At Damascus' international airport, the new head of security – a member of the anti-regime forces who marched across Syria to the capital – arrived with his team. The few maintenance workers who showed up for work huddled around Maj Hamza al-Ahmed, eager to learn what will happen next.

They quickly unloaded all the complaints they had been too afraid to express during Bashar Assad's rule, which now, inconceivably, is over.

They worker's said they were denied promotions and perks in favor of pro-Assad favorites and that bosses threatened them with prison for working too slowly. They warned of hardcore Assad supporters among airport staff, ready to return whenever the facility reopens.

As al-Ahmed tried to reassure them, Osama Najm, an engineer, announced: "This is the first time we talk."

This was the first week of Syria’s transformation after Assad’s unexpected fall.

The anti-regime alliance, suddenly in charge, met a population bursting with emotions: excitement at new freedoms; grief over years of repression; and hopes, expectations and worries about the future. Some were overwhelmed to the point of tears.

The transition has been surprisingly smooth. Reports of reprisals, revenge killings and sectarian violence have been minimal. Looting and destruction have been quickly contained. On Saturday, people went about their lives as usual in the capital, Damascus. Only a single van of armed forces was seen.

There are a million ways it could go wrong.

The country is broken and isolated after five decades of the Assad family's tyranny. Families have been torn apart by war, former prisoners are traumatized by the brutalities they suffered, tens of thousands of detainees remain missing. The economy is wrecked, poverty is widespread, inflation and unemployment are high. Corruption seeps through daily life.

But in this moment of flux, many are ready to feel out the way ahead.

At the airport, al-Ahmed told the staffers: "The new path will have challenges, but that is why we have said Syria is for all and we all have to cooperate."

The anti-regime alliance, have so far said all the right things, Najm said. "But we will not be silent about anything wrong again."

At a torched police station, pictures of Assad were torn down and files destroyed after the opposition groups entered the city Dec. 8. All Assad-era police and security personnel have vanished.

On Saturday, the building was staffed by 10 men serving in the police force of the Salvation Government, which for years governed the opposition enclave of Idlib in Syria's northwest.

They watch over the station, dealing with reports of petty thefts and street scuffles. One woman complains that her neighbors sabotaged her power supply. A policeman tells her to wait for courts to start operating again.

"It will take a year to solve problems" he mumbled.

The Salvation Government has sought to bring order in Damascus by replicating the structure of its governance in Idlib. But there is a problem of scale. One of the policemen estimates their number at only around 4,000; half are based in Idlib and the rest are tasked with maintaining security in Damascus and elsewhere. Some experts estimate the opposition's total fighting force at around 20,000.

Right now, they and the public are learning about each other, and some Syrians remain suspicious.

"The people we see on the streets, they don’t represent us," said one Damascus resident from the southern city of Daraa, where the 2011 anti-Assad uprising began. They were concerned about religious minorities and revenge killings.

"We should be fearful," he said, adding that he worries some insurgents feel superior to other Syrians because of their years of fighting. "With all due respect to those who sacrificed, we all sacrificed."

Still, fear is not prevalent in Damascus, where many insist they will no longer let themselves be oppressed.

Some restaurants have resumed openly serving alcohol, others more discretely to test the mood.

At a sidewalk cafe in the historic Old City's Christian quarter, men were drinking beer when a patrol passed by. The men turned to each other, uncertain, but the armed patrol did nothing. When a man waving a gun harassed a liquor store elsewhere in the Old City, the rebel police arrested him, one policeman said.

Salem Hajjo, a theater teacher who participated in the 2011 protests, said he may not agree with the opposition's religious views, but is impressed at their experience in running their own affairs. And he expects to have a voice in the new Syria.

"We have never been this at ease," he said. "The fear is gone. The rest is up to us."

On the night after Assad’s fall, armed anti-regime forces roamed the streets, celebrating victory with deafening gunfire. Some security agency buildings were torched.

The public stayed indoors, peeking out at the newcomers. Shops shut down.

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) moved to impose order, ordering a nighttime curfew for three days. It banned celebratory gunfire and moved its members to protect properties.

After a day, people began to emerge.

For tens of thousands, their first destination was Assad’s prisons, particularly Saydnaya on the capital’s outskirts, to search for loved ones who disappeared years ago. Few have found any traces.

It was wrenching but also unifying. Opposition members, some of them also searching, mingled with relatives of the missing in the dark halls of prisons that all had feared for years.

During celebrations in the street, anti-Assad forces invited children to hop up on their armored vehicles, posed for photos with women. Pro-revolution songs blared from cars. Suddenly shops and walls everywhere are plastered with revolutionary flags and posters of activists killed by the deposed regime.

TV stations didn’t miss a beat, flipping from praising Assad to playing revolutionary songs. State media aired the flurry of declarations issued by the new transitional government.

The new administration called on people to go back to work and urged Syrian refugees around the world to return to help rebuild. It announced plans to rehabilitate and vet the security forces to prevent the return of "those with blood on their hands." They reassured airport staffers – many of them government loyalists – that their homes won’t be attacked, one employee said.

But Syria's woes are far from being resolved.

While produce prices plunged after Assad’s fall, because merchants no longer needed to pay hefty customs fees and bribes, fuel distribution was badly disrupted, jacking up transportation costs and causing widespread and lengthy blackouts.

Officials say they want to reopen the airport as soon as possible and this week maintenance crews inspected a handful of planes on the tarmac. Cleaners removed trash, wrecked furniture and merchandise.

One cleaner, who identified himself only as Murad, said he earns the equivalent of $15 a month and has six children to feed, including one with a disability. He dreams of getting a mobile phone.

"We need a long time to clean this up," he said.