In Damascus, Syrians Reclaim Freedoms Off Limits Under al-Assad In Damascus, Syrians Reclaim Freedoms Off Limits Under al-Assad

Residents of Syria’s capital are picnicking on a once-forbidden mountaintop and trading openly in dollars and imported Nescafe. They say the city seems theirs again.

For much of her life, Sumaya Ainaya spent weekend and summer nights on Mount Qasioun, which overlooks the city of Damascus, joined by other Syrians drinking coffee, smoking hookah and eating corn on the cob roasted on grills nearby.

But soon after the Syrian civil war erupted in 2011, the military under President Bashar al-Assad closed the mountain to civilians. Suddenly, instead of families and friends shooting fireworks into the sky, soldiers with tanks and artillery launchers were firing at rebel-held areas below.

This New Year’s Eve, weeks after a coalition of rebels ousted the Syrian regime, Ms. Ainaya, 56, and her family returned to Mount Qasioun with snacks, soda and scarves to protect from the winter chill — and reclaimed a favorite leisure spot.

“Thank God, we’ve returned now — we feel like we can breathe again,” said Ms. Ainaya, an Arabic literature graduate and a mother of four, standing along a ridge and pointing out several Damascus landmarks.

“We feel like the city has returned to us,” said her son Muhammad Qatafani, 21, a dental student.

Across Damascus, as in much of the country, Syrians are reclaiming, and in some cases embracing anew, spaces and freedoms that had been off limits for years under the Assad regime. There were places ordinary Syrians were not allowed to go and things that they were not permitted to say when the Assad family was in power. The country, many said, increasingly felt as if it did not belong to them.