Ten Days in Syria: The Hardest Part Was Invisible
Taimullah Kellizy4 min readGoing back to Syria was not part of my plan after thirteen years in Cairo. But the changes the country is going through, along with the growing pressures on Syrians living abroad, made me think seriously, for the first time, about building my future at home. I wanted to find out for myself: could I actually live, study, and work there? So I decided to spend ten days in Syria and see the reality with my own eyes.
The decision was not only emotional. It was about the future. I am a second-year computer science student, and I dream of living, working, and helping to rebuild my country. I expected to run into challenges with electricity, infrastructure, or basic services. What I did not expect was that the thing weighing most on my decision would be something you cannot see: digital services blocked inside Syria.
Since I started studying computer science, AI tools have become part of how I learn. I use them to understand difficult concepts, debug my code, review my ideas, and finish projects faster. I also rely on the learning platforms and online courses that have become a normal part of any student's studies in this field. But in Syria I could not use many of these tools the way I normally would. Services like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude were not directly available, and many of the learning platforms were restricted or hard to reach.
At first I thought it was a minor annoyance. But as the days passed, I started to think about it differently:
If I moved to Syria, how would I finish my studies? How would I keep learning at the same pace as my peers everywhere else in the world?
Every time I reached for a tool that had become part of my day, I found myself dealing with the barrier itself instead of focusing on my studies.
Even outside of studying, I noticed that these digital restrictions reach into the small details of daily life. My friends and I like to watch a film or a series together after a long day, but getting to a streaming platform like Netflix, or subscribing to one, is not a given inside Syria, whether because of restrictions on the service itself or because paying from inside the country is so hard. These may sound like small things, but they are a constant reminder that you are cut off from services most people around the world treat as ordinary.
What surprised me most
It did not stop at AI tools or streaming platforms. What surprised me most was LinkedIn. This was not simply about a tool for finding a job. As a computer science student who starts building a career years before graduating, I kept asking myself: if I settled in Syria, how would I build my network? How would I reach out to companies? How would I show my projects? When those steps become complicated, building a future becomes harder.
I found that browsing the platform is possible, but creating a new account, verifying your identity, and using the paid features do not work for users in Syria, and because identity verification fails, recovering a locked account does not either. This does not affect individuals alone. It reaches Syrian companies too, which find themselves cut off from the most important professional platforms in the world.
Over those ten days, I found myself asking a question I did not expect to face so soon:
Can I really study and build my career from inside Syria?
The problem was not my desire to return. If anything, the visit deepened it. I feel today that there is more room for hope, more freedom to speak, and a real desire among young people to build their country.
But I also realized that reconstruction is not only about roads and buildings. There is another kind of rebuilding that matters just as much: reconnecting Syrians to the digital world. The student who cannot reach modern learning tools, the developer who cannot use programming platforms, the entrepreneur who cannot access financial or professional services: all of them lose opportunities no one sees. The problem is not a shortage of talent. It is that so many digital doors are still closed.
My message to the companies
Syria is changing, and its young people want to be part of the digital world. But keeping these restrictions in place stops thousands of students, developers, and entrepreneurs from learning, working, and competing on equal footing. We deserve hope, and we want you to take part in building our future by opening the doors that are still shut in front of us.
In closing
I still want to return to Syria, and I still believe its future is worth building. But building a future does not take only cement and steel. It takes an open connection to the world.