Bashar al-Assad is gone, and Syria is finally free. However, I cannot fully rejoice in the long-awaited fall of his regime and the liberation of my country. This is because, like many Syrians, I have an open wound: someone I love is still lost in al-Assad’s prisons.
My younger brother Youssef, my soulmate, disappeared in 2018 and I’ve been looking for him ever since.
Youssef was once full of life. His laugh would light up every room he stepped into. He loved Dabkeh music and dance. He raised pigeons with dedication and care.
Everything changed in August 2018. The regime accused him of participating in opposition activities against the regime, and they detained his wife to pressure him into surrendering.
Worried about harming his wife, he headed south towards Sweida from the Rukban refugee camp, where he lived. Somewhere along the way he disappeared. And I’ve spent every day since trying to find him.
All these years I pushed myself not to give up, not to lose hope. But I had so little to hold on to. With each passing day, the glimmer of hope I had left faded.
Then, last month, after the fall of the regime, a short video from the recently liberated Sweida prison reignited the fire in my heart. There was a man in the video. His face, his demeanor and his fleeting smile looked like Youssef’s.
I played the clip over and over. I sent it to my sisters. I sent it to Youssef’s wife – to everyone who knew him, who could confirm that it was indeed him.
Everyone who watched the video said the same thing: “That’s him. It has to be him.”
I desperately want to believe it’s him. If he’s alive. That we will hug him again soon. I am full of hope again. But I’m afraid too. What if we are wrong? What if this fragile hope breaks us again?
We have lived in uncertainty for a long time. Years of sleepless nights spent staring at photos, years of empty chairs at our tables, years of unanswered prayers. Years of not knowing if he was alive or dead.
For so long it seemed impossible to find answers to our questions. Al-Assad’s prisons were impenetrable, the truth was locked behind concrete walls and barbed wire. Investigators couldn’t get any closer, families of detainees like mine were denied any answers, and the world moved on as if our pain didn’t exist and the fate of our loved ones didn’t matter. But now, with al-Assad gone and the prison doors wide open, we have a chance to uncover the truth—if only we act quickly.
Now, as the doors of prisons and detention centers across the country open, we search frantically amid the chaos—digging for scraps of information, following rumors, and searching for names scrawled on torn documents.
We must not let this moment slip through our fingers.
So far the search has been too slow, too disorganized, too inadequate. International organizations, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, which should provide evidence, humanitarian aid to prisoners of conscience and connect them with their families, have failed. They are absent in our hour of need.
Every document, every trace of evidence that emerges from al-Assad’s dungeons is a slice of life and an opportunity for closure for someone who has suffered too long – a father’s last words, a son’s final whereabouts, a mother’s fate. We have to hold on to every single trace, these life impressions, because losing them would be like losing our loved ones all over again.
What we need today are experts to get down to business, to collect, examine and preserve the evidence – this work needs to be done urgently and meticulously so that we can find answers now and ultimately achieve justice in the months and years to come.
We, the relatives of the missing, cannot search alone. You are consumed by the trauma of not knowing where your loved one is, whether they are alive or dead. Limits your ability to continue fighting. And discovering the truth about our missing loved ones is not our only task either. As we search for our brothers, fathers, husbands, mothers and sisters, we also try to find ways to rebuild, care for children who have lost their parents, and ensure that this pain does not consume the next generation.
Justice is not a luxury; it is the only way we can begin to heal. Without answers and accountability for those who orchestrated and carried out this nightmare, there will be no peace.
I had to leave Syria after my brother disappeared. For years I couldn’t go back to look for him, but now I finally can. The video of Youssef – or a man who looks a lot like him – gave me hope and a reason to act. Now I’m going back to Syria to follow every lead, to ask questions I couldn’t ask for years and to enter places that were once closed. This may be my only chance to find out if he is alive, if there is a grave where I can finally say goodbye.
But we, the families of the missing, cannot and should not do this work alone. We need help, we need support. And we need experts and experts to take the lead.
The international community and the leaders of this fragile transition must not forget the detainees and their families as they chart a new path for our country. We have lived in silence for too long. Now we are looking for what is rightfully ours: answers, justice and dignity.
The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.
