Ayad Saryoul has spent most of the past month in an underground shelter that he shares with his family and 40 other people. Sometimes spending 18 hours straight underground, he passes the time by counting the number of rockets and shells that fall on the besieged Eastern Ghouta suburbs of Damascus.
“There is nothing else to do here,” said the 27-year-old resident of Eastern Ghouta. “We are waiting for death to come at any moment. Either by way of shelling or disease.”
Hundreds of thousands of people have gone underground to take shelter from relentless government attacks on the last rebel enclave near the Syrian capital. Many are living in makeshift collective shelters or basements.
Since government forces stepped up attacks on February 18, more than 1,500 people have been killed and more than 45,000 people have been displaced from their homes. Prior to offensive, the United Nations refugee agency estimated that some 350,000 civilians were trapped in the area that has been under siege for more than four years.
A Russian TV Ch broadcast a footage, by mistake of Assad forces using civilians as human shield as they were advancing in the town of Ayn Tarma, Eastern Ghouta – Arbin District. pic.twitter.com/mHgBfuPQkf
— TSE News (@SyrianEndeavour) March 23, 2018
Although largely safer than above ground shelters, makeshift bunkers are not impenetrable. Government airstrikes and artillery attacks have regularly killed civilians hiding underground. Most recently, 15 children and two women who were hiding in a school basement in the town of Arbin, were killed in government shelling on Monday. It took rescue workers more than two days to recover the corpses from under the rubble.
Syria Deeply spoke to a number of residents who have sought safety in bunkers and collective shelters. They describe dark, claustrophobic, humid and dingy spaces that sometimes accommodate up to 200 people. Saryoul has seen “little children clinging to the bodies of their parents” inside the shelters after airstrikes and mortar attacks.
Their stories shed light on the plight of those who remain in Eastern Ghouta, which the UN has described as a “hell on earth.” But they show the resilience of residents who have survived these past years.
Sharing and Storytelling
“The basement floor is filled with dirt. There are no toilets or any other facilities,” said Nivin al-Houtari, a 38-year-old mother of two, who lives in an underground shelter with her husband, children and some 30 other people. She noted that this number is relatively low as many shelters in East Ghouta host more than 100 people. Families separate their living spaces with cloth or curtains, she said.
There is a great deal of cooperation between the many families living in the tight quarters, especially in terms of cooking, sharing and distributing food, al-Houtari said. “Some families brought food supplies such as bulgur, rice or lentils, and they cook them inside the basement,” she said. “There is an understanding between us because we are aware that this is an exceptional circumstance and we must bear with it.”
At least 37 civilians were burned to death after the Syrian government bombed a shelter with napalm in eastern Ghouta, activists say.
Most of the them were women and children. pic.twitter.com/1ugQL7hHoP
— AJ+ (@ajplus) March 23, 2018
Al-Houtari said she never leaves the underground shelter. To pass the time, she gossips with other women in the bunker, or reads or tells stories to her children, who have no room to either play or breathe while living underground. “Sometimes we tell them heroic stories about the triumph of good over evil, which they like and enjoy a lot,” she said. At other times, children are given colouring books and drawing material to help them pass the time, she said.
But al-Houtari said it’s still a challenge to try to keep the kids from running outside and to distract them from the sound of heavy shelling. It’s even more of a challenge to try to explain to them why they have to live this way, she said. “My three-year-old daughter Maya always asks me: Why are we dying? Does the world hate us?” she said. “And I have no answer for her because I can’t convey to her the abstract idea that we are dying for freedom.”
Love, Underground
Hussam, 27, lives in an underground bunker with 70 people, including eight different families. He does not have a family of his own, but he said the thought of his fiancee, who is now living outside Syria, keeps him going in these difficult times. “Dana always speaks to me when the shelling is violent, so I quickly text her “shelling” and she texts back “hide” and when the bombing ends, I text her again “I am fine” and she responds by telling me a joke,” he said.
Her support during these difficult times gives him a lot of “hope,” Hussam said. “I am living inside death itself. But I feel like I am the embodiment of life for someone else. This gives me the drive to persevere.”
Aid agencies have also warned of the deteriorating humanitarian conditions in Eastern Ghouta. Andrej Mahecic, a spokesman for the UN refugee agency, told reporters last Tuesday that thousands of civilians in Eastern Ghouta were “trapped and in dire need of aid.”
Living with limited access to food and water is difficult, but for Hussam, one of the hardest parts of living in shelters is witnessing the suffering of children, he said. “I once asked one girl to draw a picture for me, so she drew a basement with many children in it,” he said. “It is very painful to see that the ceiling of our children’s imagination is just small breathing space.”
When he is not texting his distant bride-to-be – and when the bombardments are relatively slower – he helps local groups deliver food and water to families in shelters. He said both are hard to come by, especially since it is often too dangerous to go above ground and that sometimes families can go up to 48 hours without any food.
This article originally appeared on Syria Deeply. You can find the original here. For important news about the war in Syria, you can sign up to the Syria email list. Photograph courtesy of Wikimedia. Published under a Creative Commons license.
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