Unbelievable as it may seem, there are children in Syria who grew up in Bashar al-Assad's prisons without ever seeing the sky. The late, charismatic Michel Kilo (1940-2021), a longtime opponent of al-Assad's regime, shared the heartbreaking story of a child he came across in prison, a story that haunted him all his life. This 5-year-old lived with his mother in a windowless isolation cell, cut off from the outside world. Born and raised in al-Assad's prisons, he didn't know what the sky was, or what a bird was.

A jailer had secretly asked Michel Kilo, who was himself imprisoned, to come and tell this child a story. As I write these lines, I cannot hold back my tears for this child, but also for Michel, who died on April 19, 2021 in Paris, far from the Syria he loved so much. Michel Kilo had asked his jailer to stop taking him to see this child: The pain was too great, more intense than torture, more unbearable than imprisonment or deprivation. This suffering never left Michel. Every time he recalled this story, his tears flowed, tears filled with love for Syria and the Syrians.

On Sunday, December 8, when the cells of Sednaya Prison were opened, women and their children were found. Most of these children had been born from rapes committed by their jailers. And I immediately thought of that child to whom Michel Kilo had tried to tell a story, never succeeding. How can you tell a story to a child who doesn't know what the sky and the birds are? Every time a prison is liberated in Syria, it's the same scenes: Men and women who were locked up for decades, sometimes even up to 40 years, without a trial. Among them are Syrians of all faiths and origins – Christians, Druze, Alawites, Kurds, Sunnis – but also Lebanese, Palestinians, Jordanians...

I wish Michel could have been there to witness this moment of our newfound freedom, this Christian who had been fighting against the tyranny of the al-Assads since the 1970s and for whom faith was never at the heart of his commitment to Syria. He had always been a Syrian above all ideological and religious considerations and was the fruit of cross-breeding within Syrian society. A son of the city of Latakia, he rubbed shoulders and fraternized with Alawites, Sunnis, Christians ... His absolute confidence in Syrian society made him never doubt or give up, and he carried the torch of freedom to his death.

Deep societal wounds

Like him, it is in Syrian society that I want to believe. I grew up mixing with all parts of society. As a member of the Druze minority, I have always been welcomed with kindness. However, as early as 2011, the Syrian regime sought to break up the nation's unity by making the conflict sectarian. It positioned itself as the protector of minorities – minorities that, in reality, had never been threatened, except by the regime's own security services. In fact, al-Assad's prisons were overflowing with members of the very minorities he claimed to be defending.

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