And the usually pessimistic Osama, well, he can't help being infected by the energy.

To be honest, I went out to the first protests a bit timidly because the intelligence officers in my neighborhood knew my face and my name.

So I just hovered around the edges of the demonstrations.

I took some photos, doing what I could in that fleeting moment.

It was a surreal, historic time when we couldn't believe we were finally in the streets, chanting for the freedom

And in some of the photos Osama was seeing, behind the bodies in the distance, the palace windows are clearly visible.

This extremely close proximity to the palace was very symbolically significant.

But Bashar al-Assad didn't need to see these images with his own eyes.