Sahar Diab had visited Damascus’ famed Umayyad Mosque previously. But as the Syrian lawyer went there to pray during her country’s first Ramadan after the end of the Assad family’s iron-fisted rule, she felt something new, something priceless: A sense of ease.
“The rituals have become much more beautiful,” she said. “Before, we were restricted in what we could say. ... Now, there’s freedom.”
