Reporting from Cairo — Monther Etaky’s wife was breast-feeding, and in desperate need of nutrition. He spent five days hunting for yogurt to give her — anything to keep her and their 2-month-old son alive — then gave up.
The streets outside their apartment were a 24-hour-a-day death zone of exploding bombs and whistling mortars.
“Warplanes with machine guns fly all the day, all the night, shooting just to say to people, ‘We are here, you can’t sleep because we are exploding all the day around you, you can’t move, any small light we can target,’ ” said Etaky, a graphic designer and photographer from Aleppo — a city that has become the dark emblem of Syria’s more than five-year-old civil war.
“I just watch him all the night and try to calm him,” he said of his son.
Aleppo is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities on Earth, an architectural treasure settled in the Bronze Age that endured the rule of Hittites and Romans, Mongols and Ottomans.
Once Syria’s most populous city, it is still home to about 1.5 million people in the west and 250,000 in the east.
But residents tell of water pipes gone dry, hospitals without blood-pressure medication, underfed schoolchildren too hungry to focus on their lessons. Schools and hospitals have moved into basements in hopes of escaping the shelling.
“We live in a state of terror all the time,” said Mohammed Abu Jihad, of eastern Aleppo. “Even when we sleep.”
The battle for the city pits Islamic extremists and anti-government rebels, entrenched in eastern Aleppo, against the forces of Syrian President Bashar Assad and his Russian allies in the western part of the city.
U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry has called for a war crimes investigation into the bombing campaign, and on Friday the United Nation’s human rights chief, Zeid Raad Hussein, said Aleppo has become “a slaughterhouse.” He told the U.N.’s Human Rights Council that attacks on eastern Aleppo “constitute crimes of historic proportions.”
Last week, Russia announced a pause in airstrikes on rebel-controlled parts of Aleppo, and on Friday the Syrian government opened a corridor for those wanting to leave the city. But fighting has been halted before. A cease-fire was declared in September. It lasted about a week.
What has it been like to live through a siege that has captured the world’s horrified attention? By telephone, Facebook messenger, WhatsApp and Skype, several of them told their stories. The first was Etaky:
‘Civilization is gone’
Etaky and his wife, Walaa, 25, moved to an abandoned apartment in the Saif al-Dawla neighborhood three years ago after their own house was bombed. Now they’re stuck on the front line in the battle for Aleppo. He sent a map on WhatsApp shaded red in the west, green in the east. His apartment is smack in the middle.
They have no running water, and the well water, undrinkable, is for bathing and washing. Bottled water costs $4.
They have electricity about two hours a day and rely on flashlights and candles at night. He has rigged chargers for his cellphone and other devices to a car battery and mounted a solar panel to his balcony.
Without power, their refrigerator has become a cupboard, and he asks his grandmother for survival tips from the olden days: how to use salt, for instance, to preserve meat.
If they survive until winter, he asked, what will they do for heat?
“Civilization is gone,” he said.
Etaky volunteers with Space of Hope, a nonprofit center with a bunker playground where he taught photography “living, playing and sleeping underground.”
The center offered only a brief respite from the war. One day the children were playing with balloons. When one popped, the sound sent a girl into hysterics.
Many of the children are war orphans. They clamored for copies of photos Etaky took, so he ordered a Polaroid. It never arrived, and Etaky has been unable to reach the center for a month because of the airstrikes. His wife talks about decamping to the countryside. Just for a little while, if the roads ever open again. He worries about abandoning extended family and friends.
“I can’t leave this place. I lost more than 50 friends here. It’s a place I love,” Etaky said as the evening call to prayer sounded through a window.
One friend, 36-year-old Shamel Ahmad, was killed by a barrel bomb that struck his family’s car just down the street from Etaky’s apartment. Ahmad’s pregnant wife, who was injured, gave birth to their daughter and died. Etaky worries about his own wife.
“I can’t decide what I should do: Take her out of Aleppo and then back to Aleppo? Should we stay together?” he said, his dark eyes troubled behind boxy brown glasses. “A lot of my friends — they are talking about leaving. Most of them just need to take a breath. If it’s possible to go out of Aleppo ...”
Warplanes thundered overhead, and the baby bawled.
“There is the machine gun,” he said.
‘He will suffer a lot’
Mohammed Abu Jihad works as a pharmacist and surgical assistant at Hayat Hospital, the official-sounding name for a makeshift hospital medical facility tucked in the basement of an apartment building in east Aleppo. He fears it could be attacked at any moment, especially since the cease-fire ended and Syrian forces began dropping “bunker buster” bombs capable of penetrating below-ground shelters.
Recently, one struck outside the building’s door. “Two hospitals already have been hit by these kinds of bombs,” he said. One person was killed and three injured. “But we can’t do anything about it.”
Abu Jihad, 26, also works at two other hospitals — all of them short on staff, equipment and supplies. Hayat has about a month’s supply of anesthesia left. Every day as he leaves for work, he worries about his month-old twin girls, Marwa and Mariam.
“If I go to work and I come back, I might find my house bombed, God forbid,” he said. Still, “my wife doesn’t stop me from going to work. She knows the house is no safer than the hospital.”
Each day at Hayat, two doctors treat about 50 people. This year it has already been hit with a rocket, phosphorous gas and the bunker-buster bomb, he said.
One case that moved him deeply was that of a 9-year-old boy, Ahmed Ahmed, brought in after an airstrike.
“He was alive, but he didn’t have his eyes. His family died under the rubble,” Abu Jihad said. The boy, covered in ash, was silent as they anesthetized him and removed his damaged eyes. In the past the hospital sent such complicated cases to Turkey. That’s not possible now.
“He will suffer a lot,” Abu Jihad said.
‘We are not soldiers’
The little girl’s face was coated with blood and dust when Mohammed Seddaway lifted her from the rubble in her green T-shirt. A bomb blast had buried her parents.
“We didn’t have any equipment. We didn’t expect to pull anyone else alive. The last child was pulled out after eight minutes. It was almost a miracle,” he said.
Seddaway is one of about 110 Syrian civil defense workers, or White Helmets, who are trained in basic first aid and respond to airstrikes and bombings. Some Aleppo residents praise them as heroes. Others accuse them of being opposition fighters. Seddaway disputes that.
“We are not soldiers. We just help people,” he said.
On the day he pulled the little girl from the rubble, she gazed up at him and, using an honorific, said, “Uncle, I love you.”
Seddaway, 25, who has a newborn at home, took stock of the girl and her two young brothers, who also survived, and the wreckage of their home — a red sofa, a shattered television, a doll. He started to cry.
“I felt like they were my own children, or my brother’s children. And I felt, what fault did they have in this?” he said.
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Syrians evacuated from the embattled Syrian city of Aleppo during the ceasefire arrive at a refugee camp in Rashidin, near Idlib, Syria, on Dec. 20, 2016. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Tuesday that Russia, Iran and Turkey are ready to act as guarantors in a peace deal between the Syrian government and the opposition. He spoke on Tuesday after a meeting of the three countries’ foreign ministers in Moscow.
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Syrians evacuated from the embattled Syrian city of Aleppo during the ceasefire arrive at a refugee camp in Rashidin, near Idlib, Syria, on Dec. 20, 2016. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Tuesday that Russia, Iran and Turkey are ready to act as guarantors in a peace deal between the Syrian government and the opposition. He spoke on Tuesday after a meeting of the three countries’ foreign ministers in Moscow.
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A Syrian child evacuated from the embattled Syrian city of Aleppo during the ceasefire arrives at a refugee camp in Rashidin, near Idlib, Syria, on Dec. 20, 2016. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Tuesday that Russia, Iran and Turkey are ready to act as guarantors in a peace deal between the Syrian government and the opposition. He spoke on Tuesday after a meeting of the three countries’ foreign ministers in Moscow.
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An injured Syrian arrives at a refugee camp in Rashidin, near Idlib, Syria, after was evacuated from the embattled Syrian city of Aleppo during the ceasefire, on Dec. 20, 2016. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Tuesday that Russia, Iran and Turkey are ready to act as guarantors in a peace deal between the Syrian government and the opposition. He spoke on Tuesday after a meeting of the three countries’ foreign ministers in Moscow.
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Armed Syrian fighters evacuated from the embattled Syrian city of Aleppo during the ceasefire arrive at a refugee camp in Rashidin, near Idlib, Syria, on Dec. 20, 2016.
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A general view shows Syrian pro-government forces walking in the ancient Umayyad mosque in the old city of Aleppo on December 13, 2016, after they captured the area.
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An injured Syrian boy sits on a bed at a hospital on December 16, 2016, on the Syrian side of the Bab al-Hawa border crossing between Syria and Turkey. The Syrian government suspended the evacuation of the last rebel-held parts of Aleppo, but a military source denied a Russian statement that the operation was “complete.”
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Syrians are evacuated from a rebel-held area of Aleppo towards rebel-held territory in the west of Aleppo’s province on December 16, 2016. Russia announced it was negotiating with the Syrian opposition and seeking a nationwide ceasefire, as the evacuation of civilians and fighters from the last rebel-held parts of Aleppo entered a second day. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor of the war, estimated some 8,500 people had left so far, including around 3,000 rebel fighters. Syrian state media reported a figure of around 8,000.
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Turkish Muslim people pray for Aleppo victims after Friday prayer in Istanbul, Turkey, 16 December 2016. The crowd protested against the alleged involvement of the Islamic Republic of Iran in the war in Syria and the attacks on Aleppo.
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Children sit with their baggage as they await evacuation from Aleppo on Dec. 15, 2016. Aleppo’s residents have been under siege for weeks and have suffered bombardment, together with chronic food and fuel shortages.
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Two Syrians pull their baggage during the evacuation of Aleppo on Dec. 15, 2016. Aleppo’s residents have been under siege for weeks and have suffered bombardment, together with chronic food and fuel shortages.
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A man carries a bag over his head during the evacaution of Aleppo on Dec. 15, 2016.
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In this photo released by the Syrian official news agency SANA, civilians gather near Red Cross vehicles for evacuation from eastern Aleppo on Dec. 16, 2016.
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Ambulances carrying people who were evacuated from rebel-held neighborhoods in the embattled city of Aleppo arrive in the opposition-controlled Khan al-Aassal region, west of the embattled city, on Dec. 16, 2016.
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Buses which will be used to evacuate rebel fighters and their families from rebel-held areas of Aleppo are seen waiting on Dec. 15, 2016.
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Buses which will be used to evacuate rebel fighters and their families from rebel-held areas of Aleppo are seen waiting on Dec. 15, 2016.
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An injured man sits inside an ambulance as Syrian rebels and their families gather in the rebel-held al-Amiriyah neighborhood while waiting to be evacuated to the government-controlled area on the southern outskirts of the city on Dec. 15, 2016.
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A wounded boy sits inside an ambulance as Syrian rebels and their families gather at the rebel-held al-Amiriyah neighbourhood as they wait to be evacuated to the government-controlled area of Ramoussa on the southern outskirts of the city on December 15, 2016.
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Eastern Aleppo residents wait in the streets to be evacuated from the war-torn city of Aleppo, Syria, on Dec. 15, 2016.
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A vehicle of the International Red Cross is seen in the embattled city of Aleppo before the start on an evacuation operation of rebel fighters and their families from rebel-held areas on December 15, 2016.
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Syrian pro-government forces walk in Aleppo’s Bustan al-Qasr neighbourhood after they captured the area in the eastern part of the war torn city on December 13, 2016.
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Syrians leave a rebel-held area of Aleppo towards the government-held side on December 13, 2016 during an operation by Syrian government forces to retake the embattled city.
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Syrian opposition fighters fire towards positions held by Islamic State group jihadists in al-Bab on the northeastern outskirts of the northern embattled city of Aleppo on December 13, 2016.
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Syrian pro-regime fighters gesture as they drive past resident fleeing violence in the restive Bustan al-Qasr neighborhood in Aleppo on Dec. 13, 2016, after regime troops retook the area from rebel fighters.
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A Syrian pro-regime fighter speaks with a child as residents flee violence in the restive Bustan al-Qasr neighbourhood in Aleppo on Dec. 13, 2016, after regime troops retook the area from rebel fighters.
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A member of Syrian pro-government forces stands in west Aleppo’s Ithaa district on Dec. 11, 2016, after they retook the area from rebel fighters.
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A tank maneuvers in west Aleppo’s Ithaa district after Syrian pro-government forces retook the area from rebel fighters on Dec. 11, 2016.
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A member of Syrian pro-government forces inspects a building in west Aleppo’s Ithaa district on Dec. 11, 2016. after they retook the area from rebel fighters.
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Syrian army soldiers fire their weapons during a battle with insurgents at the Ramouseh front line east of Aleppo, Syria, on Dec. 5, 2016.
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Smoke billows during fighting as Syrian pro-government forces walk on a street on Nov. 27, 2016, in the Masaken Hanano district in eastern Aleppo, a day after they seized it from rebel fighters.
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A member of Syrian pro-government forces inspects an area on Nov. 27, 2016, in the Masaken Hanano district in eastern Aleppo, a day after it was seized from rebel fighters.
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A Syrian pro-government forces vehicle drives past damaged buildings on Nov. 27, 2016, in the Masaken Hanano district in eastern Aleppo, a day after it was seized from rebel fighters.
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A fighter from the Syrian pro-government forces mans a riffle inside a damaged house in the recently recaptured village of Joubah during an offensive towards the area of Al-Bab in Aleppo province on Nov. 25, 2016.
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Syrian pro-government fighters fire a Russian 122mm howitzer gun as they advance in the recently recaptured village of Joubah during an offensive towards the area of Al-Bab in Aleppo province on Nov. 25, 2016.
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Syrian pro-government forces walk around Aleppo’s western Minyan district on Nov. 10, 2016.
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Syrian pro-government forces walk around the village of Minyan, west of Aleppo, after they retook the area from rebel fighters on Nov. 12, 2016.
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Syrian pro-government forces walk around in Aleppo’s western Minyan district on Nov. 10, 2016.
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A Syrian pro-government fighter looks on from his sniper nest in a building in Aleppo’s western Minyan district on Nov. 10, 2016.
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Smoke billows from the district of Dahiyet al-Assad after an attack by rebels on Syrian regime forces in the northern city of Aleppo on Oct. 29, 2016.
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Rebel fighters from the Jaish al-Fatah (or Army of Conquest) brigades fires mortar shells toward western government-controlled districts near Aleppo on Oct. 30, 2016.
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Smoke rises from reported opposition fire from buildings in an eastern government-held neighborhood in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo on October 20, 2016.
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Smoke rises from reported opposition fire from buildings in an eastern government-held neighborhood in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo on Oct. 20, 2016, as clashes erupted in an area designated as a humanitarian corridor for civilians to leave the embattles city, an AFP journalist said, despite an announced pause in the Syrian army’s Russian-backed offensive.
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A member of the Syrian Civil Defence, known as the White Helmets, rescues Maarouf, a 12-year-old Syrian boy, from the rubble of a building following a reported air strike on the rebel-held Qaterji neighborhood in the northern city of Aleppo on Oct. 16, 2016.
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Members of the Syrian Civil Defence, known as the White Helmets, search for victims amid the rubble of a destroyed building following reported air strikes in the rebel-held Qatarji neighbourhood of the northern city of Aleppo, on October 17, 2016. Dozens of civilians were killed as air strikes hammered rebel-held parts of Aleppo early morning, despite Western warnings of potential sanctions against Syria and Russia over attacks on the city.
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Lt. Gen. Sergei Rudskoi of the Russian military’s General Staff speaks to the media with a map of the area around Aleppo seen in the background at the Russian Defense Ministry’s headquarters in Moscow, Russia, on Oct. 17, 2016. Rudskoi was quoted by Russian news agencies as saying Monday that Russian and Syrian forces will halt their fighting from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Oct. 20 in order to allow civilians and rebels safe passage out of the city as well as for the evacuation of the sick and wounded.
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Syrians surround a man as he cries over the body of his child after she was pulled from the rubble of a budling following government airstrikes in the rebel-held are of Al-Shaar in Aleppo on Sept. 27, 2016.
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Syrian rescuers hand the body of a girl down to civilians on the ground after she was pulled from rubble of a budling following government airstrikes in the rebel held are of Al-Shaar in Aleppo on Sept. 27, 2016.
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A wounded Syrian child is rushed into a hospital after she was hit by mortar shells that targeted Aleppo’s government-controlled Aziziyah and Suleimaniyah neighborhoods on Sept. 28, 2016.
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Syrian civilians and rescuers gather at site of government forces airstrikes in the rebel held are of Al-Shaar in Aleppo on Sept. 27, 2016.
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In this photo provided by the Syrian Civil Defense group known as the White Helmets, heavily damaged buildings are seen after airstrikes hit in Aleppo, Syria, on Sept. 24, 2016.
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A Syrian man walks past a bus set ablaze following a reported airstrike in the rebel-held Salaheddin district of Aleppo on Sept. 25, 2016.
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Syrian men carry a body following reported airstrikes in the rebel-held Shaar neighborhood in the northern city Aleppo on June 8, 2016.
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A man walks on the rubble of a destroyed building following reported air strikes by government forces in the rebel-held Shaar neighborhood in the northern city Aleppo on June 8, 2016.
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A Syrian man reacts after a reported airstrike by Syrian government forces in the rebel-held neighborhood of Bustan al-Qasr on June 5, 2016.
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A Syrian man who was wounded following reported shelling by rebel fighters arrives at a hospital in the Al-Jamiliyah neighborhood on the government-controlled side of the divided northern Syrian city of Aleppo on June 5, 2016.
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Malek Barghout, second from left, mourns the death of his father, who was killed earlier in the day following a reported airstrike by Syrian government forces on the rebel-held neighborhood of al-Sakhour in the northern city of Aleppo on June 4, 2016.
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Syrian emergency personnel douse flames following a reported airstrike in the rebel-held al-Sakhour district of the northern city of Aleppo on June 4, 2016.
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Syrian emergency personnel and residents search for survivors amid the rubble of a destroyed building following reported shelling by rebel fighters in the Hamdaniyeh district of the government-controlled side of Aleppo on June 4, 2016.
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Syrian security forces and residents gather near a building that was reportedly hit by rebel shelling as they search for survivors in the Hamdaniyeh district on the government-controlled side of Aleppo on June 4, 2016.
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Syrians look at the damage after rockets reportedly fired by rebels hit Al-Dabbeet hospital in the government-controlled neighborhood of Muhafaza in the northern city of Aleppo on May 3, 2016.
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Syrian emergency personnel secure a street after rockets reportedly fired by rebels hit Al-Dabbeet hospital in the government-controlled neighborhood of Muhafaza in the northern city of Aleppo on May 3, 2016.
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Syrian emergency personnel secure a street after rockets reportedly fired by rebels hit Al-Dabbeet hospital in thr government-controlled neighborhood of Muhafaza in the northern city of Aleppo on May 3, 2016.
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Syrian security forces evacuate medical staff after rockets reportedly fired by rebels hit Al-Dabbeet hospital in the government-controlled neighborhood of Muhafaza in the northern city of Aleppo on May 3, 2016
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A Syrian man walks past destroyed buildings on May 2, 2016, in Aleppo’s Bab al-Hadid neighborhood which was targeted recently by regime airstrikes.
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A Syrian man waits to fill jerricans with water in front of destroyed buildings on May 2, 2016, in Aleppo’s Bab al-Hadid neighborhood .
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Syrians evacuate an injured man amid the rubble of destroyed buildings following a reported airstrike on the rebel-held neighborhood of Al-Qatarji in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo on April 29, 2016.
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A Syrian family walks past destroyed buildings on May 2, 2016, in the northern city of Aleppo.
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Syrian men carry an injured youth in the government-controlled side of the northern city of Aleppo following fighting between regime forces and rebels on April 28, 2016.
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A man gestures amid the rubble of destroyed buildings following a reported air strike on the rebel-held neighborhood of al-Kalasa in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo on April 28, 2016.
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Syrian civil defence volunteers and rescuers remove a baby from under the rubble of a destroyed building following a reported air strike on the rebel-held neighbourhood of al-Kalasa in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, on April 28, 2016.
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Syrians react as they arrive at a hospital in the government-controlled side of the northern city of Aleppo following fighting between regime forces and rebels on April 28, 2016.
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A Syrian boy is comforted as he cries next to the body of a relative who died in a reported airstrike on April 27, 2016, in the rebel-held neighborhood of al-Soukour in the northern city of Aleppo.
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Smoke is seeing rising on a main road in the Salaheddin neighbourhood of Syria’s northern city of Aleppo following a reported air strike on April 24, 2016.
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Syrians look at the damage following a reported airstrike by governement forces on the rebel-held neighborhood of Sakhur in the northern city of Aleppo on April 24, 2016.
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Syrian civil defence volunteers evacuate people from a damaged building following a reported airstrike on April 23, 2016 in the rebel-held neighborhood of Tareeq al-Bab in the northern city of Aleppo.
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Syrian government forces hold a portrait of late Syrian president Hafez al-Assad as they drive near smoke billowing from Aleppo’s thermal power plant after re-taking the area on the eastern outskirts of Syria’s northern embattled city of Aleppo from Islamic State fighters on February 21, 2016.
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Syrian pro-government forces adjust a man-portable anti-tank system as they hold a position in the Hatabat al-Bab area in Aleppo’s eastern countryside on January 24, 2016, during a military operation against Islamic State.
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Syrian pro-government forces hold a position as smoke billows following an airstrike on an Islamic State position in the Hatabat al-Bab area in Aleppo’s eastern countryside on Jan. 24, 2016.
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Civilians photographed in a damaged building in Syria’s northern city of Aleppo following a reported airstrike by government forces on Dec. 7, 2015.
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Syrians stand amidst the destruction in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo on May 30, 2015.
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Smoke billows following the detonation of explosives placed by Syrian government forces inside a tunnel that was reportedly used by rebels in the government-controlled part of Aleppo on May 19, 2015.
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Rebel fighters walk past a heavily damaged building on Oct. 23, 2014, in the Bustan Pasha neighborhood of Syria’s northern city of Aleppo.
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Rescure workers walk past a damaged building following an alleged Syrian government barrel bomb attack in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo on Sept. 5, 2014.
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Smoke rises following a reported barrel bomb attack by Syrian government forces in the northern city of Aleppo on Aug. 14, 2014.
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A Syrian man cries as he sits on the rubble of a building following a reported barrel-bomb attack by Syrian government forces on Aug. 11, 2014, in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo.
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A woman sits on a wheelchair as she is brought into the emergency room of a hospital after an alleged barrel bomb was dropped on the Hanano neighborhood in the eastern district of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo on Aug. 9, 2014.
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A general view shows destroyed buildings following reported barrel-bomb strikes by government forces on the eastern Masir neighborhood of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo on Aug. 8, 2014.
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A Syrian girl collects her belongings from rubble on April 21, 2014, after her building was reportedly destroyed in an airstrike by government forces in the northern city of Aleppo.
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An emergency reponse member carries a wounded child following an airstrike by government forces on the northern Syrian city of Aleppo on Feb. 22, 2014.
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Children warm up with the heat of an armchair burning in the Hanano district of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo on Feb. 15, 2014.
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People walk through the rubble following a reported air strike attack by government forces on the Hanano district of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo on Feb. 13, 2014.
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A rebel fighter scans the area with the scope of his rifle as he holds a position in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo on Feb. 11, 2014.
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A rebel fighter holds a position in al-Mayasat, a rebel-controlled area near the industrial zone of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, on Feb. 4, 2015.
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Medical personnel look for survivors following a reported airstrike on the Tariq al-Bab district of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo on Feb. 1, 2014.
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A rebel fighter stands in a building overlooking the damage from fighting in the city of Aleppo on Dec. 16, 2013.
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Rebel fighters duck as they run behind a barricade to avoid being fired at by Syrian regime forces in the Old City’s front line in Aleppo on Sept. 18, 2013.
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A rebel fighter takes aim at regime forces in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo on Sept. 1, 2013.
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A rebel fighter carries his son after the Friday prayer in the al-Fardos neighborhood of Aleppo on Dec. 7, 2012.
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Syrian rebels celebrate next to the remains of a Syrian government fighter jet which was shot down at Daret Ezza, on the border between the provinces of Idlib and Aleppo, on Nov. 28, 2012.
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A Syrian opposition fighter looks out at a street blocked with rubble in the al-Jadeida neighborhood in the Old City of Syria’s northern city of Aleppo on Nov. 26, 2012.
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A rebel fighter throws a grenade toward a Syrian government forces position down an alleyway in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo on Nov. 6, 2012.
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Syrian women and children run to the basement of a building housing several rebel fighters as regime tanks and helicopters attack their positions in Aleppo on Nov. 1, 2012.
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Rebel fighters take position in a flat during a battle against Syrian government forces on Oct. 30, 2012, in the Salaheddin district of the northern city of Aleppo.
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Syrian rebels run to take position in the Bustan al-Basha district in the northern city of Aleppo on Oct. 26, 2012.
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A Syrian rebel fires toward an army position in the Karm al-Jabal district of the northern city of Aleppo on Oct. 22, 2012.
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Two Syrian rebels take sniper positions at the heavily contested neighborhood of Karmal Jabl in central Aleppo on Oct. 18, 2012.
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A Syrian rebel fires towards regime forces as his comrade ducks for cover during clashes in the old city of Aleppo in northern Syria on Sept. 30, 2012.
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Syrian rebels run to help a wounded comrade after he was shot by a sniper during clashes with government forces in the Ezza district of the northern city of Aleppo on Sept. 8, 2012.
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A Syrian man wounded by shelling sits on a chair outside a closed shop in the Al-Muasalat area in Aleppo on Sept. 4, 2012.
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A woman and her baby are seen through the scope of an opposition fighter’s sniper gun as she flees the Saif al-Dawla neighborhood of the Syrian northern city of Aleppo on Aug. 29, 2012.
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Free Syria Army fighters bring a wounded comrade to a hospital in Aleppo, Syria, on Aug. 28, 2012.
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A Syrian rebel from the Free Syrian Army fires his rifle down a street toward government snipers in the Bab Al-Nasr district of the northern restive city of Aleppo on Aug. 10, 2012.
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An image grab taken from a video uploaded on YouTube on Aug. 7, 2012, shows Syrians inspecting damage in the Bustan al-Qasr district of the northern city of Aleppo on Aug. 6, 2012.
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Fighters carrying food supplies run for cover along a street in the Salaheddin district of the restive city of Aleppo on July 29, 2012.
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A fighter from the Syrian opposition aims fire during clashes with forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad in the center of Syria’s restive northern city of Aleppo on July 25, 2012.
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An image grab taken from a video uploaded on YouTube on July 23, 2012, shows Syrian rebel fighters battling government troops in the northern city of Aleppo.
(AFP/Getty Images) The White Helmets operate a fleet of battered ambulances, delivering the injured to a beleaguered hospital Seddaway described as overcrowded and dirty. “It smells like blood,” he said.
Seddaway earns about $100 to $150 a month, not much given that the rice and eggplants his family subsists on cost $5.50 a pound. He also works part time as a cashier to supply his infant son’s formula and diapers. Formula costs $40 a can and is in such short supply, he started feeding his son Fisal a gruel of watered-down cookies, leaving him thin and weak.
The family’s five-bedroom stone home in Old Aleppo is an oasis, the interior courtyard filled with fragrant jasmine, grape and pomegranate trees. Cats roam the interior courtyard and lovebirds sing. “It’s a different life,” he said, “a normal family life.”
But Seddaway can still smell the wood and leaves burning in the cookstove they use because they’re down to one can of gas. And when he hears explosions, he must run to join his team.
His wife, Iman, understands his work.
“She always tells me keep going, keep doing it, because if our house was hit and I was alive under the rubble, wouldn’t you want someone to help me?” he said.
At night, when airstrikes increase, they sleep with their son. “If we die, we die together.”
‘I could see bodies everywhere’
When her students draw, they use a lot of red and gray. Red for blood, gray for rubble.
Some sketch the Russian flag they spy on passing warplanes, bombs dropping, headless and limbless stick figures being loaded into ambulances or floating into the clouds under the caption: “The souls of our martyrs ascend to heaven.” Others draw fantasies: baskets of fruit they cannot eat, forests and streams they cannot see.
“The ones who worry me are not the ones who draw — express themselves and cry,” Afraa Hashem said. “Lots of people cry. That makes me feel at ease. The ones who are more introverted worry me.”
Hashem is a teacher who supervises three schools — kindergarten, elementary and middle — with 360 students. Dressed in a black abaya and flowered head scarves, she visits parents at home to persuade them to send their children to the basement campus partitioned into windowless, dim classrooms.
“It’s no safer in your house. It’s probably safer in the bunker,” she tells them.
Parents know Hashem brings her children to school with her — sons Sam, 12, and Zein, 11, and their 6-year-old sister, Nay. But the new bunker-buster bombs scare many away. Hashem and a few other teachers have volunteered to teach students at home.
In a city of orphans, school staffers often become surrogate parents. She remembers a pretty 7-year-old girl with hazel eyes and a wide smile who fell apart after her entire family died in airstrikes. One day, the girl arrived at school disheveled, her blond hair snarled, jeans and coat dirty. Hashem combed her hair and straightened her clothes. “I miss my mother,” she said as she embraced Hashem.
The war touches faculty and students alike. Two teachers at her schools, both young fathers, died in an airstrike this month. Hashem had grown up with one of them.
In May, a school near hers was hit by a missile. “I could see bodies everywhere. I could see children with crayons in their hands, dead,” she said. Among the dead: the principal’s two children.
Hashem recalled an airstrike that killed six students as they played in the street. The day after, classmates insisted on visiting the mother of one of those killed, 10-year-old Mohammed Zeitoun.
“They told her, ‘We are here in his place,’ ” Hashem said of the students, who surrounded the woman as she cried.
Hashem’s children recently joined classmates who painted the burned husk of a bus destroyed in fighting near the border of west Aleppo. The bright colors stood out against the backdrop of crushed concrete and twisted metal beams.
“It’s a message to the world,” Hashem said, “that despite the destruction, no matter how much [Assad] defaces Syria, we are going to keep living.”
‘They are people like us’
There’s a misconception about east and west Aleppo, said Dr. Nabil Antaki.
“It’s not the good one on one side and the bad one on the other,” Antaki said. “We are suffering with them. They are people like us.”
A 66-year-old gastroenterologist, Antaki lives in government-controlled west Aleppo and resents that international interest has focused on eastern, rebel-held areas of the city. “The thing that people don’t know outside Syria is that west Aleppo is daily — daily — receiving mortars,” he said.
One of his colleagues was wounded recently in a mortar attack that killed 10 people in a busy commercial strip. The doctor’s legs were broken and he remains in intensive care on a respirator after shrapnel pierced his lungs.
West Aleppo is down to two public hospitals and perhaps 10 to 15 private ones, Antaki said. The private hospital where he works, Saint-Louis, had 56 doctors at the start of the war, but many fled, along the nurses. Now just 15 doctors remain.
Antaki recalled a young man, Ara Aramian, brought in after a recent bombing at his apartment.
“He had a face that was completely burned, the two legs completely destroyed. We had to amputate both legs,” Antaki said. “We tried to give him some psychological support, but it’s not easy for a 20-year-old.”
The prognosis was better for 6-year-old Pamela, who arrived with shrapnel lodged in her spine, paralyzed from the waist down. By the time she left, he said, she could move one of her legs.
Antaki does not distinguish between rebels in the east who oppose Assad and Islamic extremists. He considers them all terrorists and blames them for damaging the city’s water plants and power lines, depriving both sides of utilities. Many on the western side feel held hostage by forces in the east, he said, and support government attacks. He is among those distrustful of the White Helmets.
It was the terrorists, he said, who killed his 68-year-old brother three years ago, shooting him in the head on a bus.
Antaki sighed. “I was not like this before the war,” he said. “I was open-minded. I was democratic. I was criticizing our regime. I thought it needed reforms, more human rights.” Revolution brought not freedom, but Islamic State, and now he fears for his country.
He didn’t vote for Assad and doesn’t make excuses for his government. But he wants Syria to remain a secular state, and said the Syrian army is doing its job, fighting Islamic extremists.
“I don’t support the government,” he said. “I support Syria, the Syrian state, my country, which has been destroyed.”
Antaki trained in Canada, where he and his wife became citizens. They have children with families in the U.S. who have begged them to flee. “They don’t want us to be killed,” he said.
But Antaki says he can’t leave.
“Our duty, our human duty, is to stay here because people need us,” he said, “to share the suffering of our people and to try to help them.”
