The many monuments of the Assad regime that once dotted the Syrian city of Aleppo have been toppled, torn or burned.
The large statue on which President Bashar al-Assad’s late brother was featured riding a horse has been mostly destroyed. All that remains is the rearing animal, with boys and young men clamoring to get on top of it as they flash victory signs.
Across Aleppo on Wednesday there was celebration as exiled residents returned home more than a week after Syrian rebels captured the city in a lightning-fast offensive that ended with Mr. al-Assad’s ouster.
They came back to their city from across the border with Turkey or from elsewhere — somewhere safer — if not permanently, then at least to assess what remained and where they might live. They set out to visit old neighborhoods and homes, some of which no longer existed.
Amar Sabir, 23, fled the city nearly 10 years ago with her family and ended up in Turkey. There, she got married and had two children, but never gave up hope of returning to Aleppo. On Sunday, she did.
“God willing, we’ll never have to leave Syria again,” she said, standing with her back to the horse statue.
Her cousins were taking her around the city to reacquaint her with the landmarks and historical sites. “This is going to become a historic place,” she said.
“This is where they brought down the regime,” said her husband, Basil al-Hassan.
Their first stop had been to the 13th-century citadel, a towering medieval structure rising above the city. Once a fortress, the landmark is the most famous structure in all of Aleppo, and one of the most enduring in the city. There, little boys hawked Syrian flags to people eager to pose with it. At the gated entrance of the citadel, a popcorn seller played a protest song on repeat, the chorus a reproach to the ousted Assad regime: “He who kills his people is a traitor.”
The song was mostly drowned out by a nearby drum circle, which paused its celebration briefly only during the call to prayer. Several men pounded their drums as others jumped and danced, twirling like whirling dervishes.
Ali Siraaj Ali, 44, had also fled Aleppo during the war. Wednesday was his first day back. He, too, went to the citadel first, bringing his son. “God willing, we’ll be happy,” the father said, after dancing excitedly, catching his breath. “But it’s unknown.”
Though excitement and frenzy were on full display in some parts of Aleppo, the city was still gripped by uncertainty and grim reminders of the 13-year civil war.
Farther down the street from the damaged equestrian statue were the remnants of one of Mr. al-Assad’s last acts of violence: a small crater where a rocket tore through a crowd on Nov. 30, killing about 15 people and wounding dozens more. Dried blood stained the sidewalk. But most visitors didn’t seem to notice.
In the Salahuldeen neighborhood, where the first battles between antigovernment rebels and Assad forces were fought beginning in 2012, Zuhair Khateeb felt uneasy.
Standing next to his small mechanics shop, Mr. Khateeb tore pita bread into small pieces and threw them to about 10 pet pigeons at his feet. The clinking of tiny bracelets around the birds’ legs provided a whimsical soundtrack to a grim discussion.
All around Mr. Khateeb, 43, were piles of rubble, what remained of the homes and buildings that had been destroyed by Syrian airstrikes years ago. Other buildings in the neighborhood appeared to be torn in half. The government never came to clear any of it away or to rebuild.
Residents, Mr. Khateeb said, were not allowed to. “No one did anything here,” he said. “This was a slow death. They wanted to kill us slowly, and we couldn’t say anything.”
He worked day and night to save up money to send his eldest son to Dubai so the teenager could avoid mandatory military service under the Syrian government.
In the weeks before the surprise rebel offensive started last month, the military began combing Aleppo’s neighborhoods, sweeping up large groups of men in their 30s and 40s, he said. Now that the regime is gone, he hopes his son can return home from Dubai.
Others are coming back to the neighborhood even though they don’t have anywhere to live, he said. “Based on what people are saying, God willing, there is something better to come,” added Mr. Khateeb. “But we’ve seen and suffered a lot already.”
At a park called President’s Square, another toppled monument lay face down on the ground. What used to represent the head of Hafez al-Assad, Mr. al-Assad’s father and a former president, was barely recognizable, a piece of shattered stone attached to shoulders by a few twisted rods of rebar.
Abdulhadi Ghazal, 17, sat on the pedestal that once held the now-desecrated bust, posing like Rodin’s “Thinker.” Someone had graffitied the words “11/30 the square of the free” on the pedestal.
“I was sitting where the leader was; I wanted to sit in his place,” said the teenager, a smattering of a mustache across his upper lip. But when a few people started taking his picture, he jumped off, fearful of what might happen to him if he were seen disrespecting a regime that still inspires fear in Syria.
“We saw so many people in prison, we got scared,” he said, referring to the images of emaciated and tortured prisoners that have emerged in recent days. “We’re scared the president might return.”
He wasn’t in the square when the bust was destroyed, but after he saw a video of it online, he said, he wanted to come and see it for himself — and to stand where the statue once stood.
Others simply spat at it.
At City Hall across the street, officials with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and other rebel groups that helped take down the Assad family are scrambling to form a government that will oversee the cities and towns they now control.
A large photo of a Mr. al-Assad still hangs, untouched, outside the building. No one has gotten around to removing it yet.
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