SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Thousands of people have been freed from Syria's prisons with the toppling of the Assad regime there. But those thousands are just a fraction of the people who have disappeared into those prisons. NPR's Emily Feng has the story of one man who has been found and of the heartbreak for families who still search.
EMILY FENG, BYLINE: George Hawami grew up hearing stories of his father, who disappeared when he was just 10 months old.
GEORGE HAWAMI: At the beginning, they were telling me that he's traveling. He's abroad - he's working abroad.
FENG: Working abroad. But in truth, his father was part of a Christian militia in Lebanon and had been kidnapped there and taken across the border by Syrian troops.
G HAWAMI: We thought that we will never see him again.
FENG: A now-33-year-old son was glued to the news as rebel forces made a lightning offensive, taking the Syrian capital of Damascus. They smashed into Assad's prisons, breaking open cells.
No. Have your coffee first.
SUHEIL HAMAWI: (Speaking Arabic.)
FENG: And one of the prisoners let out was Hawami's father.
S HAMAWI: (Speaking Arabic).
FENG: This is Suheil Hamawi, George's father, now 61 years old. We all sat down together just two days after he'd returned home to Lebanon.
S HAMAWI: (Speaking Arabic).
FENG: The elder Hawami recounts to us the years of torture and solitary confinement he endured, being ferried between prisons, including a long confinement in Syria's notorious Sednaya prison.
S HAMAWI: (Speaking Arabic).
FENG: But this December 8, everything changed. Hawami tells us he heard a commotion outside the prison. Rebels were fighting their way in.
S HAMAWI: (Speaking Arabic).
FENG: He says the guards just abandoned their posts.
S HAMAWI: (Speaking Arabic).
FENG: And as he stumbled out of the prison into the morning light, he says he found himself amid gun battles. So he ran, found a phone and dialed a family number he'd committed to memory. His son picked up.
How long was your father away for?
G HAWAMI: Thirty-two years and five days.
FENG: The first place Hawami senior told his son he wanted to go after being freed was here, where we are sitting together - the home in northern Lebanon where he was kidnapped in 1991. It overlooks the Mediterranean Sea, whose waves he now gazes towards constantly.
S HAMAWI: (Speaking Arabic).
FENG: A sound he says he has not heard in more than three decades. And he's considered one of the lucky ones. Other families in Lebanon are still hoping for a reunion of their own.
UNIDENTIFIED PEOPLE: (Singing in Arabic).
FENG: On a recent weekend, some of these families gathered in a Beirut park, holding portraits of their missing loved ones as the Lebanese anthem played. They're demanding information about them after the fall of the Syrian regime.
FATMA KABBARA: (Speaking Arabic).
FENG: Fatma Kabbara has been scouring video footage of Syria for her brother Mohammad, last seen in a Syrian prison, and she hopes that her brother might still be alive. Others, like Nabil Haddad, have stopped hoping. At his home in Beirut, Haddad rearranges his chairs, pulling me to his kitchen table, as he tells me the story of his uncle Miled, who was kidnapped in the 1980s. They searched for him for decades, but two years ago, Haddad consulted his church.
NABIL HADDAD: The reverend told us that it's 40 years now, and he's disappeared. He's dead.
FENG: So Haddad's family decided to officially declare his missing uncle deceased. He and his family want a break from the past.
HADDAD: Honestly, they don't want anymore to talk about the past. They have suffered enough.
FENG: For the Hawami family, now reunited with their father after decades in a Syrian prison, joy finally permeates. The offer of sweets and nuts from their home in northern Lebanon is endless.
Oh, actually. Thank you.
FENG: The elder Hawami says he feels like he's come back from the dead, but he struggles with the weight of memory.
S HAMAWI: (Speaking Arabic).
FENG: And he still does not quite believe Assad is gone. Hawami's miraculous return to Lebanon has gotten a lot of attention. And so his family is now fielding hundreds of calls from other families, wondering if he saw their loved ones imprisoned in Syria. His son says they've been bombarding his father with names.
G HAWAMI: He's telling them, don't give me names because I don't know the name. Maybe it's someone he stayed with him for 10 years, but he don't know his name. He knows his number.
FENG: The number he and all the prisoners were assigned by the wardens. Hawami's was 55.
How did you survive?
At this, Hawami points to his son.
Your son.
S HAMAWI: (Speaking Arabic).
FENG: His son's eyes well with tears.
To hear that he feels like he survived because he was thinking of you the entire time, how does that feel?
G HAWAMI: Responsibility, because he's counting on us now to recover all these years.
FENG: Recovering nearly 33 lost years, that's impossible. But he is going to do his best for his father.
Emily Feng, NPR News, Chekka, Lebanon. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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