Bashar al-Assad’s father, Hafez, seized power in 1970, ending a volatile chapter of Syrian history that saw dozens of attempted coups over more than 20 years. He modernized infrastructure and brought education to the poor and rural communities that represented his base. Agrarian reforms begun by his predecessors had transformed the countryside, and the Sunni Muslim majority in places like Hama and Homs still deeply resents the loss of vast landholdings. Hafez also introduced a suffocating cult of personality and nurtured a paralyzing fear among Syria’s varied sects, with power now wielded disproportionately by the Alawite Muslim minority from which he hailed. Bashar was his father’s second choice as a successor (his oldest brother, Basil, died in a car accident in 1994), but he has hewn to his father’s practices. Through its long reign, the House of Assad has preached a broader identity for the country — an Arab nationalism that could encompass Alawites, Sunnis, Christians and other heterodox sects like Druze and Ismailis. But in reality, the Assads have pitted those sects against one another.

The fear of what’s next — what would follow the collapse of the government — is more pronounced in Syria than anywhere else in the Arab world, and Syrian officials cling to a kind of negative legitimacy: us or chaos. The precedents are sobering. Lebanon, the victim of a 15-year-civil war, fed in part by sectarian diversity, sits to Syria’s west. Iraq, still recovering from the carnage of its fratricidal conflict, borders Syria on the east. As cynical as the argument is, it remains compelling to many within Syria and to the countries who have a say here — the United States, its European allies, Saudi Arabia and, perhaps most important, Turkey, which shares a 550-mile border with its Arab neighbor. No one really knows what might arise from the embers of the House of Assad.

Since the uprising began, the government has allowed very few journalists into the country. On July 16, a few days before the morning spent at the safe house in Homs, I traveled with a photographer, Moises Saman, to the Lebanese town of Wadi Khaled, a backwater on the border where armed Islamists, smugglers and Syrian rebels mix freely. The trip took days to organize, as contacts called contacts, no one giving his real name. Since we had no visas, they would have to ferry us across a porous border stitched by roads, motorcycle paths and foot trails.

Iyad met us for the first time in Wadi Khaled, accompanied by a friend named Ahmed, who came from a family of smugglers. Iyad wore a beard favored by religious conservatives and had a quick wit and youthful smile. Until a few days before, he had worn his black hair long, but after security forces began inquiring about “Abu Shaar” — the guy with the long hair — his cousin persuaded him to cut it. As we sat in a house rented by Syrian refugees, displaced by violence across the border in Tel Kalakh, he and Ahmed detailed the route we would take to skirt checkpoints and soldiers.

They called us Zingo and Ringo, nicknames taken from an old cartoon, and together we rode on Suzuki motorcycles through the mountainous terrain, over a 20-foot-high dirt berm that marks the border, then along a vast plain traversed by other smugglers carrying contraband fuel, cigarettes and anything else that can wrangle a profit from imbalances in Syrian subsidies and Lebanese taxes. Every so often, we shed more of our belongings: first our computers and equipment (too suspicious), then our backpacks (too foreign-looking), then our clothes and toiletries (too cumbersome). At the first safe house across the border — a simple one-story affair where Ahmed lived — I was left with three notebooks and a pen. Everyone had grown nervous, but as we sat on plastic mats on the floor, sharing soft drinks, tea and coffee, the conversation began to put us at ease. This was the first time since covering the uprising that I had talked to one of the youthful protesters in person. With visas so rare, and granted only under strict conditions, most journalists have covered Syria by frustratingly brief phone calls.

For many years, Syria’s cities have been myopic in their rivalries. Dara’a was considered backward, populated by the hillbillies of the steppe known as the Houran. Deir al-Zour was the preserve of armed tribesmen, bound by the ties of extended clans. Homs, favored by the government, competed with Hama, long officially discriminated against for its history of rebellion and its religious cast. Decades after independence, Damascus and Aleppo still vied for supremacy in the country. But now protests arise regularly in one town out of solidarity with another under siege. “Dara’a and all the villages around it have a special place in our heart,” Iyad said as he dragged on a Marlboro Light. “This is where the revolution began, and it is a place that offered up so many martyrs for us. Dara’a taught us that even if the army assaults you, you can still rise up again.” It was afternoon, and he and Ahmed were anxious for us to move to another safe house before too much time passed. As we prepared to leave, Iyad turned to me and said: “We’ve already won. We’re victorious now. I lived a life of terror, fear and killing, and now I’m free.”

Before the uprising, Iyad said, his life had been boring, even suffocating. He had a degree in business and economics, but jobs were scarce. The incentive to revolt was more ambiguous, though; he’d had enough of the humiliations, the propaganda, the hypocrisy, and now, finally, he could do something about it. No one encouraged him to go down to the first protest in Homs in March at the Khalid bin Walid mosque. No one had to. “I’m a person now,” he said. “I can say what I want. I love you if I want to love you, I hate you if I want to hate you. I can denounce your beliefs, or I can support them. I can agree with your position or disagree with it.” We shed the last of our belongings for another ride. “We’re not waiting to live our lives until after the fall of the regime,” he went on. “We started living them the first day of the protests. We began our lives.”