JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
After more than a decade living in exile, many Syrians are finally considering what many once thought impossible - going home. The fall of dictator Bashar al-Assad last December opened a door or at least cracked it. Now, for the millions who fled to neighboring countries like Turkey, the question is rising again - is it time to return? But as reporter Rebecca Rosman recently found out, behind that question are a thousand others. From just over the border in southern Turkey, she brings us the story of two families standing at the crossroads.
ADHAM ALJAMOUS: So this is our land and the village.
REBECCA ROSMAN, BYLINE: Adham Aljamous keeps a plastic bag full of old photos - the only thing his family managed to carry out of Syria. They reveal a world that feels like a lifetime ago - golden afternoons, family meals, a home untouched by war.
ALJAMOUS: Let's see - me.
ROSMAN: Even the bad memories are good memories, he says.
ALJAMOUS: Especially after you leave forcefully, even the things you hate, you would start to love and miss.
ROSMAN: Aljamous is 32 years old. He grew up in Daraa in southwest Syria, the cradle of the 2011 uprising. When he and his family fled Syria, they thought they just had to lay low for a few weeks. That was 11 years ago. For years, Syrians like Aljamous have lived with the same question - will I ever be able to go home again? But since the fall of Bashar al-Assad seven months ago, that question has started to change. Now it's not if, but when, how and at what cost?
ALJAMOUS: When the circumstances are suitable, there will be a return to homeland, inshallah, for sure.
ROSMAN: But a lot needs to happen before those circumstances can be called suitable. Sanctions are being lifted to reconnect Syria with the international economy, but roads, railways and homes still need rebuilding. Years of conflict have devastated basic services. Electricity and water remain unreliable in many areas, making daily life a struggle, and there's uncertainty over Syria's interim leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, who was once linked to al-Qaida. None of this worries Aljamous.
ALJAMOUS: When the regime was in control, I said I would follow the devil if he overthrow this regime because, for me, this is worse than the devil.
ROSMAN: The real problem isn't just the logistics of returning. It's that the Syria waiting for Aljamous isn't the Syria he left behind. The war didn't just destroy cities. It shattered what home could ever mean.
ALJAMOUS: Sometimes, I just sit and try to think who's left there - literally no one from my friends. I don't know anyone there. So if I go back, I think it's going to be a big problem for me. Like, your hopes or your dreams are just dreams.
ROSMAN: And he's not alone. In another corner of Gaziantep, Turkey, I meet with Bushra Ajaj and Hasan Ajam, a married couple who met through the revolution and survived it together.
HASAN AJAM: Some Syrian sweets, please.
ROSMAN: Oh, my...
Over generous cups of cardamom coffee and pistachio-filled sweets, they tell me what returning feels like now.
(SOUNDBITE OF COFFEE POURING)
ROSMAN: The new Syrian flag hangs in their living room. It's a symbol of pride and grief. Both were arrested for their activism. Both lost friends and family. Hasan Ajam has returned to Syria twice since Assad's fall in December, but even now he says...
AJAM: Everybody have memories and have friends and everything in last life, there in Syria. But till now, I visit Syria twice time, but I didn't go inside my home.
ROSMAN: Bushra Ajaj went back once in April for the first time in 10 years.
BUSHRA AJAJ: In some moments, I felt myself like stranger. It's very different from the Syria that we left.
ROSMAN: Her family home was damaged - no windows, no doors. But it wasn't the house that broke her. It was seeing her old university.
AJAJ: So I remembered my friend that passed away because of Assad regime there in university. I remembered a lot of stories we lived there in the university. So I cried a lot when I saw it after 10 years.
ROSMAN: The memories came back?
AJAJ: Yes.
ROSMAN: It's not just that Syria has changed. It's that going back means facing everything and everyone that's missing. For this married couple, even imagining a return comes with questions. They have two young kids to think about, both born in Turkey.
AJAJ: They speak Turkish better than Arabic. Sometimes, I feel it's good, because they live here, not to feel themselves strange or - but now we are thinking about going back to Syria. We are not sure. We don't have any clear picture about our situation. I fear that they feel theirselves (ph) a stranger in Syria.
ROSMAN: If they do ever go back permanently, Bushra Ajaj wants it to be somewhere new, not her tiny village, maybe somewhere in nearby Aleppo - somewhere she can create new memories, even if it never quite feels like the home she left. Rebecca Rosman, NPR News, Gaziantep, Turkey. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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