Bayan, Syria

“I studied architecture at Damascus University in Syria and then went on to take a Master of Science in Urban Studies and Urban Cultural Theory. Syria is a small country around the size of Washington State or Spain. The country’s climate means that only a quarter of its land is arable with the remaining desert area subject to droughts and dust storms. The majority of Syria’s population lives on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea or in the Euphrates River valley.
Syria has been ruled by the Assad family since 1970. After Hafez al-Assad’s death in 2000 his son and current president, Bashir al-Assad took control. There was a brief period of adjustment and then non-democratic national elections were implemented, and Syria became a regime of arbitrary detainment in torture prisons.
It was not a safe option to be ‘yourself’ if you objected to the government, and it consumed a lot of my energy and strength to just live. Not being true to myself felt like I was just existing. To quote EE Cummings ‘To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best day and night to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight and never stop fighting.’
I continued to pursue an Urban Studies education in Europe and then enrolled at the George Washington University in Washington DC, to study Data Analysis.
I live daily with conflicted feelings of being lucky to have survived Assad’s torture prisons, and guilty when so many other people didn’t. Sometimes when I lay down my head, I think I can still hear their screams.
The projected photograph has a special meaning to me as it is my favourite view of Damascus at night. The city always looked so peace from up there.”