A Syrian Father’s Journey to Find His Son

0:10Suleyman Al-Yusuf is a father of seven. He lives outside Damascus and works odd jobs. Twelve years ago, his son Shadi went missing. And he's been looking for him ever since. Our colleague Ben Solomon talked to Suleiman last December. What were your first impressions of him? So when we first met him, he was just very kind, very gentle, and really just soft-spoken.

0:48It was clear that he didn't come from a lot of money, that, you know, he was a working-class guy and that he just didn't know really where to turn. He didn't know how to approach this search, but he was going to do whatever he could.

1:03Suleiman showed Ben the only clue that he had that his son was alive, a video.

1:12The video shows men being released from prison after the fall of Syria's dictator. There, in the crowd, Suleiman pointed to one man, who he said is his son.

1:31He said, when I saw the video, I knew. I said, that's shoddy. He also said, if you put him among a million people, I could still pick him out. And when he showed us the video, I mean, it was shocking. Ben makes documentaries for the Wall Street Journal and decided to follow Suleiman's journey. It was like, oh, this is, I mean, I immediately thought, wow, this is going to end with a happy ending. Like, he's going to find his son. We've got to follow this guy. When I went to Syria, I knew I wanted to find someone like him. I knew I wanted to find somebody that was actively looking for their family because there was hundreds of thousands of people that were missing.

2:22So we decided to start following him. And what we found was a much more complicated and much more powerful and also sad, but also hopeful story that spoke to the country at large and not just his case.

2:41Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business and power. I'm Kate Leinbaugh. It's Monday, April 28th.

2:54Coming up on the show, the search for Shadi.

3:14According to Suleiman, Shadi was 25 years old when he disappeared in 2013. Shadi had worked at a tobacco and shisha store. His father described him as dignified and ambitious.

3:31His mother, Mfadi, said Shadi was the head of the household and that his brothers would listen to him.

3:45What did Suleiman say about the last time he saw his son? So Suleiman told us that the last day that he saw his son, And he, the son, was trying to go out, trying to work. And so the man was like, just don't go to Damascus. Don't go to the city. Don't cause any problems. Don't, like, test it. Just stay home. He took the car keys away and hid them so his son wouldn't sneak off. Eventually, Shadi got hold of the keys and drove into the city. He was arrested at a checkpoint.

4:21Shadi disappeared at a time of tremendous conflict in Syria. There were widespread protests against the oppressive regime of Bashar al-Assad. And the regime was indiscriminately arresting men of military age. With all that chaos, Suleiman had wanted his family to keep a low profile. This is a really poor family that was just trying to do whatever they could to make money. And so he and his wife were telling their son all the time, lay low, don't make a fuss, don't get in trouble, because they were just arresting any military-age man around that area. And then not long after the fighting started, his son went out and then he just never came home.

5:07What did he think happened to him? So for a long time, Suleiman told us they just didn't know. It could be any number of things. His son could have been killed. He could have been shot in some of the crossfire because there was a lot of active fighting all around that area back then. You know, they don't know. And for the longest time, he just, like, searched wherever he could.

5:38and Suleiman told me that they were always thinking of him we were always thinking of him we always on any occasion would think of him we would cry and wish that he was there with us he would have gotten married by now he would have had kids he would have had grandchildren so we didn't forget him one bit not one bit and there was always hope that we would find him We would always pray and send him our prayers that one day he might return to us unharmed.

6:08For years, Suleyman looked for his son. He went to prisons. He talked to locals in Damascus. He looked online. This was a systemic machine of disappearing people that were opposed to the government. And so many people were being put in the same position where they just did not know what happened to their family members. And to say anything and to be loud about it and to push or to fight with the government would risk your safety as well. So, you know, he was suffering in silence. And like so many Syrians, there was no recourse to try to find what happened, to try to get any kind of justice, to try to get any kind of information.

6:49So it was just years and years of kind of waiting and kind of staying quiet. Then, in December last year, Assad was overthrown. And thousands of people were freed from prisons. While there were many celebrations, there was also chaos on the streets of Damascus. Many of those prisoners didn't know how to get home. I mean, the reality of the situation in Syria back then was that it was mayhem. Like, so many different, nobody knew what was happening. It was just chaos. There was, nobody was in charge yet. There was no kind of, like, overarching mechanism for anybody to figure anything out. There was no government.

7:31The government had just left. So it was rumors. And a lot of the rumors that were going around were that some of these people that were coming out of the prisons did not remember who they were. Did not remember any of their history. Barely knew their names. And then Suleyman found that video of the man who looked like Shadi.

7:52The video shows a crowd of freed prisoners thanking God for freeing them. They're outside Sinaya, an infamous prison known as the Human Slaughterhouse. The men are skinny and bald. And Suleyman thought that one of those men was Shadi. And at one point I asked him if seeing the video made him feel better or worse, and he said, of course, better. I was sure that he still exists. There was no room for doubt that my son is alive, and that he's there, and that he was released from prison. But I just want, I just am dying to find him.

8:38Thousands of men had disappeared during the Assad regime. Ben wondered, what are the chances that in this random video, Suleiman actually saw his son? So it wasn't until the first time that I saw, I went to his house and he went through a photo album and he showed me the pictures of Shadi. And I took pictures and I went back to my hotel and I looked at them side by side. The videos of the man from the night that Saniya opened, the photos of Shadi before he was arrested. And I just, you know, I wasn't sure. I couldn't be sure. And I showed it to some colleagues, and they weren't either. And it was just, you know, when you hear from a father that that is my son 100%, you know, what can you say to that?

9:23It's either like, who else would know? And a mother, too, Mfadi, his wife, was also just convinced that's him, that's 100 % him, and we have to find him.

9:39Shadi's mother Mfadi said, He's my son. What's more to say? He's a piece of my heart. She said their lives were shattered by his absence.

9:58It was such a crazy time that it felt not unlikely that his son might not just have been able to find home. They had moved from the original place where they had lived before. Or so it was there was a likely there was a high likelihood that it was him. But, you know, days turned into weeks, turned into months. And then from afar, as I was just texting him on WhatsApp and just, you know, he would tell me no information, no information, nothing new. At a certain point, did you think it was a dead end? I think at a certain point, we we kind of started to feel that maybe it's not him. And it seemed more and more unlikely that this guy just had so much memory loss that he couldn't hit home.

10:48And that was when we kind of started digging deeper. That was when we started joining these Facebook groups, getting into these accounts of lost people, and starting to look for Shadi ourselves.

11:04Ben joined Suleyman in his search for Shadi. And what he found wasn't what he expected. That's next.

11:39To help Suleiman in his search for Shadi, Ben started looking online, trying to find the man in the video. We started looking for this photo, and we just put out word. Anybody could tell us any information. Does anybody know who this person was? Ben got some help from a local journalist in Syria named Aroub Hamoud. Arub posted about Shadi on Facebook groups and made lots of calls. She chased down leads and tried everywhere she could to find the man in the video. And then in February, she got a hit. Finally, you know, after months and months of writing around, randomly just got a Facebook message.

12:25And a man wrote to her and said, hey, that's actually my cousin. And here's his name. And here he is. and here's his story, and then sent a picture of the same man wearing the same thing. So Aroub called him.

12:45The man from the video was in another part of Syria. So Aroub set up a call with Suleiman.

12:56Suleiman took the call from his house. He sat on his couch and fidgeted with his keys. Umfadi sat across from him.

13:10I think he knew as soon as he started talking to him that this is not my son. And I think that was really tough to see. The man wasn't shoddy. Suleiman still had questions. How long had he been in prison? The man said, over seven years. And then Suleiman said,

13:38I saw you in the video. I thought you were my son. The man on the call responded, God willing, God willing you will find him soon. Suleiman asked him some more questions about the sweater he was wearing in the video, the cigarette he was smoking. He also asked him where he's from. And Suleiman again told the man that he really, really thought he was his son. The man responded the same way he did earlier. God willing, you'll be reunited with him soon.

14:23The call ended. Suleiman put down the phone And he said

14:33It's not Shadi It's not his voice

14:40Suleiman stared at the ground He rubbed his face He said This means Shadi is dead

14:54Suleiman stared beyond Ben's camera. He repeated out loud that Shadi was gone and whispered a prayer.

15:06He rubbed his face again. Umfadi left the room.

15:24It was just a two-minute call, but in those few minutes, there was just these long pauses where he just kind of waited to kind of hear this man's voice and just think about what to say next. I mean, it was really hard to kind of see him slowly realize that this is not his son and that this is the end of his search.

15:49Ben learned that Suleiman wasn't the only person who thought the man in the video was their loved one so many people were posting the same photo and their son next to it and their brother and their cousin they thought it was their relative it was hard to see these faces over and over of so many people seeing their sons um you know this people were desperate like this this is a country of desperate people with no information and for years just had given up hope like these are just hundreds if not thousands of Suleyman's who just believed that this could be their family member and it was just you know he had bushy eyebrows and he was gaunt and he and he looked like a face that so many people could just see their loving and see their hoping.

16:41So in some ways it was really inspiring. And in other ways, it was really, really hard to hear and see.

16:49What does Suleiman now think happened to Shadi? Well, Suleiman, he's kind of back to just the same place he started years and years ago, unfortunately. He doesn't know. There's no information. I still think part of him holds on to hope a little bit. I think even though he kind of has to say goodbye to this hope, to this moment, there's still a part of him that wants to think that maybe he's still out there and maybe there's something he doesn't know.

17:25This is not just Suleiman's story. It's the story of so many people in Syria. I mean, you hope so much that there's some happy endings for people like Suleiman, but there's some hope that so much of the suffering will have meant something. But as the new country just tries to rebuild itself from decades of pain and silence and war, it's hard to know what happens next.