SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
For decades, the Syrian army ruled over parts of neighboring Lebanon. One place that Syrians controlled was a village in northern Lebanon. And that is where NPR Diaa Hadid begins this story in 1984 in her father's ancestral home. And we do want to let you know that there is the sound of gunfire in this story.
DIAA HADID, BYLINE: I was playing by the old oak when I heard Mum wailing, and I froze. A kindly older cousin scooped me up. Let's go play, she said. I was so little, so easily distracted. We were in Dad's village of Kaferkahel because my grandfather had passed away. Dad flew us in from Australia to pay his respects. Following Levantine tradition, Dad didn't trim his beard for 40 days after his father's passing.
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HADID: And that made him a target of Syrian forces who were ostensibly keeping the peace in our part of Lebanon during our country's civil war. With his unruly beard, Dad looked like a supporter of the Islamist group, the Muslim Brotherhood.
At the time, Syrian forces were chasing down Brotherhood supporters who fled to neighboring Lebanon after they tried to overthrow the Assad regime. The Syrians took Dad while he was near our village. As the afternoon stretched on and he didn't return, Mum feared the worst because so many others had disappeared.
Dad later told me he was taken to a school that Syrian forces were using as a lockup. He told me he could hear men screaming in the other rooms. While he was being held, he recited verses of the Muslim Holy book, the Quran, like this...
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UNIDENTIFIED SINGER: (Singing in non-English language).
HADID: ...Verses about Jonah. Muslims too believe the Biblical story of Jonah and the whale. And Dad prayed, Lord, as you freed Jonah, please free me. My father was eventually freed. By chance, the driver of a Syrian officer recognized Dad. He pleaded for his freedom. The driver was a distant relative. We left Lebanon soon after, only returning years later, as the war's embers faded in 1990.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: The horrors and madnesses of the war are over.
HADID: But the wounds were still fresh. Bullet holes were shot through the bus that ferried us from the plane. There was dried blood on the floor. In the airport, there were posters everywhere of one man. I pointed and asked, who's that, Dad? He hissed at me to shut up. I didn't know the Syrian ruler Hafez al-Assad, and I didn't know that just pointing at his image could get us in trouble. Assad was effectively in charge of Lebanon.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Motorists are still checked by Syrian troops.
HADID: Because Syrian forces were allowed to stay in Lebanon as part of the deal to end the war - the Assad Regime - first Hafez, then his son Bashar - ruled Lebanon like they ruled Syria, with terror. My cousins schooled us. Never talk about the regime. Don't even talk to the mirror, my cousin warned. Maybe your reflection will squeal on you. Years later, I studied Arabic, listening to songs to get the cadence of the language. Dad helped me understand this poem sung by Egyptian diva Umm Kulthum.
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UMM KULTHUM: (Singing in non-English language).
HADID: I see you do not cry, she sings. You are steadfast. As I immersed myself in Arabic, I asked Dad if I could go to Syria, where there were excellent language courses. No way, he said. So I went to our ancestral village in Lebanon to study and nursed a deep resentment of my father. Syrian forces stayed on in Lebanon until a bombing on Valentine's Day 2005 killed the Lebanese prime minister, Rafic Hariri.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: (Non-English language spoken).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: This was the moment that brought change to Lebanon's relations with Syria.
HADID: Hariri's killing was widely blamed on Syria. It led to a movement demanding Syrian forces leave, nearly three decades after they arrived.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #5: (Chanting in non-English language).
UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: (Chanting in non-English language).
HADID: By then, I was a journalist, mostly covering conflict and its consequences, from Iraq to Gaza to Libya. Dad never worried. For him, life and death were in the hands of God. Except for Syria - when I was assigned to cover the Syrian civil war in 2013, Dad pleaded, don't go. I pushed back hard, and finally, nearly 30 years after it happened, he told me how he was nearly swallowed into the belly of the Assad regime in '84. Still, I went to Syria. But that revelation helped me make sense of my reserved father - his embrace of prayer, his gratitude to be a citizen of Australia, a country that upheld the rule of law.
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HADID: Last weekend, news began filtering in.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Now, we begin with breaking news out of Syria, of course. Opposition forces have declared the end of President Bashar al-Assad's rule after 13 years of civil war.
HADID: Syrians were toppling statues, cheering in the streets.
(SOUNDBITE OF CAR HORNS HONKING)
HADID: Now, thousands of families are searching for their missing loved ones swallowed by the Assad regime. Dad passed away nearly two years ago, and I couldn't stop thinking, the terror that haunted him and millions of Lebanese and Syrians was over. Diaa Hadid, NPR News, Mumbai.
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