Aleppo - In the rubble-strewn
square outside Aleppo's ancient citadel and under the scorched
vaults of its covered souk, workmen are starting to mend the
destruction of a war that has shattered the Syrian city's
priceless historical heritage.
About 20 volunteers sorted through the debris in Khan
al-Gumruk, one of the souk's great medieval inns, piling up the
stones from a fallen archway that can be used in its
restoration.
"I'm a son of this district. We're all from Aleppo and our
priority is to work here. We've been at it for a month in this
area since the fighters left," said Mohannad Hassari, a bearded
25-year-old.
About 30 percent of the Old City suffered "catastrophic"
damage in the fighting that ended there in December, said
Maamoun Abdulkarim, Syria's director general of antiquities.
Speaking to Reuters after his first visit to the city since
the rebels were forced to surrender there, he said officials
were working on a plan to save what they can.
The Aga Khan Development Network's cultural arm, which was
behind a multi-million dollar restoration and urban development
project around the Citadel and nearby souks a decade ago, said
it was also looking at possible rehabilitation of the area.
Aleppo is one of the Middle East's great historic centres,
its ancient Citadel and medieval mosques and souks among the
region's finest buildings and a source of national pride - and
tourist revenue - for Syria.
Today, the lingering smell of burning is everywhere in its
Old City: under collapsed domes, in the soot-blackened souk and
in the cracked masonry, broken glass and discarded bullet
casings that litter the famous Umayyad Mosque.
A street vendor in gaudy folk costume accosted customers
with paper cups of cardamom-spiced tea and coffee outside the
Citadel. But the area's mood remained sombre compared with its
bustling pre-war gaiety.
Many of the cafes that lined the area, in old buildings with
arched facades, have been wrecked but a group of soldiers sat in
one, warming their hands around a stove that billowed black
smoke and listening to mournful Arabic music.
However, people are returning, some to live where homes are
still habitable and others to salvage possessions from their
shops. Many more simply want to enjoy places that were too
dangerous to visit during the fighting.
In the Umayyad Mosque's courtyard a group of teenage boys
huddled for a selfie in front of walls so peppered with bullets
that it was hard to find a smooth patch of stone larger than the
palm of one's hand. The 11th century minaret was destroyed by
shelling in 2013.
Under the arches inside the mosque, an old man in a bulky
greatcoat, woollen scarf wrapped around his head, stood sobbing
in the dark near a shrine, a barricade of oil drums and sandbags
still looming behind it.
FRONTLINE
When fighting erupted in Aleppo in 2012, a year after the
rising against President Bashar al-Assad had begun elsewhere in
Syria, rebels took its eastern districts and much of the Old
City.
Intense clashes in 2012 and 2013 made the souks and the area
around the Umayyad Mosque one of the fiercest front lines in
Syria, pounded by artillery and air strikes.
Under the painted cupola of the Mamlouk throne hall in the
Citadel, a heavy machine gun on a stand pointed towards a window
and out across a wasteland of smashed buildings.
The Citadel, a dramatic fortress on a hill, stands at the
centre of Aleppo, overlooking the city. It was held by the
government but surrounded by rebel territory. The area to its
south and west, near the Umayyad Mosque, is where the Old City
suffered most damage.
One stretch of the covered souk is now a dark tunnel,
pierced by beams of daylight from roof shafts, its entrance a
mass of stones and its shops clogged with rubble and weeds.
Oil drums and sandbags, topped by a cushion in traditional
fabric, gave fighters a firing position that commanded the souk
corridor leading towards the Citadel.
"The memory of Aleppo is very symbolic," said Abdulkarim,
Syria's antiquities director general. Restoration would meet the
requirements of international bodies, he added, and no modern
buildings would be put up in the Old City.
He said preservation of Syria's heritage should be treated
separately from the political issues surrounding the war.
RESTORATION
Both sides in the continuing war have accused each other of
targeting or damaging historical sites, which range from ancient
cities, temples, mosques and castles to the more recent relics
of Ottoman rule.
"Everybody realises we are working in difficult
circumstances," said Ali Esmaiel, head of the Aga Khan Cultural
Service in Syria, alluding to the fighting and other obstacles
to saving Aleppo's heritage.
However, he said the charity was looking at a framework for
the rehabilitation of the Old City and conservation of its
historic monuments "as conditions and resources allow".
The charity worked from 1999 to 2012 on restoring the area
around the Citadel, transforming it into a popular haunt for
Aleppans and tourists and the site of concerts and other
cultural activities.
But the fighting caused most to flee and its shops are now
closed. At the Bab Antakia souk, Heitham Ghanam, a middle-aged
trader in women's fashion accessories, was clearing rubble from
his shop with his wife and daughter.
"We are waiting for the electricity to come back and for
others to open their stores before we do," he said.
In Baron's Hotel, where Agatha Christie and T.E. Lawrence
stayed, the elegant tiles of the grand lobby, smoking room and
bar are hard to see in the unlit interior.
The only guests are three families of refugees from eastern
Aleppo districts damaged in the fighting, one living in a room
once occupied by Iraq's King Faisal.
At the top of the sloping causeway leading up to the
Citadel's entrance, wide enough for horses to ride abreast, four
soldiers scrolled through their phones under posters of Assad.
But many residents look forward to a time when the soldiers
manning gun positions in the Citadel's museum and stringing
laundry between the pillars of its Ayubid Mosque can be replaced
by tourists.