Waves of joy flood Damascus. But an undercurrent of distrust lingers.

A surging crowd pressed up against the high metal gate at the entrance to a government compound, desperate for clues about disappeared loved ones. Politely but firmly, uniformed soldiers belonging to the victorious Islamist group now governing Damascus pushed them back.

“Give us time, just a little bit of time, to organize things,” one fighter pleaded.

For now, most Syrians seem ready to indulge Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), whose forces swept through the country almost unopposed and seized the capital, Damascus, last weekend from Bashar al-Assad. The deposed president fled to asylum in Moscow.

The city is caught up in seemingly endless waves of celebrations. Small steps toward normality are still sufficient, after decades of despotic rule that brought suffering to almost every household.

“Our men can move freely again – what is more beautiful than that?” marvels Huda, a woman joining the crowds in central Damascus Thursday. Like others interviewed for this story, she withheld her full name.

As she spoke, rebels handed out chocolates, and flower vendors sold pink Damascene roses at a discount to celebrate the fall of “Assad, the donkey.”

Not everyone trusts their new leaders, whose radical Islamist past gives many, inside and outside Syria, cause for concern. But the almost universal joy unleashed by the departure of Mr. Assad, bringing an end to 54 years of brutal family dictatorship, is overwhelming.

“Whatever comes next cannot possibly be worse that what came before,” says Yasmine, a Damascene woman with long graying hair, soaking up the festive atmosphere. “We were petrified. Now, we just want to be out on the streets and keep celebrating.”

“We hope for safety”

Syrians are now faced with the huge challenge of emerging from half a century of dictatorship and more than a decade of civil war.

Building a functional society here on the foundations of their unbridled joy and deep traumas will be especially hard. Syrians are still digesting the systemic brutality of the regime, now that prisons and torture chambers – chief among them Sednaya – have been opened.

The suffering of disappeared families was one of many grievances that sparked the 2011 antiregime protests. Syria is a country where sectarian and social divides have been reinforced by war, and where the one common denominator was raw fear of a state whose suffocating security apparatus turned institutions into instruments of terror and abuse.

In Damascus, citizens are watching carefully to see how HTS goes about creating a semblance of order in a multifaith city where fear of militias and security services has long ruled everyday life. The group has limited resources to rise to the challenge and to cope with a traumatized population, but it is having some impact.

In Bab Touma, traditionally the Christian quarter of Damascus, bearded fighters clean up a destroyed police station and people line up for bread from a bakery that never shut, as church bells ring on Friday morning, the day of Muslim prayer.

“We were suffocating,” says Hasan, a merchant selling flatbread, dropping his dough for a moment and clutching his throat to indicate the mood in the neighborhood before it fell to HTS. He recounts how he paid $5,000 to evade mandatory military service.

Now, he says, “The situation is slowly inching toward progress. We hope for safety.”

As it took control of the capital, HTS swiftly fanned out fighters and officials to protect key installations. Some came from Idlib, a province in northern Syria where HTS has run a ministate for several years. Their faces reflect the joy of victory but also the stress of navigating a massive city with which they are not familiar.

As the new authorities in town, they are hounded at every turn by civilians airing grievances ranging from the price of bread to conflicts over property to thieves taking advantage of the security vacuum.

Some hospital doctors and nurses are back at work, but they have had few casualties to care for. Instead, they are overwhelmed by relatives looking for traces of their loved ones who they hope may have emerged from the former regime’s notorious jails.

Concerns about Islamists

HTS leader Ahmed al-Sharaa, who has now dropped his nom de guerre, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, has asked public services to resume, and many medical workers have heeded that call, says Dr. Mohammed Abdelkareem, a gastroenterologist.

“We are not scared about the new rulers,” he says. “On the contrary, people are happy. If people don’t show up, it is not out of fear, but lack of transport.”

At the same time, the composition of the new government – comprising only bearded men – has sparked dissent online, expressed by the hashtag “this government does not represent me.” Voicing such discontent – felt not only by minorities but also by Sunni Muslims, from whose ranks HTS draws its fighters – marks a major break with the past, when a Facebook post could get one arrested.

Whether such freedoms will take root is not yet clear. One son of former military officers who gave the name Nowar took his wife and daughter to enjoy fireworks and revolutionary singing at Ummayad Square in central Damascus Thursday evening.

His parents are very happy, but also worried about Islamic governance, he says. “People can’t accept seeing [Islamist] flags on the streets.”

Nowar himself is optimistic, despite contradictory signals. Syrian state TV, now under the control of HTS, puts the group’s black-and-white Islamist banner above the new three-starred Syrian national flag on-screen. But it has stopped playing the Islamist songs that were popularized by Sunni Islamist hard-liners.

Competing factions

Outside the headquarters of the Baath Party, long the Assad family’s political machine, Yaman Mohamed sits in a chair he has salvaged and guards the entrance, dressed in black and sipping sweet tea to ward off exhaustion. His job is to prevent looting and destruction, but that task requires substantial human resources that are not always in sufficient supply. Many official buildings have been damaged, and fires were still burning Friday afternoon.

Mr. Mohamed, who played the role of guard for two days in Aleppo and for another two days in Hama before reaching Damascus, is disciplined. He has stayed at his post even though he could be resting with family members he has not seen for eight years due to the war.

He is also optimistic, believing that the mosaic of military groups that overthrew Mr. Assad can stick together, despite variations in their hard-line interpretations of Islam.

“The difference now is that the factions understood that they have to stop fighting” among themselves, he says. “We had friction among factions and entities like ISIS that brainwashed us. Fortunately, now we have clerics who are guiding us on a better path.”

Which is not to say that there are no tensions among the various armed groups that competed for power during Syria’s civil war.

Outside Damascus stands the hilltop military base that houses the 4th Armored Division, commanded by former President Assad’s brother, Maher. On Wednesday, the body of the division’s chief of staff, Maj. Gen. Ali Mahmoud, still lay in his office where, rebels say, they found him dead already. He had been killed by a grenade explosion that had also left its mark on a ceramic fruit bowl, charring apples and bananas.

A fierce dispute broke out between armed men from different factions over who had the right to inspect General Mahmoud’s remains, a dispute that worsened when men sporting the armbands of a radical Islamist group arrived and tried to calm the argument.

“If we don’t kill each other now, I am certain one day our children will be fighting each other in battle,” one Syrian man roared at another.

Modeling a new Syria

HTS, considered a terrorist group by the United States and others, appears keen to stamp out such sentiment. The new authorities would rather point to Damascus Airport, southeast of the capital, as the right model for Syria. It remains untouched by recent events, even though looters have been active in other state facilities.

Airport guards stick to a strict entrance policy, and rebels here suggest that domestic flights could resume soon, before international flights to Qatar and Libya.

Syrian Air planes wait on the tarmac in the meantime, and a polished black Mercedes from the presidential fleet is parked in front of the ornate VIP lounge, although it is missing its tires.

“We consider the international airport of Damascus as a gate to the world, which needs to see the new Syria,” says a senior HTS security official at the airport, who asked not to give his name.

The airport “is the political face of this country, this new country that we are trying to create.”