June 28 has always marked the date of my annual trip to my home country, Syria. It had been an unquestionable travel day, reminded to me purely by the chaos in my mother’s eyes attempting to fit all of her gifts for relatives in two large suitcases. Each year, my excitement and readiness for this trip only exceeded the previous. My eyes would glimmer at the idea of seeing all my loved ones — my cousins, blood relatives, aunts, uncles and grandparents — for the first and only time in a year. This cherished tradition came to a devastating halt in the winter of 2024.

Syria had been governed by a family of dictators for over 50 years. Once the dictator fled after years of unrest, parades and parties erupted in the streets. However, what truly was heaven at the time soon spiraled into a blunt reality. Extremists took over the country and ignited chaos, quickly targeting minority groups with no remorse. They began targeting my sect of Islam, the minority known as Alawites. That summer, my family made the difficult decision that I was not able to visit Syria for my own safety. This year remains the same.

What hurts even more is hearing the devastation and horror that is continuously happening through the words of family members in Syria, all from the comfort of my own home. It feels like I am confined within a jail cell, powerless, where I can see the outside world but can’t reach it.

The economy and infrastructure in Syria have also been deteriorating for many years and have now plummeted, with expenses skyrocketing. Security is also currently at an all-time low, with kidnappings, robberies and crimes rising in hotspot cities.
This instability is nothing new, as Syria has been caught in the middle of conflicts for as long as I can remember. I vividly recall the last summer I spent in Syria. My family and I were enjoying a peaceful dinner at an outdoor restaurant, when we saw a bright light in the dark blue sky. It stood out like a sore thumb, and for a moment we questioned if it was a shooting star. Later that night at 3 a.m., we were woken up by a loud, distant explosion. Moments like that became the unfortunate norm of living there.

It is difficult for me to admit, but the future for Syria is small, if it even exists at all. Even my relatives, those who have treated Syria as their home for years, have been attempting to put all their memories aside in order to flee the country. My cousins are intentionally choosing international universities, hoping for a way out through education, and my aunts and uncles are searching desperately for jobs abroad.

Conflict and war has constantly acted as a veil covering Syria. It has shrouded the country that I am lucky to have called my home. Underneath what the public sees is true beauty like no other: my childhood and the roots of my identity. I am beyond grateful for the experiences I had growing up in such a country fueled by culture, but I can’t help but feel disheartened by the fact that I will probably never be able to experience them again.

I will never forget our family movie nights, when we would spend over an hour arguing which movie to watch. Of course, the moment we would agree on something, the TV would stop working.

I will never forget the daily power outages, where my brother and I would argue over who could have the battery-powered fan facing them during the peak heat. It became so hot that it got to the point where we sprayed water on our beds to cool ourselves down.

I will never forget the late-night Monopoly games with my cousins until 3 in the morning. What always started as a friendly game filled with laughter ended into a life-or-death scenario. If you forfeited to go to sleep, you would forever be diminished as a chicken.

I will never forget the weeks my family would spend at the beach, when we would rent a cabin for a couple of days with more than 10 people. The whole day was reserved for swimming, eating delicious homemade meat rolls, playing cards, swimming again and finally sleeping in sand-lined beds.

I will never forget the taxis we took everywhere we went. They were often the size of a clown car, yet my cousins and I never failed to fit. We packed in like sardines, two people in the front seat, four in the back, one laying across the others and one unlucky person in the trunk.

Most importantly, I will never forget the Fridays I spent at my grandfather’s village. Those days truly filled my heart, connecting me with over 50 of my relatives. Admittedly, I never knew how I was related to half of them. We were all of different ages, but what united us was not our blood — it was the experiences we shared together: hide and seek in the mountains, pickup basketball, soccer tournaments — the memories go on forever.

Now, these experiences have become faint memories in the back of my mind. They almost feel distant. Something just out of reach. Syria will always be my home, the foundation of my culture and identity, but now it rests differently. Instead of returning to my authentic culture, I carry it with me diligently. It hurts to even think about the possibility of never going back. It hurts to know that the ground of my most heartfelt memories is slowly chipping away. Still, I will carry these experiences with me for as long as time will allow. They will forever remind me of the carefully painted country that is Syria, one that has built my memories, my family and who I am.