My life in Syria was amazing, I had everything.” Seated in his barren, wooden room in the southern Swedish village of Strövelstorp last December, Salah Debas remembered what he deemed the best days of his life. Until two years ago, Debas was a DJ for a radio station in Damascus belonging to Maher al-Assad, the brother of the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad. Debas shuttled between gigs at radio studios and nightclubs across West Asia, from Cairo to Dubai, from Beirut to Istanbul. The pay was good, at least $1,500 per event, and the lifestyle enviable. The contrast with his current existence couldn’t be starker. “I feel like shit,” the 23-year-old said. “Life here is just pressure, pressure and more pressure. Music is my life, but now I can’t get any pleasure from it. The only good thing is that I am safe.” Debas’s old life fell apart after the start of the Syrian civil war in early 2011. Disgusted by what he described as the pro-government propaganda broadcast by his radio station, he quit his job and became a media activist for the rebel Free Syrian Army. When Syrian intelligence started looking for him, he fled. Using all his savings, Debas went to Istanbul and paid a smuggler to hide him in the trunk of a bus bound for Stockholm, the Swedish capital. He spent the seven-day journey breathing through an oxygen mask, and arrived in Sweden on 17 March 2013. Seven months later, he was granted asylum. Matteo Fagotto on the Syrians trying to rebuild their lived in Sweden.
Posted on: Wed, 10 Sep 2014 10:30:00 +0000
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