Diary of Agnese – 1

The first great thing is this: it has been a while without leaving, but now I can. I am leaving for Syria.
And I can do it because my passport, unlike others, opens the doors to over 180 countries.
It is a privilege of few, and certainly not of the Syrians.
I realize from this, too: “leaving” is something special.
I understand it from the people who write to me, asking me to bring small possessions, things that could not be sent on their own.
Some Syrian women who got here with the Humanitarian Corridors leave in my care small gifts for holidays and birthdays, for the nieces they never met, or documents for a reunion that have not been delivered for months and get lost god knows where.
Then they leave in my care their wishes.

Tonight I’m looking at the stars from Quseyr, sitting on the roof of the house we’ve rented in this small syrian town in the southeast area of Homs.
It’s not a holiday, definitely not tourism, we’re not exactly aid workers, we don’t have an office – and we don’t want one – we move using public transportation and we speak Levantine dialect without ever having studied standard Arabic, the official kind.
I realize that our presence here raises several questions, for both Syrians and Italians: why, how, since when, for how long, with whom – and again, why?

It looks like we're going to make this trip, it looks like it's all arranged, it looks like they're going to they are going to make us cross the border between Lebanon and Syria... it seems.
But I still don't believe it.
And so I focus on every present moment, with no expectations, just the here and now.
But then we really get to the border and really after a while we are in a car that travelling at high speed through Syrian territory, on the road to Damascus.
I begin to realize that we have really entered, I start to get emotional, I am at a loss for words. Words.
But the power of what is happening overwhelms me when we arrive in a suburb outskirts of the fascinating Syrian capital, and from the balcony he looks at us, greets us and then runs to meet our Syrian friend.

As volunteers of Operazione Colomba, alongside the Syrian people since 2013, we must participate in the euphoria following the surprising fall of the Assad regime in Syria. A regime that lasted 53 years and gripped the lives of three generations of Syrians.

In these crucial days that are overtaking this country, heart and bridge between the Mediterranean East and Mesopotamia, we echo the stories of pain, desperation, anger, but also resistance, resilience, patience, which we have especially met in Lebanon, but also in Syria, Turkey, Greece, Germany, France and Italy.

Our thoughts go out to these people we chose to meet and that came to life in everyone who has welcomed us and who has trusted us with their story, even as they lived it first-hand, on their own skin.

To those who confided in us “Unfortunately life has assigned us this fate, we only want a future for our children”, aware of having been caught up in the events that brought them to a life as refugees.