Greetings from Damascus, Syria, where a crowded bar welcomed post-Assad revelers

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Far-Flung Postcards is a weekly series in which NPR’s international team shares moments from their lives and work around the world.

It was exactly a week after the Assad regime fell in Syria last December, and Damascus was euphoric.

My colleague and I came across a bar in the center of the city called Sugar Man. A small space, with purple lights, neon signs, a cowboy hat, colorful posters of American and Arab movies and celebrities, and posters advertising U.S. cities. The bartenders had trendy haircuts and piercings. People were tattooed, fashionable. I’d been told that some of them were young Syrian activists who’d fled to Beirut during the Assad regime. Now they were back home partying.

Only Arabic music played: pop, patriotic songs — including anti-Assad songs we heard all over the city — and the classics by legends like Fairuz and Umm Kulthum.

It was decidedly Syrian, Arab, proud — and free.

There were fears, though: Would the Islamist groups that led the revolt against Assad shut down places like this, confiscate alcohol, make the music stop?

Those questions lingered in everyone’s minds. But not tonight.

Tonight was for dancing.

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