Graffiti left on Assad’s prison walls express fears, loves of tortured Syrians

Languishing in a prison cell of Bashar al-Assad, the then ruler of Syria, an unknown prisoner wrote a verse of Arabic poetry on his cell wall – an expression of pain and love in his torment.

“My country, though it oppresses me, is dear. My people, though they are not charitable to me, are generous,” he wrote. It is a well-known verse, composed 800 years ago by a poet challenging a tyrannical caliph.

As you walk through the cool, dark cells of Assad’s prisons, the graffiti on the walls screams. The messages plead with God and yearn for their loved ones. Often mysterious, they preserve fragments of what anonymous men were thinking as they faced torture and death.

“Don’t trust anyone, not even your brother,” someone warned darkly on a cell wall in Damascus’ notorious Palestine Branch detention facility.

“Oh Lord, bring relief,” moaned another.

Since 2011, tens of thousands of Syrians have disappeared into the network of prisons and detention facilities run by Assad’s security forces as they have tried to crush his opposition. The inmates went for years without contact with the outside world, living in overcrowded, windowless cells where prisoners died around them.

Layers of graffiti marking generations of suffering

Torture and beatings were inflicted on a daily basis. Mass executions were frequent.

Most of the inmates would have fully expected to die. They had no reason to believe that anyone would ever see the messages they scratched on the walls, except the future prisoners.

One wrote a single word in Arabic, “ashtaqtilak” (“I miss you”) – a love letter that could never be sent to a loved one whose name only the writer knows.

More than a month after the prisons were opened by the insurgents who ousted Assad, The Associated Press visited several facilities to see the graffiti left behind. Nothing can be known about the men who draw and write them.

Only a few names bear it, and few are dated. It is impossible to know which of them lived or died.

Some walls have layers of graffiti on top of others, marking generations of suffering.

“Do not be sad, mother. This is my destiny,” reads one dated January 1, 2024. Below are traces of an older text, so faded that only a few words are read: “… out of you” – a hint of longing for a loved one.

Calendars mark years on the wall

Many of the writings and drawings are cries for parents or loved ones. Someone drew a heart broken in two, with “mom” written on one side, “dad” on the other.

Some quote poetry. “When you wage your wars, think of those who ask for peace,” read one, somewhat reminiscent of a verse by the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish.

Many keep calendars, filling the walls with grids of numbers. “A year has passed,” was a concise summary of a prisoner above a field of 365 points arranged in a row.

Some designs are also toys, like googly-eyed cartoon faces or a hash joint. Others are flights of fancy whose meaning, if any, was known only to the prisoner. One scene shows a landscape of rolling hills and forests of bare trees, where a pack of wolves howl to the sky and a bird of prey clutches a hissing snake in its claws.

Darkness and fear hangs over most, with attempts to endure.

“Patience is beautiful, and God is the one from whom we seek help,” one wrote. “God, fill me with patience and do not leave me in despair.”