ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
In Syria, people have grown up looking over their shoulders, knowing that one wrong step could land them in trouble with the government, in prison or worse. Well, overnight, that dictatorship toppled. And so for the first time in more than half a century, Syrians are experiencing life without the shadow that they've known for generations. NPR's Ruth Sherlock is in the capitol of Damascus. Hi, Ruth.
RUTH SHERLOCK, BYLINE: Hi, Ari.
SHAPIRO: We've seen celebrations across the country at the fall of Bashar al-Assad's regime, but this is also a frightening time for many people. And when you were at the Syrian border with Lebanon today, entering Syria, you met people going the other direction, fleeing the country. Why?
SHERLOCK: That's right. The vast majority of people on that border were trying to leave. The roads were clogged. The people were walking alongside the cars, dragging children and suitcases behind them. We found dozens of families, you know, really young kids who'd slept in the dirt by the border last night. And this is because, Ari, most of the people here fleeing are from the Shia Muslims or from the Alawite minority sect. That's the same sect as the Assad family. And the militias that control the capitol now are Sunni Muslims, and that includes some hardline Islamists. And we spoke to one man who was afraid to give his name. NPR producer Jawad Rizkallah interpreted.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Through interpreter) All minorities are now afraid in Syria. Weapons are all over the streets. They're all over the country and Damascus and everywhere else.
SHERLOCK: Everyone we were speaking to had these horror stories. They said they'd heard of rebels shooting Shia patients in hospital beds or ransacking Alawite homes in Damascus. I have to stress, you know, there's no proof that any of this is true. These were not firsthand accounts, but it goes to illustrate some of the fear that people are feeling.
SHAPIRO: Well, after you spoke to those families, you went on to the capitol, Damascus. Tell us about the journey.
SHERLOCK: Well, on the Syrian side, it was so strange. We went through passport control and customs without any checks at all. The border posts were burned out. There were abandoned tanks on the side of the road. There were just some rebels with Kalashnikovs waving us through. Now Damascus is calm, but there were these huge plumes of smoke rising from buildings that were hit by heavy bombardments by Israel, who's been targeting military positions of the former regime. So the air was thick with this kind of acrid dust, and it catches in your throat. We saw people wandering around into security bases and palaces. And these are places they couldn't have stepped inside before, and now they're curious, trying to see the insides of this regime that ruled them for so long.
SHAPIRO: You also visited one of the prisons that have become synonymous with the brutality of the Assad family rule. What did you see there?
SHERLOCK: That's right. We went to Saydnaya Prison. It's this huge complex behind these high walls outside of central Damascus. And walking up the road to the prison, there were these signs in the area around it saying it was mined. It's estimated that as many as 20,000 people disappeared into this place, sometimes without trial. And any dissent could get you jailed here. And one of the first things the rebels did was release the prisoners there. But even three days after that happened, there are still thousands of people there, searching, still hoping their relative could be alive, maybe in some underground cell yet to be found.
And we spoke to one man who was looking through this handwritten ledger he'd found of prisoners for - and he was looking for the name of his brother. And then we met another man, Aysa Husseini, and he's been searching every prison, every security office in Damascus for his three cousins.
AYSA HUSSEINI: (Non-English language spoken, crying).
SHERLOCK: He just broke down as he asked us, with a last kind of moment of hope, if we might have seen any more detainees in the wing of the prison we'd just come out of. Then we met Ratib Zamykani. He's an elderly man, and he's walking away from the prison. He's holding a red rope in the shape of a noose that people believe was used to hang prisoners.
RATIB ZAMYKANI: (Speaking Arabic).
SHERLOCK: His son disappeared 13 years ago. He doesn't even know why he was detained. He'd heard in these years that his son might be dead, but he never received a death certificate. So he's been coming to search the prison every day since the regime fell. And he says he took the noose to show the world the brutality of the Assad regime.
SHAPIRO: That's NPR's Ruth Sherlock, speaking with us from Damascus. Thank you.
SHERLOCK: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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