• You might receive an invitation to a conference exploring the root causes of the collapse of the Middle East. Or perhaps you are simply interested in studying this region, home to your people before the collapse that prompted their exile and migration. Or maybe you are just curious about events that took place half a century ago. I do not know, but in any case you will one day return to this pivotal year in order to understand your present, a present that has been forged out of this collapse. You will visit a library and find hundreds of books about the causes of the collapse: the rise of ethnic identities, the economic recessions, the collapse of the “illusion” that we once called the ‘center’.

   

  Your present may have reconciled itself to the rule of the extreme right and normalized its racist ideology. I do not know. It is also possible that this wave has already passed, following the wars and the destruction it caused, and your research has led you to hold previous generations accountable for the rise of that wave. I do not know.
• Aleppo and its destruction. Perhaps, this city, or one of its neighborhoods, would have gone down in history alongside Guernica, Dresden, or Deir Yassin as icons of destruction and murder
• You may find some oil sketches here or some verses of poetry there speaking of this city. You might stumble upon such verses in your search for some imagery to use in the introduction of your dissertation. And the question you never asked your parents, but which has haunted you, will come back: “How did you consent to such destruction, killing and displacement?” Therein lies the advice of this letter: Stop at this question, at Aleppo and at the Syrian revolution. For this is where the story began.
• But today, 50 years before you read this letter, Aleppo is burning. And the term “revolution” is all we have left so that we do not participate in this murder. So forgive us our misuse of these concepts.
• I cannot predict what will have taken place between this letter and your present. Perhaps the world will have learned from Aleppo and awoken from this madness. Perhaps this madness will have led to wars which compelled the world to face its moment of abandonment. But perhaps all of this will not have happened, and you will still be living in a world which thinks the Assads are the best this region can offer. I do not know. What is certain, in any of these cases, is that this region has collapsed. And if there is still one thing that we can pass on to you from all this rubble, it is this: Remember Aleppo, not as an icon of impossible heroisms or the necessary price for an ideological revolution, but as a moment, a moment when the world decided in full awareness and in cold blood to give up on itself.

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