Damascus, Syria – In 2013, Mohamad Yamen, then nine years old, fled from the Damascus suburb of Jobar with his family.The Assad regime flattened Jobar, making it uninhabitable. Yamen and his parents moved to the Abbasiyyin neighbourhood of Damascus, where he continued his studies and dreamed of moving to Spain.Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of listAt around midnight on December 8, 2024, the 20-year-old Yamen was on his phone as news poured in that the regime might be on its last legs. A rebel operation from the north of Syria had overtaken Aleppo, Hama and Homs, and word was that they were on their way to Syria’s capital city.Yamen told a few friends and joined them in the streets of Damascus. His house was between two police stations, Abbasiyyin and Jobar, staffed with police who he said were corrupt and would regularly harass people.But that evening, they were nowhere to be found. Instead, they found the uniforms of defected soldiers lying on the ground.His phone died while he was out on the streets, so the news did not come in by phone, but the sound of gunfire echoed through the night sky.“There was a lot of gunfire from jubilant people,” he said on Monday, a day before the first anniversary, seated in a hotel courtyard.He looked out over the courtyard and played with a ring on his left hand as he spoke.H …
