I went into Syria with a concept of war as something that happens far away, in deserts, in jungles, between two opposing military forces. Images of total war à la Saving Private Ryan ran through my head as I approached the border from Turkey. Would there be just a storm of bullets and bombs? Would I need to run and duck for cover? Would I actually need the body armour I wore?
Instead of finding a chaotic wasteland, I found that we needed gas. We stopped and bought some from a guy in a garage alongside the road. A cigarette pinched tightly between his lips, he filled us up from dirty two-litre bottles as he joked with my driver. We stopped and changed-up some money; we needed some cash so we could go to the crowded restaurant next door and buy sandwiches and cold sodas for the drive to Aleppo.
My goal here was not to be a ‘combat photographer’ by any means. My vision was to make portraits of the people affected by and living with this conflict on a daily basis. It was not hard to find people who could share stories of dead relatives, or to find destroyed environments to shoot in. Every street in Aleppo has at least one bombed-out apartment building or walls riddled with bullet holes. And while the war was never out of sight or mind, I was struck more by how normal everyday life seemed in the midst of the carnage. Amid the events that cause this damage, life goes on, and people continue about their business. They can’t do anything else.
I spend a night at the house of my interpreter, Abu Ahmad, in the country. His family owns a small farm just outside of town. They grow olives and pistachios, and make olive oil. We sat up that night eating and talking. I met his family. I walked through their pistachio orchards and felt like I was taking a walk in the Pennsylvania countryside. Until the fighter jet came. I could hear it prowling in circles above us. You see them during the day, people gathering around, pointing them out, wondering where they’ll strike. If you’re in a car, you pull over and watch until it drops its payload and you can move on. One day, I sat with a farmer and drank fresh cow’s milk as a helicopter fired flaring rockets at a target a few miles away. We seemed so removed.
So when we heard the jet circling, I wasn’t particularly startled or afraid – until the sky ripped open with the extended braaap of a heavy cannon. Abu Ahmad’s family farm is located less than three miles away from Aleppo International Airport, where opposition forces besieged government forces. The jet fired several times from directly above us towards the airport. It was the most terrifying sound I’ve ever heard. And then it was gone, and we went back to our meal of fresh olives, hummus, and makdous.
We sat on the back porch enjoying the night air, when the missiles started to fly, piercing the cloudy night sky with long jets of fire. Abu Ahmad told me that the regime forces launch them from an air force base in central Aleppo. I lost count after 50, arcing soundlessly to the north, toward Azaz, Marea, Minnagh, and elsewhere. With a photographer’s eye, I can see the beauty – how the light threads through the clouds as I frame my shot. But then I realise, guiltily, what those missiles are actually going to do.
People warn you not to walk down this street or alley, because snipers can see you there
You do not even hear the shelling after a while, unless it is close enough to affect you. I had dinner at an activist’s house one evening. Eating family style and chatting, we gathered around a football match on satellite television. A whistle-whoosh sound started to drill down, distinguishing itself from all the other shelling in the background. We all paused, eyes wide, looking at one another, wondering, is this the one that will hit us? When we heard the explosion a few blocks down we all smiled in relief but, again, I felt guilty, because the explosion may have ended someone else’s casual evening.
This contrast between everyday life and instant death and violence is never far from sight. A new clothing store opens next to a building destroyed by shelling. A street strewn with rubble holds a squeaky clean, bright-white pharmacy with an immaculate green sign and stacks of medications, all of which are too expensive for most people to buy.
The pharmacist keeps a good stock, but must risk his life to cross over to government territory to buy more. And even then he cannot get hold of some common medications.
Before I went, a more seasoned conflict photographer had told me you can edge up to the line and keep as much distance as you want (as long as the line does not move), so you can be in relative safety. And that turned out to be true. Most of Aleppo that I was able to visit is opposition-held territory they call the ‘free areas’. Areas still held by the government are called ‘occupied territory’ on this side of the line. Within these free areas I live and move while I am here. And the people of Aleppo live there, too. Just like people live in your hometown. They shop for food or go to a restaurant. Every day I buy coffee, and my crew buys cigarettes. When the car breaks down, we need to get it fixed.
This is not the anarchy that I thought it would be. FSA guys direct traffic. Vendors line up along the streets selling vegetables; butcher stores are full of fresh meat. I even see a cotton candy vendor and an ice-cream parlour. In the middle of the destroyed Bustan al Pasha area, not 500m from the front line, a group of boys play football in the cleared yard of their bombed-out school. Down the street a widow rummages through the rubble of a building that seems to be spilling its guts onto the street in an attempt to find something of value to sell so that she can feed her kids.
People warn you not to walk down this street or alley, because snipers can see you there. When I go to the front lines, I crawl through holes in buildings, running behind buses crashed crazily, blocking snipers’ views, until I can peek out from the fighting holes and see Government positions only 50m or 100m away. And despite the ongoing potshots, the fighters offer you tea, or make you have lunch with them. And as you talk, you again realise that you no longer hear the bullets cracking overhead unless they are close enough to affect you, and you look around and people are laughing, eating, watching TV, all the while carrying weapons. A game show blares as the watch changes and a new group of fighters goes out to relieve the guys on the line.
It is quiet at the hospital, and they invite me upstairs. I see a man who has had a heart attack
I was present at the funeral of an opposition fighter killed not an hour before in a firefight. His brother had opened the shroud and motioned for me to photograph his dead brother’s face. His name was Ahmed Ibrahim. It is the last photo that anyone will ever take of him. The gravediggers finish the tomb, pile the dirt on, and go back to their fire to make a new pot of tea, laughing and joking. The graves are already dug, long rows, one for each neighbourhood; they just add new tombs in the line and cover them up. I have had enough of death, and I just want to leave. But we have one more visit to the hospital.
This time there is no shelling. It is quiet at the hospital, and they invite me upstairs. I see a man who has had a heart attack. This hospital is equipped to deal with cardiac care. I did not even think about this type of care with the more violent happenings outside.
A boy lies in bed, his father next to him. I ask what happened to him, the father says his son has a severe ulcer from stress. I get it.
In another ward, in another building, I find a nursery. Three newborn babies lie peacefully in incubators. The nurses hide their faces; no one wants to be photographed, and I promise not to show pictures that will give away the location of this site. They cannot afford for it to be bombed, because even in the midst of this conflict, people are making babies, and people are still taking care of them.
Most Syrians just want to live their lives. In the end, these are just people who wanted more freedom – freedom to have political discourse or dissent – and ended up having to fight for it. The war has become very complex, very sectarian, and very violent. I am no expert on geopolitics. What I see are people on the ground doing their best to live their lives the way we all do. They may be sandwich makers, mothers, activists, fighters, refugees, farmers, or imams, but they all have to sleep, eat, feed their kids, go to work – even if that is fighting – and even get married and have babies.
I am relieved when it is time to go. I breathe a sigh of relief when I can see the well-lit streets of Turkey in the distance. But I feel that familiar tug of guilt because I get to leave, and my friends and colleagues stay and try to live their lives amid the death that hovers around them. I smoke my last cigarette with my driver at the border, say goodbye, give him an extra $100, and walk back to a world where violent death is a fluke, not a daily expectation.
A Whole World Blind: War and Life in Northern Syria by Nish Nalbandian is out now (Daylight Books): daylightbooks.org
