A child walks along a wall in the Deraa camp, in southern Syria, in July 2025. Soulayma Mardam Bey/L'Orient-Le Jour
Life carves its way through the carcasses of buildings. It takes the shape of a group of children playing ball, of laundry hung out to dry on the ruins of a gutted building, of shops reopening or the sound of excavators.Nine months after the fall of the Assad regime, walking through the Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk in southern Damascus is akin to entering the depths of an apocalyptic landscape pierced by a few rays of hope.Here and there, stray dogs are a reminder that not so long ago, in October 2013, an imam issued a fatwa authorizing their consumption, as well as that of cats and donkeys, to fight famine. Everywhere, the scale of destruction binds past to present, linking the ordeal endured by the Yarmouk yesterday to that of Gaza today.“When we were besieged and starving under the former regime, we told ourselves that even...
Life carves its way through the carcasses of buildings. It takes the shape of a group of children playing ball, of laundry hung out to dry on the ruins of a gutted building, of shops reopening or the sound of excavators.Nine months after the fall of the Assad regime, walking through the Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk in southern Damascus is akin to entering the depths of an apocalyptic landscape pierced by a few rays of hope.Here and there, stray dogs are a reminder that not so long ago, in October 2013, an imam issued a fatwa authorizing their consumption, as well as that of cats and donkeys, to fight famine. Everywhere, the scale of destruction binds past to present, linking the ordeal endured by the Yarmouk yesterday to that of Gaza today.“When we were besieged and starving under the former regime, we told ourselves that even...