raqqa, Homs, and Idlib—mix with Damascus vehicles at intersections and working traffic lights. “This is new for us,” said a local. “We didn't see cars from these areas before.”

Amid the congestion, as drivers jostled for space, the man joked: “An Idlib plate now means ‘government car’—we’d better make way.”

With traffic police largely absent, a few members of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham have stepped in at key intersections to direct the flow. Still, residents seem to manage on their own, relying on self-organization.

As night fell, parks, cafes, and the bustling Shaalan Street in Damascus filled with families and young people. Crowds moved between juice stands, sandwich shops, and shisha cafes, many with foreign or English-inspired names.

The famed adaptability of locals is evident in small but significant changes. People quickly adjusted to using foreign and Arab currencies, garbage collection resumed swiftly, and even rules for non-Syrians buying SIM cards were amended.

Previously, foreigners had to register with an entry stamp and local address. Now, with Syrian border controls relaxed and monitoring left to the Lebanese side, new measures ensure SIM cards remain traceable without complicating the process.

The “revolution flag” now covers private cars, taxis, and shop entrances in Damascus. Many stores are offering discounts on clothing and shoes to celebrate “victory,” while street vendors eagerly sell the new flag, urging people to buy it with cheers and congratulations.

It’s unclear who genuinely supports the change and who is simply going along to stay safe, especially among small business owners. What is certain, however, is that public spaces have moved on.

From the Lebanese border to the heart of Damascus, slogans praising Assad and the “eternity” he symbolized have been wiped away.

Posters and billboards have appeared across Damascus, especially in Umayyad Square, with messages like “Syria is for all Syrians” and “Time to build a better future.” The slogans call for unity and a shared future for all citizens.

It’s unclear if this is part of an organized campaign by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham or just political improvisation.

Umayyad Square, now a “revolutionary site,” draws crowds day and night, eager to take photos near the historic monument and the abandoned statue of Hafez al-Assad. The scene speaks volumes about untold stories.

Once a key landmark of Damascus, the square is now Syria’s gateway to the world. Syrians from inside and outside the country flood social media with joyful images, while journalists and TV teams from around the globe report in multiple languages.

The atmosphere feels like the opening of “Pandora’s Box,” revealing both the good and the bad.

Journalists in the square, whom you later find in small local restaurants and hotel lobbies, bring to mind post-2003 Baghdad—another capital at a historic turning point, filled with people and emotions.

Like Baghdad, hotel lobbies here are full of contradictions, with journalists playing just a small role.

In these grand spaces, diplomats, UN staff, and translators sit alongside businessmen and contractors eager to capitalize on economic opportunities. While Damascus itself hasn't changed much, its need for basic services, especially electricity, is huge. Entire neighborhoods have been destroyed, with forced displacement, hunger, and fear almost touching the city's hotels and restaurants.

In these hotels, which have become a microcosm of Syrian society, Damascenes are meeting for the first time faction leaders and fighters from the north. Many of them, due to their circumstances, had never seen the capital or entered a hotel.

Their sense of victory is clear, but so is the confusion in their eyes and actions. For example, one might hesitate in an elevator, unsure whether to step out or stay, then greet you politely while avoiding eye contact.

In their military uniforms, with visible weapons and long beards, the fighters stand out in these historic hotels, with their elegant decor and refined staff.

This contrasts sharply with the ordinary Damascenes who visit hotel cafes and restaurants simply for peace and privacy. The fighters bridge the gap with their serious, guarded demeanor, though it softens with a joke from a friend.

Locals feel their “bubble” has burst, and their way of life has changed forever. Yet, most agree that nothing will be worse or last longer than what they’ve already experienced.

In a war-ravaged Palestinian refugee camp in Syria, Radwan Adwan was stacking stones to rebuild his father's grave, finally able to return to Yarmuk cemetery after Bashar al-Assad's fall.

"Without the fall of the regime, it would have been impossible to see my father's grave again," said 45-year-old Adwan.

"When we arrived, there was no trace of the grave."

It was his first visit there since 2018, when access to the cemetery south of Damascus was officially banned.

Assad's fall on December 8, after a lightning offensive led by opposition factions, put an end to decades of iron-fisted rule and years of bloody civil war that began with repression of peaceful anti-government protests in 2011.

Yarmuk camp fell to the opposition early in the war before becoming an extremist stronghold. It was bombed and besieged by Assad's forces, emptied of most of its residents and reduced to ruins before its recapture in 2018.

Assad's ouster has allowed former residents to return for the first time in years.

Back at the cemetery, Adwan's mother Zeina sat on a small metal chair in front of her husband's gravesite.

She was "finally" able to weep for him, she said. "Before, my tears were dry."

"It's the first time that I have returned to his grave for years. Everything has changed, but I still recognize where his grave is," said the 70-year-old woman.

Yarmuk camp, established in the 1950s to house Palestinians who fled or were expelled from their land after Israel's creation, had become a key residential and commercial district over the decades.

Some 160,000 Palestinians lived there alongside thousands of Syrians before the country's conflict erupted in 2011.

Thousands fled in 2012, and few have found their homes still standing in the eerie wasteland that used to be Yarmuk.

Along the road to the cemetery, barefoot children dressed in threadbare clothes play with what is left of a swing set in a rubble-strewn area that was once a park.

- 'Spared no one' -

A steady stream of people headed to the cemetery, looking for their loved ones' gravesites after years.

"Somewhere here is my father's grave, my uncle's, and another uncle's," said Mahmud Badwan, 60, gesturing to massive piles of grey rubble that bear little signs of what may lie beneath them.

Most tombstones are broken.

Near them lay breeze blocks from adjacent homes which stand empty and open to the elements.

"The Assad regime spared neither the living nor the dead. Look at how the ruins have covered the cemetery. They spared no one," Badwan said.

There is speculation that the cemetery may also hold the remains of famed Israeli spy Eli Cohen and an Israeli solider.

Cohen was tried and hanged for espionage by the Syrians in 1965 after he infiltrated the top levels of the government.

Camp resident Amina Mounawar leaned against the wall of her ruined home, watching the flow of people arriving at the cemetery.

Some wandered the site, comparing locations to photos on their phones taken before the war in an attempt to locate graves in the transformed site.

"I have a lot of hope for the reconstruction of the camp, for a better future," said Mounawar, 48, as she offered water to those arriving at the cemetery.

Damascus: ‘Pandora’s Box’ Opens for Its People and the World