Why Stories Survive When Cities Don’t: The Psychology of Post-War Syria

When a city crumbles, you don’t just lose buildings, you lose the echoes. The morning calls to prayer. The chatter in the cafés. The myths parents whisper to their children at bedtime. But oddly enough, those are the very things that survive, not in the rubble, but in us. That’s why in Syria, long after neighborhoods were reduced to dust, stories kept circulating. Around stoves in refugee camps. In WhatsApp voice notes. In exile, salons. These stories were memory, resistance, and therapy all at once.

As someone who grew up in Syria and later wrote books to reclaim pieces of it, Guard Thy Heart, Palmyre pour toujours, Damascus Has Fallen, I’ve seen how the stories people tell after war aren’t just for remembering. They’re for surviving. That’s the heart of the psychology of storytelling in post-conflict Syria.

Storytelling as Psychological Survival

In a war zone, control vanishes. Your home, your work, your routine, gone in a moment. But when you tell your story, you reclaim agency. You decide what mattered. You assign meaning. Even pain becomes bearable when it’s shaped into a narrative.

Psychologists call this “narrative identity.” It’s the internal story we tell ourselves to make sense of who we are. For Syrians who’ve lost everything, storytelling helps rebuild that inner structure. It’s no coincidence that in every refugee settlement I’ve visited, there’s someone telling stories: a parent recounting a lost childhood, a teenager performing spoken word, an elder passing down forgotten proverbs.

Oral Tradition and the Legacy of Cultural Storytelling

Syria’s storytelling culture didn’t begin with war. We’ve always been a nation of poets, musicians, and keepers of oral memory. In pre-war Damascus, you could still hear hakawatis reciting tales in old cafés, legends passed down for centuries. That culture didn’t disappear in exile. It adapted.

Now, instead of public cafés, stories are told through podcasts, WhatsApp messages, or over late-night calls across time zones. These aren’t just nostalgic retellings, they’re living testaments. A mother describing how she made yogurt in Aleppo before the siege. A boy narrating how his cousin survived a bombing. A grandfather recalling how he taught Arabic grammar to soldiers and civilians alike.

Trauma Narratives

There’s a reason many survivors don’t speak immediately. Trauma silences. The brain protects itself by erasing or repressing. But with time, words begin to emerge, first in fragments, then in shape. This process isn’t clean. It’s often painful. But it’s also freeing.

In therapeutic settings, writing or speaking about trauma has been shown to reduce symptoms of PTSD and depression. But in Syria, where formal therapy is rare, storytelling often happens informally, at dinner, in exile circles, and in literature. I’ve heard stories so harrowing they couldn’t be told directly. So people tell them through metaphors, fables, or dreams. A burned home becomes a tree struck by lightning. A missing brother becomes a pigeon that never returned.

That’s the brilliance and the burden of the psychology of storytelling in post-conflict Syria- truth wrapped in parable, sorrow coated in poetry.

When Stories Become Bridges Between the Past and the Present

For many Syrians in exile, myself included, our identity exists in two worlds. The one we left behind. And the one we live in now. Storytelling helps us build a bridge between them.

When I wrote A Coeur Perdu, I wasn’t just telling Paul Ollenson’s story. I was reflecting on what it means to carry a scar that doesn’t show. To live in one place, but feel anchored in another. Many of the characters I write, though fictional, echo this fractured sense of self, because that’s what millions of Syrians live with daily.

By telling stories, we preserve the old while making peace with the new. We create space to grieve what’s lost and celebrate what’s still ours.

Literature as Testimony- Why Writers Must Bear Witness

Not everyone can stand in court to testify. But we can write. We can speak. We can remember.

Literature, especially from Syrian writers in exile, has become a crucial form of testimony. Novels, poems, essays, even social media threads, all of these form a collective archive. They record what might otherwise be forgotten or denied. That’s why storytelling in post-conflict societies isn’t just personal, it’s political.

In my work, I often feel a dual responsibility: to tell compelling stories and to honor real experiences. Fiction allows me to explore grief, identity, and survival without direct reportage. But make no mistake, behind every page, there is truth.

Stories Don’t Rebuild Cities, But They Rebuild Us

We can’t glue stones back together with words. We can’t undo war with poetry. But we can refuse to forget. We can soften grief with narrative. And we can hold on to who we are, one story at a time.

That’s the gift of storytelling. And in Syria’s case, it may be the strongest inheritance we have left. Because when everything else is taken, stories are what remain.

The psychology of storytelling in post-conflict Syria isn’t about nostalgia. It’s about survival. About carrying light into places that know only shadow. And in that light, finding ourselves again.