"They've, they've gone!" In the cab, Adnan, in his forties, sitting in the front passenger seat, frantically exclaimed at each checkpoint he saw lying deserted by the Syrian army, on the road running from the Lebanese border to Damascus, the Syrian capital. "Here was the army; there, army intelligence," he continued, pointing to buildings, which, just 24 hours ago, had been occupied by the vast and dreaded security services of Bashar al-Assad's dictatorship, which fell on the night of Saturday, December 7. All the while, he made video calls and filmed his surroundings: "My God, you won't believe where I am. We're going home! We're going home!" The entrance to Syria gave rise to a chorus of honking horns.

Earlier, the Masnaa border crossing, located further south, on the Lebanese side, looked akin to a town fair, bereft of the usual austere security that befits the site. The sound of automatic weapons and fireworks echoed out over the mountains of the Bekaa Valley. Vehicles lined up in single file, their windows open, with families seated in open doorways, Syrian revolutionary flags in hand. The flag was everywhere, printed on leaves, painted on the hoods of cars and drawn on children's faces.

Checks by Lebanese General Security (the security branch responsible for foreigners) officials were swift, as Lebanese authorities have decided to facilitate Syrian refugees' return to their homeland. For these people, the emotional shock was dizzying; some hadn't seen their country in over a decade.

Chaotic atmosphere

Mustapha, 13, had tears in his eyes. "I don't know how to tell you how happy I am," he said, exulting as his uncle looked on tenderly. At the start of the war, in 2011, his family fled their country to seek refuge in Tripoli, a large port city in northern Lebanon. "I was born here. I've never seen my country," he said, his arms resting on a metal fence, watching the frenetic procession unfold before him.

Standing on a concrete block at a checkpoint, a man repeated, shouting, "Long live free Syria!" The compact crowd that had formed in front of him repeated the phrase, as a chorus. Never mind "the future," said one man, "God is with us." There, in the hollow of an arid gorge, a long exile came to an end, and a new life began.

On the Syrian side, there were neither identity checks nor passport stamps, and the border guards had also left the area deserted. At the Jdeidet Yabous border crossing, the atmosphere was chaotic: Armed rebels were busy emptying the magazines of their Kalashnikovs, shooting up at the sky in celebration rather than checking the people coming and going. "Where are you going, youngsters?" asked one of them, whose greying hair stood in stark contrast to the youthful faces of the other fighters – some of whom even seemed bent double under the weight of their PK machine guns and the necklaces of bullets they wore around their necks. Here, victorious V-signs were shared with those passing by. The less wealthy had even decided to walk or hitchhike home. Just like four young men, barely 20, who sat, loaded into the boot of a cab, on their way back to Damascus. Originally from Al-Amara (located southeast of the city of Hama), they were seeing their country again, for the first time in five years. One of them had lost his brother, who "fell as a martyr," and another was desperately trying to reach his mother.

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