BY FAWAZ ALMOTLAK The road to Damascus, Syria, is different today than it was in the past. Damascus, which was under dictatorship for approximately 54 years—a duration longer than my own lifetime since I was born in the mid-1970s—has only known one president and then his son as president during my entire life. Since graduating from university in the mid-1990s, I have struggled in my work as a journalist, forced to work for a government newspaper to represent and enforce its policies and restrictions on the Syrian people. This created continuous psychological pressure on me for many years as I searched for salvation, which finally came with the start of the revolution in 2011. However, the Syrian revolution, sabotaged and manipulated by the regime itself, veered off its intended path, resulting in massive destruction. It failed to achieve its goals at the time, leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths and millions displaced from their cities and homes. Among those displaced were my fa...