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Agence France-Presse

Photographer Sameer al-Doumy never dreamed he would be able to return to the hometown in Syria that he escaped through a tunnel seven years ago after it was besieged by Bashar al-Assad’s forces.
Douma, near the country’s capital, Damascus, was once a rebel stronghold, and suffered terribly for its defiance of the former regime. It was subjected to a particularly horrific chemical weapons attack in 2018.
“It is like a dream for me today to find myself back here,” he says.
“The revolution was a dream, getting out of a besieged town and of Syria was a dream, as it is now being able to go back.


“We didn’t dare to imagine that Assad could fall because his presence was so anchored in us,” the 26-year-old says.
“My biggest dream was to return to Syria at a moment like this after 13 years of war, just as it was my biggest dream in 2017 to leave for a new life.”
An award-winning photographer, he has spent the last few years covering the migrant crisis for Agence France-Presse’s Lille bureau in northern France.
“I left when I was 19,” says Sameer, all of whose immediate family are in exile, apart from his sister.
“This is my home, all my memories are here, my childhood, my adolescence. I spent my life in Douma in this house my family had to flee and where my cousin now lives.


“The house hasn’t changed, although the top floor was destroyed in the bombardments.
“The sitting room is still the same, my father’s beloved library hasn’t changed. He would settle down there every morning to read the books that he had collected over the years – it was more important to him than his children.
“I went looking for my childhood stuff that my mother kept for me but I could not find it. I don’t know if it exists any more.”
Sameer adds: “I haven’t found any comfort here, perhaps because I haven’t found anyone from my family or people I was close to. Some have left the country and others were killed or have disappeared.
“People have been through so much over the last 13 years, from the peaceful protests of the revolution, to the war and the siege and then being forced into exile.


“My memories are here but they are associated with the war which started when I was 13. What I lived through was hard, and what got me through was my family and friends, and they are no longer here.
“The town has changed. I remember the bombed buildings, the rubble. Today life has gone back to a kind of normal as the town waits for people to return.”
Douma was besieged by Assad’s forces from the end of 2012, with Washington blaming his forces for a chemical attack in the region that left more than 1,400 people dead the following year.
When I left Syria, I never thought one day I would be able to return … It was impossible Assad could fall
Sameer al-Doumy
Sameer’s career as a photojournalist began when he and his brothers began taking photos of what was happening around them.
“After the schools closed I started to go out filming the protests with my brothers here in front of the main mosque, where the first demonstration in Douma was held after Friday prayers, and where the first funerals of the victims were also held.
“I set up my camera on the first floor of a building which overlooks the mosque and then changed my clothes afterwards so I would not be recognised and arrested. Filming the protests was banned.
“When the security forces attacked, I would take the SIM card out of my phone and the memory card out of my camera and put them in my mouth.”
That way he could swallow them if he was caught.
In May 2017, Sameer fled through a tunnel dug by the rebels and eventually found himself in the northern rebel enclave of Idlib with former fighters and their families.
“I took the name Sameer al-Doumy [Sameer from Douma] to affirm that I belonged somewhere,” even though he was exiled, he says. “I stopped using my first name, Motassem, to protect my family living in Damascus.


“In France I have a happy and stable life. I have a family, friends and a job. But I am not rooted to any particular place. When I went back to Syria, I felt I had a country.
“When you are abroad, you get used to the word ‘refugee’ and you get on with your life and make a big effort to integrate in a new society. But your country remains the place that accepts you as you are. You don’t have to prove anything.
He adds: “When I left Syria, I never thought one day I would be able to return. When the news broke, I couldn’t believe it. It was impossible Assad could fall. Lots of people are still in shock and are afraid. It is hard to get your head around how a regime that filled people with so much fear could collapse.
“When I returned to the Al-Midan district of Damascus – which had long resisted the regime – I could not stop myself crying.
“I am sad not to be with my loved ones. But I know they will return, even if it takes a while.
“My dream now is that one day we will all come together again in Syria.”


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Syrian conflict

Syrian photographer’s return to hometown ‘a dream’ 7 years after war tore it apart

France-based photojournalist Sameer al-Doumy photographs Douma from a damaged building. He says returning to his Syrian hometown doesn’t offer comfort. Photo: AFP

Sameer takes a selfie in his old neighbourhood. Photo: AFP

Sameer talks to people from his old neighbourhood, which was heavily bombarded by Assad’s forces. Photo: AFP

Sameer visits his old house in Douma. “The sitting room is still the same, my father’s beloved library hasn’t changed,” he says. Photo: AFP

The top floor of Sameer’s old house was destroyed during the bombings. Photo: AFP

Sameer says he doesn’t feel comfort returning to Douma, as most of his family members are no longer there. Photo: AFP

Sameer meets a friend from his old neighbourhood in Douma. Photo: AFP

Sameer visits his old school in Douma. Photo: AFP

Sameer began his career as a photojournalist in Douma, filming protests against Assad’s oppressive regime. In May 2017, he escaped the city via a tunnel. Photo: AFP

The Afghans making music, and musical instruments, in defiance of ban by Taliban

An Afghan musician plays the rubab. Unesco recently recognised the playing and making of the instrument as intangible cultural heritage in Afghanistan and neighbouring countries, but the playing of music in public is banned by Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers. Photo: AFP

Craftsman Sakhi makes a Rubab at his workshop in Herat, Afghanistan. Photo: AFP

Made of dried mulberry wood, the rubab is one of the oldest instruments in Central Asia. Photo: AFP

Amateur rubab player Gull Agha with his rubab. Photo: AFP

Sakhi makes another rubab. These days, under the Taliban unaccompanied vocal chants are the only form of music allowed in Afghanistan. Photo: AFP

Actor Chow Yun-fat, showing his photographs of Hong Kong, says ‘It works when it’s right’

For actor Chow Yun-fat, photography has become a passion. Photo: Harbour City

Detail from an example of Chow Yun-fat’s street photography, seen in his exhibition at Harbour City in Tsim Sha Tsui. The actor often goes out in urban Hong Kong in the early morning before the hustle and bustle of a typical working day begins. Photo: Harbour City

An older man sips from a cup outside a cafe in Hong Kong’s Central district, as captured by Chow Yun-fat. Photo: Harbour City

Chow Yun-fat removed the aperture blades from the lenses of his camera to create a shallow depth of field, sharpening a photo’s subject and softening the background. Photo: Harbour City

Chow (above, right) wears inconspicuous outfits to take photographs. Photo: Harbour City

One of Chow Yun-fat’s “selfies” featured in his photo exhibition at Harbour City. Photo: Harbour City

Chow Yun-fat often plays with his camera to create unique effects. Photo: Harbour City

Actor Chow Yun-Fat describes the centrepiece of his exhibition, a photo he calls Untitled, of Victoria Harbour and the Wan Chai skyline in a black rainstorm. Photo: SCMP

“Hong Kong Morning” features 30 photographs. Each word in the show’s title represents a photographic category. Photo: Harbour City

Photographer’s images of post-war Hong Kong get overdue exposure in exhibition

 A peddler in Mong Kok, a photograher taken by Mak Fung in 1970. Photo: Mak Fung

Mak Fung’s Central, taken in the 1960s, serves as a reminder of how the city once looked. It is one of more than 20 images featured in Hong Kong Once Was: 1946-1980s, at EastPro Gallery until December 21. Photo: Mak Fung

Hong Kong photographer Mak Fung, who died in 2009, is the subject of a new exhibition. Photo: Photo Pictorial

Fung’s Drying salted fish in Tai O, taken in the 1960s, features at the exhibition. Photo: Mak Fung

Fung’s A peddler in Mong Kok, captured the ever-changing fashions in Hong Kong in 1970. Photo: Mak Fung

Fung’s General Post Office (1973) captured a grand example of Hong Kong Victorian architecture before it was demolished. Photo: Mak Fung

Fung’s St. George’s Building (1959). Photo: Mak Fung

in Aberdeen (1958), Fung shows his mastery of shadow composition and light. Photo: Mak Fung

Tung-pui Lau, founder of PhotogStory, has studied Fung’s work for several years. Photo: Felix Wong

Why the Year of the Wood Snake starting in 2025 could bring major change, and more luck

A snake at a farm in Bangkok, Thailand. The next lunar new year will be a Year of the Wood Snake, which comes around every 60 years. The previous one, in 1965, saw dynamic change and upheaval. Are we in for more of the same? Photo: Getty Images

Snakes made of palm leaves are displayed in Shanghai to celebrate the previous Year of the Snake in 2013. Photo: Getty Images

Following the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, people line up to vote, most for the first time, in Alabama in the US in 1966. Photo: Getty Images

Angry depositors protest and clash with police outside the office of the chairman of the Canton Trust and Commercial Bank in 1965, the previous Year of the Wood Snake in the Chinese lunisolar calendar. Photo: Chan Kiu

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Middle East

Douma, near Damascus, endured years of terror under Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Sameer al-Doumy escaped, and thought he’d never get back there


Douma, near Damascus, endured years of terror under Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Sameer al-Doumy escaped, and thought he’d never get back there.


Syria

Photography

Europe’s refugee crisis