Tablecloth shop shines in Aleppo souq rubble
aleppo — It used to be one of the most vibrant marketplaces in the Syrian city of Aleppo, but today, the bombed-out streets of Khan Al Harir are home to a solitary shop selling tablecloths.
Mohammad Shawash’s partly restored storefront stands amid a sea of smashed concrete and debris-laden roads.
The 62-year-old with a snowwhite beard and glasses decided to return to the historic souq five months ago to reopen the shop he had managed for years.
“I cried when I first came back. I found total destruction all around me. The stores were destroyed, the streets covered in rubble and rocks, and the buildings collapsed,” he told Khan Al Harir, or the Silk Market, lies in the celebrated Old City of central Aleppo, a Unesco world heritage site.
Its historic covered market was the largest in the world, with some 4,000 shops and 40 caravanserais in a labyrinth of alleyways selling everything from home ware to artisanal products.
For four years, the Old City was on the front line of battles between government troops in the city’s west and rebels in the east.
Much of the Old City remains scarred by fighting, but part of the Souk Al Jumruk marketplace reopened last month.
Shawash, a native of Khan Al Harir, was one of them.
“I was raised here and I used to open my shop from 7am until late at night. I knew everyone around me,” he said. When he returned earlier this year to check on his shop, he found a wall had collapsed, the goods were either gone or burned, and the streets were eerily empty.
For a week, Shawash piled bricks, cement, and stone in a small wheelbarrow and navigated it through the ravaged streets to repair his shop by hand. He has since resumed his daily ritual, laying out multicoloured plastic tablecloths and mats for display, many of them still wrapped in protective plastic. Shawash now sits down on a plastic chair and waits for customers, his prayer beads in hand.