When Hayyan Maqsoud, the director of Syria’s postal service, returned to work on Tuesday, the first thing he did was remove the portraits of Bashar al-Assad and his late father, Hafez al-Assad, from the walls of his Damascus office.
“Finally we can breathe,” said Maqsoud, a lifelong civil servant, gazing at the spot where the portraits used to sit, the nails still in the wall and the outline of the frame visible against the faded yellow paint. Maqsoud asked his employees to return to work on Tuesday, two days after Assad fled ending his family’s 54-year rule over the country.
