In the Amiriya suburb of Aleppo, a kebab stall operates in the shadow of a building whose upper floors were sheared in half during the civil war. The stall's owner, a thin man with a white beard, tends to his grill under a tarpaulin, while nearby a young man digs through rubble for reusable limestone. These scenes of tentative recovery are repeated across Syria, where nearly 3 million people have returned after the fall of Bashar al-Assad.
Many returnees find their old neighbourhoods without water or electricity, and housing scarce. In Amiriya, Abu Arab has moved back into his family home after 13 years, a roofless building with exposed columns and flooring slabs. He sleeps there to guard bags of cement against thieves. His wife and children remain in a rented apartment outside the suburb until he finishes repairs.
Abu Arab showed a visitor his former room on the third floor, now open to the sky. The walls are black with soot and punctured with holes, including a sniper's position once used by his cousin. He described the furniture he could still picture, adding with a faint smile that it was the smallest room in the house, from before he was married.
A local politician in Aleppo, speaking on condition of anonymity, estimated that nearly two-thirds of the city lies in ruins. He said clearing the rubble alone would take years, and full reconstruction decades. All current efforts are individual, with people like Abu Arab rebuilding their own homes. The politician warned that many buildings are structurally unsound, but acknowledged that people have little choice.
