Abu Zeid and several friends took up arms after security officers shot demonstrators in Tadmur, the modern town near Palmyra. Now, alternately passionate and confused, Abu Zeid has only the dimmest idea of an endgame, swept up in a wave heading nowhere clear.

He wavers, unsure whether joining the revolt was his life’s proudest moment or its ruin — or both.

His exploits, sometimes more Keystone Kops than Che Guevara, left him feeling empowered but morally conflicted. He stole money and weapons, something he struggles to justify to himself. He endangered his neighbors, beat up an informer and narrowly escaped a raid that killed some of his friends after one drew attention to their hide-out by getting stuck in an elevator. Even his beloved camel ended up dead.

Now he is a jobless fugitive in a country bordering Syria, heartsick for a life in which, he said, “I felt like a king in my own way.”

Like someone who grew up near the sea and is drawn to water, Abu Zeid spends hours visiting ancient ruins, quizzing people about his new country’s tourist industry. He worries that unrest will harm his family, or Palmyra’s antiquities. One moment he vows to go back and fight; the next he disavows violence.

“I hate my life this way,” he told a friend in a recent message.

Yet he will be proud if Mr. Assad leaves office, he said: “They can’t keep talking as if we are nobody — we are citizens.”