By Dr. Adnan Bouzan

My journey back to the homeland after fourteen years was not a return, but a painful unveiling of truth—a brutal collision between what memory had kept alive in my heart and what time had left standing before me with unfamiliar features that no longer recognized me. I returned carrying an entire homeland within me, only to find that the homeland which received me stood on the opposite shore, looking at me with cold indifference, as if I were a passing stranger rather than a son of this land. From the very first step, I realized that some homelands are not reclaimed; we are merely permitted to visit them, as one visits cemeteries—with heavy reverence, aching silence, and a broken heart.

I entered through the crossing, and the crossing itself was an open wound in the body of geography, a bleeding that never ceased between what once was and what has become. My steps trembled, as if the land itself doubted my belonging, as if the soil were bitterly interrogating me: Were you the one who fled, or the one who endured? I lifted my gaze and saw exhausted, rigid faces wearing carefully polished masks—masks that concealed fear and had long been trained to smile without a soul. I did not find the features of those I once knew, but their shadows: pale replicas worn down by time until it reshaped them, as a river reshapes stones—featureless, voiceless.

I passed through Aleppo, the city of Abu Firas al-Hamdani, once the pulse of my chest, now a body without memory. Its streets no longer recognized the sound of my footsteps; the walls that had guarded our secrets chose silence, and the windows that once overflowed with life turned into extinguished eyes staring into nothingness. Even the stone had changed; it was no longer a warm stone that knew the heat of palms or the weight of memories, but a cold witness to what the place had been forced to forget. I walked through it like someone wandering inside a torn memory, searching for myself among the corners, finding nothing but emptiness.

Then I continued my journey toward the city of al-Raqqa, the city of my youth and my first love, and from there I crossed the deserts—those naked distances that had once been passageways for dreams. The desert seemed longer than my capacity to endure, as if it stretched its massive body between me and what remained of me. The wind no longer sang as it once did; it howled, carrying the dust of wasted years and lashing my face with questions that had no answers. There, in the heart of that endless void, I understood that absence is not measured by the number of years, but by how much silently erodes within the soul.

When I reached my village, I stood for a long time at its threshold, fearful of the moment of encounter. I feared betraying it with a single glance, or being betrayed by its coldness. I finally entered, and it appeared to me like a woman who had suddenly grown old, no longer recognizing her children. The houses bent like weary backs, the doors had changed, the trees I grew up beneath had aged or vanished, and even the birds’ chirping was no longer what once awakened my childhood; it had grown faint, trembling, as if the birds themselves had learned fear.

Everything had changed, even the air. I breathed cautiously, as though my breaths were strangers to the place. The faces I met were not faces at all, but perfected masks—laughing when permitted to laugh, silent when silence was imposed. I could not tell whether they recognized me, or whether they had forgotten even their own names. I felt that the homeland was no longer a home, but a vast stage on which everyone performed roles written for them, without ever being allowed to read them.

I stood at the heart of my village, and at the heart of the truth: I was no longer the one who had left, and the homeland was no longer the one I had waited for. Between us lay an invisible distance, fashioned by disappointments, fear, and years that passed without truly passing. And yet, something within the heart continued to resist collapse—an obstinate love that refused to die, and a fragile faith that the homeland, no matter how it changes, remains a sacred pain, an open wound, and a longing that never learns how to die.