Caught in the middle of a maelstrom

Aleppo resident reflects on life on the front line

ALEPPO // Najah and her 80- year- old husband Mohammed can barely believe the fighting is over in their district, where they spent years on one of Aleppo’s most dangerous front lines.

Their home in Syria’s ruined second city, where pro-government forces have now retaken most neighbourhoods held by rebels since 2012, sits on a thoroughfare that became known as “the street of death”. “We were caught between the two sides, but we survived,” says 65-year-old Najah as she finishes the housework in their modest first-floor flat.

Bisecting Midan, in government-held west Aleppo, and the previously rebel- held Bustan Al Basha neighbourhood, their street was the scene of some of the fiercest battles of Syria’s fiveyear civil war.

Their quarter was finally retaken by government forces as part of a Russia- backed offensive, launched last month, to regain Aleppo, but the elderly couple still flinch at the memory of the shelling, air raids and hunger they endured for years.

“Shots were being fired from here and here,” Najah says, gesturing to either side of the street.

Surrounding their block of flats, which miraculously sustained only minor damage over the years, is a scene of devastation. Most buildings have collapsed, pavements are covered in rubble and metal debris litters the streets.

Walls are black with soot and satellite dishes are pockmarked with bullet holes.

“Each day, a shell would land and the doors would shake,” says Najah. “We couldn’t move and no one came to give us any news. We waited for death.”

The war reached Syria’s former economic powerhouse in 2012.

“Suddenly, we were caught in the middle,” says Mohammed, whose family was split, with his sons’ house, where his six grandchildren lived, ending up behind rebel lines.

Worse than the violence was the crushing hunger Najah and Mohammed suffered each day.

Like residents of east Aleppo, who lived under government siege for months, the couple were unable to get food because of the fighting.

“We went out very rarely,” she says. “We ate what I had saved in the house until that ran out then we had to eat the weeds we had planted.”

A pinch of salt, she says, at least gave the near-calorie-free plants a little taste.

Evenings were spent in sombre contemplation of loved ones scattered elsewhere in the city. When their son was wounded and had to move his family to another neighbourhood after another advance, they were left with no way of knowing his fate.

“As night fell, all we did was remember the times when the family was together,” Najah says.

‘ Each day a shell would land and the doors would shake Najah resident of Aleppo