Syrian Dust: Reporting from the Heart of the War

by Francesca Borri

  Ismail Khodor al-Yosef is seventy-five years old; his heart is failing following a myocardial infarction, his bones sculpt his skin like a bas-relief, and he is lying on the ground waiting to die. His wheezing gasps pierce the thick air of early afternoon like broken bottle shards. It is not one of those deaths that you get used to in war: abrupt, terse, a bullet and you’re gone, no—it’s a harsh, protracted death, agonizing, the death of a man clinging to life, his eyes doggedly fixed on the light. He was the park’s watchman. He has no word of his children, all of them refugees. And lying on the ground, his wife behind him like a Pietà who will never have her Michelangelo, he stares solely at the light, in the tomb of a man whose name nobody knows, as he too slowly, simply, passes on.

  aleppo is starving, stricken by a typhus epidemic, people are selling everything they own in the streets. It seems like everyone has emptied his living room: teapots, TVs, telephones, tablecloths, light switches, anything and everything—or more precisely, bits and pieces of anything and everything. Because Aleppo is nothing but rubble, so someone sells you a stroller, another the wheels. Ibtisam Ramdan, twenty-five years old, lives with tuberculosis and three children in a section of drainage pipe below the riverbank, with chicken coop mesh for a door, a paint drum for a stove, and those three children crying and coughing in a dark, dank corner, coughing so hard and crying so desperately that they gasp for breath. On a scrap of cardboard, the remains of rice. They don’t have dishes, and in any case, there’s nothing edible around here right now. And like them, dozens of others. The entire riverbank is riddled with clefts and hollows; they aren’t shacks, they aren’t caves, they’re nothing but pieces of things—sheet metal, wooden planks, plastic tarps—aggregations of pieces of things. At some point you’re simply inside, among women, children, old people maimed and speechless, those toothless mouths. You pass an inch from them and they don’t even look at you, faces blackened from the coal stoves, skin covered with infections. Even the cats are sick. A plane roars above and in your head. You try to push open a door and discover a man dying of leukemia; you try another one and find a man skinning a rat; then another door to find only this girl: blank, motionless as if absent. You attempt to ask a question, and your interpreter breaks down in tears and says, “I’m sorry, but I have no more words, I have no more words for all this.”

  Aleppo is starving, so devastated that the missiles strike, and people stay put and live among the rubble. Like in Ard al-Hamra, 117 dead, 17 of whom are still under there, scattered beneath you. The living emerge before you, one by one, from staircases, collapsed ceilings, caved-in floors, stumps of supporting columns, a carpet hanging from the blades of a fan. All they have is what they have with them. Fouad Zytoon, thirty-six, shows you a photo on his Nokia: the head pitched on a shelf is his daughter. They insist on telling you all the details. “Do you want the names of the victims?” they ask you, “I have the full list,” and you’re ashamed to say it, but no, you don’t need the names, just the total number, besides it’s late, and Aleppo is a thousand stories and this is only one line of your article; it’s late, really, and besides you’re tired, and dusty, and you’re terrified by the aircraft over your head, which keeps circling and circling and circling, the pilot deciding whom to bomb, maybe he’s choosing you, so no, all you need is the number, thanks, that’s all: 117, seventeen of whom were not recovered. And the young man looks at you, point-blank, and says, “You see? There’s nothing left of our lives, not even a name.”

  Aleppo seems normal. And the journalists are gone. Grass has grown among the ruins, the war has become the city’s face. Taxi drivers see you with the Nikon around your neck, and they stop you, as if you’re a tourist. They ask you: “Want to go to the front?” But then you run into a little girl, smiling, blond, and she snaps to attention and gives the military salute. Then you come across a street cleaner and an electrician repairing an antenna, and suddenly, like the crack of a whip, their bodies drop. Hit by a sniper. Then as the plane appears, disappears, reappears, levels out, climbs again, unidentified dead bodies lie at the entrance to the hospital and people pass by, lift the sheet slightly, make sure it’s not a brother, a cousin. Then you go into a playground, while maybe the pilot is choosing you, while maybe it’s your turn, and among the swings there’s a sleeping bag, and inside the sleeping bag there’s a boy who is purplish, a hole in his temple, and while these are the cruelest moments, you look around, and everywhere around you, devastated by artillery, there are only houses with one floor inhabited, another floor mangled, a charred tricycle hanging in mid-air, in the wind, waiting, a lamp, a curtain swaying, fossil remains of normal lives. Because Aleppo seems normal, but then you walk into a school, a classroom, children bent over their books in silence, and the teacher shows you their drawings—“My best friend”—and one is a child amid the rubble, another a child missing a leg, one is a sheet of paper, red, all red, a sheet sodden with blood, while maybe it’s your turn, now, and all you can do is huddle there, along with everything you’ve left unsaid in your life, the times you weren’t capable of loving, the times you weren’t capable of risking, the words that remained caught in your fingers, the times that . . . now it’s too late though, it’s too late for everything, and life holds a fierce beauty now that maybe it’s your turn.

  Until excitedly, then, a man comes, and announces: Sheik Said has been bombed. And it’s tasteless to admit it, but—it’s hard, but it’s an infinite relief. Sheik Said: not you. An infinite relief. Knowing that someone is dead. And it’s as if this war has robbed you not of humanity, but has suddenly and still more violently, as if—as if—as if it’s left you naked in front of the mirror, exposed for what you really are, because you’re all that matters in your life, it bleeds to admit it, but this war hasn’t robbed you of anything, of anything, your humanity, your diverse selves, simply—never existed. All that matters is you. And what kind of a life is a life like that?

  The reporters have gone away, one by one. Yes, Aleppo seems normal. The front, however, is still here. You know you’re close to it when a procession of Syrians fleeing in the opposite direction to yours begins. Dozens of vehicles profiled against a sky seething with explosions, vans loaded with everything you can think of: it’s not exactly the image you’d associate with “liberation.” The refugees take everything with them, refrigerators, sofas, even potted plants, because otherwise it will all be stolen. The rebels empty out the shops. They strip the machinery in the factories. They sell the marbles, the inlaid wood window frames. They sell the blankets, the carpets. The dishes. Everything. That’s how the front advances, city to city, district to district; it advances like a tsunami, and in its wake nothing is left, only children playing ball in the dust. The regime bombs everything that’s bombable, and the rebels drive around in their jeeps to arrest, torture, and sometimes execute on the spot anyone suspected of collusion with the regime—or anything—at their discretion.

  Shabia.

  After the fighting, the bombings, it’s always this way. After the bombings, the looting. And after the looting, feuding among the rebels for control of the ruins. “It’s all just stories made up by the journalists!” their spokesman challenges me as we make our way through a market. Meanwhile, he buys some rice clearly labeled: “Aid. Not for sale.”

  Even humanitarian aid is resold here.

  The Syrians are resolutely against the regime, but also, and increasingly, against the rebels accused of having dragged Aleppo into a war they were never prepared to fight, with their tuna can grenades. And now accused of looting and extortion as well, and in particular of having handed the country over to Jabhat al-Nusra. To Al Qaeda’s men.

  They came here from Sudan, from Somalia, from the United States. From Belgium. From Bosnia and Sweden. From Yemen. From Indonesia, Ireland, and Romania. With their experience, with their sophisticated weapons, they altered the balance of the war and prevented a defeat that seemed certain. But they also altered the balance of
Syria, a secular country. In support of Islam.

  They continue to be a minority, according to estimates. They continue to make up about 5 percent of the rebels. But they also continue to be the most highly trained, the most well equipped: the ones who decide. And most importantly of all, they continue to be inaccessible. Not much is known about them. They don’t speak to journalists. They run things by means of fatwas posted on the Internet. No one knows who issues them, and in the name of what authority. But it’s well known how they’re carried out. Because every so often you’ll be walking in Aleppo, and you’ll see a black jeep standing at the curb. Armored. The windows dark. And then a man. You see this man in front of you suddenly grabbed from behind, hit in the head. Thrown into the jeep. And to this day no one has ever returned to tell what happens next.

  And not much more is known about them.

  “But don’t write that we are not democratic,” a Saudi in their headquarters warns me. “If you have questions, you can find everything on our Facebook page.”

  The only certainty is that the Islamists don’t have anti-aircraft protection either.

  To reassure us, they stand there with their Dushkas, the slings pulled back, pointing toward the sky. But the only anti-aircraft is rain clouds. As Wael says: “The only refuge is luck.” He’s eight years old. And he goes back to playing ball, while every so often something around him explodes. Explodes and topples.

  The Syrians stare at you, dazed, standing at the roadside like a tableau of Armageddon. But then a bus passes, and in that instant you think: like that one, that time, the one we hid behind, that time when there were snipers everywhere, and grenades. That bus: and that little boy, who had almost made it there, he too almost safe—but it’s only an instant. And you keep moving. Only you duck into a house. Any house. And to the right, in the shadows, to the right there’s a basement. A basement like that one—they were bombing, remember? They were bombing everything, and that man, when he gave you his place so you could stay alive and tell the world. Remember? When he said to you: “Your life is more important than mine.” And then at the corner of al-Shifa. The asphalt barely buckled. But there were two craters, two bombs—where Alessio nearly died, where Narciso nearly died, and that wall in front—there was a corpse there, and a mortar—remember? A mortar that struck it dead-on, that disintegrated it, can’t you hear it? There’s a dead body in the air and at every corner, every corner. You walk along and try to keep moving, but at every corner, every corner of the entire city, there’s another city behind the city, an echo behind every voice, a corpse behind every living being and this dust, these ashes, this memorial to an unknown civilian, when suddenly a child appears and clings to your arm and screams, “I’ve lost them all!” He screams it out, “I’ve lost them all!” and he tugs at you, and screams, and begs you, “I’ve lost them all.” There, where a hand emerged once, and you feel like you’re falling, while everything around you, suddenly, everything in front of you is a blur, fading in and out. “I’ve lost them all!” And he won’t go away, he won’t go away, he clings to you, “I’ve lost them all!” There, remember? There, where a head surfaced, where you thought they were flakes of plaster but they were slivers of human skull. There, the last time you saw Abdallah, can’t you hear it? The first time you said I love you.

  Until, exhausted, now gray with dust, you crawl out from among the usual sandbags to dodge yet another sniper. “How long before we get there?” you ask, nerves shattered. “Is it still far?” And it’s only then that you understand this war: when you’re in the middle of nowhere, and Alaa tells you: “We’re already here.”

  Because all that remains of Aleppo’s ancient souk, the bazaar—the most enchanting place, the iconic picture postcard of Syria with its tumult of voices, its stories and colors, the flurry of life—all that remains is this: rubble. Your feet sink up to your ankles in twisted spikes of rusty iron, glass, metal. The shutters are ripped open and riddled with bullets. Dust and stones. Nothing more. Truly nothing more. The rebels lead you from aisle to aisle, shop to shop. “This is the cotton market,” they explain. “This is the goldsmiths’ market, to the right are spices, back there silver.” But the bazaar is nothing but rubble. “This is where brides come to buy their wedding dresses,” and they point to a remnant of structure, “here their rings.” Verbs in the present indicative: and all you see is . . . nothing. Here not even a mouse is stirring.

  Iyad is thirty-two years old and has a fragile look despite his bulky muscles; he’s a carpenter. “My workshop is the one in the corner,” he says, even though there’s only a collapsed ceiling and the remains of a wall in the corner, and even though he now works as a sniper, two hours a day, every day. He sleeps here, a mattress and a blanket beside the skeleton of a door. His brother is dead, his father is dead, his best friend is dead, everyone is dead, his two-year-old daughter is dead, a photo of her body lying in blood on his cell phone, and now he’s a sniper, simply that, two hours a day behind a barrier of sand bags; you look through the opening from which he shoots and the helmets of the last soldiers he hit are still there, in the middle of the street. Any question you ask, Iyad has the same answer. “How does it feel the first time?” you ask him, and he shows you his daughter’s body. “What goes through your mind as a man lies gasping in your viewfinder?” and he shows you his daughter’s body. You ask him: “When all this is over, what will you do? And what will Syria be like?” and there’s only his daughter’s body, only the blood. Until he says: “Anything else you want to know?” puts the phone in his pocket, and goes back to shooting.

  They’re seventeen, eighteen, twenty years old, with those transparent eyes that you can look through to see the devastation behind them. They’ve been fighting here for months; the clock on the wall is stopped at 5:47 p.m. It was September 25, and Aleppo was an inferno, an explosion every few seconds, when the old city, a UNESCO Cultural Heritage of Humanity site, was engulfed in flames. They roam through the remains of the disaster with their Kalashnikovs, wearing T-shirts and Simpsons socks under their boots. They are the new masters of Aleppo, young kids who scarcely have diplomas, scarcely trades—but they have Kalashnikovs. They’ve gotten a whiff of power at this point and they won’t go back to being nobodies, as they were in the old days of Assad. They’ve set up camp here with their portable stoves and sleeping bags, as if they were visiting on an InterRail pass. Talking to them is useless, you hardly get a word, hardly any reaction. They control every corner. Every vestige of wall has its checkpoint, its guards. They patrol the streets of an imaginary city. “This is the best tailor shop in Aleppo,” and there’s nothing there but a pile of jagged sheet metal that’s under sniper fire.

  And since you know Aleppo, when you come across a swarm of insects on a street corner like this, you know there are human remains under the pile.

  And at some point, in a burst of mortar, something golden still glints. It’s a chandelier. Curious, you duck your head, squeeze between the sandbags, wriggle inside, and you find yourself among dozens of copies of the Koran, all riddled with bullets: it’s the old mosque.

  What’s left of it.

  The walls defaced by artillery fire, the candelabra trashed. Engravings and decorations razed, the shades of red on the carpet now tinged with blood. And hung between the pillars, dark plastic sheeting: Assad’s snipers are on the other side of the courtyard. Because Aleppo’s war is a war of the past century; it’s trench warfare. Rebels and loyalists are so close they shout insults at one another as they shoot. Your first time at the front, you can’t believe it: bayonets you’ve only seen in history books, which you thought hadn’t been used since Napoleon’s reign. Now war is waged with drones; only here it’s fought inch by inch, with a blade strapped to the barrel, rusted with blood, because it’s a street-to-street battle, hand-to-hand combat, with stray dogs outside scuffling over a human bone. These young men are praetorians of an empire of death; they salute you with the victory sign as i
f they were posed in front of the Coliseum for a souvenir photograph, but all they stand before are demolished minarets, tangles of sheet metal. Then they stop the photographer: “Here, it is forbidden to enter,” they say. “The area beyond is reserved for women.” They stand guard over a hallucination, over the charred remains of things beyond recognition, among the ghosts of brides—here, where everything is more sacred than life.

  It’s like the blasted landscape in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. The muezzin doesn’t even summon people to prayer. He’s out looking for blood donors for victims injured by the last missile. Only a hail of Kalashnikovs jolts you awake when they start shooting again outside. It’s the only sign of life. Out there, some are still alive. Some haven’t yet died.

  in the thronged alleyways of Bustan al-Qasr, one of Aleppo’s poorest neighborhoods, they have to point him out to you three times. You would never recognize him, here in the crowd, even with a photograph of him in hand. He looks like any other Syrian: black hair, black eyes, and mustache. Small. He’s thirty years old. In his white shirt, he has the ordinary look of a provincial clerk of the seventies.