This is The Guardian.

Hello, my name is Claire Longerick, and I'm the deputy editor of the Guardian Long

Read. This December, we wanted to bring you our top picks of the year from the audio

long read. Today, I've chosen a piece called What Reconciliation, what forgiveness,

Syria's deadly reckoning by Heath Abdulahad. At the end of last year, when the Assad regime

fell, hope for a new start was tempered by fears of a breakdown of order.

Crimes committed by supporters of the regime had destroyed so many lives,

the new government urgently needed to act

to ensure that people obtained some form of justice

before they took things into their own hands.

But rumours of revenge killings were rife and in March, reports emerged of a massacre.

In an orgy of violence over a thousand people, most of the members of the Alawite community

had been executed in their homes and in the streets.

This story gives an account of what happened that March weekend through the experience of two friends

from different communities. Faith brings us into the lives of these two men as they hear and then

see the violence explode around them.

It's a vivid and horrifying account of a community under attack as armed men rampaged through a neighbourhood, looting and killing,

wreaking revenge on anyone they can find.

Peace and stability clearly hang by a thread in Syria.

But most striking about this story is the abiding friendship between these two men

from different communities of different backgrounds and politics

who both spent years being tortured in Assad's prisons

...