The graffiti left on the walls of Assad’s prisons express the fears and loves of tortured Syrians

As he languished in the prison cell of then-Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad, an unknown prisoner scrawled a verse of Arabic poetry on the wall of his cell – an expression of pain and love amid his torment.

“My country, even if it oppresses me, is dear. My people, although merciless towards me, are generous,” he wrote. It is a well-known verse, written 800 years ago by a poet who defied a tyrannical caliph.

As you walk through the cold, dark cells of Assad’s prisons, the graffiti on the walls screams. The messages plead with God and yearn for loved ones. Often mysterious, they preserve fragments of what anonymous people thought as they faced torture and death.

“Don’t trust anyone, not even your brother,” someone warned grimly on a cell wall in the infamous Palestinian branch detention facility in Damascus.

“Oh God, bring relief,” groaned another.

Since 2011, tens of thousands of Syrians have disappeared inside the network of prisons and detention facilities run by Assad’s security forces as they try to crush his opposition. The prisoners were cut off from the outside world for years, living in overcrowded, windowless cells where prisoners died around them.

Layers of graffiti mark generations of suffering

Torture and beatings were carried out daily. Mass executions were frequent.

Most prisoners would fully expect to die. They had no reason to believe that anyone would ever see the messages they had scratched into the walls, except the future prisoners.

One wrote a single word in Arabic, “ashtaqtilak” (“I miss you”) — a love letter that could never be sent to a loved one whose name only the writer knew.

More than a month after the prisons were opened by the rebels who ousted Assad, The Associated Press toured several facilities to see the graffiti left behind. Nothing can be known about the people who drew and wrote them.

Only a few bear names and a few are dated. It is impossible to know which of them lived or died.

Some walls have layers of graffiti on top of each other, marking generations of suffering.

“Don’t be sad, mother. This is my destiny,” reads one from January 1, 2024. Beneath it are traces of an older text, so faded that only a few words are legible: “… except you” — a hint of longing for a loved one.

Calendars mark the years on the wall

Many notes and drawings are cries to parents or loved ones. Someone drew a heart broken in two, with “mother” on one side, “father” on the other.

Some quote poetry. “When you fight your wars, think of those who seek peace,” reads one somewhat misremembered line by the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish.

Many held calendars, filling the walls with grids of numbers. “It’s been a year,” was one prisoner’s succinct summary above a field of 365 dots arranged in rows.

Some drawings are even playful, like a cartoon face with googly eyes or a piece of hashish. Others are figments of imagination whose meaning, if any, was known only to the prisoner. One scene depicts a landscape of rolling hills and a forest of bare trees, where a pack of wolves howl into the sky and a bird of prey clutches a hissing snake in its claws.

Darkness and fear hover over most, along with attempts to hold on.

“Patience is beautiful, and God is the one we ask for help,” wrote one. – God, fill me with patience and don’t let me despair.