Syrians are once again picnicking and smoking shisha amid the ruins of ancient Palmyra, once desecrated by jihadists but still awe-inspiring, and open to the public following the overthrow of president Bashar al-Assad. The city's renowned ruins, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, were twice overrun by the Islamic State group, which proceeded to destroy many of the most famed structures.
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00:00We usually come here every week, every Friday, from the beginning, from the cemetery, and
00:26then we go back to our memories. We come back to our land, our country. We come back to
00:33the traces, you know. Everyone comes here. We come to this country to see it. And we miss
00:39the traces a lot. We haven't come here since 2015. I saw it, look, the people are very
00:46happy, very happy. It's better than that, the weather is great.
00:56What do you think of the situation in the area?
01:13A lot has changed. A lot of things have changed. For example, when we used to come here, we
01:18needed papers, and we needed an ID, and we needed a lot of things so that we could
01:22go in. You only have half an hour to change. You know what I mean? When do we not want
01:27freedom? When do we not want to go in? When do we not want to go out? You know what I
01:31mean? The atmosphere here has changed a lot, especially with the destruction.
01:35Are you comfortable now?
01:36Yes, thank God. I swear, we are very comfortable.
01:53This is Jamali. This is the Egyptian bridge that exploded behind me. It's gone.
02:01Before the revolution, I grew up in this area, in the archaeological site. We used to work
02:07with tourists, and we knew everything about the archaeological site. So we didn't go
02:12through the destruction of the fortresses, and the archaeological site. We went through
02:18the destruction of ISIS, Iran, Russia, and the militias. The archaeological site means
02:28more to me than my father. I grew up here. I worked here when I was 4 or 5 years old.
02:35I worked here for about 13 years. I grew up in this archaeological site.
02:48I saved my family from the destruction of the archaeological site.
02:51A lot of people from the archaeological site were destroyed.