Ayoon wa Azan (My beloved Aleppo)

After the massacre at the University of Aleppo in mid-January, we hear about a new massacre at the end of the month. As we enter a new month, we all hope that we will not wake up to the news of yet another massacre. The Aleppo that I knew when I was a teenager was the glory of the world; a historical city whose residents were among the most moral, intelligent and literary-minded people, and I have a thousand friends there. "Aleppo" and "terrorism" are antonyms. I visited the city by train from Beirut when I was 17, and returned there time after time. My last visit was three years ago. It was always a city of coexistence among people from different religious sects and ethnicities. I once wrote a love poem – no comment – to a British reverend who visited there, as part of the Sunday Hour on BBC Radio. He spoke about the phenomenon of mosques and churches being in close proximity, and a wedding in a cathedral, where half of the friends of the bride were wearing the hijab. I cannot forget my Armenian friends who were taken in by the bride of northern Syria, Aleppo. Today the only thing I hear about Aleppo involve crimes or massacres. Who shot the two rockets at the University of Aleppo? After the crime, I wrote that I would always be the enemy of the perpetrator. Who killed the young men and threw them in the river? Again, I am the perpetrator's enemy. I write, and then tell myself, "What good does my hostility do, since it doesn't protect anyone?" A friend of mine whose family owns agricultural land is now in Beirut, while his family moves between the cities of the Syrian coast and the Gulf. Another friend's family owned a pharmaceutical plant, which was bombed, and 880 people suddenly found themselves out of work. His father fled to Lebanon. A friend from Aleppo told me that he can give me the names of 70 people who were kidnapped, and whose families all paid ransoms to release them. He began to tell me the names and insisted that I knew one of them, a mutual friend who had been kidnapped three times. The only people left in Aleppo are terrorists and their victims. Everyone else who can has left. All of Syria is vulnerable to attack. The Israelis strike a target deep inside the country and no one asks questions, is held accountable, or responds. The Syrian regime now says that it has the right to respond to Israel. I say, "Now, you're talking about a response?" The regime should prepare its rockets to be used against non-civilian Israeli targets, such as the Haifa oil refinery or the Dimona nuclear reactor, and bomb them minutes after any Israeli attack or strike inside Syria. The regime should act, not issue threats. My relationship with Aleppo was love at first sight, or love at first falafel sandwich after the train trip. My visits after that were with my parents and their friends. We paid many visits to the Aleppo Family Club, where some of the female card players were as old as the club itself, or around 100. At night, there were more young men and women, enjoying freedom under parental supervision, and sometimes there was music and singing. Today Aleppo is caught between the hammer of rulers who kill civilians, and the anvil of an opposition that began peacefully, honorably and patriotically, and then was joined by extremism and terror. My Aleppine friend says that in his town there are dozens of Libyan fighters who believe that they are on their way to liberating Palestine, along with some Tunisians, Chechens, Gulf Arabs, Afghanis and others. The Aleppo I know is not one of mutual destruction and terror. She is a young woman, the daughter of a friend, who studied nuclear physics in the United States and Germany. Her family asked me to help her get in to the American University of Beirut, my university, to study nuclear medicine. She was accepted, without any assistance. She ended up in Abu Dhabi after she received a better offer for work and training. She is now on her way to Italy, where she was accepted to do a Master's in Nuclear Physics, sponsored by the European Nuclear Education Network. This is the Aleppo that remains, and that will return. --- The views expressed by the author do not necessarily represent or reflect the editorial policy of Arabstoday.