Looking around the room, Syrian artist Yeser Berro saw a mix of anger, pain, and relief among the participants in his workshop in Damascus, Syria.
In front of him, some of the men were confronting their Syrian military conscription booklets for the very first time since the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime nearly two years earlier.
Then, they picked up pens and pencils and started to draw.
Amid the sound of focused scribbling and rustling papers, images soon started to take life across the aged pages: tombstones, fingerprints, caricatures of the overthrown dictator who had overseen a brutal 14-year war against the revolution in Syria.
"This document controlled their lives for many years," Berro explains about what the small paper booklet meant in some cases. "It was very therapeutic for everyone involved."
Mandatory military service had long been part of life for Syrian men, who were required to report for service when they turned 18 — at which point they would receive their military service booklets.
Under the Baathist state, this became further entrenched as a tool of state control written into the constitution that said: "Military service shall be a sacred duty and is regulated by a law."
Some were forced to remain in the military involuntarily for many years as the war raged on. Those who attempted to avoid conscription could be subject to severe punishment, be criminalised, and prevented from leaving the country.
"These notebooks, they symbolise the regime," the workshop’s host explained.
"It's basically an ideology book. It tells you who you're supposed to be as a soldier, what you're supposed to believe, what your duties are," Berro added.
"At the beginning of the notebook, there is a written rule, which says you cannot write anything on the notebook, you cannot delete anything, you cannot scratch anything."
The legacy of conscription
Acknowledging the potential historic role such documents may one day play toward accountability, the pens that Berro placed on the table that day were also erasable.
Wissam, one of those who took part in the recent workshop, tells The New Arab his military book previously "dictated my fate." His last name is being withheld for safety.
"It was essential for passing through military checkpoints, and I carried it in my bag wherever I went; if I ever left the house without it, I would be overcome with sheer terror."
While every man in Syria was expected to serve in the military, some were exempt if they were a family’s only son, temporarily if they were studying, or, in some cases, could afford to pay their way out.
Many fled, but many others were forced into service until the whole system collapsed along with the regime on December 8, 2024. Ahmed al-Sharaa's new government then abolished Syria’s mandatory military service.
Now defunct, many harbour complex feelings toward their old military conscription booklets — some even chose to burn them. But for those who didn’t, a creative outlet perhaps offered another option.
Held at Manzoul, a cultural space in Damascus, in February this year and hosted by the cultural initiative Nisaba, Just a Notebook invited young Syrian men to confront the document that had, for generations, reminded them of the power the Syrian state held over their lives.
The participants had made every attempt to evade military service: enrolling at university, becoming deserters, and some were even captured and forced to conduct desk work. Each had a different story, and a booklet uniquely chronicling their lived experience.
"It was kind of like breaking this taboo that has persisted not just throughout the war, but for decades of mandatory military service," Berro adds.
Working with erasable materials, 11 participants sat around a square table with free rein to tackle the book in whatever creative means they felt appropriate.
"Some people expressed their anger through drawing, others critiqued the contents of the booklet through writing," Berro says.
"Sometimes using humour, for example, by writing their own words into fields that were supposed to be filled by government officials."
For Wissam, the process involved drawing a recurring dream he had experienced, while confronting the names written within the booklet itself.
"I began to feel a desire for revenge against the notebook for the immense power it held; I vented my anger upon it, drawing on its pages and mocking the names written inside," he tells The New Arab.
"I also felt afraid, because it was not easy to anticipate such an act—being able to project my angry thoughts onto an institution that once governed my life but no longer existed. I drew a dream that had haunted me for a long time: standing on a hill while on guard duty during my military service, with a pack of rabid dogs advancing to kill me; behind the guard post, I drew a figure hanging himself," he continued.
"During my forced military service in the later years of the war, the only creature I had harmed was a rabid dog that had attacked me while I was on guard duty. Ever since, I feel guilty about it, and I cannot imagine how others were able to harm human beings, let alone their fellow Syrians."
Turning trauma into art
While the fall of the Syrian regime came and went almost two years ago, the collective process of healing a fractured nation is still in formative stages.
A 2021 study found 86% of respondents said the war was the main cause of mental distress, and further reporting by the World Health Organisation this summer stressed the importance of "communal healing" and the |activation of social networks" going forward.
While hosting the workshop, Berro observed the mood shift as the art progressed, with creativity allowing for deeper expression and understanding.
They turned to conversations about past ordeals, the lengths some had gone to defer conscription, and what it all means for looking ahead.
"Psychologically, it was one of the most cathartic experiences of my life," Wissam adds.
Just a Notebook is currently being scanned and developed ahead of a collective book launch anticipated for this month in Syria, featuring work produced during the workshop.
Berro is curating the collective book after participants selected which work they wanted to share, which Berro says will serve both as an archive and an "example of collective healing from an oppressive past."
The project marks a small but poignant shift in Syria’s creative landscape that Berro says is crucial to processing and rebuilding a collective Syrian identity, with artistic expression helping to "find a way out of survival mode and to process everything that we went through."
"If there's a time to begin new cultural projects, it's now," he states.
"There’s still a long way to go," he says. "But the first step to building a better future is to confront our complex past — and reconcile with it."
Tamara Davison is a British freelance journalist reporting across the Middle East on humanitarian issues, post-conflict resolution and migration
Follow her on Instagram: @tamaradavison_