Tuesday, May 27, 2025

Living in Exile

‘Everyone Around Me Thinks That I’m Crazy for Wanting to Come Back’
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/27/opinion/syria-migration-return-assad.html
An extraordinary piece from Lydia Polgreen:
In the modern world, we think the most profound form of punishment is confinement, the restriction of one’s freedom to move unencumbered in the world. But it is worth remembering that the most fearsome and irrevocable punishment for much of human existence was something else: exile. In our most ancient texts, across countless civilizations, being forced to leave your home to live among strangers long served as a fate akin to death.
People in rich countries fear that people imprisoned by poverty and conflict will break out of that confinement and storm their citadels of plenty. What they fail to recognize is that, absent total cataclysm, there is perhaps no force in human history more powerful than the longing for home. Nowhere is this clearer, and more moving, than in Syria today. 

Related:
I Went to Dubai, and Caught a Glimpse of the Future by LYDIA POLGREEN

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