From Syria, With Love

By Leen Shoura

This time my story is different. It’s not about memories, not about the past, I’m writing about a fear I felt with my own skin, a fear I thought I had buried forever. 

On July 16, Damascus was shaken in a way I hadn’t seen in a while. Around 3 p.m., the sky cracked open with thunder that wasn’t thunder. Israeli airstrikes struck the very heart of the capital, Umayyad Square, a place so central that no Syrian can imagine Damascus without it. The targets weren’t hidden away; they were the Defense Ministry and the General Staff headquarters, landmarks that stand at the center of our daily lives. Within minutes, smoke rose across the city, and the sound of explosions rolled through every neighborhood. 

I was sitting in the living room when it happened, and my aunt’s voice pulled me toward the hallway. In that moment, time collapsed. I wasn’t in 2025 anymore. I was back in 2016, when the hallway became the only safe place, when every blast forced us into its narrow space, praying for silence to return. Streets that only hours before were filled with people and traffic turned into scenes of fire and rubble. On the news, Israel framed it as a “warning” to Damascus, tied to the fighting in Suwayda and the Druze minority there. But to us, the reasons didn’t matter. What mattered was that the bombs fell on our city, that children and elders once again crouched in hallways, that memories of past wars were ripped wide open. I thought those days had ended. But the fear returned, sudden and raw. 

What shook me most was the audacity of the attack. Israel didn’t strike a hidden base or some distant checkpoint; it struck the most iconic and busiest square in Damascus. The message was clear: nowhere is untouchable. The very center of the city, the place that carries so much of its spirit, was lit up in fire and smoke. That boldness, that reach, left me stunned. 

Just when we thought we were beginning to heal, that we had left the bombs behind, Damascus was reminded of its fragility. The same hand that destroys Palestine, the same one that scarred Lebanon, reached into our lives too. And in the silence after the blasts, I realized that fear never fully leaves us, it only sleeps, waiting for the moment it is shaken awake. 

The attacks may try to silence us, to make us feel small and unsafe, but they cannot take away our resilience. They cannot erase the laughter that still fills our homes, the aroma of coffee that still drifts through our mornings, or the hope that still glows quietly in our hearts. Still, despite everything, love for this city carries us forward. Even when its walls tremble. Damascus has been shaken many times before, and yet here she still stands. And so will we, with love, with faith, and with the unyielding belief that brighter days are waiting just beyond the smoke.