Everyone is waiting to see what is left of their lives there.” “My neighbors moved to central Damascus too, and they don’t know what has happened to their shops. “I don’t know what happened to my home it’s in an area to the east,” said Issam. Those same rural areas are now off-limits to many displaced families who fled their homes and are not allowed back past Syrian army checkpoints. The fighters man checkpoints, oversee bread distribution at bakeries and bring in food from rural areas nearby that are also under rebel control. All the signals have been damaged by fighting or disabled by power cuts.ĭamascus has new internal borders: Tadamun and Qadam, southern neighborhoods of the capital, are clearly in rebel control. In rebel-held eastern suburbs on the outskirts, cars ignore traffic lights. but there’s a sense that no place is really safe.” “I rent my place for 70 percent of what I used to, and that’s when I can find a tenant,” one resident said. They can’t go home.”ĭespite the flow into the city centre, still relatively safe, rents have dropped and some apartments are empty. “If you look inside, you can see whole families have moved inside. Walking to his parents’ house from work this week, he thinks some of the new homeless have found an answer: “In some shopping districts, the shutters that cover storefronts aren’t locked. “Most families I know are like this, and I want to know what will happen to the refugees who come now.” Who has room now?,” said Issam, a resident of central Damascus.
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My wife’s house is full of her aunts and uncles. “I have moved into my parents’ house along with all my siblings’ families.
But there are signs that generosity may be reaching its limits. Families and friends with homes in more central parts of Damascus have been taking in beleaguered refugees.
Whatever their political views, civilians are putting safety first. The army has warned Yarmouk’s impoverished Syrian and Palestinian residents to flee in preparation for a “cleansing” operation, as bombardment ratchets up the intensity of a week of internal clashes between Palestinians for and against Assad. The air strike, believed to have killed 25 people, was the closest yet to the city centre, little more than a mile away. On Sunday, warplanes raided the Palestinian refugee district of Yarmouk, one of the most densely populated parts of the capital, where concrete homes are piled upon each other. Now Damascus is under attack again, this time by its own people. Sacked by Mongol invaders in 1400, it was later taken by the Turks and seized more than once by European armies last century. This ancient city has survived conquests down the ages, from Alexander the Great to early Arab caliphs and Crusaders. “The sounds of all the different explosions - mortar, artillery and warplanes - suggest the frontline is getting closer,” she said. “There is fear and pain in people’s hearts, a feeling of despair and paralysis because of the enormity of the crisis,” said Suad, an architect in the Salihiya neighborhood. The same squares where President Bashar al-Assad once drew tens of thousands to cheer in support lie empty and walled off by concrete barriers up to two meters (six feet) high.ĭamascus is bracing itself after nearly two years of civil conflict as rebel forces seep deeper into the capital, and anxiety is etched across the faces of people in the city centre. Smokes rises after an explosion was heard near the Palace of Justice in central Damascus June 28, 2012.
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