Food has lost its taste for Ahmed Merai and sleep, when it comes, offers little relief. Although it has been months since he was freed from Syria's notorious Sednaya prison, the memories of being tortured are still brutally vivid.
His experiences during five years in the dungeons of the regime of former president Bashar Al Assad have continued to haunt Mr Merai, 33, whose eyes sometimes drift into space as he tells his story. He often pauses as he speaks and touches his prayer beads nervously.
“Sednaya, it's a long story. I can tell you a lot about it,” he said, his voice cracking and his eyes filling with tears.
He described the guards’ cruel beatings, the constant hunger, barely dulled by the daily serving of mouldy bread, and the lack of hygiene. Detainees were limited to a single weekly shower in freezing water.
At one point, those held in the prison survived for two weeks on nothing more than half a cup of bulghur, “barely enough to live on", he said. He watched fellow inmates die from exhaustion and the effects of torture.
For Mr Merai, who was arrested after defecting from the army during Syria’s civil war, his liberation from the prison did not bring an end to his ordeal. It is a tale familiar to many former detainees.
“You can’t go through that and stay the same. Until now, I feel a constant anger in me,” he said. The horrors he faced mean he has only been able to eat vegetables in the past few months and he can barely sleep at night.
It took months before he was able to communicate with his family and neighbours. Even now, he argues with them frequently. To this day, he said, his reintegration into society feels incomplete, despite having found work at a factory. “It's hard to settle,” he admitted.
He realised he needed help. Former detainees urged him to join a mental health initiative launched by humanitarian NGO MedGlobal, in co-ordination with Syria’s Health Ministry. The pilot project, introduced in Homs in May, offers individual and group therapy sessions for former detainees, led by trained social workers, counsellors and psychiatrists.
As rebels toppled the Assad regime in December and freed tens of thousands of detainees from the vast network of prisons, notorious for their systematic use of arbitrary detention and torture, the scale of trauma became clear. “We saw an urgent need to help former detainees reintegrate into society," Hala Kseibi, 25, the area co-ordinator for the project, told The National.
About 308 former detainees have attended more than 1,600 sessions and are, for the first time, able to speak openly about their experiences. Mr Kseibi said progress was slow, but some have been able to resume normal life gradually. Only about one in five require medication to tackle their trauma.
The National visited the centre during Mr Merai's first session. He hopes therapy will help him rebuild his life and overcome the anxiety he has struggled with since he was released.
'They turned us into beasts'
For Jihad Al Azouz, 50, therapy has been transformative. Once a businessman in the construction sector, he was freed in December after spending 11 years in Homs Central Prison, five of them endured without a single visit.
After years of abuse, the hardest part was learning how to interact with people again. “They turned us into beasts,” he added. "And because we've been through so much, we kept asking ourselves how we could live again among others.”
Loud noises used to trigger him and he would lose his temper easily. But therapy, he said, has helped him reconnect with his wife and five children, the youngest of whom was just one year old when he was jailed. “I had missed a whole generation. My children were all grown and I didn’t recognise anyone," Mr Al Azouz said. "It was hard to deal with them.”
former detainee in Homs Central Prison
His friend Khaled El Taleb, 46, another former detainee of Homs prison, had to deal with the challenge of rebuilding a life that was stolen from him, after spending his thirties in the dark corners of an overcrowded jail.
He and his wife, with whom he had little contact during those 13 years, separated after his release. He has no children. “I missed out on a lot and I couldn’t build anything. It feels like I’m starting from below zero,” he said.
The scars of prison have turned him into a different person, while the outside world has also undergone drastic changes. “Thirteen years is a lifetime and society changes while you’re away,” he said. “Technology changed everything. Back then we only had a bit of TV. Before, interactions were person-to-person. Now, everything’s online."
He felt disconnected from others. “I didn't feel like doing anything. I felt depressed, any inconvenience would make me angry,” he said.
Breaking taboos
Depression is among the most common challenges faced by patients, said Hadeel Khusruf, 30, a therapist at the clinic. Many former detainees, she explained, also lack the technological and social skills needed to reintegrate into society easily. “Some see the outside world as hostile. They feel unsafe around people. Others have forgotten their professional skills,” she said.
Tensions at home are also common, she added. Children often struggle to accept the return of their fathers, who in some cases were long believed to be dead. Wives also find it difficult to reconnect with husbands after years of separation.
Post-traumatic stress disorder related to cruel treatment in prison is also widespread. “Almost everyone describes torture,” she said, referring to crude practices such as the dulab, in which detainees were forced into a rubber tyre, beaten and subjected to electric shocks.
Detainees also endured psychological torture. “During Ramadan, guards would deliberately break detainees’ fasts to crush their will,” she added. Inmates, who had no way of keeping track of time, realised the holy month had begun when guards forced them to drink water at dusk.
She also spoke of cases of sexual assault against women, a subject that remains deeply taboo. Specialists at the centre, which also runs programmes for female former inmates, said the weight of social judgment was often heavier for women.
Moemina Al Ater, 47, said seeking help felt like she was being set free once more. “There were many humiliations I had never spoken of before. But in therapy, I was able to open up. That was healing,” she told The National.
“Now I can talk freely. It’s like, finally, someone is listening."
Ms Al Ater spent 51 days in prison after a local official fabricated a report against her to earn favour with the former regime, she said. That is known to have been common under Mr Al Assad’s rule.
For 50 days, which Ms Al Ater said felt like years, she suffered beatings by guards that left her body in tatters. Her left eye turned blue and her cornea was permanently damaged, leaving her partially blind.
“They used to punch me in the mouth so hard my teeth fell out. My teeth are all implants now,” she said. A decade after her release, she is still unable to lift her arm properly.
Ms Al Ater, who was a law student when she was jailed, said she lost all motivation after being detained and never finished her studies. She now works as a delivery woman.
Torture changed her forever. But today, at least, shame has shifted sides. “Before, I used to hide that I was a former detainee,” she said. “Today, I'm so happy. I can finally share my story.”
