“I always thought that I am going to die, and my children are going to die, and many more generations will die and he will still be here. I thought it will never end,” Esraa Alsliman, a student, told CNN at the square. “It’s like a dream.
I wake up every day thinking it was a dream, even today I woke up thinking it was a dream,” she said. Families brought little children to the square with flags painted on their cheeks. Young students were joined by the elderly.
Women dressed in conservative Muslim fashion celebrated next to those wearing trendy western clothes. Many said they travelled across the country to witness the jubilations. Many were waving the three-starred flag of the Syrian Arab Republic – an opposition flag that had been used when the country was under French mandate, and was replaced by a two-starred version during the Assad era.
“I really believe that at this time, we will support each other, stay with each other and get to the top. Syria will have a good name in the world,” Alsliman said. “I always thought that to have a future, to have a successful life, I will have to go abroad.
Now I can stay here, in my country.” For half a century, the Assad family had ruled over Syria with an iron fist, with long-documented reports of mass incarceration, torture, extra-judicial killings and atrocities against their own people. On Sunday, after 13 years of civil war that fractured the country, the regime came crashing down.
Rebel fighters declared Dama.
