This book presents a vision of the first year following the fall of Bashar al-Assad's regime on December 8, 2024. The author attempts to portray these fragile and chaotic repercussions, which are full of events.
French writer Cécile Boissot was forced to leave Syria in 2011, after the dangers threatening her presence as a foreigner at that time intensified. However, she approaches the details of life there throughHer book "The Restoration of Damascus" (Actes Sud, Arles, 2026), published a few days ago. Cécile studied and worked in Syria for many years, living a full life there. She came to know the character of the people and developed extensive connections within the cultural community.The author combines the perspective of someone knowledgeable about the recent past and history with that of a researcher who observed and documented the history of the revolution as visual material, through tens of thousands of videos filmed by activists in Syrian cities and rural areas. Cecile talks about her return to Damascus after the fall of the regime from an emotional perspective. She loves the place and does not feel like a stranger there, but she experiences the anguish caused by the absence of the friends with whom she shared her life in the city.The other aspect of her visit, the details of which are recorded in the book, is that she thinks and writes with her eyes, meaning that she records the details through her visual memory. Even when she provides background information on what has happened in Syria over the past years for the reader of her French book, she devotes ample space to imagery. The Syrian revolution and the war that followed were extensively documented by the young people who participated in them. The author also sets the stage for understanding what she is talking about by tracing the lives of Syrians under repression and the terror of prisons.which has been ingrained in their minds for decades!
The author devoted a part of her narrative to her attempts to document the visit through photography and audio recording, as if she sought to reconnect with Damascus through what she had tried to keep in her mind for 14 years of absence, during which she thought she would never visit it again after her hopes for the regime's downfall had faded. It is true that she was unable to archive what she wanted as she should have, but she explains the impact of what she tried to create within herself, writing: "I then realized to what extent a photograph also preserves the impact of that intimate relationship."and the ambiguity between the existential state of the person standing behind the lens and what is captured at the moment when light falls on the film."
This book is an intimate account of this journey. It is also composed of images, those that shape our memory of the conflict, and others that allow us to understand the fragility of the post-disaster period, that moment when certainties crumble with the fall of regimes, when everything is reshaped, and when new fault lines emerge.Unlike traditional war chronicles, "Rediscovering Damascus" recounts a rare moment in history: the moment of a country trying to emerge from war without yet knowing what kind of peace awaits it.
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