Abdulmonam Eassa is a photographer who has been one of the key contributors to AFP's coverage of the Syrian government’s offensive on Eastern Ghouta.
His last weeks in the enclave were spent going from town to town as regime forces advanced, cowering in basements from shelling and air strikes, and documenting as much as he could with photos, videos and text, before finally making it out to a new life and a new beginning.
After arriving to Hama AbdulMunam said: Here, you start feeling like you can start all over. I went into a clothes shop, I bought new clothes. I immediately threw away the ones I had been wearing. Not because they were dirty, but because they held memories I’d rather forget...Bad Memories.
It’s the end of March, slightly more than a month after the Syrian government began an intensive bombardment of my home, in the Eastern Ghouta region that has been under control of rebels since 2012. For weeks, I had been going from one area to another in Eastern Ghouta, cowering in basements as I fled air strikes and the regime’s advance. I photographed as much as I could, but there were things that I just couldn’t capture with my camera. I had been wearing the same clothes for a month, hadn't shaved in two months, and hadn't had a shower in 10 days. And now I have reached this other area in Syria.
Everything here looks great compared to the death back in Ghouta.
March 7, 2018
Today is one of the hardest that I’ve ever lived through. After two weeks of bombardment, I am exhausted, but I leave the house nonetheless, telling myself: ‘‘I’ll just go out and see what’s happening in the neighborhoods of Hammuriyeh.’ This is my hometown, the place where I grew up, the place where my family lives.
Ten minutes later, the bombing starts. I hop into an ambulance and head to the site of a strike. The airplane hits again. We turn into a street. We see a man and his son on the ground. They are on fire near their motorcycle. I have seen so much death and destruction, but I am shocked by this scene. I never thought I’d live through something like that, much less photograph it. It’s very, very hard. I take pictures, but it hurts. I help the members of the Civil Defence to put out the fire and move the two people. Later I come across one of the burned man’s brothers. He is heartbroken. I show him the pictures that I shot. Extreme sadness. I end up spending seven hours in the ambulance that day, setting my camera aside so I can help.
Sixty percent of the houses in town are completely destroyed. There is nothing but destruction all around. People are gathering their belongings to get out of the area, but then they hear the sound of shelling and run and hide. The Syrian regime and Russian warplanes are sparing no one and nothing -- no mother, child, home, mosque or school. The regime is advancing, the battles are raging.
I get my family out of our house. I never thought I’d get to this point -- to get my family to safety because I am afraid they will be bombed. We go to hide in a tunnel. The shelling is so intense that at some point, the flames from the resulting fires almost reach the tunnel. We try to leave and go somewhere else, but an air strike hits nearby. The kids are crying. My mother is crying. I don’t cry. I don’t know why. Maybe because I know crying won’t change anything.We stay until 6:00 am. I manage to bring a car. We drive to an area near Hammuriyeh, where the shelling is not as bad. I am shocked by the level of destruction around us. Just fifteen days ago, the situation here was normal. Now everything is destroyed -- the houses, the shops. My house is destroyed. The neighborhood where we used to play as kids is devastated. Nothing is open, there are no shopkeepers. Just people emerging with a bag in each hand stuffed with their belongings, fleeing.
I go back to my house and find everything exactly where it was, but broken. The room where we used to sleep is destroyed. The room where we used to have breakfast is destroyed.
In moments like that, you think there’s nothing left. The only thing left is that my family is safe.
On March 25 the exhaustion took over AbdulMunam's mind and body, and he decided to leave within the evacuation agreement.. "We get on the bus and we sit inside for seven hours, without it moving. Seven hours feels like a lifetime. It’s a very long wait. Especially when you’re leaving your birthplace, the place where you have spent days both beautiful and hard. Especially when you have no idea whether you’ll ever return."
After seven hours of waiting the bus started to move along with the convoy toward the Syrian north. AbdulMunam said: "What did we do wrong, having lived in an area where there was opposition to the regime, and then there was fighting and ‘insurgents’?...That was just the place where we lived."
On his arrival to Qalaat Al-Madiq, every thing was new for AbdulMunam... He bought new clothes, new shoes, had a shower and shaved... Then slept for one whole night without hearing the sound of shelling. It’s the first time he sleeps like that in two months.. It was new life, he said.
Finally AbdulMunam ended: "Now I am in a new area. I am separated from my family, but I’m glad that I could rest and change a bit. But now I’m thinking of leaving Syria. I want to see what life is like outside. Are people different? Is it only in Syria where there is war? I’ll try to escape the reality that I’m living in. Maybe I’ll rest, maybe I won’t. Life is really hard when you’re living in war. It’s hard in other circumstances too, of course. But you just can’t compare."