Syria: A Journey to Lost Time

Bashir Al-Baker

"After 45 years of forced absence, the writer returns to Syria. He attempts to reclaim an identity he feels has vanished and to remember a city he thought he had forgotten, only to discover it is etched in his heart with its streets and alleys, allowing him to navigate them blindfolded: Al-Salhiyyeh neighborhood, Sheikh Mohieddine, the building where he lived as a young man, Damascus University...

He searches for his old friends, only to be surprised that many of those he knew have left; some died, some traveled, and one lost his speech!

His journey leads him to Al-Rawda Café, which has become a meeting point for returnees after the fall of the regime, where he meets friends and acquaintances. Throughout all this, he evokes names in culture, poetry, art, and struggle... He observes the conditions of residents and returnees, intellectuals, women's situations, urban development, and public taste... He conjures up places, streets, and cities that lead to stations and eras in Syria and beyond.

In chapters prefaced by poetic verses, and with a delicate narrative oscillating between the yearning and anguish of the longing, the narrator traverses Damascus and its surrounding cities like a spirit that has settled in the city's body. Unapologetic about the fall of the former regime, the returning writer views the new Syria with the eyes of one who understands the laws of nations and their need for time to recover and flourish anew.

Bashir Al-Baker – A Syrian writer and poet (born in Al-Hasakah). Winner of the Arab Journalism Award (2008). Former editor-in-chief of "Al-Araby Al-Jadeed" and one of its founders, and a participant in establishing "Bayt Al-Shi'r" magazine in Abu Dhabi. He has authored works in politics and poetry, and his poems have been translated into French, English, and Turkish. "Syria: A Journey to Lost Time" is his second book published by Naufal after "A Land Unlike Dreams" (2025)."