On Long Island, hope, worry for relatives in war-wracked Syria

Lake Grove resident Bilal Hito followed Sunday's rapid fall of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in real time, courtesy of relatives in Damascus who live dangerously close to the ongoing bloodshed but keep him updated through texts, email or video chat.

For some relatives, of Hito and others in Long Island's small Syrian American community, the reports come from balconies of apartments with windows blown out by passing fighter jets, others from indoors.

"They’re in bathtubs looking out windows," said Hito, whose parents emigrated from Syria. "They’re terrified. What if a missile comes? What if something happens? You just don’t know."

Hopeful, on edge

Hito and other Syrian American Long Islanders interviewed by Newsday said they remained hopeful but on edge Tuesday about the future of a country that has been wracked by civil war, thousands of deaths, economic sanctions and the use of chemical weapons against civilians.

"Surprised, excited, worried, apprehensive, a little bit of everything," said Hito, 39, a real estate broker, of Assad's fall from power. "We’re happy to see him gone but we don’t know what the future holds."

Of his relatives in Damascus, he added: "They’re kind of sleeping with their eyes open."

Sammy Elkhawam, 47, of Amityville, said it was "definitely a shock" that al-Assad was overthrown so quickly.

"He just left without a fight," Elkhawam said.

Some of his relatives had the windows in their Damascus apartments smashed as fighter jets continued bombing nearby Syrian military installations, he said. One relative, Elkhawam added, is nine months pregnant and due next week.

Elkhawam visited Syria as recently as last summer and lived there for two years until the country began to deteriorate. He left in 2010 on the cusp of civil war.

Hito and Elkhawam are part of a Syrian American community on Long Island that the U.S. Census calculated in 2023 at 836, based on residents’ self-reported ancestry.

Concern for his sisters

Yassin Kurdi, 64, a Selden resident who emigrated from Syria to the United States in 1978, said he has been in touch with three sisters in Syria during the tumult to make sure they were OK. They live near a notorious prison outside Damascus where al-Assad tortured and killed hundreds of political prisoners, according to human rights groups.

"We keep watching the news," Kurdi said. "We are like nervous wrecks to see what is happening."

He was also glad to see al-Assad go, but worried about what will happen as different factions of the rebels, whose advances led to the dictator's downfall, now vie for power.

Hito said the images his relatives shared in the last few days were remarkable.

"They were sending us videos of the old guard leaving, fleeing," he said. "The only gunfire they really heard was more celebratory."

Hito holds dual citizenship in the United States and Syria, and used to spend summers in his parents’ homeland. But he hasn’t been back since 2010.

He said some of his relatives once held high-level posts in opposition political movements in Syria. He likely would have been a marked man had he returned during the al-Assad dictatorship, Hito said. Until this week, he would have been afraid to speak out publicly about events in Syria for fear of retaliation against relatives there, he said.

"There’s a lot of blood on that man’s hands," Hito said of al-Assad. "He’s ruined a lot of lives. He’s ruined a country."

In Hito's view, one key step to Syria’s recovery will be the lifting of sanctions imposed by the United States, the European Union and other nations.

"Unfortunately, with sanctions, they just don’t seem to work, whether it’s Cuba or Venezuela or North Korea or Iran or Syria," he said. "These countries have been under sanctions for decades. It only empowers the leaders and brings the people to ruin."

Kurdi said his sisters were feeling the effects of the sanctions and other economic problems. Under al-Assad, shortages of electricity, water, gas, propane, rice, sugar and other essentials were constant, he said.

Al-Assad "wasn’t doing anything for his own people," Kurdi said. "He was only interested in himself and his family."

Hito said he hopes to return to Syria one day, but it will be little like the place he once knew.

"We’ve been split up from our families," he said. "We haven’t seen people in what, 15 years now? We’re not going back to the same Syria. We’re going back to the graves of our family members. We are not going back to reunite with them."