Although a new age has dawned in Syria, one native who escaped ‘a very difficult life’ to find success on the island still finds it follows him around
Sometimes a New Year really is a new year. “It’s a new thing for us,” says Aziz Altaany. “It’s a new thing. We lived 50 years with the same dictator family… It’s a new thing for me to write something on Facebook without fear.” Welcome to 2025, not just a new calendar but the dawn of a new age – at least if you happen to be Syrian.
We talk nine days before New Year’s Day and two weeks after the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad, an event so momentous it still seems a little unreal. Aziz (short for Moataz) sits sipping coffee at Gloria Jean’s in Engomi, talking a blue streak and occasionally interrupting to greet people as they pass. He’s a regular here, coming often to work on his laptop or conduct business. He runs three businesses, and owns a stake in three companies… but more on this later.
He’s 38, with neatly-trimmed stubble and alert, hazel-green eyes. He’s a handsome young man – which is not just an idle observation but part of the story, his good looks having been what prompted the interviewer at Brioche Dorée in Damascus to recommend him for a public-facing role, instead of the kitchen job he’d applied for.
A couple of years later – still in his early 20s – he’d risen to become the store manager, meanwhile studying Hospitality Management and thinking about a Master’s abroad. This was quite a dream, as the family weren’t rich – his dad worked in construction, supporting a wife and five kids – indeed Aziz had his first taste of work at the age of seven, selling sweets in the street for extra money. Eventually, however, he made it, crossing to Cyprus in 2011 for a Master’s in Marketing at European University, down the road from where we’re sitting now.
Meanwhile, around him, the world was changing. Even before the Arab Spring protests kicked off in Tunisia at the end of 2010, the mood in Syria was heavy. “We knew that it was going to happen, revolution,” he recalls. “We’d had enough from the government, from the regime.”
The regime knew it too, and had already started clamping down on activists – all those who “have opinion, let’s say,” he offers in fluent but accented English. One of them was Aziz’s older brother, who disappeared for six weeks before the family were told he’d been arrested and thrown in prison, the dreaded Sednaya jail for political prisoners. “Back in those days, they were not killing people in jail,” he says. “But they leave them [there]. They might leave them forever.”
His brother was in jail for one and a half years – and was still incarcerated when Aziz left for Cyprus. “I went to say goodbye,” he recalls. “There was a few metres between us, and he was in a cage.
“He was very depressed, very down. And he told me: ‘Do not come back. Leave this country. It’s not for us. As long as this regime exists, we do not have rights here. Leave Syria, and do not come back. Once they go, you come back’… And I left.”
That was in February 2011. A few weeks later, on March 6, came the uprising that sparked a decade of war, left the country largely destroyed and led, eventually, to today’s new chapter. Aziz Altaany never went back to Syria (he still hasn’t), and didn’t see his family again for eight years – by which time his dad had passed away and his brother had been released, re-arrested, and tortured so badly (hung up by his manacled hands for 10 days, a kind of crucifixion) that his wrists were permanently shattered, though he’d also managed to escape by boat through Libya to Italy and eventually settle (and obtain citizenship) in the Netherlands, where he now lives.
Does Aziz himself ever wish he’d stayed, instead of watching all these monumental changes from exile in Cyprus?
He cocks his head, sighing. “It’s a very difficult question, actually… If I stayed I would be dead, for sure. Because I have a lot of –” he gestures to indicate restless energy. “Like, I’m not going to stay home. I would go in the street, and I’d go to demonstrations, protests, everything.” Even if he’d survived the initial ‘revolution’ he couldn’t have stayed, not without picking up a gun. A man in Syria faced a stark choice: fight in Assad’s army, run away to join the rebels – or leave the country. He just happened to leave a couple of years early.
Aziz’s experience in Cyprus was the experience of any poor migrant, albeit exacerbated by constant news of his country tearing itself apart a few hundred miles to the east. “First few months, I knew no-one,” he recalls. “My English was very bad… To be honest, it was a very difficult period.”
He and some others organised protests outside the Syrian embassy – initially hiding their faces (a remnant of growing up in a police state, like the physical shakes that assail him even now when he has to visit a government office), but then “you lose the fear” after a while. He couldn’t ask his family for money, in fact he was sending them money. He got a job as a waiter in a Syrian restaurant; the salary was low, but included accommodation – meaning he could use it to pay the university, at least if he did nothing else.
“First three years I studied in university, I didn’t buy one coffee,” he says, savouring the taste of the Gloria Jean’s espresso. “I never bought a sandwich from university. I could not afford it.” He had no social life; he had no car. He was just surviving, sending a certificate back home every year to confirm his student status and postpone his army obligations.
Meanwhile, Syrians were fleeing in their thousands. 2015 was the year of the boat invasion of Lesbos, the world shocked by images of drowned toddler Aylan Kurdi off the coast of Turkey.
It was also the year when Aziz Altaany graduated – but of course going home was out of the question, especially after having led those protests outside the embassy. He decided to apply for asylum. “They give me something called subsidiary protection,” he explains, “which means once the war is over in your country, we’re gonna send you back.”
By this time, he’d found a way of making money, working in nightclubs taking publicity photos. There’s no support system for Syrians, no association they can go to for help (at least he doesn’t know of one) – but he’d befriended an older compatriot who lent him money for a secondhand camera. He and a friend rented an unfurnished apartment, taking turns sleeping on the couch – and he started putting together a career as a photographer, specifically a wedding photographer. “Everything I learned from YouTube. How to use the camera, how to use Photoshop, everything.”
There are currently an estimated 20,000 Syrians in Cyprus (some have started going back, post-Assad), but “a lot of them in the camps,” he sighs. Not all Syrians are the same. Later arrivals are traumatised and often uneducated, having grown up in a broken country. Those who came earlier, as students – like Aziz – tend to do better. “Now in Cyprus, I have 10 friends,” he says. “All of them Syrian. All of them successful people. One has a restaurant, another guy has two restaurants, another one has a construction company… Another two are managers in a forex company.”
He himself was always ambitious. “For me, it was a very difficult life,” he says, speaking of his years growing up under the dictatorship. “Because I was a young man with big dreams, big passion!”
The war has been his curse – yet the war also enabled him to pursue that ambition, and fulfil many of those teenage dreams. Aziz is now among the most sought-after wedding photographers on the island; he’s almost fully booked for the next two years, and one client even changed their wedding date (in 2026, admittedly) to ensure his availability. He has over 17,000 Instagram followers. In 2017 he registered as a company, paying taxes and social insurance. In 2020 he launched a second business, a bridal boutique selling wedding dresses in Limassol. Just recently he’s started a third one – “Because I’m not going to be forever photographer” – teaming up with his Syrian friend with the construction company to build and sell houses.
His story is inspiring – but not in the way I expected. I thought he was going to be a symbol for Syria, battered and buffeted like that unfortunate country – but in fact Aziz exists in a kind of inverse proportion to his homeland, forging a life for himself even as Syria collapsed into a battleground, carved up by the big powers.
“It’s a big game,” he admits wryly. “Everyone plays – and here is the stadium, the pitch: they play in Syria. And they find nice land to play! America, Russia, China, Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, everyone. Hezbollah…” Aziz chuckles: “Only Cyprus isn’t involved”.
Cyprus – like our president keeps saying – is the pillar of stability in this scenario, a place where a hard-working man can make something of himself. Sounds like he lives a pretty good life, I venture. “I live a very good life,” he agrees. “I’m driving my dream car. I live in a very nice apartment. No complaint.”
But the future seems a little bit…
“Blurry, I could say,” he admits, completing my sentence.
It’s not the situation in Syria that’s the problem, at least not anymore. It’s the fact of being Syrian. Aziz is an obvious success story – yet the powers-that-be in Cyprus often refuse to look beyond his nationality.
Banks, for instance, have been mostly unhelpful. “For example I did a wedding for a couple, and they sent me the money from their account to my account. [The bank] blocked my account! ‘Why?’ ‘Sorry, you’re from a third country.’ ‘But I registered a company, and I pay so much expenses for the company every year… Deal with me as a human being!’. It was a very difficult situation.”
Then there’s the question of citizenship. “I consider myself successful business –” he begins, then corrects himself: “successful man in Cyprus. I am refugee – but I don’t take any money from the government… I give taxes. I have employees. I register three companies, I pay for these companies. I have zero crime, zero police reports or anything.
“I applied for a Cypriot passport in 2018… They answer me beginning of 2024, after six years of waiting. The answer was negative. They rejected me. They rejected me because they say I have a bad character…”
Aziz shakes his head, preferring not to speculate – for instance – that the problem may have been his nationality rather than his character. (The migration department offered no justification for its decision. His lawyer has filed an appeal.) Syria follows him around, even as he’s tried to shake free of its tragic politics.
Yet he also loves his country deeply – and in fact he plans to heed his brother’s advice, from all those years ago. Now that Assad is gone, “my dream is to go back. I’m not going to stay in Cyprus. But you never know,” he adds with a kind of practised weariness. War may flare up, things might go south. A Cypriot passport is an insurance policy – not to mention that his girlfriend is Cypriot, and he’s running three businesses here. What more can a person do?
The future is blurry – but the near future fills him with joy. “I’m very positive for what will happen in Syria. Because no matter who, no matter what, they will be better than Bashar al-Assad.
“Things need time,” says Aziz Altaany, having slowly, over time, built up his own life. “I believe in 10 years, Syria will be – I don’t want to tell you like Dubai or Qatar, [but] it will be a very good country. I’m sure about this.” His excitement is infectious. We shake hands and go our separate ways, into the uncharted territory of 2025.
