Hell is never far away: the female

medic

risking her life for Aleppo

Umm Abdu has lost her husband and a son to the war in Syria, but the pistol-wearing woman refuses to
abandon her embattled city

A man carries two girls to safety after a reported air strike by government forces on Aleppo. Photograph:

Zein al-Rifai/AFP/Getty Images

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It is a familiar routine: the thump of the rotor blades, the boom of the
explosion from the barrel bomb released by the Syrian government troops
far above, followed by Umm Abdus scramble towards the four-storey
building that will receive the inevitable human carnage.
Not that the hospital is safe. Most large buildings around it have been
obliterated by the same half-tonne bombs, leading those who work, live and
die within its iodine-stained walls to believe that they are the real targets.
Hell is never far away, she says, resting on a gurney in what makes for a
trauma area. She is the only woman on the floor, a black-clad figure
working alongside three exhausted young men in green gowns to treat
most of Aleppos victims of war.

Um
m Abdu lives in a small flat with her three remaining children.
Umm Abdu stands out for another reason: the steel pistol she holsters to
her back when stitching or bandaging patients using the skills that echo her
pre-war career as a wedding dressmaker. Getting justice from this war has
become a personal jihad for me, she admits. I cant work without it [the
gun] any more.
Everyone who remains in the eastern half of this battered city has a story of
deprivation and loss. And most, like 40-year-old Umm Abdu, have found
ways to cope with life in a wasteland, where existence inches on but life has
stopped. Ive used the weapons, she says. And then Ive treated the
people who were injured.

The contradiction seems lost, or maybe even no longer relevant, in a

conflict where death often comes from the skies. Barrel bombs, the Syrian
wars most savage weapon, are also its most indiscriminate killer.
Slowly, methodically, they have tipped the tide in the favour of the regime,
which continues to edge around Aleppos north-eastern flank as its bombs
erode the city of civilians, fighters, and hope.

Syrian boys play in the rubble of Aleppo. Photograph: Baraa alHalabi/AFP/Getty Images
Umm Abdus son, Yousef, was killed by a bomb three months ago while
travelling on a minibus to work in the only other functional hospital in the
citys east. That attack killed 35 people, and gouged yet another giant hole
through an urban landscape now difficult to distinguish among piles of
rubble often dozens of metres high.
That day was the worst of days, she says, sitting in a darkened room of
her home on the edge of Old Aleppo. Her surviving son, Abdullah, sitting
next to her, says: We shared the same bed for 17 years. We did
everything together: we played, we dreamed, we grew. Now hes gone.
What can I say.
In the small flat she shares with her remaining children, Umm Abdu has
placed three teddy bears on her pillow, two Free Syria Army flags and an
Islamic flag above her bed, and her gun on her mattress. Her medicines are
tucked away nearby.

In the early days of a war that promised hope, but has instead delivered
three years of unrestrained brutality and an estimated 200,000 dead, Umm
Abdus husband was shot dead by a regime sniper.
Eighteen months ago, while trying to retrieve a wounded man from a nomans land near her home, she too was almost killed. Snipers bullets ripped
through her mouth and thigh. It was only flesh, she says. Its all working
now.

A rebel fighter holds a position in Aleppo. Photograph: Zein alRifai/AFP/Getty

Rebel fighters who work alongside Umm Abdu in the city say the fightercum-medic is unique. No one else risks her own life as much, says a local
leader, Abu Juud, who helps provide food for her family. And no one else
saves as many other lives.
We owe you a lot, he tells her. Aleppo owes you as well.
Those who have remained in the east of the city maybe 50,000 of the 1
million or so who once lived here all speak with disconcerting candour
about mothers, brothers, fathers and babies killed during the war.
My three cousins were executed by Isis, shrugs a fighter from the Islamic
Front, the main opposition group in eastern Aleppo. They betrayed them at
a checkpoint.
The fighter is sitting in a circle of eight men, all of whom had a similar story
that they hadnt deem worthy to share until asked about it.

My sister was killed last year in al-Bab [a town near Aleppo], says another
fighter. So was her son. He shows photos of the boy stored on his mobile
phone: I loved him a lot.
Another man says quietly but matter-of-factly: My mother died in her
home. I buried her in five pieces. She said she would rather die here than
live on her knees in Turkey.

A man holds a baby saved from under the rubble after an air strike by
regime forces. Photograph: Hosam Katan/Reuters
Unfathomable loss is too evident at the hospital. Most people who come
here are ripped apart when they arrive, says an Egyptian neurosurgeon
who tries daily to repair the most seriously injured. But I dont have a
working CT scan. Do you know how hard it is to do brain surgery without
one?
Despite this, the surgeon does have some successes. He leads us to a
civilian who was shot through the brain a week earlier. He can speak now,
the doctor says enthusiastically. Say hello, Mohammed. Wave at me. The
patient wearily lifts his arm as his five-year-old daughter sits mutely on a
bed across the room.
Nearby, a 30-year-old woman winces as another doctor sterilises a large
gash in her thigh caused by a shell, not a barrel bomb.
Shells drop randomly on Old Aleppo many times each day. Later that
afternoon, a deafening blast erupts near a fruit stall. The vendor doesnt

flinch as he hands over his produce; nor does his customer.

Fruit packed into carts oranges, apples, bananas, watermelons jut vividly
from the grime of Aleppo in early winter; rare shocks of colour against a
backdrop of grey. Those who can afford food are not starving, but the city
itself one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world is all but
broken.
Why, then, do people stay? This is where I come from and this is where I
will die, says Ibrahim Khatan, 48, a resident of the Old City, who has
remained behind with his seven young children. Even if they surround us,
we will sow potatoes in the fields and eat the chickens, he says, pointing at
a dozen hens and ducks his daughters have just fed by a mosque wall. No
one deserves a world without children. My oldest is 20 years old and my
youngest, three months. I cant take them away.

Syrian children queue for food aid from a community kitchen in the Myassar
district of Aleppo. Photograph: Zein al-Rifai/AFP/Getty Images
Nearby, the Islamic Front maintains a field clinic, where its fighters are
treated for wounds sustained in clashes with regime troops around the
ancient citadel less than a mile away.
Umm Abdu travels here regularly along the ancient cobblestones slick with
recent rains, to tend to a local commander, Abu Assad, who is recovering
from a gunshot wound to his thigh.
Before this war, I was a seamstress making wedding dresses, she says.

My family are all from here. This place is essential to my identity.

I ask her what could make her change her mind, and take her surviving son
and three daughters, one of whom works at the same hospital, to safety in
Turkey. If they dont unite, she says of the various rebel groups battling
the regime, I will kill myself.
Thats not true, my sister, says a startled bystander.
Youre right, Umm Abdu replies with a smile a rare sight in northern
Syria. But they need to bring everything together. We all need to support
each other.
Later that night, the clouds that had kept the helicopters away from Aleppo
clear, and the risk of barrel bomb attacks increase. As dawn gives way to
daylight, bright yellow ambulances parked near the hospital seem like
perfect target indicators for any bomber above. The skies, though, stay
empty. Clapped out generators that provide neighbourhood power echo
through alleyways. A slight wind blows broken doors against stone walls.
Islamic Front fighters move slowly through the heart of the Old Citys
streets; some shelter in a giant atrium near a soap factory that a dog-eared
sign says is heritage listed.
Their choice of refuge is touted as a hospital for intellectually disabled, built
in 1354. Theres no one crazy here, one rebel says amid the flotsam and
jetsam of endless war. All the people on the streets those [civilians] who
are still here theyre the crazy ones.
Additional reporting: Saalim Rizk
Posted by Thavam