On one of the city's main streets, families have still gathered every night on the sidewalks and in the medians for nighttime picnics. Vendors crowd around selling hookahs, popcorn, sandwiches and coffee. Traffic moves slowly as people park cars by the sidewalk and open doors and windows to let music stream out to entertain the crowds...
...Many residents of the city still place their hopes in Assad, the Aleppo resident said, and fear that the civil war-like strife that formerly characterized Iraq and now Libya could happen in Syria as well. She doesn't think the city will rise up because in some ways it has already separated from the rest of the country.
Further deepening the feeling of isolation, residents no longer venture outside the city because of rumors that they will be attacked by other Syrians out of anger.
"That's not good for national unity, that's not good for this new Syrian identity that is developing," Abdulhamid said. "Who knows? Maybe they'll even shift the capital to Aleppo by the end of Ramadan."
"And I have found both freedom and safety in my madness, the freedom of loneliness and the safety from being understood, for those who understand us enslave something in us. But let me not be too proud of my safety. Even a Thief in a jail is safe from another thief. "
Khalil Gibran (How I Became a Madman)
Khalil Gibran (How I Became a Madman)
Lübnan Marunîleri / Yasin Atlıoğlu
NEWS AND ARTICLES / HABERLER VE MAKALELER
Monday, August 08, 2011
City of Aleppo seems in own world amid revolt elsewhere in Syria- Los Angeles Times
Two days before black smoke left a pall over Hama, a bloodied symbol of the uprising against the government of Syria, the country's second-largest city, Aleppo, held a cultural festival featuring a 3,600-foot-long Syrian flag wrapped around its ancient citadel.