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What Does Freedom Feel Like When You’re Miles Away From Home?
As Syrian people take to the streets of Damascus to celebrate our newfound freedom, those of us living in exile are still dealing with a complex blend of emotions. For me, both as a Syrian and as someone who works at a non-profit organization who left home at 21 in pursuit of education and safety, this moment is bittersweet. In this extraordinary time, I find myself thinking about my journey from Syria to the United States, my work advocating for Syrian refugees, and the profound loneliness of celebrating a long-awaited freedom far from my family and home, from a quiet hotel room in a state that is even further away from my diasporic home. As I travel to advocate for refugees, I sit with joy, sadness, and fear—emotions that resonate with Syrians across the diaspora. This is a moment we’ve all been waiting for, so why do we feel empty?
To understand these feelings, we must look back. Eleven years ago, I left Syria not because I wanted to but because I had to. The Syrian regime’s violent response to the revolution forced so many of us to make impossible choices: to stay and risk everything or to leave and lose everything familiar. I left behind the warmth of the home where my family lives, the comfort of childhood streets, and the laughter of my childhood friends. I left to find safety, to dream of better opportunities, and to survive.
Exile is a strange place. It’s a world of new beginnings but also of loss. The streets Syrians walk now are not the ones we once knew. The homes we live in are not the ones that raised us. We take every opportunity to try and make these places familiar, to feel like ours, but they never truly do. The longing for home is neverending— a constant thought in the back of our minds reminding us of what we’ve lost.
And now, after so many years, something unimaginable has happened: Assad is gone. Liberation has come. The dictator who ruled with fear and violence is no longer in power. Our happiness is beyond words, yet so is our pain.
We watched from miles away as our families and friends flooded the streets of Damascus, celebrating in Umayyad Square. We see joy in their eyes; their voices rise in chants of freedom, and their tears fall with relief. They raise flags with proud colors and feel the weight of decades lifted from their shoulders. But here in the United States everything is still. Outside our windows, the world goes on as if nothing has happened. There are no celebrations, no flags waving, no shared understanding of this moment we are living through.
This loneliness is a different kind of exile. To be separated not only by distance but by experience: to long for the touch of home even as it continues without us, to feel happiness softened by the emptiness of not being there. It is a bittersweet liberation, one that reminds us of what we have gained and what we continue to lose.
Talking to displaced Syrians at the Karam Foundation where I work has given me a deeper sense about their feelings about our newly freed home’s latest chapter. Many of them share the same bittersweet emotions: happiness mixed with fear. For so many young men and women, Syria exists more as a memory than a tangible reality. They left when they were very young, spending years learning the language of their adopted countries and struggling to fit in. They hope to one day return and rebuild the homes they lost, but uncertainty weighs heavy on their hearts. For many, the houses they dream of returning to have been flattened by the war. Their resilience and hope, however, remain strong as they draw a picture of a future where they can contribute to a liberated Syria.
But even in this loneliness, there is hope. This moment reminds us of why we left and what we fought for. It is proof that dreams of freedom are not in vain, and that one day, we too will return to those streets, those friends, and to those memories that we held onto so tightly and stored in suitcases, under beds, and in our attics.
But for now, we will celebrate in our own quiet ways, carrying the voices of our families, the strength of our people, and the hope of a new Syria in our hearts. Even in exile, we remain connected to Syria through our love, longing, and the unshakable belief that liberation, no matter how lonely, is still worth it.
{
"article":
{
"title" : "What Does Freedom Feel Like When You’re Miles Away From Home?",
"author" : "Nour Al Ghraowi",
"category" : "essays",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/what-does-freedom-feel-like-when-youre-miles-away-from-home",
"date" : "2025-03-21 16:26:00 -0400",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/2024_12_8_Syria_1.jpg",
"excerpt" : "As Syrian people take to the streets of Damascus to celebrate our newfound freedom, those of us living in exile are still dealing with a complex blend of emotions. For me, both as a Syrian and as someone who works at a non-profit organization who left home at 21 in pursuit of education and safety, this moment is bittersweet. In this extraordinary time, I find myself thinking about my journey from Syria to the United States, my work advocating for Syrian refugees, and the profound loneliness of celebrating a long-awaited freedom far from my family and home, from a quiet hotel room in a state that is even further away from my diasporic home. As I travel to advocate for refugees, I sit with joy, sadness, and fear—emotions that resonate with Syrians across the diaspora. This is a moment we’ve all been waiting for, so why do we feel empty?",
"content" : "As Syrian people take to the streets of Damascus to celebrate our newfound freedom, those of us living in exile are still dealing with a complex blend of emotions. For me, both as a Syrian and as someone who works at a non-profit organization who left home at 21 in pursuit of education and safety, this moment is bittersweet. In this extraordinary time, I find myself thinking about my journey from Syria to the United States, my work advocating for Syrian refugees, and the profound loneliness of celebrating a long-awaited freedom far from my family and home, from a quiet hotel room in a state that is even further away from my diasporic home. As I travel to advocate for refugees, I sit with joy, sadness, and fear—emotions that resonate with Syrians across the diaspora. This is a moment we’ve all been waiting for, so why do we feel empty?To understand these feelings, we must look back. Eleven years ago, I left Syria not because I wanted to but because I had to. The Syrian regime’s violent response to the revolution forced so many of us to make impossible choices: to stay and risk everything or to leave and lose everything familiar. I left behind the warmth of the home where my family lives, the comfort of childhood streets, and the laughter of my childhood friends. I left to find safety, to dream of better opportunities, and to survive.Exile is a strange place. It’s a world of new beginnings but also of loss. The streets Syrians walk now are not the ones we once knew. The homes we live in are not the ones that raised us. We take every opportunity to try and make these places familiar, to feel like ours, but they never truly do. The longing for home is neverending— a constant thought in the back of our minds reminding us of what we’ve lost.And now, after so many years, something unimaginable has happened: Assad is gone. Liberation has come. The dictator who ruled with fear and violence is no longer in power. Our happiness is beyond words, yet so is our pain.We watched from miles away as our families and friends flooded the streets of Damascus, celebrating in Umayyad Square. We see joy in their eyes; their voices rise in chants of freedom, and their tears fall with relief. They raise flags with proud colors and feel the weight of decades lifted from their shoulders. But here in the United States everything is still. Outside our windows, the world goes on as if nothing has happened. There are no celebrations, no flags waving, no shared understanding of this moment we are living through.This loneliness is a different kind of exile. To be separated not only by distance but by experience: to long for the touch of home even as it continues without us, to feel happiness softened by the emptiness of not being there. It is a bittersweet liberation, one that reminds us of what we have gained and what we continue to lose.Talking to displaced Syrians at the Karam Foundation where I work has given me a deeper sense about their feelings about our newly freed home’s latest chapter. Many of them share the same bittersweet emotions: happiness mixed with fear. For so many young men and women, Syria exists more as a memory than a tangible reality. They left when they were very young, spending years learning the language of their adopted countries and struggling to fit in. They hope to one day return and rebuild the homes they lost, but uncertainty weighs heavy on their hearts. For many, the houses they dream of returning to have been flattened by the war. Their resilience and hope, however, remain strong as they draw a picture of a future where they can contribute to a liberated Syria.But even in this loneliness, there is hope. This moment reminds us of why we left and what we fought for. It is proof that dreams of freedom are not in vain, and that one day, we too will return to those streets, those friends, and to those memories that we held onto so tightly and stored in suitcases, under beds, and in our attics.But for now, we will celebrate in our own quiet ways, carrying the voices of our families, the strength of our people, and the hope of a new Syria in our hearts. Even in exile, we remain connected to Syria through our love, longing, and the unshakable belief that liberation, no matter how lonely, is still worth it."
}
,
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{
"title" : "Black Liberation Views on Palestine",
"author" : "EIP Editors",
"category" : "essays",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/black-liberation-on-palestine",
"date" : "2025-10-17 09:01:00 -0400",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/mandela-keffiyeh.jpg",
"excerpt" : "",
"content" : "In understanding global politics, it is important to look at Black liberation struggles as one important source of moral perspective. So, when looking at Palestine, we look to Black leaders to see how they perceived the Palestinian struggle in relation to theirs, from the 1960’s to today.Why must we understand where the injustice lies? Because, as Desmond Tutu famously said, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”{% for person in site.data.quotes-black-liberation-palestine %}{{ person.name }}{% for quote in person.quotes %}“{{ quote.text }}”{% if quote.source %}— {{ quote.source }}{% endif %}{% endfor %}{% endfor %}"
}
,
{
"title" : "First Anniversary Celebration of EIP",
"author" : "EIP Editors",
"category" : "events",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/1st-anniversary-of-eip",
"date" : "2025-10-14 18:01:00 -0400",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/WSA_EIP_Launch_Cover.jpg",
"excerpt" : "Celebrating One Year of Independent Publishing",
"content" : "Celebrating One Year of Independent PublishingJoin Everything is Political on November 21st for the launch of our End-of-Year Special Edition Magazine.This members-only evening will feature a benefit dinner, cocktails, and live performances in celebration of a year of independent media, critical voices, and collective resistance.The EventNovember 21, 2025, 7-11pmLower Manhattan, New YorkLaunching our End-of-Year Special Edition MagazineSpecial appearances and performancesFood & Drink includedTickets are extremely limited, reserve yours now!Become an annual print member: get x back issues of EIP, receive the End-of-Year Special Edition Magazine, and come to the Anniversary Celebration.$470Already a member? Sign in to get your special offer. Buy Ticket $150 Just $50 ! and get the End-of-Year Special Edition Magazine Buy ticket $150 and get the End-of-Year Special Edition Magazine "
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,
{
"title" : "Miu Miu Transforms the Apron From Trad Wife to Boss Lady: The sexiest thing in Paris was a work garment",
"author" : "Khaoula Ghanem",
"category" : "",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/miu-miu-transforms-the-apron-from-trad-wife-to-boss-lady",
"date" : "2025-10-14 13:05:00 -0400",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/Cover_EIP_MiuMiu_Apron.jpg",
"excerpt" : "Miuccia Prada has a habit of taking the least “fashion” thing in the room and making it the argument. For Spring 2026 at Miu Miu, the argument is the apron; staged not as a coy retro flourish but as a total system. The show’s mise-en-scène read like a canteen or factory floor with melamine-like tables, rationalist severity, a whiff of cleaning fluid. In other words, a runway designed to force a conversation about labor before any sparkle could distract us.",
"content" : "Miuccia Prada has a habit of taking the least “fashion” thing in the room and making it the argument. For Spring 2026 at Miu Miu, the argument is the apron; staged not as a coy retro flourish but as a total system. The show’s mise-en-scène read like a canteen or factory floor with melamine-like tables, rationalist severity, a whiff of cleaning fluid. In other words, a runway designed to force a conversation about labor before any sparkle could distract us.From the opening look—German actress Sandra Hüller in a utilitarian deep-blue apron layered over a barn jacket and neat blue shirting—the thesis was loud: the “cover” becomes the thing itself. As silhouettes marched on, aprons multiplied and mutated—industrial drill cotton with front pockets, raw canvas, taffeta and cloqué silk, lace-edged versions that flirted with lingerie, even black leather and crystal-studded incarnations that reframed function as ornament. What the apron traditionally shields (clothes, bodies, “the good dress”) was inverted; the protection became the prized surface. Prada herself spelled it out: “The apron is my favorite piece of clothing… it symbolizes women, from factories through to serving to the home.”Miu Miu Spring 2026 Ready-to-Wear. SuppliedThis inversion matters historically. The apron’s earliest fashion-adjacent life was industrial. It served as a barrier against grease, heat, stain. It was a token of paid and unpaid care. Miu Miu tapped that lineage directly (canvas, work belts, D-ring hardware), then sliced it against domestic codes (florals, ruffles, crochet), and finally pushed into nightlife with bejeweled and leather bibs. The garment’s migration across materials made its social migrations visible. It is a kitchen apron, yes, but also one for labs, hospitals, and factories; the set and styling insisted on that plurality.What makes the apron such a loaded emblem is not just what it covers, but what it reveals about who has always been working. Before industrialization formalized labor into factory shifts and wages, women were already performing invisible labour, the kind that doesn’t exist on payrolls but sits at the foundation of every functioning society. They were cooking, cleaning, raising children, nursing the ill. These tasks were foundational to every economy and yet absent from every ledger. Even when women entered the industrial workforce, from textile plants to wartime assembly lines, their domestic responsibilities did not disappear, they doubled. In that context, the apron here is a quiet manifesto for the strength that goes unrecorded, unthanked, and yet keeps civilization running.The algorithmic rise of the “tradwife,” the influencer economy that packages domesticity as soft power, is the contemporary cultural shadow here. Miu Miu’s apron refuses that rehearsal. In fact, it’s intentionally awkward—oversized, undone, worn over bikinis or with sturdy shoes—so the viewer can’t flatten it into Pinterest-ready nostalgia. Critics noted the collection as a reclamation, a rebuttal to the flattening forces of the feed: the apron as a uniform for endurance rather than submission. The show notes framed it simply as “a consideration of the work of women,” a reminder that the invisible economies of effort—paid, unpaid, emotional—still structure daily life.If that sounds unusually explicit for a luxury runway, consider the designer. Prada trained as a mime at Milan’s Piccolo Teatro, earned a PhD in political science, joined the Italian Communist Party, and was active in the women’s rights movement in 1970s Milan. Those facts are not trivia; they are the grammar of her clothes. Decades of “ugly chic” were, essentially, a slow campaign against easy consumption and default beauty. In 2026, the apron becomes the newest dialect. An emblem drawn from leftist feminist history, recoded into a product that still has to sell. That tension—belief versus business—is the Miuccia paradox, and it’s precisely why these aprons read as statements, not trends.The runway narrative traced a journey from function to fetish. Early looks were squarely utilitarian—thick cottons, pocketed bibs—before migrating toward fragility and sparkle. Lace aprons laid transparently over swimmers; crystal-studded aprons slipped across cocktail territory; leather apron-dresses stiffened posture into armor. The sequencing proposed the same silhouette can encode labor, intimacy, and spectacle depending on fabrication. If most brands smuggle “workwear” in as set dressing, Miu Miu forced it onto the body as the central garment and an unmissable reminder that the feminine is often asked to be both shield and display at once.It’s instructive to read this collection against the house’s last mega-viral object: the micro-mini of Spring 2022, a pleated, raw-hem wafer that colonized timelines and magazine covers. That skirt’s thesis was exposure—hip bones and hemlines as post-lockdown spectacle, Y2K nostalgia framed as liberation-lite. The apron, ironically, covers. Where the micro-mini trafficked in the optics of freedom (and the speed of virality), the apron asks about the conditions that make freedom possible: who launders, who cooks, who cares? To move from “look at me” to “who is working here?” is a pivot from optics to ethics, without abandoning desire. (The aprons are, after all, deeply covetable.) In a platform economy that still rewards the shortest hemline with the biggest click-through, this is a sophisticated counter-program.Yet the designer is not romanticizing toil. There’s wit in the ruffles and perversity in the crystals; neither negate labor, they metabolize it. The most striking image is the apron treated as couture-adjacent. Traditionally, an apron protects the precious thing beneath; here, the apron is the precious thing. You could call that hypocrisy—luxurizing the uniform of workers. Or, strategy, insisting that the symbols of care and effort deserve visibility and investment.Of course, none of this exists in a vacuum. The “tradwife” script thrives because it is aesthetically legible and commercially scalable. It packages gender ideology as moodboard. Miu Miu counters with garments whose legibility flickers. The collection’s best looks ask viewers to reconcile tenderness with toughness, convenience with care, which is exactly the mental choreography demanded of women in every context from office to home to online.If you wanted a season-defining “It” item, you’ll still find it. The apron is poised to proliferate across fast-fashion and luxury alike. But the deeper success is structural: Miu Miu re-centered labor as an aesthetic category. That’s rarer than a viral skirt. It’s a reminder that clothes don’t merely decorate life, they describe and negotiate it. In making the apron the subject rather than the prop, Prada turned a garment of service into a platform for agency. It’s precisely the kind of cultural recursion you’d expect from a designer shaped by feminist politics, who never stopped treating fashion as an instrument of thought as much as style.The last image to hold onto is deceptively simple: a woman in an apron, neither fetishized nor infantilized, striding, hands free. Not a costume for nostalgia, not a meme for the feed, but a working uniform reframed, respected, and suddenly, undeniably beautiful. That is Miu Miu’s provocation for Spring 2026: the work behind the work, made visible at last."
}
]
}