Searching for hope in Syria | Bashar al-Assad

Bashar al-Assad is gone and Syria is finally free. However, I cannot fully rejoice in the long-awaited fall of his regime and the liberation of my country. This is because, like so many Syrians, I have a gaping wound: someone I love is still languishing in Al-Assad's prisons.

My younger brother Yusef, my soulmate, disappeared in 2018. and I've been looking for it ever since.

Youssef was once full of life. His laugh lit up every room he entered. He loved Dabkeh music and dance. He breeds pigeons with dedication and care.

Everything changed in August 2018. The regime accused him of engaging in opposition activities against the regime and detained his wife to pressure him into surrendering.

Worried they would hurt his wife, he headed south to Sweida from the Rukban refugee camp where he lived. Somewhere along the way he disappeared. And I've spent every day since trying to find it.

All these years I pushed myself not to give up, not to lose hope. But I had so little to hold on to. With each passing day, the spark of hope I had left faded.

Then, last month, after the fall of the regime, a short video from the recently liberated Sweida prison reignited the fire in my heart. There was a man in the footage. His face, posture, and fleeting smile looked just like Yusef's.

I played the clip over and over. I sent it to my sisters. I sent it to Yussef's wife – to everyone who knows him who can confirm that this is indeed him.

Everyone who has seen the clip says the same thing: “That's him. It has to be him.

I desperately want to believe it's him. That he is alive. That soon we will hug him again. I am full of hope again. But I'm also scared. What if we are wrong? What if that fragile hope breaks us again?

We have lived in uncertainty for so long. Years of sleepless nights spent looking at pictures, years of empty chairs at our dinner tables, years of unanswered prayers. Godini does not know whether he is alive or dead.

For so long it seemed to us that the answers to our questions were impossible. Al-Assad's prisons were impenetrable, the truth locked behind concrete walls and barbed wire. Investigators couldn't get close, families of detainees like mine were denied any answers, and the world moved on as if our pain didn't exist and the fate of our loved ones didn't matter. But now that al-Assad is gone and the prison doors are wide open, we have a chance to reveal the truth—if only we act quickly.

Now, as the doors of prisons and detention centers across the country are flung open, we search frantically through the chaos—digging for scraps of information, following rumors, and searching for names scrawled on torn documents.

We cannot let this moment slip through our fingers.

So far, the search has been too slow, too disorganized, too inadequate. International organizations, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, which are supposed to secure evidence, provide humanitarian aid to prisoners of conscience and reunite them with their families, failed to seize the opportunity. They are absent in our hour of need.

Every document, every shred of evidence emerging from Al-Assad's dungeons is a slice of life and a chance for closure for someone who has suffered too long – the last words of a father, the last whereabouts of a son, the fate of a mother. We must hold onto each one of these traces, these impressions of life, because losing them would be like losing our loved ones all over again.

Today we need specialists to get to work, to collect, examine and preserve evidence – this work needs to be done urgently and thoroughly so that we can find answers now and possibly achieve justice in the months and years to come.

We, the relatives of the missing, cannot search alone. The trauma of not knowing where your loved one is, whether they are alive or dead, consumes you. Limits your ability to continue the fight. And uncovering the truth about our missing loved ones is not just our task either. As we search for our brothers, fathers, husbands, mothers and sisters, we are also trying to find ways to restore, to care for the children who have lost parents, and to make sure that this pain does not consume the next generation.

Justice is not a luxury; it's the only way we can begin to heal. Without answers and accountability for those who orchestrated and perpetrated this nightmare, there will be no peace.

I had to leave Syria after my brother disappeared. For years I couldn't go back to look for it, but now I finally can. Youssef's video – or someone who looks a lot like him – gave me hope and a reason to act. Now I am returning to Syria to follow every lead, to ask the questions I have not been able to ask for years, and to enter the places that were once sealed. This may be my only chance to find out if he is alive or has a grave where I can finally say goodbye.

But we, the families of the missing, cannot and should not do this work alone. We need help, we need support. And we need experts and specialists to take the lead.

The international community and the leaders of this fragile transition must not forget the detainees and their families as they chart a new path for our country. We have lived in silence for too long. We now demand what is rightfully ours: answers, justice and dignity.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.