This stinking hole in the ground. One metre in this direction, one metre eighty in the other. Bare walls, bare floor. And this hole. Nedal counts every single day. In the end, it should be four months and eighteen days. Round after round, he knows every bump on the rough walls, feels them, there is no light, it is almost impossible to tell when the day changes. Blows, questions, questions, blows. He points to the front row of teeth that were knocked out.

Nedal has no idea why he was here. Vague accusations, questions about men. He tries to answer willingly, but he knows nothing. Who is this man? Do you know that one? What do you know? Questions, beatings, cell. At some point, he realises that it’s just a ritual, no longer about answers.

After almost five months in pre-trial detention, he is sentenced to one year in prison by a summary court for ‘throwing stones’. Until then, his family, his wife and his six daughters knew nothing of his whereabouts and believed him to be dead.

After that, nothing is the same as before. Always cautious, always on guard, those who are arrested a second time usually do not survive.

Nedal was born in 1958 in Deir ez-Zor, a city in eastern Syria, which he describes as prosperous and peaceful at the time. He grew up in a large family and was the one who wanted to study. After graduating from high school, he moved to Ankara in Turkey to study at an American technical university. He studied architecture for five years in English and also learned to speak Turkish fluently.

He was close to graduating when economic and political problems forced him to return. Back in Syria, he was briefly arrested and interrogated for the first time — a week, a foretaste of what would befall him years later. But at that time, they let him go. He found his place: from 1988 onwards, he worked for international oil companies, first as a translator, later as the person responsible for logistics and security issues.

A stable job in a dictatorship that still had functioning structures at the time.

He married and had six daughters with his wife. They should all study and have good jobs! And that’s exactly how it turned out. They built a house and lived what he describes as a good life. When the war began, his family moved from the destroyed Deir ez-Zor to Damascus. There he was able to continue working, founding a small service company that supported oil companies with personnel, materials and the organisation of necessary supplies.

When people in his hometown demonstrated against the Assad regime, he stood behind them. Not as a fighter, he says, but as someone who helps, who provides, who listens. Simply sympathising with them was enough to land him on the secret service’s list. He is arrested, put in solitary confinement, spends almost five months in darkness and is tortured, then spends a year in prison.

When he is released in 2016, he starts over. Working, providing for his family, carrying on. For eight years. Then he learns that the secret service is after him again. In Syria, a second arrest does not mean imprisonment, but disappearance. His wife begs him: ‘Go!’

He hurriedly sells his house, gives half of the proceeds to his family and sets off with the rest. Turkey, Izmir, crossing to Greece by speedboat, then on via Athens to Germany. There he joins his brother, later moves to a reception camp, answers questions, fills out forms, tells his story — honestly and openly, as he emphasises.

Today he lives in Germany, separated from his wife and daughters, who are still in Syria or Turkey. He speaks Arabic, Turkish and English. He often says he wants to work, to be useful, to settle down. And that’s how it is. He has been working since the day he was allowed to.

But what remains is this line in his story: before the cell, after the cell. And the clarity he has drawn from this: ‘People come first.’ He says this several times during the conversation. No religion, no party, no flag. Only people.

Following the latest political developments in Germany, his dreams are bursting like soap bubbles. Nedal is 67 years old, and the chances of bringing his family to Germany are close to zero. They want to send him back, saying he should rebuild his homeland. A homeland where he does not know who will welcome him or how, a hometown where most of the buildings had already been bombed when they were forced to leave.