In peace, sons bury their fathers. In war, fathers bury their sons.
Herodotus
A Russian soldier stopped us at the checkpoint west of Palmyra, next to the ancient Druze castle of Tadmur.
‘Dobry den,’ he grunted in Russian. Good afternoon.
He asked for our papers and Nada flashed our regime press cards. He eyed my passport as I looked at him. I tried to decipher the badges on his uniform, to figure out which unit he was in. I knew from my intelligence sources that the two main groups of Russians in the region were mercenaries from a mysterious private army called ‘Wagner group’, as well as Chechen militiamen drawn from the elite ranks of the Spetznatz. The Russians had been supporting Assad with air strikes on rebel units, and in recent months had deployed Special Forces troops and private fighters on the ground to act as advisors and military police.
I looked at the soldier. He couldn’t have been a day over twenty-one and I suddenly felt very sorry for him. He couldn’t have grown a beard, even if he’d wanted to, and looked hot and uncomfortable in his uniform and body armour, surrounded by a ragtag bunch of Syrian commandos. A couple of miles down the road, we stopped at a petrol station to refuel our car and I went to get a cup of tea from the shop.
As I was waiting to be served, a shiny white coach pulled up outside and dozens of armed men piled out. Like the Russians, most of them seemed to be in their late teens and early twenties, but these men were definitely Arabs, and most of them wore long beards and some had long curly hair tied up with black bandanas.
I froze and for a second I thought that ISIS might have turned up. I shuffled into the corner to try to make myself less conspicuous. Luckily, I had a decent beard and blended in pretty well as a Syrian, but still I admit that for a moment I feared that I’d finally pushed my luck too far.
‘Salaam, kaif halak,’ said a young man, ‘how are you?’, swinging an AK-47 over his shoulder. He wore olive-green webbing around his chest and grenades dangled from his pockets.
‘Wa alaikum as-salaam,’ I replied.
‘Min ayi balad ant?’
I only had a very basic understanding of Arabic, but I knew he was asking where I was from. There was no point in lying.
‘England,’ I said, fearing the worst.
The lad broke into a grin. ‘Welcome!’ he said in English. I love England.’
Phew, I thought to myself. ‘Where are you from?’ I asked him back.
He stared at me with an earnest look and held my gaze for a few seconds before replying.
‘ISIS,’ he said solemnly.
My heart skipped a beat and I was silent. He then started laughing uncontrollably.
‘Just kidding, I’m from Lebanon.’ He said, enjoying the fact I almost shat myself. ‘We’re Hezbollah.’
‘Oh, nice to meet you,’ I said with a gulp.
‘We’re off to the front. Should be fun.’
‘Yes, I’m sure,’ I said. ‘How long for?’
‘This deployment is only a few weeks. I’ve just finished school, so it’s like my gap year.’
He smiled and patted his machine-gun, before handing me a Coca-Cola.
‘Here, it’s on me. Add me on Facebook, I’m coming to England soon. I’ve just finished my application form for Leeds University.’
With that a burly sergeant came in and shouted for the troops to get back on the bus and they all shuffled out, finishing their cigarettes and waving goodbye.
It occurred to me just how complicated this war was. Here we had Russians supporting pro-Assad militias, a stone’s throw away from the rebel Free Syrian Army, supported by Turkey, the US and the UK. Fighting them, to the east were the Jaish al-Fatah and Tahrir al-Sham, factions of al-Qaeda, directly funded – allegedly – by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, both of whom, of course, are funded and supported by Turkey, the US and the UK.
Iran, a firm ally of Assad, was sending in Afghan Hazara tribesmen to fight alongside Hezbollah from Lebanon, in order to defeat the al-Nusra Front – an organisation sponsored by Qatar, which is, believe it or not, a firm ally of Iran, and bizarrely, a mediator for the Taliban in Afghanistan, who really do not like the Hazara.
The Kurds, to the north, were still being bombed and invaded by Turkey and yet were themselves being helped by the US and the UK to fight against al-Nusra and of course, ISIS, who, if Professor E was to be believed, were being directly assisted by Israel.
What a bloody mess.
We drove west towards Homs and reached the city by nightfall. It was almost dark when we found ourselves in a small hotel next to a fried chicken restaurant, on the main avenue that led to the old town.
‘We’ll stay here for the night and we’ll meet Hayat,’ Nada told me.
Hayat was a government official, who worked for the Ministry of Information. She had offered to show me the devastation of the city, which had seen some of the heaviest fighting in all Syria after being under siege for three years.
After a troubled sleep, punctuated by sporadic gunfire in the distance, we woke early and drove down towards the district of Warik, where we met Hayat, a middle-aged woman wearing thick makeup and a black leather jacket. Her eyebrows were painted on and she greeted me with a forced smile, stained with a lifetime of cigarette smoke.
We walked together for some time along a road that was flanked by now derelict gardens and allotments, overgrown with weeds. For some reason it reminded me of home: Stoke-on-Trent, when I was a boy in the eighties. I remembered going for walks with my grandfather in Hanley Park and, remarkably, the view was almost identical.
Hayat told me about the war, about how the ‘terrorists’ had taken control of Homs in 2011 and dug in for three years, before it was finally ‘liberated by the government’. I wondered how her version of the story would differ from that of one of the thousands of Sunni residents who tried to rise up against Assad’s brutality.
‘I want to show you the truth,’ she said, as we rounded a corner. I stood still in horror as the panorama before me assaulted my vision. Two ragged children were frolicking in a playground, holding each other’s hands as they slid down a dirty orange slide. The roundabout creaked as it spun. Behind the park was a scene of the kind of devastation I hadn’t seen since Mosul. The entire neighbourhood had been demolished; rubble was piled up fifty feet high and not a single building had remained unscarred.
Whole apartment frontages were ripped apart by shells and bombs, leaving a naked skeleton of grey, forlorn destruction. The streets of the old city were filled with bullet cases, burnt-out cars and twisted relics of former peace; dishwashers, sofas and chairs were strewn across the road. In some waste ground, a Ferris wheel stood as a grisly monument to what seemed like time before the apocalypse. We wandered through the dereliction. It was a scene all too familiar.
This was the Syria of the news reports, it was the Middle East we’d all become accustomed to, but even such indoctrination could never prepare my own brain for the incomprehensible scenes of such savagery and violence. This was Dresden and Hiroshima after the bombs had fallen. This was real life Armageddon. Death and annihilation was everywhere; school textbooks littered the rooms, alongside filthy teddy bears, ripped Qu’rans, shattered pots and soiled nappies. Shoes and torn clothes were mixed with masonry and broken plaster, like some gruesome modern art installation.
The walls that were still erect were all sprayed with rocket holes and the graffitied slogans of the various fighting groups that had battled among the ruins over the years. Hayat began to sob as she gently picked up a family photograph album from the floor of a house. She dusted it off and opened it up, her tears dripping into the mummified pages.
‘Dead. All of them,’ she cried. ‘Thousands of people dead, and for what?’
She shook her head and placed the book down next to a children’s toy – a fluffy smiling heart.
It seemed the old city was empty, utterly abandoned, but no. The little children we’d seen in the playground ran past us and scuttled up the shell of a staircase into the rubble and up some stairs.
‘People are starting to return, but look at what they must live among,’ said Nada, placing a hand on Hayat’s shoulder.
I turned around, hearing the squeaking noise of a bicycle wheel. It was an old man, with a vacant look in his eyes, pushing an ancient bike with a makeshift basket filled with empty bottles and metal tools. He nodded with sadness.
‘Where are you going?’ asked Hayat.
‘Home’ was his simple reply. I followed him along the street as he picked his way through mountains of warped debris.
The word echoed through my mind, as I watched the poor man enter the charred hole that had been his porch. He shone a torch into the murky shadows of what was once a room, and was now just a void. ‘We have no water. Please tell your people to send us water,’ he whimpered.
‘Yalla,’ muttered Hayat. ‘Leave him to his misery. There’s nothing we can do here.’
She tugged on my arm and I walked away, feebly pressing forty dollars into his hand, as the only gesture I could think of.
We left the tragedy of the old city in the half light of the afternoon, as the sun disappeared below the jagged remnants of the shattered mosque. Hayat insisted that we stay with her in her apartment. Nada agreed that it was the safest place, and so we followed her in our car to a part of the city that seemed to have avoided at least some of the fighting. The building was grey and reminded me of the kind of London council flats that were built in the 1960s. The elevator didn’t work, so we trudged up the stairs to where Hayat let us in.
Her flat was small and grungy. Fluorescent strip lighting and exposed bulbs dangled from the ceilings, giving the place a harsh, industrial feel. I noticed that in one corner was a shrine: a display cabinet with an ornate gilded Qu’ran and prayer beads, and some framed verses of the hadiths. In the other corner of the room was another display cabinet, similar to the first, and yet this one was filled with Christian figurines. There was a crucifix leaning against the wall, and a little porcelain statue of the Virgin Mary. I had no idea if Hayat was Muslim or Christian, and I supposed it didn’t really matter. I was a guest in her house and she was glad to have us.
She fumbled about in a pantry and came back with two beers and a bottle of arak. Nada didn’t drink, but Hayat poured me a double and we toasted peace in Syria. I saw that on the walls of the living room was a third shrine, a photograph of a young man in uniform. I’d seen these kinds of pictures before – they often adorned the roadsides in Middle Eastern war zones – shrines to the martyrs of the war.
‘Who is he?’ I asked.
‘My son, Mohamed.’ Hayat smiled, wiping away another tear. ‘He was killed three years ago in Daraa by Nusra. He was twenty-one.’
The tales of horror were endless, it seemed. Hayat told me how he’d volunteered to fight for the Syrian army after the opposition took the south.
‘He wanted to fight for his country and not see it overrun with terrorists,’ she said. ‘He joined with his friends and they were all in the same unit, and then one day, in August 2014, he found himself surrounded by the enemy in a house. He did what any good boy would do, and called me on his mobile. He tried to reassure me that everything would be okay, but I knew by his voice that it would be the last time I ever heard from him. He said goodbye. I heard a bang. Then the line went dead.’
We sat in silence. I was welling up with emotion myself at the sight of this poor woman who’d lost her son, regardless of which side she was on. I asked if she would ever forgive them.
‘Forgive them?’ She shook her head and fell silent. A minute passed, and I thought perhaps I should never have asked. I felt rather self-conscious as she mulled over my dumb question.
‘They’re probably dead anyway,’ she eventually responded. ‘They were young boys, too, I’m sure. All dead. I must forgive them, I must forgive all those who push for war, and I must forgive myself. Hatred gets us nowhere. I must forgive, because otherwise all of this was for nothing. All we want for now is peace. I have to forgive for the sake of Syria.’
That night I was given the only spare bed in the house. It was that of Mohamed, Hayat’s son, a twenty-one-year-old soldier. I didn’t really know what to feel about sleeping in his bed, surrounded by his belongings. On the bedside table and a desk were spread out his meagre effects: army dog tags, childhood photos, a military belt and his beret, some toys, and medals for sporting achievements and, leaning up against the wall, his rifle, a polished AK-47, still loaded with a full magazine of 7.62 rounds.
Despite being on the front line in Syria, sleeping in a dead man’s bed, surrounded by those who were technically the enemy, I felt a surge of empathy and understanding such as I’d never experienced before. I knew that I’d never take anything personally again. If that woman could forgive the people who killed her son, then I could certainly let go of whatever insignificant niggles were bothering me. I’d seen and experienced it all and knew that life would never be the same again.
When I got home, I’d make sure never to take anything for granted. I’d tell those around me how much they meant to me, I’d forgive those who’d hurt me and I’d never lose my temper again. I realised there and then that nothing else matters but kindness, compassion, forgiveness and love. I slept soundly that night as machine-guns and rockets drilled the horizon, and I dreamt of home. I felt myself holding my grandad’s hand as I walked through the green and brown allotments of Hanley Park in Stoke-on-Trent, beneath a grey sky.