I was still sleeping in Doha when the event occurred on the morning of Dec. 8, 2024. The regime of Bashar al-Assad had fallen. The euphoria I felt in that initial minute has never truly departed. Even a year later to the exact date, it still seems like a dream.

Similar to millions of Syrians in the diaspora, I had come to terms with the thought that I might never see my native country without Assad in power. However, an 11-day event led by Ahmed al-Sharaa changed all of that.

More optimistic Syrians had faith that the regime would eventually be overthrown, not by the current generation that rose up against it, but by a future one. They believed this regime could not rule indefinitely. They hoped this regime might outlive them, but not their children. The revolution might be temporarily defeated but would not perish.

For years, I had assumed that my life outside Syria was temporary, that returning after studying and building a career abroad was simply what would happen. I had often prayed about living long enough to sit together in my family home in Deir Ezzor, joined by my parents and the entire family, to stroll in “our” street—a mini-village composed only of the houses of my uncles and aunts. But months before Assad’s fall, I had a realization. I had been unable to envision any path that would lead me back. There was no way to pass through Damascus, and cousins who visited my hometown told me there was nothing left. The faces were different, with the people I knew either dead (from old age or killed in the war), and younger ones born after I left.

I was finally able to return to Syria in January 2025. As a journalist and researcher who had tracked the situation for 14 years, I was still shocked by how bleak the reality in Syria was, including in regime-held areas that were spared the worst.

My youngest brother, who like me studied in Damascus but lived in the capital throughout the war, had less knowledge of the city’s roads than I did—and he had lived there longer. For years he could not deviate from his usual route (which still involved zigzagging to avoid dead bodies on the roads) due to the significant risks of random arrests. The eastern regions we come from were hotbeds of rebel opposition.

Because of this, those of us living abroad knew much less about the suffering in regime-held areas—the people left to live under a President who has claimed the war had purified the country. Even the relative safety in these areas was suffocating for those who kept their heads down.

The regime’s collapse was so unexpected that Syrians, and many outsiders, still tend to attribute it to hidden forces (worldly or divine). Those who opposed the regime see it as a sheer miracle, others see it as an international conspiracy to replace Assad with jihadists willing to make peace with Israel. As silly as it may sound to analysts, this widespread sense of a miracle can help us understand the attachment many Syrians have to the current moment.

Only Syrians felt the psychological toll of 14 years of this. The support for the new Sharaa government, and often angry or excessive reactions on social media to any form of dissent or criticism, is not a longing for authoritarian rule. It is emotional zeal or a form of anxiety about losing what once seemed impossible.

Analytically, I can now explain how something I had long ceased to expect came to pass. The regime was hollow and brittle long before it crumbled; the support in 2015 that helped it survive was weakened because of the war in Ukraine, and the real forces that kept it in power on the ground, namely Hezbollah and Iran, were hampered by Israel’s relentless campaign against every Hezbollah and Iran move in Syria. Crucially, there was a disciplined and powerful rebel force led by Sharaa in Idlib province ready to seize the moment.

Yet those who say they foresaw the regime’s imminent collapse were either lying or guessing blindly. Assad had been accepted by his Arab neighbors and was on the way to full normalization and embrace in Europe and the U.S. The Biden Administration had even considered lifting biting sanctions as part of confidence-building measures—and wishful thinking—that involved Damascus pledging to curb Iranian activities in the country.

But despite this newfound analytical clarity, we are still trying to adapt to a reality that overturned not only a regime but also the resignation we had built our lives around. We are still living in the moment of that glorious morning a year ago. Leave us be. Many of us had already mourned the homes we left behind, the streets that no longer resembled the ones in our memories. Overnight, that mourning was interrupted.

Syria still faces a number of significant challenges, from building an inclusive and non-sectarian political order after half a century of repressive rule, to restoring the rule of law and rebuilding a shattered economy. These are difficult tasks.

But the regime’s collapse has opened a new path for Syrians to reimagine and rebuild their country. And that is not all. At least for now, Syrians are still relishing this moment—the moment when a regime that once seemed certain is no more.

For those inside Syria, the future appears brighter. And for those outside, like me, the door back is no longer closed.