Every forgotten photo on a wall, every garment piled in empty cells, every voice repeating the name of a disappeared person, serves as a reminder that Syria remains marked by absences. A year after the fall of Bashar al-Assad, the liberation of the prisons opened a chapter of hope, but also It exposed the magnitude of the crimes of the overthrown regime.Justice, recognition, and reparations still seem distant.

A flower like pink lipstick on a bare face. That's how the color of the Damask rose stands out when it blooms in the middle of the desert. In Qaldoun al-Marah—or simply Al-Marah—a town of five thousand inhabitants fifty kilometers north of Damascus, one of the oldest varieties in the world is cultivated between mid-May and early June: the "queen of roses," as the Bitar family calls it. This family is one of the main growers of the Damask rose in Syria. Its intense, almost intoxicating perfume seems to stop time. Here, where the earth is hard and the sky is almost never cloudy, is where it "grows best," they say.

"Do you see anything in that house?" That's the question Commander Kobani asks. Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) He lets go of us as we approach a pair of isolated houses in the middle of the desert. There's no one on the entire road between us. We stop the car, and suddenly two soldiers, having changed their camouflage, appear and tell us to go inside. Inside, a larger group, perfectly equipped in dark green military uniforms, greets us.

Six months have passed since the fall of Bashar al-Assad, and Syria remains caught between hope and collapse. Ahmad al-Sharaa, former leader of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham militia, now heads an interim government. which is trying to bring stability to a devastated country. Although it lacks constitutional legitimacy, it has some international support and has focused its efforts on breaking diplomatic isolation and attracting investment to boost reconstruction.

A steady stream of Syrian families is flooding the Nahr al-Kabir River, the natural border between the Syrian coast and northern Lebanon. Exhausted after several days on foot to circumvent the checkpoints imposed a week ago by security forces, they are crossing through areas where the water level is lower. and flee sectarian violence perpetrated by radical Islamic militias against the Alawite minority, to which the Al Assad dynasty belonged.

More than 100 people have been killed in recent days in clashes between Syrian security forces and militias loyal to former President Bashar al-Assad in the country's coastal region, where a curfew has been imposed in Latakia and Tartus due to the intensity of the fighting, the Syrian Observatory reported yesterday.