‘I only had this father, and he’s gone’: Wafa Mustafa’s fight for truth and justice for Syria’s missing

With more than 177,000 people forcibly disappeared since 2011, short doc Maybe Tomorrow captures ‘the violence of waiting’ experienced by family

W hen Wafa Mustafa was a child, she remembers her father playing the music of Umm Kulthum non-stop at home in Syria , humming along to the legendary Egyptian singer’s melodic tones. One day, in an effort to encourage his daughter to appreciate music, he asked her to take a pen and paper and write the lyrics of a song she loved. Wanting to impress him, Mustafa chose an Umm Kulthum song called “Aghadan Alqak”, which translates to: “Will I meet you tomorrow?”

“The lyrics are literally about someone who’s gone, about the waiting for them and the love you have for them,” says Mustafa. “It feels like I knew what was coming … as if I manifested my life since I was very young.”

In 2013, as pro-democracy protests spread on the streets of Syria , Wafa Mustafa’s father, Ali, was abducted in a Damascus apartment by armed men and driven away. It was the last time he was seen or heard from. Mustafa was 23. Since then, she’s been waiting for a tomorrow in which she can see her father again, or at least find out what happened to him.

Mustafa’s case is far from unique in Syria. According to the Syrian Network for Human Rights , more than 177,000 people were forcibly disappeared between 2011 and 2025 in Syria, most of them arbitrarily detained and taken into notorious prisons by Bashar al-Assad regime forces or other armed groups, where they were tortured and often killed, during a conflict that broke much of Syria’s estimated 25 million population.

Now, a year and six months after the fall of the Assad regime , under new ruler Ahmad al-Sharaa, the mission remains the same for Mustafa: to fight for truth and justice for Syria’s forcibly disappeared, and to ensure they are not forgotten.

Mustafa has joined up with her childhood friend, documentary film-maker Waad Al-Kateab, who co-directed the Bafta-winning For Sama , to make a new documentary short, Maybe Tomorrow – in reference to the Umm Kulthum song that plays in the film and, according to Al-Kateab, “reflects the film and the experience for Wafa and other people in Syria.” The film, which premieres this evening at the Sheffield DocFest, is an intimate look at what Mustafa calls “the violence of waiting.” It follows her first in Berlin, where she is now based, and then in Syria after the fall of Assad, in her desperate search for information on what happened to her father.

“Millions of people [in the world] are disappeared,” says Mustafa. “But I only had this father, and he’s gone. And I cannot let him go.”