The first thing the three militants did on entering Syria’s notorious Palestine branch prison as free men was to search for their former solitary confinement cells. They crossed under the towering iron gates and barbed wire at the edge of the Damascus complex after the fall of Bashar al-Assad and headed immediately to the squalid cells just a few feet wide where they had spent years huddled in the dark, staring at the back of the heavy metal doors and drawing on the walls.
Mahmoud Chtawi said that when he entered he lifted his head to gaze up at the 10-storey concrete building just to prove to himself that he could. For decades, anyone passing the facility run by military intelligence was terrified to even steal a glance. He headed to find cell number 15, firing off rounds of bullets in celebration when he did. He then decided to spend the night inside his former cell to “process the memories” of his time there.
