Adnan Alaoda felt at home in Damascus' Rawda café on Al-Abed Street. "It's like a lounge, a living room in the center of the city," said the poet and screenwriter. Since this former exile returned to Syria on January 8, a month after the fall of Bashar Al-Assad, he has spent his days in the haze of cigarette and hookah smoke that hangs over the large room, where anonymous people and artists meet. Here, intellectuals and opponents who fled the regime, now back in the country or just passing through, meet up with friends and memories.

Adnan Alaoda recalled screenwriting sessions with peers, over cups of coffee and tea, before leaving Syria in 2013, refusing to endorse the war into which the country had sunk after the repression of the popular revolt of 2011. "Today, we're talking about culture and politics: which direction is the new government [of Hayat Tahrir Al-Cham, the de facto authority] taking, civil or Islamist? How to form trade unions? How do you build civil peace? It's like a People's Parliament," he said. "We have to rebuild everything from scratch, after more than 50 years of a regime built around a mafia family."

Since December 8, 2024, Rawda café has alternated between festive moments and public discussions, under garlands of green, white and black pennants emblazoned with three stars, the colors of the new Syria. Former MP Riad Seif, actor Jamal Suliman and writer Yassine Al-Haj Saleh, three leading ex-opposition figures who have all returned from exile, are regulars. The atmosphere has been rejuvenated: young men from Damascus, who used to limit their movements to avoid military service, now take to this public space.

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