At the end of November, Hamza Hourani’s phone rang. It was a cloudy morning in Damascus, and some Syrians were quietly stocking their cupboards as rebel fighters marched south toward the city after seizing much of the rest of the country. But the government of Bashar al-Assad still controlled the capital.
On the other end of the line was an official from the Ministry of Communications, summoning the 26-year-old Hourani and his co-founder, Bashar Saaduddin Al Jbawi, to its offices to discuss their startup: an education app called Quizat.
