‘We survived Assad’s prisons and we will rebuild Syria’

For three years, Omar Alshogre was imprisoned and tortured, while his father, brothers and cousins were killed.

A decade has passed since I first tasted real freedom. It was March 18, 2011, when I received a phone call from my then-20-year-old cousin, Bashir. In a shaky voice, he asked me to come down to the city centre of Baniyas, 10 minutes from my home village of al-Bayda, telling me only: “The birds are gathering, you have to come.” I was 15, but I understood what his coded words meant. I had watched the protests in Tunisia and Egypt on TV. On March 6, they had arrived in Syria, when residents of Dara’a protested against the arrest and torture of 15 students for writing anti-government graffiti, and on March 15, there had been more unrest in Damascus. Now I understood that it was the turn of my city.