‘I only had this father, and he’s gone’: Wafa Mustafa’s fight for truth and justice in Syria’s disappearance | Video

WDead Chicken Mustafa was a child, he remembers his father singing the song Umm Kulthum continuously at home. Syriahumming along to the music of a famous Egyptian singer. One day, in order to encourage his daughter to appreciate music, he asked her to take a pen and paper and write down the lyrics of her favorite song. To cheer her up, Mustafa chose Umm Kulthum’s song “Aghadan Alqak”, which translates as: “Will I meet you tomorrow?”

Mustafa said: “The lyrics are really about someone who is gone, about waiting for them and the love you have for them. It feels like I know what’s coming… like I showed my life since I was a child.”

In 2013, pro-democracy protests spread through the streets of SyriaWafa Mustafa’s father, Ali, was kidnapped from his house in Damascus by armed men and driven away. That was the last time he was seen or heard from. Mustafa was 23 years old. Since then, he has been waiting for tomorrow to see his father again, or to know what happened to him.

Mustafa’s story is not new in Syria. According to Syrian Network for Human RightsMore than 177,000 people were forcibly disappeared between 2011 and 2025 in Syria, most of them detained without permission and held in notorious prisons Bashar al-Assad militias or other armed groups, where they are often tortured and killed, in a war that has displaced nearly 25 million Syrians.

Now, a year and six months after the fall of the Assad regimeunder the new ruler Ahmad al-Sharaa, the task remains the same for Mustafa: to fight for truth and justice so that Syria is destroyed by force, and to ensure that it is not forgotten.

Mustafa was joined by his childhood friend, filmmaker Waad Al-Kateab, who directed the Bafta-winning series. About Samato create a new short documentary, Maybe Tomorrow – about the song of Umm Kulthum that plays in the film and, according to Al-Kateab, “represents the film and what happened to Wafa and other people in Syria.”

The film, which premieres this evening at Sheffield DocFest, is a curious look at what Mustafa calls “violence in waiting.” It follows him first in Berlin, where he now lives, and then in Syria after the fall of Assad, on a desperate search to find out what happened to his father.

“Millions of people (in the world) are missing,” says Mustafa. “But I only had this father, and he is not there, and I cannot free him.”

The film begins in 2020, at the beginning of Mustafa’s multi-year campaign to raise awareness around the world that Syria has disappeared. Mustafa was already speaking about this at the United Nations meetings, and he did arranged a bodyguard for one woman Outside a court in Koblenz, Germany, where two former Syrian police officers were on trial for state-sponsored torture.

Like the Oscar-nominated Kwa Sama, which was directed by Edward Watts, Al-Kateab wanted the project to be a collaboration, but this time with the main protagonist as the director. While promoting For Sama in Tunisia, Al-Kateab noticed.

He said: “I saw the power of what we can do when we have our stories. “For me, the moment was too big, and I realized that Wafa should make his own film.” He told his friend: “I want you to find your way. you I want to tell this story. “

Mustafa, who has been active on social media since he was young and has thousands of followers, said the film serves as a “reminder” of his daily life over the past six years, which shows the problems faced by many families, especially those who have been deported.

He hopes that through the film, the audience can see a little bit of “what it means to have your father disappear without knowing what happened – only to be told he is dead, but unable to accept it.” And failing because there is nothing to accept.

The documentary also raises the question of how traumatic cases like this affect individual and collective memory. “Sometimes we forget things, or our memory gets in the way,” Mustafa’s mother tells Wafa in the film, “I always remember your father telling you… ‘My daughters, you have to write things down… write things down.’

“Hope is a very dangerous thing,” said Al-Kateab, warning that Mustafa’s journey with the film does not promise a happy ending. “This video, at the end of the day, is a tool,” he said. “For Wafa, the result (would be) the goal.”

“Today’s war is not only about seeking the truth, taking responsibility or fighting for your loved ones to live, but also proving that they were there,” says Mustafa. This is especially important when the crimes and human rights violations that are happening in Syria have been tried to be erased by the authorities, leaving few ways to learn what really happened.

Forced disappearances are “unparalleled,” insisted Mustafa, pointing out that this is “not just a Syrian issue, but a global issue of love and violence, especially for young women.”

Amnesty International documents that “all over the world, the majority of victims of the end of coercion are men.” However, it is women who often lead the struggle to find out what happened in the minutes, days and years after the disappearance.

“All these crimes did not end when Assad fled the country and the fall of the Assad regime,” says Mustafa, explaining. killing people and the forced ceasefire has continued under Syria’s new leader. “I don’t want some girls in Syria today to lose their fathers and live a life of guilt, it is the responsibility to save their fathers from the authorities.”

Although it is difficult for Mustafa to talk about his father, his love is reflected in his actions. He said: “My father was my first friend.

“Even if Ali Mustafa wasn’t my father, I would definitely do everything for him, because he is important.