As-Sweida – Aug 30, 2025
Al-Karama Square filled with familiar faces. People arrived in ones and twos until the crowd moved as one. Photos of the abducted were held up like small windows onto absent homes, and names were read in a voice that refused to break. The sound began low, then held steady. It was not a show of strength. It was a rehearsal for endurance.
In the front rows, mothers held the photos like certificates of life. Behind them, young people painted words on cloth that sounded new to local ears. The phrase “self-determination” appeared on a white banner. It was no borrowed headline. It carried weight, enough to change the rhythm of the hour.
The chants were not one note. Some called for a clean break. Others asked for protection and for a steady hand on security and daily life, here and now. No one forgot the abducted. Each name opened a small pause in the square, and each pause was filled with applause or a brief prayer. Between those tense lines, someone passed with bread and juice for the front rows. Ordinary details guarded a larger meaning.
Inside Sweida there was no organized counter-voice. Caution was present, and people watched one another closely, but the square set the tone. Those who disagreed chose to keep their words to themselves rather than stand in the path of the procession. Outside Sweida, a different conversation raged: accusations of treason, quick headlines, screens hunting for sharper images. Inside, people kept walking and tightened their grip on the banner so it would not fall.
Not everything said that day sounded like what had been said a month earlier. The language changed because the experience changed. Massacres, abductions, and a long siege turned a plea for services into a demand to own the decisions that shape life. In the square, the questions were practical and direct: who protects, who is accountable, who opens the way to the hospital, the market, the school.
After about an hour, the chants quieted by choice, not from fatigue. The photos were carefully put away, and the banners returned to shoulders as if kept in trust until needed again. The square recovered its usual noise, but the words from that hour lingered. The names did not leave. The new term has taken root in the local vocabulary. This is what happened in Al-Karama Square, and it is enough to move tomorrow.
