No one here in forsaken one here Aleppo expects to live – still the world sits on its hands
THERE is not a single spot in forsaken Aleppo – the most dangerous place on Earth by some distance right now – where it is possible to escape the sense of impending peril. Fatalism infects us all. No one expects to live much longer. Maybe this will be the last time I type; the last time I record what is happening to my home city.
That’s not an easy thought to contemplate with an unborn child growing inside me and an 11-month-old baby daughter sleeping at my side.
A noose has hung around us since the Syrian army and the Russians began besieging Aleppo 110 days ago and now it grows ever tighter.
Time is running out. We slide inexorably towards what seems like the end – and yet the rest of the world sits on its hands. Soon we will be overrun completely. After that, who knows?
To all of you, to the governments of the West, I issue this heartfelt plea: in the short time that is left please do something, please remember your humanity. Work towards setting up an effective aid corridor. Drop vital supplies. Please do something.
It’s too late to save ancient, once beautiful Aleppo in any physical or aesthetic sense.
Relentlessly pounded by bombs of every size and shape, it is now a morass of rubble and concrete, no stone left untouched, as if trampled upon by giants. It is flat. Nothing left. Just air. Yet even the air is polluted with chlorine gas or dust, or pungent nitroglycerin – the smell of bombs.
Everyday city noises – the rumble of traffic, car horns and voices – have been replaced by the screech of bombs and then silence. Aleppo has also become a city of darkness.
Save for a few generators that serve the one remaining hospital and a few bakeries, we have no electricity.
NEITHER do we have running water. We use primitive means to extract what we can from old wells. You can pass many days without washing your hands. Taking a shower or bath is too great a luxury. Before the bombing became so persistent and before the chlorine gas attacks started, I used to film life outside the hospital – the only one left in the city – where I live with my husband Handra, a doctor.
Now I limit myself to what happens inside, the aftermath of massacres for instance.
But mostly I am preoccupied with staying alive and more prosaic concerns.
Nappies for instance. I have one pack left and I have come to think of it as an expensive treasure. It will run out soon. Only 40 per cent of bakeries are functioning and those that are are open for only a few days a week. The quality of bread is very bad because other stuff is added to the flour to make the loaves last longer.
At the beginning of the siege, aid agencies began an allotment project, with the aim of growing vegetables to cover some of the needs of the city. It was an excellent idea.
But the allotments were lost completely when the regime made further advances.
Every time a district falls, its people flee – but have no place to go. If they head for the government-held areas they face death and if they remain they face a similar fate. There is no choice.
Food and water is not the biggest issue. It is the final push from the regime, the heavy bombardment that is causing massive casualties.
The hospital is targeted daily by shells. On Friday one fell in front of the emergency gate. An ambulance driver lost both of his legs, and another member of staff died while bringing in a child he’d found in rubble.
Yesterday a makeshift hospital was bombed and we had to move the casualties and medical staff to our hospital.
One girl lost her left eye but wanted to stay where she was because she was worried her
‘Time is running out – we slide towards the end’
mother and father wouldn’t be able to find her.
I tried to calm her down and persuaded her to stay with me or stay here – and said I would look for her mother. We could not find a bed so put her in with a wounded woman – who by some kind of miracle turned out to be her mother.
Here, tears are mixed with blood, happiness with sadness. It was like a scene from Hollywood. At the end of the day, we lay our heads on a pillow, the sounds of war planes all around. I pull the covers tight over me and cuddle up to my husband and daughter.
I mumble, pray to my god, for this war plane to leave us without bombing – or to go and bomb somewhere else. Truthfully, I don’t want to be forced to leave my city, to flee the place that I belong to.
I want to stay so my destiny will be the same as the soil. We have a cause. And we will sacrifice ourselves for this cause. I want to live in dignity in my own country.
I cannot lose hope, despite the fatalism. I tell myself only this: that there is a child inside me who will see the light in a couple of months. I have great hope that when he is born everything will be fine in Aleppo.