DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Hani Al Sawah recently walked the streets of Damascus, Syria's capital, with wide-eyed excitement. It had been 13 years since the rap artist last was in Syria.
Later that night, he would take the stage to perform his unapologetically political songs in his home country for the first time without the Assad dynasty in power.
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Hani Al Sawah, a Syrian rap artist known as Al Darwish, works on his laptop in old Damascus, Syria, Friday, Jan. 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Omar Sanadiki)
Hani Al Sawah, a Syrian rap artist known as Al Darwish, performs at a restaurant in old Damascus, Syria, Friday, Jan. 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Omar Sanadiki)
Hani Al Sawah, left, a Syrian rap artist known as Al Darwish, performs at a restaurant in old Damascus, Syria, Friday, Jan. 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Omar Sanadiki)
Hani Al Sawah, a Syrian rap artist known as Al Darwish, walks at a street in old Damascus, Syria, Friday, Jan. 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Omar Sanadiki)
Hani Al Sawah, a Syrian rap artist known as Al Darwish, performs at a restaurant in old Damascus, Syria, Friday, Jan. 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Omar Sanadiki)
Al Sawah, who performs under the stage name Al Darwish, couldn’t contain his excitement.
“Never in my wildest dreams did I think I could ever return to Syria,” he told The Associated Press after a sold-out show on Jan. 16, followed by another one the next day. He could barely hear himself as the audience sang along to every lyric.
“I have this weird feeling that I never left, or that I left a part of me here that I was able to find again,” Al Sawah said.
During the uprising in 2011, before he fled Syria to neighboring Lebanon in 2012 and later Germany, Al Sawah’s fiery lyrics about mass protests defying dictatorship in Syria shed light on a rap scene not many imagined existed.
His songs also paid tribute to other anti-government protests in the region. He also witnessed monthslong protests in Lebanon not long before leaving for Europe.
Al Sawah amassed a following online after leaving home, with many Syrians both at home and abroad relating to his music during the country’s deadly civil war.
Since his upbringing in the city of Homs, Al Sawah has always been a rebel at heart. In 2001, he discovered rap music and soon realized it was a way for him to express himself. He was later part of an underground scene where he and others exchanged songs and ideas.
“We had a nice scene at the time in Homs, of course everything was underground and nobody knew anything about us and that we were rapping,” he said. The authorities often pulled him and his friends aside asking why they dressed the way they did, saying it resembled “devil worshippers.” Others told him that the hard-hitting music genre represented Western culture and imperialism.
“There was the saying: Eat what you want but dress as the people want,” he said.
Al Sawah was elated and inspired by the uprising against Syrian President Bashar Assad and his government, especially when mass demonstrations swept across the city of Homs. He secretly attended those protests, defying his father’s orders not to out of fear for his life.
Though it’s been over a year since a lightning insurgency in December 2024 took down the Assad dynasty’s half-century rule, it wasn’t until just last month that Al Sawah visited. While hopeful the new rulers in Damascus will build a just and prosperous country, he is concerned about incidents of violence that quickly turned sectarian.
Al Sawah decided he had to return home, to see his father and to see what life was like in this new chapter of the country’s history.
“What happened here were fast and sudden changes, and we’re only talking about Damascus,” the rapper said after taking a stroll on a boulevard in Syria’s capital. “Sure it changed, but not like my city of Homs, Aleppo, or any of the cities where two-thirds or three-quarters of it were destroyed.”
When speaking to friends and others, Al Sawah was surprised to see a certain fear of criticizing the new authorities, something he said was “inherited” from decades of living under Assad and the family’s web of security agencies.
“If we want to say that the regime really did fall, then so should this fear,” he said.
It doesn’t take away from his joy that Assad is gone, but online he spoke out against sectarian violence and how some people who opposed it under other circumstances tried to justify it.
He was talking about a government counteroffensive against armed Assad loyalists of the Alawite religious minority along the coast that later turned into widespread revenge attacks targeting the community.
Last summer government forces launched an intervention in the Druze-majority province of Sweida, ostensibly to stop clashes between Druze militias and armed Bedouin tribes, but clearly siding with the latter. In both cases, hundreds of civilians were killed.
“If you can justify what happened on the coast — which of course you can’t — by saying they were armed (Assad) loyalists and so on, then you cannot justify what happened in Sweida,” he said, calling it a “fatal error” in the Islamist-led government’s efforts to try to win the support of minorities and bring the country back together.
During his performance, Al Sawah paid tribute to the coastal province and Sweida in one of his songs, admittedly nervous about how the crowd would react. To his surprise, they cheered and applauded, and that gave him hope.
“This is the reaction I was looking for," he said. "It’s what encourages me to come back.”
Chehayeb reported from Beirut.
Hani Al Sawah, a Syrian rap artist known as Al Darwish, works on his laptop in old Damascus, Syria, Friday, Jan. 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Omar Sanadiki)
Hani Al Sawah, a Syrian rap artist known as Al Darwish, performs at a restaurant in old Damascus, Syria, Friday, Jan. 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Omar Sanadiki)
Hani Al Sawah, left, a Syrian rap artist known as Al Darwish, performs at a restaurant in old Damascus, Syria, Friday, Jan. 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Omar Sanadiki)
Hani Al Sawah, a Syrian rap artist known as Al Darwish, walks at a street in old Damascus, Syria, Friday, Jan. 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Omar Sanadiki)
Hani Al Sawah, a Syrian rap artist known as Al Darwish, performs at a restaurant in old Damascus, Syria, Friday, Jan. 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Omar Sanadiki)
