It was a small act of teenage defiance that sparked a revolution, a moment forever inscribed in Syrian history.

Émigrés hope the battered country—sometimes a haven, sometimes a persecutor—can again be home under the new government.

Huda Khayti always knew that this day would come. While she worried that the world might have sidelined Syria over the course of nearly a decade and a half of war, she never stopped hoping. "I knew ...