DAMASCUS
“WAIT, LOOK, here is another one!”
We walked gingerly to where Hassan was calling us. In his right hand was a rag, and in his left, what seemed to be a human bone. We were in Hassan’s home district of Tadamon, an area in Damascus that held, and still harbours, some of the ousted Bashar al-Assad regime’s darkest secrets.
In 2022, horrifying footage, as reported in The Guardian, emerged of a 2013 massacre in the district―where blindfolded detainees were led to a brutal death in an execution pit. The jarring visuals were leaked by a rookie in the Syrian military who chanced upon the video and decided to speak out about the atrocities of the regime. The regime stayed in power until rebel forces, headed by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), overthrew Assad in a lightning offensive in December.
We asked some residents where the suspected mass graves were. “There’s one here,” they would say, pointing to our feet. “One there,” pointing about 30 metres away. “One behind that building,” gesturing towards a destroyed building just across the street. “There are mass graves all around us.”
The veil of death and destruction shadows Damascus even after its perpetrators fled. There were piles of rubble and mud perhaps four metres high, allegedly created by the Assad regime to hide their bloody activities. Hidden among the piles were bones. Residents I met were convinced that under the mounds of mud there are many, many more.
“We would sometimes see a big bus full of people being brought to the area,” says Hassan. “In about three hours, we would smell burning flesh.”
Horrors past: A man in Damascus emptying a bag of bones.
My colleague mentioned the footage we had seen on The Guardian website, and one of the men we were with said he knew the exact location where the video was filmed. We made our way through winding paths, laced on each side by old or destroyed buildings.
As we approached our destination, I noticed a boy, no older than 13, playing on a raised platform, seemingly the ground floor of a ruined building. The buildings in the area were skeletal now―just columns and open spaces, devoid of doors or windows. As he overheard our conversation, he picked something up off the ground and held it up.
“Look, bone.”
Making our way up the dusty stairs, we found it was not the only one. Someone picked up what was clearly part of a human jaw with two molars. They placed it on what looked like a hip bone. I knelt down and took a photo.
All the people with us took it upon themselves to show us all the evidence of the killings they were aware of for over a decade but dared never whisper a word about. Someone brought a piece of vertebrae; another was holding up what he believed was a portion of a skull. One of them emptied a whole bag of bones onto the floor, asking us to photograph it.
Later, our fixer, Moe Nejim, told me that one of the children had mentioned the bag being a collection of bones he found while playing among the destruction.
A human jaw placed on what looks like a hip bone.
Moe, too, has his tale of horror from Tadamon. A resident of Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp, right next to Tadamon, he told me that as an 18-year-old he had been taken by the army to serve as a bargaining chip for the release of an alleged regime spy at the camp, who had been taken hostage by the Free Syrian Army.
Moe said he was kept in detention for 58 days in the basement of a building. On the back of his hand is a scar left by his hostage-keepers who stubbed out their cigarettes on him. Right above it, “2013” is tattooed in Arabic―the year of his capture.
Six days before his release, Moe was taken to another room and told that he was going to be killed. While waiting, he heard an unusual number of gunshots―maybe one every ten seconds. Later, an officer persuaded the other guards to keep Moe alive for a potential exchange deal.
Nine years later, while reading the Guardian article, he realised that the day he had heard all those gunshots was the day of the Tadamon massacre. He told me that he, too, was surprised at the vastness of death in the area.
Right next to the piles of mud suspected to be mass graves was a playground. It is hard for me to even begin to grasp how children perceive death―children who have spent their entire lives in a neighbourhood where detention and death were ever present.
The sense of dread, however, is gradually dissipating.
“Now, my fear is gone, thank God,” says Hassan, his voice filled with a newfound lightness. “The repression and torture won’t return, I think.”
People are still reeling from shocking discoveries, but the atmosphere is also filled with hope and festivity. A day earlier, I had been walking in Al-Hamidiyah Souq, looking for Bakdash ice cream. As I traversed the large crowds and narrow paths, I caught glimpses of the new flag sewn onto winter beanies, and many stalls selling souvenirs with the flag on it. Mobile vendors had the flag perched on top of their cart.
When I got to the ice cream shop, I saw four staff members, each with the flag sewn onto his shirt, preparing their product while loudly singing the “Syria, Paradise” song, one that was widely linked to the country’s revolution. As they kept beat with their pestles, many customers joined in with the singing, some filming, some clapping along.
Despite this sense of relief and victory that prevails throughout the city, many Syrians are worried about what new governance and their policies will look like.
On December 19, about 250 people gathered near the capital’s Umayyad Square for a ‘Secular Youth Protest’, holding up the new Syrian flag and chanting in unison for a secular state. The demonstration came after HTS spokesperson Obeida Arnaout’s controversial remarks on the role of women, including casting doubt on whether women could take up judicial positions. He mentioned that the biological and psychological makeup of women did not align with some roles, like being in charge of the defence ministry.
I met Razan, a dental technician, who was holding up a huge painting of a girl with a Syrian flag painted on her cheek. “It symbolises a free woman,” she explained. As we talked, the crowd erupted in chants of “One, the people of Syria are one.”
There were a few rebel members in the vicinity, but none of them seemed to involve themselves much in the demonstration.
Lana, a third-year architecture student at Damascus University, said she felt “so happy” after the regime’s overthrow. But she was still worried about what will follow. “We’re afraid of the unknown,” she said.
Many people I talked to told me that the uncertainty of the future worried them. Hanan was one of them. “The most important thing for me as a woman is to know our role,” says Hanan. “We want to be hand in hand with men to build a new Syria.”
The overthrow of the government has begun to soothe the scars of the past for many. When I was at Tadamon, I met a soft-spoken man, perhaps in his late 70s or early 80s. As we were talking to him, someone mentioned that he had spent 13 years in Saydnaya prison after being accused of being part of the Muslim Brotherhood.
“Tell them about what you saw,” someone urged.
“Why? So I can be taken again?”
His hands were shaking, whether from age or fear, I could not tell. He was with us throughout, his eyes constantly scanning the ground for the remnants of human life.
As we were leaving, one person said, “Come on, take his photo!”
I lifted my camera. At first, he mumbled, averting his eyes. Someone placed a hand of encouragement on his back.
“The regime is gone,” they kept repeating.
The man lifted his eyes, ready to pose.
“His name is Abdul Rahman.”
The wrinkles next to his eyes creased as Abdul smiled.