PHOTO: Bus barricade in Aleppo to protect civilians from snipers (Karim al-Masrikaram/AFP/Getty)
Marwan Hisham writes for Vanity Fair, with illustrations by Molly Crabapple:
I first moved to Aleppo 10 years ago. At that time, the city was the world for me: the glorious past and the present, the bitter and the sweet. I attended university in mid-Aleppo’s wealthy neighborhoods. To get there, I took the bus from my apartment in the crowded Al-Myassar, one of Aleppo’s poorest slums. We rode by the ancient gates of Bab Al-Hadid and Bab Al-Nasr, through which the Silk Road once curved. Old Aleppo’s walls had vanished over the years, but its gates survived as if to remind residents of their history: the city may have been destroyed before, by Mongols and by earthquakes, but every time it got up on its feet again.
Aleppo wore its heritage with pride, but beneath its beauty lurked darker contradictions. Aleppo’s western half was a rapidly modernizing playground for the elite. But inhabitants of the city’s east, who had fled their villages to seek better prospects in the city’s outskirts, stayed mired in poverty. While the government labeled these slums agricultural plains, on the ground they were a maze of concrete cells, run by clans of organized criminals who dealt drugs and extracted “taxes.” The government used these clans as enforcers—especially when the revolution’s wind briefly blew on Aleppo in 2011.
During this time, I was a student at Aleppo University. My classmates and I saw the campus transformed by these enforcers and by the Mukhabarat, or the Syrian secret police. They planted informants amongst students and persecuted student protesters. Hundreds would disappear forever into the Mukhabarat’s dungeons. Despite this, students kept challenging the security forces. Revolutionaries across the country nicknamed the school “The Revolution’s University.”
But most of Aleppo regarded the Arab Spring with indifference. When the revolution broke out in earnest later that year, much of the city distanced itself from the turbulence. Demonstrations remained confined mostly to slums like Al-Saladin, Bustan Al-Qasr, and Al-Marijah. Protests were brief, with demonstrators chanting before running from the security forces.
In Aleppo, the revolution gives the impression that it is a revolt of the poor. When rebel groups from the northern countryside pushed towards the city, these slums were the first that welcomed them, unlike the richer neighborhoods, which, instead, remained in the hands of the regime.
Aleppo is now a city divided, with each half shelling the other. World-heritage sites have become front lines, and treasures turned into ramparts.
I left Aleppo in 2012 and only returned this May. No words could have described my shock. The once bustling northern districts were now empty except for blocks of rubble with flags of the innumerable rebel groups flapping above. As I stood staring, the wind slapped my face, coating me with the city’s dust. It seemed to whisper, “What brought you here?” The Aleppo of the past is not the Aleppo of today; but for me, it still felt like home.
Since the war, most of the old city’s neighborhoods had become inaccessible. Charred vehicles blockaded central streets. Trips that before the war took minutes had become seven-hour marathons, traversing hundreds of kilometers and dozens of checkpoints, each controlled by different warring groups. Regime snipers positioned atop the Citadel’s towers could survey huge areas of the city. Bodies caught in their cross fire might remain unburied for weeks, or months.