FARIS, MUHAMMED AHMED (born 1951), Syrian Air Force pilot who in 1987 became the first Syrian citizen to travel to space. Faris was born in Aleppo and attended the air-force academy, after which he attained the rank of colonel and served as an aviation instructor and navigation specialist. In 1985 he was chosen for the Soviet Union’s Interkosmos program, which recruited astronauts from Soviet-allied countries to participate in spaceflights. Though Syrian president Hafez al-Assad—father of current president Bashar al-Assad—wanted the first Syrian in space to be a representative of his own ethno-religious sect, the Alawites, the Soviets overruled him and chose Faris, a Sunni.
Faris spent two years at Star City, the Soviet Union’s space-training camp near Moscow, preparing for his flight. In July 1987 he flew aboard the Soyuz TM-3 alongside two Soviet cosmonauts to the Mir space station, the largest manmade structure in space at the time. As a research cosmonaut, Faris conducted experiments in space medicine and materials processing and brought with him a vial of soil from Damascus, becoming the first person to bring dirt from Earth into space.
He returned to Earth after spending a total of seven days, twenty-three hours, and five minutes in space. For his participation in the Interkosmos program Faris was awarded the Soviet Union’s highest civilian honors, the Order of Lenin and the title Hero of the Soviet Union.
“When you’re up there,” Faris said of his experience, “you realize there are no borders, no countries, no nationalities. Just Earth.” While in space Faris decided that he would quit the military and become an educator. He was named head of Syria’s air-force academy but grew frustrated by both the older and younger Assad’s lack of interest in funding a national space institute.
Faris hoped to transition into academia, but his plans were derailed by the Arab Spring. In 2011 he participated in anti-government protests. As the Syrian civil war broke out in earnest the following year he fled to Istanbul with his wife and three children, becoming the highest-ranking defector from the Assad regime.
Though Faris and his family would likely be eligible for asylum in the European Union, the United States, or Russia, he has refused to apply to any of them, citing his objections to the conduct of all three geopolitical entities during the civil war. He remains one of 3.6 million Syrian refugees in Turkey, the largest community of refugees worldwide. He advises the Turkish government on the refugee crisis and participates in the Syrian National Coordination Committee for Democratic Change. Faris hopes someday to return to Aleppo, one of the world’s oldest continuously inhabited cities, and to sit in his garden and watch children play without fear. If that should prove impossible, he dreams of building a refugee city on Mars, where, he says, “there is freedom and dignity and where there is no tyranny, no injustice.” This vision was taken up by Turkish artist Halil Atindere in his video Space Refugee (2016), filmed in Turkey in the volcanic region of Cappadocia and presented in virtual reality as Journey to Mars (2016).