"How Can I Go Back?" That question haunts Hevin, the Syrian mother of four, every time she recalls the streets of Aleppo, her hometown in Syria, that she left behind more than a decade ago. A year after Assad’s fall, her dream remains suspended, caught between an unquenchable longing and a reality that binds her to Germany.
This text was originally written in Arabic and published on InfoMigrants Arabic.
Despite the everyday hardships of life in Europe’s largest economy and the aching nostalgia for her hometown, Hevin sees no alternative but to stay.
With a tone heavy with sorrow, Hevin, a mother of four who has lived for nearly 11 years in Germany's largest state, North Rhine-Westphalia, explains: “You know what Syria is like now… war, no jobs, no money, life is very hard. Right now, I’m not ready to return.”
Without hesitation, she poses the question during her conversation with InfoMigrants.
“How can I go back to Syria? My children are studying here, learning everything, thank God. They’re in school, my husband works, and our life is more stable,” she said.
As she speaks, Hevin scrolls through her phone, watching footage from December 8 last year when the rule of now-ousted President Bashar Assad ended.
In late November 2024, Islamist factions led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, whose leader Ahmad al-Sharaa is now Syria’s interim president, launched an offensive on the city of Aleppo, aiming to take it back from Assad's forces.
Instead, Assad’s forces crumbled almost overnight. Aleppo fell first, then Hama and Homs, clearing a straight path to Damascus. Meanwhile, rebel groups in the country's south mobilized to make their own push toward the capital.
On December 8, Damascus was theirs. Assad, spirited away by Russian forces, now lives in exile in Moscow. That marked a dramatic end to more than five decades of family rule.
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Homecoming
For many Syrians who had to leave their country, Assad’s toppling has sparked cautious optimism. Yet nostalgia cannot mask the grim reality of a country torn by a 14-year-old war that has left the nation in ruins.
“We have no home in Syria, and life there… It’s very hard,” says Hevin. “If you go back, you don’t know what circumstances you’ll face.”
A year after Assad’s downfall, Syria has opened a new chapter, but a country long shrouded in isolation is now struggling to find a place on the regional and global stage.
But behind this hopeful façade lies a harsher truth: the economy remains fragile, jobs are scarce, and basic services are still out of reach for most Syrians.
These realities outweigh Hevin’s longing for her village in Aleppo.
“My kids were little when we came here,” she says of her move to Germany. “Now they’re grown. If they went back to Syria now, life would be very hard for them.”
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'Families are exhausted'
While Hevin has firmly decided not to return, thanks to her stable life in Germany, especially with her eldest now working and helping support the family, many others who fled Syria have chosen to go back.
Many have since returned, doctors, engineers, teachers, workers, and farmers, often bringing new skills learned abroad or money collected from expatriates to help with rebuilding.
Others are bringing back the experience of having lived in a democracy to a country that has never really known it.
In her interview with InfoMigrants, Hevin says she has read about many families leaving Germany to return to Syria, attributing the trend to mounting pressures and the hardships of life in exile.
“Everything here [in Germany] is mandatory, mandatory, mandatory,” she explains. “Families are exhausted. Back in Syria, women weren’t forced to work or go to school. Here, it’s all compulsory—and the language is hard. There’s pressure, pressure, pressure. People got tired and decided to go back.”
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Political debate
Germany is home to around a million Syrians, many of whom arrived during migration movements that peaked in 2015 under then-Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Since the overthrow of Assad in December 2024, debate has grown heated around whether they should return to Syria.
The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) has called for them to go home, highlighting a recent spate of high-profile violent crimes.
The government is in talks with Syria's new Islamist-led government to resume deportations of violent criminals.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz spoke about the prospects of staying for well-integrated refugees.
“Many are here and are needed here, have become doctors, for example, or are working in various professions. We also want to give them the prospect of staying here if they are integrated, if they are able to earn their living here with their families,” Merz added, cited by dpa.
At the same time, he emphasized that refugees who have sought protection from civil wars must return to their home countries once the conflicts have ended.
But for Hevin, a Syrian mother living in Germany for a decade, she shrugs off this political storm.
Her life in Europe’s economic powerhouse is stable, and her family is steadily finding its footing in German society.
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50 euros a day
Yet her heart is still tethered to Aleppo. She keeps in constant touch with relatives to learn what life looks like after Assad’s fall.
“My cousins, my parents, my sister… they’re all in Syria,” she says. “They tell me prices are sky-high, there’s no money, no jobs. Half of Syria survives thanks to Europe, you know?”
She’s referring to the remittances sent by Syrians abroad to help families weather the economic storm a year after the regime’s collapse.
“I hear you need about 500 to 700 thousand [Syrian pounds]—that’s like 50 dollars or euros a day, you know?” she adds, underscoring the crushing cost of living back home.