Laya Mosto

Can I say this?

I'm very grateful to be here.

So I grew up in Syria.

I was born and raised in Damascus.

So I lived there until I was 13.

The war started when I was 12, actually.

So 2011 sort of started out as like a revolution and then broke out into like a civil war that lasted about 14 years.

I think a lot of bits and parts of my childhood are blocked out still, but I think I remember things being quite normal almost from a child's perspective.

I think we always heard about the suppression.

You can't really talk about politics or express your opinions or anything.

I remember my music teacher when I was in maybe third or fourth grade saying, the walls have ears.

And we always kind of had that, like the walls have ears.

You don't really talk about politics.

You don't talk about anything like that.

So Syria was like ruled by the Assad family.

So we had Bashar al-Assad and then before that Hafez al-Assad and...

Full tyranny, authoritarianism, you talk about something and you disappear.

Or you talk about something and the next day you're taken to prison, you're tortured.

I mean, there are people like that right now after Assad fell that have gone out of prison, that have been there for 14 years, some more, some since his father's time.

So absolute atrocities.