Serene, 41, and her sister Saswan, 28, are U.S. citizens of Syrian descent who grew up in San Francisco's East Bay. They are Muslim, fluent in Syria's primary language, Arabic, and neither had ever visited Stone Mountain before Thursday. Serene and her husband fled Syria two years ago because of the war (they lived there to be close to his parents), and now they and their three children call Roswell, GA home. This is in fact Saswan's first time visiting Georgia, and she still lives on the West Coast.
 
According to U.S. News & World Report, the U.N. says "more than 191,000 people have been killed in three years of bloodshed in Syria's civil war (08/22/14)." It's a sad sign of the times that, with ISIS and the Islamic State at the top of the news right now, Serene and Saswan felt the need to clarify that Syrian people are in no way affiliated with these extremists and abhor them as much as anyone. In addition to cluing me in that Syria has two flags these days (the one of the Assad government and the new "independence flag" of the Syrian National Coalition), Serene briefly gave voice to the nature of Syria's war:
 
"Life goes on for weeks and weeks and weeks, and then all of sudden there will be rockets....I used to live in a suburb of Damascus. I lived there for nine years, until I left two years ago. It's hard to describe the war in just a few sentences, but basically the same family has been in power since 1970 [Assad], and they ruled with an iron fist. If you spoke or campaigned against them, you would 'disappear' into their jails, and oftentimes never come back. When their son, Bashar, took power, he partially liberalized the economy, but the people to benefit were largely people who were already wealthy or those who had connections with the ruling family. The resentment has been building up for years, but it didn't catch fire until people saw the revolutions happening in Tunisia and Egypt.
 
Most people I know thought it would be all over in a few months. They didn't anticipate this long drawn-out conflict. I know some people who were pro-revolution who have become disillusioned at the sectarian turn it has taken, especially with the rise of extremist factions like Islamic State. I know some families where some members are pro-regime and others are anti-regime but they have to go on and keep living with each other. That is what the country as a whole needs to do: find a way for all to live with each other again. No one side is going to completely get their way."