Ben C. Solomon

speaker

27 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Apr 2025 last heard Apr 2025

Ben C. Solomon’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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The Journal. · A Syrian Father’s Journey to Find His Son · 28 Apr 2025 podcast

So when we first met him, he was just very kind, very gentle, and really just soft-spoken. It was clear that he didn't come from a lot of money, that 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.

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 the family because there was hundreds of thousands of people that were missing.

So 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.

So Suleiman told us that the last day that he saw his son, the son was trying to go out, trying to work. And Suleiman 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.

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.

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.

And 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.

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. So it was just years and years of kind of waiting and kind of staying quiet.

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. The 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, did barely knew their names.

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.

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

It 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. So it 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.

I think at a certain point, we kind of started to feel that maybe it's not him. It seemed more and more unlikely that this guy just had so much memory loss that he couldn't hit home. And 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.

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?

Finally, you know, after months and months of riding around, randomly just got a Facebook message. And 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.

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