We, in Syria, our point of view stems from our experience.

Host: The air was thick with dust and the smell of smoke, rising from the ruins of what had once been a market street. The sun hung low, a red, bleeding circle behind a veil of ash. Children’s voices echoed faintly from the distance, half laughter, half hunger — the kind of sound that doesn’t belong anywhere, yet stays forever in the mind.

Amid the wreckage, a small café still stood, its walls cracked but its doors open. The old fan above the counter turned slowly, its wings creaking like an old memory refusing to die.

Jack sat near the window, a journalist’s notebook open before him, his pen hovering, but hesitating. Across from him sat Jeeny, her hands folded, her eyes steady, watching him like someone who had seen too much to ever look away again.

Outside, the city — or what was left of it — breathed, broken but alive.

Jack: “You know, Jeeny… I read what Bashar al-Assad once said: ‘We, in Syria, our point of view stems from our experience.’ It’s one of those lines that sounds simple, but it’s not. It’s… loaded.”

Jeeny: “Everything that comes from war is loaded, Jack. Every word, every silence.”

Host: The wind shifted, carrying a faint echo of a call to prayer from a distant mosque, broken by the static of a radio somewhere in the next street.

Jack: “He’s saying that truth isn’t universal. That it’s personal, born from what we live, not what we read. But isn’t that just a way of justifying everything — even violence?”

Jeeny: “Maybe. Or maybe it’s a confession. When your streets have been bombed, when your neighbors have vanished, when your memories are filled with the sound of sirens and shells, your truth doesn’t look like anyone else’s. It can’t.”

Jack: “So you’re saying experience becomes morality?”

Jeeny: “Sometimes it has to. When the world refuses to understand you, you build your own logic to survive.”

Host: Jack’s hand tightened around his pen. A dog barked outside. The sound of a distant explosion rolled like thunder, too familiar to even frighten anyone anymore.

Jack: “But doesn’t that logic become dangerous? If every nation, every person says, ‘my experience is my truth,’ then anything can be justified — even atrocity. That’s how dictatorships survive. That’s how wars keep burning.”

Jeeny: “Yes… but you talk as if objectivity still exists. As if the truth isn’t already divided by who’s telling it. Even you, Jack — your notebook, your articles — they all come from your experience, your bias. You think you’re reporting, but you’re also interpreting.”

Jack: “I try to be fair.”

Jeeny: “Fair? Fair to whom? The side you understand? The one that speaks your language? The one that bleeds the way you expect?”

Host: The fan above them clicked, stuttered, then kept turning. A fly circled the empty sugar bowl, persistent, aimless.

Jack: “So you’re saying there’s no truth at all? Just versions?”

Jeeny: “No. There is a truth — but it’s fragmented, like a mirror shattered by a bullet. Everyone holds a piece, but no one sees the whole.”

Jack: “That sounds poetic, Jeeny. But tell that to the people who died because someone else’s truth was louder.”

Jeeny: “I don’t need to tell them, Jack. They already know. They’re the reason truth still matters.”

Host: A pause — the kind that weighs more than words. Jack leaned back, his jaw tight, his eyes on the window. Outside, a boy of maybe ten walked by, carrying a jerrycan, his feet bare, his expression ancient.

Jeeny watched him too, her eyes wet, but not with pity — with recognition.

Jeeny: “That boy’s truth will not sound like yours. Or mine. And that’s what Assad meant, I think — that when you’ve suffered enough, right and wrong start to speak in different languages.”

Jack: “That’s a dangerous idea.”

Jeeny: “It’s a real one.”

Jack: “But where does that end? The Holocaust was justified as national survival. The war in Iraq was justified as liberation. Even the bombings here — all of them have ‘experience’ behind them. Experience can blind, Jeeny. It can turn pain into ideology.”

Jeeny: “And ignorance turns it into policy.”

Host: Her words hung between them like a smoke ring, slowly dispersing, but never gone.

Jeeny: “When Assad says ‘our point of view stems from our experience,’ he’s not just talking about Syria. He’s describing humanity. Every people sees the world through the wound they’ve suffered.”

Jack: “Then the world’s nothing but a collection of scars.”

Jeeny: “Exactly. But scars teach. Wounds blind. The difference is whether you’ve healed or not.”

Host: The light through the window had changed, reddening as the sun descended into a haze of dust. The sky looked like a bruise — purple, orange, tired.

Jack: “So what do we do, Jeeny? Just accept everyone’s ‘experience’ as truth? Forgive everything in the name of understanding?”

Jeeny: “No. We listen. We recognize. Understanding doesn’t mean forgiving, Jack. It means seeing clearly enough to prevent the next wound.”

Jack: “You think understanding can prevent anything? You’ve seen these streets. The buildings fall, the flags rise, and the cycle just starts again.”

Jeeny: “Then maybe the point isn’t to end it. Maybe it’s to remember it. So we don’t pretend we’re any different.”

Host: The muezzin’s voice rose again, this time closer, clearer, cutting through the heat of the evening. Jack closed his notebook, his fingers resting on the cover like it was a coffin.

Jack: “You know… I came here to write about facts. But the longer I stay, the more I realize — there are no facts left. Only stories.”

Jeeny: “And stories are all we’ve ever had. They’re how we survive what we can’t explain.”

Jack: “But they can be weapons too.”

Jeeny: “Yes. But they can also be bridges.”

Host: The evening light bent through the cracked glass, falling across their faces — his lined with cynicism, hers softened by grief. Between them, the air was heavy, but alive — like something trying to heal.

Jeeny: “Maybe that’s what Syria’s been trying to say, Jack. That experience isn’t just an excuse — it’s a language. You don’t have to agree with it. You just have to hear it.”

Jack: “And if I can’t?”

Jeeny: “Then you’ll just write another story, won’t you?”

Host: Jack’s mouth curved — not quite a smile, more a grim acceptance. He looked down at his notebook, then began to write again. The pen moved slowly, hesitantly, as if choosing its words carefully.

Outside, a child’s laughter rose again, high, fragile, impossible.

The camera would have pulled back then — through the cracked window, across the rubble, over the burnt rooftops, up into the sky, where the city still smoked, but glowed faintly in the dying light.

Host: And in that twilight, Bashar al-Assad’s words seemed to linger, not as a defense, not as a prophecy, but as a mirror:

“We, in Syria, our point of view stems from our experience.”

Host: And perhaps that’s true of every nation, every soul — for in the ashes of experience, the human voice always rises, still trying to explain, still trying to be heard.