Nasma and Haleem Kawas met during the first protests in Aleppo against Bashar al-Assad’s rule. In the early days of the 2011 Arab spring, the pair locked eyes at a demonstration calling for the president’s overthrow. Now after 13 years of conflict, broken dreams and exile, the couple are planning their return.
The Kawases have lived just two hours from Aleppo in the Turkish city of Gaziantep for almost a decade, only able to visit their home town in their dreams. And even then, said Haleem, these were always punctuated with memories of being chased through the streets by Assad’s security forces as they did during those early protests.
