“We lived in the country of the Assads, everything belonged to them”

Huda Tabbakh cautiously ventured into the four-story villa, waiting to be invited. “I’m the neighbor across the street. I wanted to see the house,” said the 60-year-old Syrian woman with short, dyed blonde hair. , to the young hooded fighter. Kalashnikov slung over his shoulder, Raghab leafed through the bound books on the life of the Prophet Muhammad, stacked, intact, in the entrance hall. The 20-year-old from Homs was tasked by his unit Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS, Levant Liberation Organization, former branch of Al-Qaeda in Syria) to guard this street in the upscale Malki neighborhood, in Damascus.

From its balcony with green shutters, on the third floor of the building facing the modern villa surrounded by lush vegetation, Tabbakh offers a breathtaking view of the residence of deposed Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. “This is my first time here. I was even scared before I looked at the house,” she said. In the 40 years she has lived in this apartment, she has never met the father, Hafez al-Assad, who lived in the neighboring villa until his death in 2000, nor the son, Bashar, his wife, Asma, and their three children, who moved next door “in 2006, if I remember correctly”.

Four days after the fall of Damascus, on December 8, the villa – pillaged and ransacked – remained unoccupied. HTS men man the roadblocks on both sides of the street, where a leader of the rebel faction has taken up residence. They put an end to the endless stream of curious people coming to see the private residence of the hated dictator. Papers and personal effects, still scattered on each floor, reveal the daily life of the Assad family. It was an opulent life in a country plunged into poverty after 13 years of war, during which several hundred thousand Syrians were killed, the majority under fire from Assad’s army.

You have 80.11% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.