I’m Raya Jalabi. This is my only Twitter handle. You can verify this by heading to my official @Financialtimes bio page: Or by checking out the FT's list of its own journalists: Reach me on my FT email with your tips & tricks.

RT @maxseddon: Syria’s new government pressed Moscow about reparations in their first meeting with a Kremlin delegation since the downfall…

RT @SarahDadouch: Main points from our interview with Syria’s new FM @Asaad_Shaibani, his first with international media: -plans to privati…

With @SarahDadouch

In the past week, the status quo has been upended in Lebanon, first with Joseph Aoun as president & now with top ICJ judge Nawaf Salam picked for PM. While the challenges ahead are immense, many Lebanese now feel hope for the first time in a long time.

Around Damascus, stores are now lined with Turkish bottled water, Saudi bouillon cubes, Lebanese powdered milk & western chocolates like Twix. In one supermarket in the centre of the city, an entire wall was dedicated to Pringles, writes @SarahDadouch :

“He ran away like a dog in the night,” said one person familiar with Assad’s exit from Damascus. “He was telling people around him up to an hour before he fled that everything was going to be OK.” With @SarahDadouch @ChloeNCornish @malaika_tapper

RT @FT: .@gideonrachman talks to FT Middle East correspondent @rayajalabi about what she found when she arrived in Damascus shortly after t…

RT @SarahDadouch: Syria’s largest oil refinery Baniyas halted operations after Iranian crude shipments stopped, previously the vast majorit…

RT @felschwartz: Scoop: US delegation headed by Barbara Leaf expected in Damascus in the coming days to meet HTS leader Jolani https://t.co…

Assadists turned Tadamon into an industrial killing field. It has remained a wasteland since, reflecting Assad’s policy of punishing those who stood against him: a sea of rubbish & human remains; an ashen purgatory wafting with the souls of unnamed dead:

RT @maxseddon: This piece by ⁦@rayajalabi⁩ and ⁦@SarahDadouch⁩ is the kind of stunning reporting that we all go into journalism aspiring to…

The first Friday prayers at the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus:

The mood was charged but the tone polite, as a millennial HTS technocrat asked civil servants exactly what their jobs entailed. A privilege to witness the untangling of the kleptocratic Baathist state with one of its keenest observers @SarahDadouch

@LinaKhatibUK @louiseelisabet @SarahDadouch We’ve only been here four days, give us time

Saydnaya’s architecture was intended to confuse, its maze of corridors littered with clues of the horrors meted out there. In one hall, there were cages tall enough to fit a row of men. Below were the solitary windowless fetid solitary confinement cells.

RT @felschwartz: Iranian regime insider to the @FT on Assad: “He had become an obstacle, a liability — some even called him a betrayer. His…

An unbelievable day in Damascus: “I’m 24yo and for every single one of those years I’ve had [Assad’s] boot on my neck, keeping me down,” said Omar Seif, who I met taking selfies in front of an abandoned tank. “But today? I can breathe for the 1st time.”

Damascus. I didn’t think I’d ever be back.