In Idlib, a protester still going strong

MAARET AL NUMAN: Nearly eight years after he joined his very irst protest against Syria’s regime, Bahr Nahhas still demonstrates every week with unwaning energy, even if the slogans have changed.

“” Words can be stronger than weapons ,” Nahhas said, as he prepared signs in Arabic and neat, block-lettered English.

,” Nahhas said, as he prepared signs in Arabic and neat, block-lettered English.

Just like he has since 2011, the 45-year-old tilemaker carefully paints clever slogans on protest banners before each Friday rally in his rebel-held hometown of Maaret Al Numan, in Syria’s northwest Idlib.

But their tone has evolved, as popular demonstrations spiralled into active conlict, foreign powers got involved, and the area around him became home to diehard militants.

In his very irst protest in March 2011, Nahhas demanded “freedom and dignity” in solidarity with other cities rising up against President Bashar Al Assad’s regime.

“I’ll never forget those days for the rest of my life,” said the tall, olive-skinned father of ive.

Protesters would kiss and hug each other, Nahhas recalled, exhilarated by the prospect of speaking out freely against Syria’s iron-isted regime.

“We hoped to bring down the regime in just a few days or weeks,” he said, his hair and beard greying.

Instead, a drawn-out conlict has seen Russia-backed regime troops slowly roll back rebel and militant gains nationwide, until this summer they started to mass around the Idlib region.

That prompted residents of Idlib, including Nahhas, to protest once more in order to head off the assault. “By going down to the streets, we are telling people that we are a coexisting, peaceful people asking for freedom and dignity,” he said.

For Nahhas, hardliners do not represent all of Idlib.

“We have gone out to protest again to tell the world that we are not terrorists,” Nahhas said, wearing a short-sleeved stripy white and black shirt.

Most days of the week, he makes loor tiles, scooping a grey mixture into a square mould with large yellow gloves, before pushing each into a small oven.

But with the week’s end approaching, he left his workshop to prepare banners for the town’s Friday protests.

Inside a building still under construction, he knelt over a long white sheet, brushing curly Arabic letters across it in thick black paint.