Last Sunday, Abdel Rahman was serving a 15-year sentence in a cramped cell in Syria’s notorious Saydnaya prison, after an altercation with a corrupt police officer last year in Damascus.
By Friday morning, he was in the ancient market of the old city selling the newly adopted green Syrian flag — the one anti-Assad rebels have flown during nearly 14 years of brutal civil conflict. At midday, he was able to listen to a sermon at the nearby mosque that called the deposed president Bashar al-Assad “a tyrant”.
“How great is Syrians’ joy, how great is this victory!” declared the prime minister, who was giving the unprecedented sermon, his words roaring over the speakers outside the Umayyad mosque. The message was greeted with cheers. Euphoria and some disbelief was etched on the faces of the thousands of people who are still coming to terms with the fall of a dictatorship that ruled them with an iron fist for more than 50 years.