Around 100 people gathered in Washington Square Park in Lower Manhattan on Sunday afternoon to celebrate the fall of President Bashar al-Assad of Syriabighit777, who fled his country after rebel forces stormed the capital earlier in the day.
Syrian expatriates and their supporters beat drums and sang revolutionary songs in Arabic, holding hands and forming circles for the dabke, a dance that is common at celebrations in the Middle East. Some were draped in the flag of the Syrian opposition, with green, white and black stripes and three red stars.
Others chanted anti-Assad slogans and, after reading news reports that Russian and Iranian officials had said that Mr. al-Assad had fled to Russia, joked about going to Moscow to force him to leave there as well. As the celebration continued in the square, people distributed baklava and shawarma.
One attendee, Marcelle Shehwaro, 40, from Aleppo, Syria, said she had been compelled to leave because of her participation in political activism there. While she does not know what to expect, she said, she is cautiously happy.
“I don’t want to think about the next phase in Syria’s future because I want to take in the happiness of this historical moment,” she said in Arabic.
After government forces killed her mother, Ms. Shehwaro said, she staged a demonstration and published criticism of the regime under her real name, which made her a target. She was questioned multiple times by the secret police and lived in hiding for a while, she said. She left the country in 2014.
Ms. Shehwaro said she had given up on returning to Syria. But after seeing reports in recent days that rebels were freeing prisoners of Mr. al-Assad’s regime, she felt jubilant, and believed that justice was being restored.
Ms. Shehwaro has some family members “who have been scared to contact me for 12 years,” she said, “and now we are finally in touch.”
Hazem Alanani, 33, also from Aleppo, works in health care I.T. and said he left Syria in 2019. He also participated in political demonstrations in the country and was questioned by the secret police, and said he considered himself lucky to have never been jailed.
He said that many Syrians had abandoned hope of regime change. “It was disheartening for me and I went through an overwhelming amount of hopelessness and helplessness while the Syrian regime was gaining ground” in recent years, Mr. Alanani said.
This weekend’s developments came as a shock. “I haven’t gotten the chance to completely process it,” he said, adding, “I broke down crying many times when I realized what had happened.”
He went onbighit777, “Everything that we chanted for and fought for in the early days of the revolution has become a reality.”