Syrian Dust: Reporting from the Heart of the War

by Francesca Borri

  In part because the rebel advance has meanwhile ceased, and by now can no longer be measured by cities, or even neighborhoods, but by blocks, as the war hibernates in a war of position: a war fought by men like Qannaas, guys fifty yards away, facing each other, trading insults all the time, sometimes shooting, sometimes chatting, when they discover that they know each other. In the end that’s how it is in the Middle East, they’re all relatives and cousins, and you’re there for your piece on the Sunnis and Shiites while they’re fighting over Real Madrid and Barcelona.

  Qannaas studies the walls, considers the best spot in which to station himself, and between one place and another pours some food for a fish that is still swimming in its glass bowl. Today he’s on duty in the old city. Where the rebels are fighting from these elegant houses, lined with books, the curtains embroidered. Chandeliers, velvet sofas, and them. Coming from the countryside, they always feel somewhat in awe amid all that inlaid furniture, the hand-painted tiles. They’re afraid of breaking something, they move around timidly, uncertainly, here where everything, all around, is exploding—exploding and collapsing. The owners of this apartment must have fled in a hurry. They left everything. The fish, toothpaste on the brush. Half their dinner still on their plates. In the other room there’s some artillery and a corpse, purplish; two other snipers carefully pack up all the ceramics, the silverware, a painting, while a third sniper, on guard duty, stands barefoot at the door so he won’t ruin the carpet.

  Of the thirty-four he’s killed so far, Qannaas simply says: “They were shabia.” In Arabic that means “ghosts,” slang for Assad’s plainclothes militia. They have plagued the Syrians for years, and today shabia is the most frequently heard word in Aleppo. You get the impression that even your wife’s lover has become a shabia, or the boss who hassled you, the customer who has never paid his debt. Or those you’ve killed though you’re not sure why. Like Mohammed, Qannaas’s closest friend.

  “We went to school together. We grew up together. His mother is like a mother to me.” And together they enlisted in the call-up. Mohammed was the only one who knew that Qannaas wasn’t really dead. “I told him to desert, and he replied: ‘Not yet, it’s too soon.’ I told him that I would help him. That I would hide him. But he kept saying: ‘No, not yet.’ He was afraid that what happened to my family might happen to his.” That is, interrogations. Threats. Ostracism, neighbors not talking to you anymore. “My family was spared the worst,” says Qannaas, “only because they are all officers of Assad—and because everyone thinks I am dead: really dead.”

  Mohammed was stationed at the Shatt checkpoint, and Qannaas had warned him: that checkpoint was their next target. “But he didn’t listen to me. There were three of us. We killed a colonel, a soldier, and Mohammed. I don’t know which of the three I killed,” he says. “All I know is that we had enemies in front of us. And they ordered me to shoot.”

  He takes a deep breath. Being a sniper in Syria is the job that’s most in demand. And the highest-paid. “We’ll be able to buy ourselves a house when it’s over,” he says. “If there are any houses still standing.” It’s the highest-paid job because it’s the most difficult job. No, not because you have to be precise, he says. “Because you see your victim.”

  the first strike exploded unnoticed, as did the second, covered up by the screams of a young boy, his leg torn off, as a doctor closed it up just like that, without anesthesia, using a kitchen knife for a scalpel. But the third hurtled down on the other side of the sidewalk, crashing into three bodies waiting to be identified. The fourth demolished a wing of the building across from us, the fifth a wing of the building beside us, as we realized that al-Shifa was again under attack.

  Blasts of plaster flakes, shrapnel, and glass, the dust rising like a tide, dense, filling the air, and this rumbling, louder and louder, closer and closer—like a vise, the artillery gradually closing in around you. The mortar is a rudimentary weapon that doesn’t allow you to calculate distance. You can only choose the direction. Then someone, close to the target, says by radio: farther east, farther west. Someone who is close, at this moment, and who is watching you. But in Aleppo an artillery attack is also a hail of bullets. Fired into the air, fired at the ground. Fired everywhere and anywhere. And completely pointless: the mortar launcher is miles away. But the purpose is to convince us that we are protected by the Free Army. And so, in addition to dodging mortar shells, you also have to dodge the rebels, who have been taught how to shoot, though no one explained when.

  Alaaeddin, the driver, yanks me away, shoves me into the car on top of three other journalists and takes off, breaks squealing. In a panic, because it makes more sense to take refuge in a basement, behind a wall, to flatten yourself on the ground, anything, at this moment, except to be out here on the street as the road suddenly disappears behind a curtain of dust. And in the midst of it this car, blind, zigzagging drunkenly. An explosion to the right, an explosion to the left, while we, inside, retreat under our helmets and watch our death play out on the windshield, like at the movies, as everything around us topples, collapses, and burns. Only the snipers are left. A car in front of us swerves. Then another, a man rolls out and is struck in the head. Once, twice, there on the asphalt, the bullets drilling into him; with each bullet the body jerks, twitches, shudders, and Alaaeddin drives faster and faster, more and more disoriented, until a helicopter appears and he turns left, then right, down narrower passageways, the chopper descends, closer and closer, choosing its target as Alaaeddin slams a parked car, goes right again, then straight, bangs into another car, makes a left, another left, a right, a left, and screeches to a halt: we’re back at al-Shifa again. “Shit,” he says. And squeals off. We reach the Turkish border, thirty-seven miles, without a word. Blood from al-Shifa on our boots.

  Alaaeddin stops just before the passport control. He says: “I’ll buy some water.” We get out too, amid swarms of children hoping for a coin, a biscuit. A shot, in the distance. We unfasten our helmets. Another shot. The border is a camp by now. A third shot, a fourth. There are already 140,000 refugees in Turkey; the border is closed. Another shot, then another, a burst of Kalashnikov fire—and we realize we are under attack. Alaaeddin yanks me away again, hurls me into the car, and we turn back. We head toward Azaz, which is the first city the rebels captured: it’s under their complete control. We’re safe there. Amid the remains of a mosque, the charred husks of the regime’s tanks, pictures of the battle in the park at town hall. The war in Azaz is already a museum piece. Meanwhile, we have no news of Aleppo. Nor of Narciso, who is still at al-Shifa. The only news we get is from the wounded on their way to Turkey. The old city, they say, is in flames. Giulio stayed back there. So did Javier. You can hear the echo of explosions. Aleppo is on the horizon, to our right, the deep orange of sunset scored with black and red—it looks like lava. Another conclusive offensive must have begun. Alaaeddin stops near the pharmacy. He says again: “I’ll buy some water.”

  We get out too. Helmets on the hood.

  A man gives us bread.

  For a week we had only tea, in Aleppo. He gives us bread and oranges.

  We gaze at the sunset, to our right.

  Alessio is also over there.

  When a plane, suddenly, rips the air.

  And as always, there’s no place to take shelter, no basement, no wall, nothing. Nothing. Nothing. The bomb hits a house three hundred yards away. “It’s over, if only for today,” Wahed says. And he runs off to help the wounded. Another explosion: another bomb.

  On the same house.

  What can I write? Plato has already written it all. Only the dead have seen the end of war.

  they raised funds for stray dogs. To build a kindergarten in the Congo, a well in Ethiopia, to rebuild a church in Haiti. To save the wolf and the bear from extinction, and the blue-fin tuna as well, to finance cancer research, stem cell research, for a hundred polio vaccines for a hundred children in Afgha
nistan. To plant a tree in Nigeria. They told me: Berlin has heart. It’s receptive and liberal. I left some small change for the dog people. The woman asked me: “Where are you from?” I said: “From Syria.” “Oh,” she said. “Syria.” She said: “Syria must be lovely. But it’s a little difficult now, isn’t it?” she asked. Indeed—you could say that, ma’am. Sixty thousand deaths, four hundred thousand refugees, oh yes: Syria is a bit difficult at the moment. A missile can come along and incinerate you. Blood in the streets, bits of brain and guts, yes ma’am. A sniper might pick you off. “Oh,” she said. “I never imagined.” Then she said: “Just think how many stray dogs there must be.”

  And then she said to the guy next to her, the plant-a-tree guy: “Do you know she’s come from Syria?” “Oh,” the tree guy said. “I adore couscous. Have you ever tried it made with fish?” Then he questioned: “But you’re not Syrian?” “No,” I said. “I’m a journalist.” “And you’re in Syria?” “In Aleppo.” “Oh,” he said. “Aleppo.” He said: “Awesome.” That’s just what he said: “Awesome.” I told him: “Every now and then someone dies.” He said: “Better one day as a lion than a hundred days as a sheep.”

  A week ago, while I was waiting for the commander at the school that serves as the rebels’ base, as I was putting my notes in order, there were two children chasing each other around from one classroom to another. At a certain point I turned and one of them, who must have been around six years old, was standing in front of me with a .22 caliber pointed at me. The safety off. He was playing. My one hundred days as a sheep.

  I am in Berlin for a prize. The UNICEF Photo of the Year Award. Which for 2012 obviously goes to a photograph of Syria, because what could be more dramatic than Syria this year? Even though, truthfully, neither UNICEF nor the UN have ever been seen in Aleppo, and the only thing they organized for this war was Kofi Annan’s special mission: an attempt at negotiations, which began in February and was shelved in July. If you look for news of it on the Internet, the only remaining trace is how much it cost: $7,923,200. $3,022,300 went to salaries.

  The UN also sponsored this award and the prize went to Alessio. Alessio Romenzi. Someone who, typical of our generation, repaired broken-down refrigerators in a provincial life as sung by the 883; then he left Italy, and in two years found himself on the cover of Time. Alessio is blond, fair-skinned, frugal, shy, and introverted, a man of few words. A person who, if he has something to say, will send you a photo from his iPhone. “But then at night,” says Andrea Bernardi, a cameraman who has been in Syria for months, also at the front, “you hear him talking in his sleep about bloodshed and battles.” And Andrea is another one like that: he talks about everything, but never about the war. “Because they tell me I’m nuts, that it makes no sense,” he says. “That if I need the adrenaline rush, I can parachute instead. And it’s no use explaining that not only does someone have to be a witness to all this, but that I’m not a thrill-seeker. I don’t defy death: in Syria, in Iraq, in Libya, when everything might be over in a second, nothing is more powerful than life.”

  Well anyway, I’m here partly because I got an infection in Aleppo, and I’ve had a fever for a month now. And partly because these photos were the images that made the world aware of Syria: and me too. It was February 2012, and Alessio had covertly crept into Homs through the water pipes, while the city was under siege. And he took these photographs that, when you look at them all together, one after the other, make you see clearly what Syria is today. And not only Syria; you realize what freedom is, and dignity, and courage. Yet that’s not the reason why I was so moved, the reason I bought a ticket for Beirut and decided to write about Syria. The real reason, actually, is that Alessio is someone who had worked all his life, whereas I’d spent years studying for one degree, then a Master’s, then another degree, and yet I’d never understood Syria. I’d never understood a thing until I saw those photos in front of me. On the contrary. Everything I’d studied proved to be completely unfounded. Completely useless. Beginning with Kosovo, where I started out, which was supposed to be a humanitarian war, right? A just war. A war of the left. It began as a war to defend the Albanians from the Serbs, but when I got there, the problem was to defend the Serbs from the Albanians—somewhat like the peacekeeping mission in Lebanon, which had been presented to me in thirty different courses as a peacekeeping mission par excellence. The perfect operation, just the kind you should carry out, should you become secretary of the United Nations someday. You should do the very same thing, they told you: it’s so perfect, in fact, that it’s been thirty years and it’s still in place. And Lebanon too: still on the brink of collapse.

  And basically I would like to be able to write like that, and above all to live like that: like Alessio’s photos. With that immediacy, that naturalness—that depth. And I came to Berlin. Philip Roth was once asked to name the most important book he’d ever read. And he replied If This Is a Man by Primo Levi. Because after reading it, he said, no one can ever say he hadn’t been to Auschwitz. Not that he hadn’t known about Auschwitz. No, that he hadn’t been there. The power of that book—it’s the power that certain photos have. They grab you and take you there.

  Only I’m at this strange ceremony now. In the midst of this reception with wines that cost as much as it does to feed twenty families, or to pay for twenty cars to the Turkish border, and to tell the truth, it makes an impression. Because there’s this photo at the entrance, the photo that won the award, and there it is, life-size, and it’s the picture of a little child. A little girl dressed so that she looks like a doll, one of those porcelain dolls: all embroidery, a pleated skirt, a flower in her hair. And I was there when it was taken, because it was taken at al-Shifa. Her father is beside her and the little girl is holding her father’s hand. And she has this look of fear, but more than fear, bewilderment, this questioning look, and it’s directed at all of us, all of us here in front of her, this look as if to say: I don’t understand why this is happening. And plainly the picture is beautiful. And yet—it has a strange effect. And not just because of what was around her, outside the picture, forgotten now, because children aren’t frightened in Aleppo, they’re torn apart. The real photos never end up in the newspapers, so as not to be insensitive, so as not to offend people’s sensibilities, and you don’t even submit them, you keep them for yourself, the real photos, along with your ghosts, along with the words you say only at night; but no, it’s not just because of that. It has a strange effect because after this it’s time to take pictures—photos for the press releases, time to take photos with the photo—and there they all are with those stemmed wineglasses, those patent leather shoes, those ties, all so elegant, those smiles, and they have this photograph in front of them, life-size, this little girl, yet nobody tells them: She’s dead, see? Because, meanwhile, on November 22 al-Shifa was blown away, and everyone was killed. The doctors, the nurses. All of them. The patients, Osman, Zahra Bahia, everyone, and the little girl, the little girl too, there’s been no further word. She was the doctor’s daughter, that little girl with the flower in her hair, and they are all dead, blown to bits, strewn everywhere, and they are all covered with maggots now, putrefied, rotted, food for the rats, all still under there, the little girl too, where did she end up? And that’s what Aleppo is like, outside the picture, that’s how it is, where nobody cares about these little dolls in the rubble, these rag doll bodies amid the worms, the rats.

  A dog occasionally unearths a bone.

  An American approached me. An official of something or other. “It’s a tragedy,” he said. “A real tragedy.” And he stared at the photo. He said: “It’s a real tragedy. A tragedy that’s difficult to deal with, so many aspects, that ancestral hatred, and Islam, a tragedy. Problematic.” I said: “Yes.” He said: “Difficult. Unfortunately, it’s a time of crisis. How can we intervene effectively? We don’t have the resources,” he said. He said: “The wars multiply, resources shrink. In some offices we no longer even have pa
per for the printers.”

  Then he said: “It’s just a tragedy.”

  And he poured me some wine. He studied the glass against the light. A Cabernet. He said: “It’s a red that’s unmistakable.” “Yes,” I said. “Unmistakable.”

  Like the snow on the ground in front of al-Shifa.

  WINTER 2013

  Every morning, a family loads everything into a van and returns home. The one in front of me, nine children, three women, two men (two brothers who took part in a demonstration against Assad in October were killed, only a scarf of theirs remains amid the rubble), is going back to Al-Bab, near Aleppo. They will be bombed in six hours.

  But anything is better than the refugee camp at Atmeh. Even war.

  A few feet away from Turkey, with laundry hung out to dry on the barbed wire marking the border, more than thirteen thousand displaced individuals, haggard and emaciated, wander among tents that often aren’t even tents, but simply sheets of plastic, sheet metal, old flour sacks cobbled together, a tattered shirt to plug up a hole, fetid carpets on the ground, soaked by now as rain pounds on the walls and drips on them. No electricity, no gas, no water, only a fierce wind-driven snow. And for latrines, a dozen holes in the ground hidden from view by piles of bricks. The shower is a mother, a sister, who hands you a pitcher amid ankle-deep sludge. All they have is what they were wearing when they fled under mortar fire. Children drag through the mud in adults’ shoes, a sweatshirt and little else, their eyes sunken. They have no firewood either—the olive trees in the fields around here are guarded by the owners—so they burn branches, leaves, empty bottles of the mineral water a truck unloads, at dawn, along with stale bread. Sometimes a little rice. A few potatoes. There’s nothing else.