Safa and her children before leaving Jobar, Eastern Ghouta. Photo by Safa, used with permission. My name is Safa. I was born 30 years ago. Today, I'm a mother of three children: the eldest is five years old and the youngest is less than a year. Three months ago, Assad's forces killed my husband during the constant shelling of our town, near Jobar in Eastern Ghouta. Now I am alone, sad and tired. My story started one Thursday. A Thursday that separates the years of siege, bombardment and death from the unknown future on the other side. The story started when the men said farewell to us and went to the front lines. We stayed, women and children, in the back lines of the Jobar front. We did not have any choice but to wait, consumed by continuous brutal, horrific shelling, and by continuously having to move to escape certain death. The men came back on Friday morning, preceded by disappointment, as the factions’ leaders had announced surrender. This meant handing the rebel areas over to the Assad regime and being forced out of our homes. We had lost all hope. Of being able to defend ourselves. Of being able to live and die near the soil that had embraced us since we were born and witnessed our childhoods. We would be forced to leave the town that had offered us its schools, whose fruit we had eaten, in whose neighborhoods we had played, whose residents we'd befriended, in whose buildings we had worked. It was the time of farewell and departure. This is how the time of our departure arrived—without our having a say in determining our destiny, without our being asked about what we wanted. Maybe some of us wanted to leave, but others wanted to stay in their houses and accept life under the control of the regime that killed, displaced, tortured and besieged us. But no one asked us what we wanted, as if that was not our destiny. So, we will be forcibly displaced, in order to maintain our principles, dignity and freedom. But this injustice is painful, and it burns my memory, or what remained of it. Assad's forces got closer to our house on Friday afternoon. That morning, we buried our 14-year-old cousin Mostafa. We gathered our few belongings, preparing to leave. When Assad's forces arrived, the rebels withdrew, the town notables disappeared and we were left alone, facing the unknown. Outside the house, people were carrying their bags and did not know where to go, moving chaotically in different directions. Everyone was asking everyone: where are we going? Where are the buses heading? We headed to Jobar, my ancestors’ land, the land that Assad destroyed with what his force and equipment, the land that had resisted and intimidated those forces, militias and allies for a long time. That gracious land embraced us in our last days in Eastern Ghouta. The torturous search for the buses assigned to the forcibly displaced and for ways to leave the town started in Jobar. We knew that the green buses were in Arbin city and those who wanted to leave should go there and wait in the streets for their turn to come. Everything was shrouded in ambiguity. No clear information about arrangements or destinations was available. In Jobar city, we stayed for three days near our dear martyrs: my husband, brother and cousin. We spent our last days there next to their graves, talking to them, crying for our loss and saying farewell. We met our relatives and others dear to us there, also saying farewell to their loved ones under the ground. We went to Arbin via Zamalka. The scenes we witnessed were heart-breaking. People were sleeping in the streets awaiting their destiny, powerless. Getting on the buses happened through nepotism. Even in such a situation, corruption controlled us. We registered our names with more than one faction, fearing that we might lose the chance for salvation. A convoy of buses arrived in Arbin, at a location controlled by one of the fighting factions in Eastern Ghouta. I ran towards them carrying two of my children while the third ran alongside me holding on to my clothes. The place was unlike anything I've ever seen: countless people, fear and horror everywhere. I still hear my children's cries every time I remember that scene. Those responsible for organizing the boarding of the buses wanted their relatives and friends to get on first. They called their names, and the relatives and friends pushed past the crowds of other women and children, stepping on those who fell on the ground. No one had any idea what was happening. Saving oneself was the aim. After suffering in front of the bus door for more than an hour, being pushed to and fro in that crowd, we got on the bus that would carry us into the unknown.