‘Living or Dead, We Want Our Sons Back’In Syria, women begin picking up the pieces of a broken nation. Photographs and text by Lynsey Addario

More than 600,000 Syrians died during 13 years of civil war. At least 100,000 more went missing.

They were mostly men, taken to prisons and torture centers around the country. Some were simply piled into anonymous mass graves.

Many of those left behind were their mothers, wives and children.

Now, even as joy sweeps a nation emerging from darkness, these women are working to understand what was lost …

… and rebuild what they can from what remains.

After the fall of the Assad regime in early December, Syrians rushed to learn the fate of those who disappeared during the war. At morgues, prisons and hospitals, the number of women searching for answers was notable.

Hilala el-Hassan lost four sons. None of them were among the bodies she found at a morgue. But she did find the corpse of one of their friends.

Her grief stood in stark contrast to the joyful gatherings nearby.

Thousands poured into the streets of Damascus to celebrate the end of a regime that held the nation in a brutal autocratic grip for decades.

It was a moment — perhaps a brief one — in the light.

At a morgue in Damascus, Amira al-Homsi cried, “I have found my son!”

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Her husband, Yahyiha Abu Shaqra, helped identify their child, Muhammad Fayez Abu Shaqra. He was arrested just a month before the war ended.

His face was mutilated from torture, but his mother recognized the tattoos on his chest.

His parents buried him the next day at a cemetery in the al-Midan neighborhood in Damascus.

Some of the women searching the prisons and morgues could only hope for this kind of closure.

One of the greatest challenges in recent weeks has been identifying the dead.

There were so many bodies that there could be confusion about their identities.

Doctors have used DNA testing in many cases, but the results take time.

Wahida Muhammad Sobhe thought she had found her child, missing for a decade, at a morgue.

“This is my son,” she cried. “This is my son! Oh, God! He has a mark on his eye!”

A day later, officials determined that it was not his body.

At the Sednaya prison, Ayoush Moussa el-Hassan searched for some sign of her son’s fate. She hasn’t heard from him since he was arrested 13 years ago.

“Living or dead,” she says, “we want our sons back. We want their bones.”

The detritus of those who didn’t make it out littered the prison.

At a detention center inside this abandoned military-intelligence compound, another story took place.

Falak was arrested in 2014 for her support of the Free Syrian Army and was held here for a while.

She asked to be identified by only her first name because she feared that the old regime or something like it could return.

She was tortured and was made to watch as others had their teeth pulled out with pliers or were hanged upside down from a ladder and beaten for hours.

Falak’s family was able to pay a heavy fine, and she left prison after four years.

Now she wanted to face the horror of what happened.

“I have chills inside me,” she said, looking at the way the light entered the room.

“We never used to see that light. This light didn’t exist. There was only darkness.”

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In Syria, women begin to pick up the pieces of a broken nation.

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Photographs and Text by Lynsey Addario

Published Dec. 20, 2024Updated Dec. 23, 2024