The Battle for Home

Memoir of a Syrian Architect

Marwa al-Sabouni, Roger Scruton

• Publisher: Thames and Hudson Ltd
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9780500773277
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: History of Architecture

Drawing on the author's personal experience of living and working as an architect in Syria, this book offers an eyewitness perspective on the country's bitter conflict through the lens of architecture, showing how the built environment offers a mirror to the community that inhabits it.

From Syria's tolerant past, with churches and mosques built alongside one another in Old Homs and members of different religions living harmoniously together, the book chronicles the recent breakdown of social cohesion in Syria's cities, with the lack of shared public spaces intensifying divisions within the community and corrupt officials interfering in town planning for their own gain, actions symptomatic of wider abuses of power. With first-hand accounts of mortar attacks and stories of refugees struggling to find a home, this compelling and original book explores the personal impact of the conflict and offers hope for how architecture can play a role in rebuilding a sense of identity within a damaged society.

1

THE BATTLE FOR FREEDOM

One Who Lacks Cannot Give Back

Everyone in Syria has lived his war. Every day people have fought for their lives, every day has brought a bid for survival, but it is not only bodies that suffer; souls, too, go through these battles, dying a thousand times in anticipation, only to rise up wearily to face another day. Hundreds of thousands of these excruciating battles have been fought, and still are being fought, for when the drums of war are beaten no one can escape the sound. But the battles were started long before the first drum was struck.

Actual war often comes after a series of minor hidden wars. Although they are considered less bloody and destructive, these minor wars – these parries against profiteering officials; these responses to intolerable living conditions – are still bitter, because they are suffered in silence and solitude: no newspaper will write about them, no TV channel will show interest in them, and no organization will offer readiness to help.

People try to fight these minor wars one by one, but they lose most of them until the ‘actual’ war begins in full force. The strange thing is that most people – including those who were fighting all along – are still surprised, as if war had caught them off guard.

The laws of the universe have made no exception for this Syrian war, which flared up when social diseases had settled in the alleyways and on the rooftops. Vicious viruses of greed, corruption, dishonesty and ignorance had infiltrated the immune system of the communities and made clear highways for every imaginable – and sometimes unimaginable – form of torture. So it has been in this country for four years or more.

The legitimate question ‘why did this happen’ has received all kinds of rhetorical answers and has inspired all sorts of conflicts. We have seen mutual blame being laid by two parties who act as if they have arrived at the scene of a bloody football match, only to discover that each player is a team on his own and that no one is suffering more than the ball.

Why did this happen? We will look at the answers in the pages of this book. Many people simply wish things would ‘go back to the way they were’. I have heard this phrase many times, from very different kinds of people, and each time I hear it I think, why would anyone support a process of massive change, then simply – and very late in the day – regret the destructive repercussions and want things to go back to the way they were! Even if the individual wasn’t personally involved in the process of change, why would he or she want things simply to be as they were: why not wish for better, why settle for the state of instability that brought us here in the first place? This gives me the feeling that we haven’t learned any lessons from all that has happened; that we have never reflected on anything, or tried to relate cause and effect.

The habit of dreaming about a tomorrow-matching-yesterday brings to mind a short story. A poor villager lived with his wife in a shabby one-room shed. The woman continually complained about her cramped conditions and nagged her husband to provide a better home. Although he lacked money, this man didn’t lack wit. One day he brought his wife what he called a gift: a goat to live inside their tiny room with them. As it was cold outside, the woman reluctantly acknowledged that they had to bring the goat indoors. After a few days the man brought another ‘gift’: this time it was a hen. The same story was repeated over the next few weeks; each time a new animal was brought into the ever more suffocating room … until, one day, the man decided to move all the animals out and get rid of them once and for all. The woman couldn’t have been happier. She showered her husband with thanks and contemplated with great contentment the spacious home that was now theirs. In the case of Syria, however, there is no such easy way back to things as they used to be … for the shabby little room has been destroyed.

Still, I could never wish for things to go back to the way they were; to an era when I – like hundreds of thousands of disoriented young people – felt stuck in time and space, waiting for nothing to happen; waiting as everybody, consciously or unconsciously, was waiting. I was jailed behind the bars of nothingness.

While Homs – the place where I was born and raised – is the third biggest city in Syria, it always seemed to me like a neglected village, where nothing much happened and every day was pretty much the same. I used to hate holidays and weekends because the ‘leisure facilities’ were so inadequate that there wasn’t a single place my children could have a decent experience: no functional public parks, no cultural centres open to the public in a systematic or organized way, no zoos, no amusement parks; and, even if those places had existed, there would have been no exciting activities, no safety measures, no tasteful or memorable architecture.

In those days, my children and I would pick up other people’s empty potato chip bags and plastic bottles just to clear our space on the patches of greenery beside the road where people, lacking other options, would have their picnics. No one else was motivated enough by our actions to pick up even a tissue; nevertheless, I was convinced that I was teaching my children a lesson. I insisted on telling them all about the stipulated heights and details of pavements and street planning. I didn’t want them to grow up and think their surroundings were acceptable the way they were, and I didn’t want them to shrug off the ugliness, even if its existence would never be their fault.

Every walk in the city was a struggle for me. Of course, this was not the most important concern in a country where, if you arrested the thief who was trying to rob you, you were as likely to end up in jail as the thief. Favouritism and bribes were the only system, and they functioned smoothly because the vast majority of people were reconciled to the fact that this was the way things were. Every sector had its own mafia, its own game rules, and very few were unwilling to participate. Even fewer were willing to fight, since the battle could take a lifetime. So the majority chose one of two paths: either the way out, to the Gulf or the West, or the way in, to corruption and degradation.

It is only natural for immorality to shout louder than its opposites, just as the dark spot shouts above the white cloth on the table. But when immorality prevails and life loses its equilibrium, as it has done in Syria, things can only get worse.

The future, for most Syrians, has become a word of one syllable: ‘mine’. It means having a home, a car, a family, a steady income. In the current matchbox world, ideals, dreams and public spirit are all considered laughable; you may be accused of being crazy, suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder or behaving like an elitist snob if you try to maintain standards. ‘Stop acting as though you were raised abroad!’ snapped a friend, when I refused to sit in a smoke-filled room. I fought with every taxi driver in the city over speed limits, crossing red lights, smoking in the car. Demanding such rights was considered a pretentious luxury, and laws that had once been passed to protect those rights were no longer enforced.

At that time I didn’t dream of owning a home. Why would I run after that carrot with my tongue on the floor just to live my old age in peace? I simply wanted – as innocent young people still want – to be somebody, to do something, but without deviousness or force. But that was, and still is, too much to ask.

Wondering about the causes of this war reminds me of a lung cancer patient wondering about the cause of his disease, when he has been a couch potato all his life, smoking heavily, drinking to excess and gorging on junk food. No matter how diverse and serious the external threats, a ‘healthy’ country would not fall apart in the face of a crisis, and, no matter how corrupt and ruthless the governing powers, a ‘healthy’ people would not eat each other up like savages.

There is a saying that ‘money and power don’t change people: they just show them as they truly are’. War does exactly the same. Ignorance mixed with injustice makes for a deadly cocktail. In Syria this mixture is our daily dose, and the glass has been filling up over time. One can sense it in almost every aspect of people’s lives. And the cost inflicted on the built environment has played a major role in heightening and perpetuating what has turned into a major catastrophe.

When, at the age of 17, I began to study architecture at the city college in Homs, I became acquainted with a different world, through the pictures of international projects in books and magazines. Our professors urged us to draw inspiration from what we observed in those images. I remember our very first project as freshman students: we were asked to design a house and to provide sketches of its exterior. Our professors recommended sources of inspiration ranging from the American home styles of New England and Cape Cod to illustrations from randomly chosen library books. They made no distinction between the styles; they just showed us images completely detached from our own reality.

This approach was cemented during our five years of study. Professors would introduce us to a type of building but give us only a name and short description. We were supposed to do some research on its functional program via very limited resources, confined to a few shelves of the college library. The internet was not available, so we had to rely on our own initiative.

I had a friend whose sister used to send him a monthly architectural magazine from Italy, where she lived, and I would buy a copy from him, then circulate it among other students to share the educational benefits. On this monthly supply I fed my inspiration without any understanding of the implications of what I was receiving, and without any reading of the historical, philosophical or intellectual background. It was like eating bits and pieces from all over the world, blindfold, and trying to understand the art of cookery.

The funny thing was that the educational system of the architecture school was based on promoting the most theatrical of shapes, yet with a very rigid understanding of the functional program. We were taught that there were very few ways to ‘go around’ the function of a building. Professors wouldn’t accept any suggested functional solutions or zoning other than the settings they already had in mind. Any attempt to break with these would be met with a failing grade.

To satisfy their teachers, some students would copy the outlines of celebrated international projects from magazines. The professors seemed to have no idea that this was happening, since very few of them showed any signs of caring enough to take a good look at the wider architectural world or to familiarize themselves with its icons. If they did know about any new developments, it was almost certain their interest would be confined only to the images they saw and not to any engineering or other challenges that might have been overcome to reach the final result, let alone any criticism or theory behind the work.

Students were also set the task of ‘solving’ interiors according to the set program. Often a student would secretly trace the outlines of a successful building found in a publication, then tweak the insides in order to fit the pre-set areas and functions required by the professors. If the student then shared this with others, the sharing had to be performed in secret, since it was considered to be cheating and that had its consequences. I was never a fan of the process. A few others and I preferred to design our own solutions, but that meant a lot more work and lower grades.

In effect, we were practising a fake freedom. We were free to draw inspiration, free to use free forms, free to think as we wished, with absolutely no constraints, but the teaching program could not be changed.

On the other hand, the professors really did have freedom when they wanted it. In the absence of genuine standards, and respect for knowledge as something objective, they were free to evaluate as they pleased, with no clear rules to define the process. In the students’ absence, their projects were ‘sentenced’ and, with a sprinkle of administrative corruption, luck was always the master of the situation. How does the judge feel today? Does he like curves at the moment, or is it angles? Does he have anything against this particular student, or has another already received special treatment? Is this student a relative, or does he have a family connection with an influential official? Is this student wealthy, or is she pretty? Ignorance and injustice were practised freely, to produce the chosen architects of tomorrow who would build our city – a city that was deteriorating rapidly in the hands of its governors and residents.

Typically, the governor of a Syrian city would come from elsewhere, with the mayor – usually one of the city’s well-known figures, and preferably someone from the upper class – in charge of the built environment. These were not written laws, just the inescapable rules of the game. Yet controlling the built environment is a huge responsibility: the face of a city governs the daily routines of its people and all that pertains to their way of life. Nonetheless, it has become a lucrative source of income for unscrupulous alliances who construct the city for their personal benefit and without regard for its inhabitants.

As young architects approaching graduation we used to encounter our senior colleagues and observe the blatant despair on their features, their sloping defeated shoulders, their low-pitched voices, and their eyes dried of hope as they warned us of the major disappointments in store for us. It always took the spring out of our step so that we went forward haltingly, our ‘perfect’ projects rolled up in our hands.

I remember one senior friend trying to ‘prepare’ me for the ugly truth, telling me what I wasn’t told at college: that everything I was designing and dreaming about was a total waste of time. ‘Look around you’ was a sentence enough to wake anyone from his illusions. In the ‘real world’, it was the established powers, led by the governor and the mayoral offices, who decided the shape of architecture; it was not the classical theories of the art, and certainly not the ‘nonsense’ theories of deconstruction and post-modernism that seemed to be all the rage in the West.

This was what our predecessors were trying to warn us about. They were trying to explain to us how hard we would fall when we leapt from our ivory tower onto a cracked desk in the back of an empty 50-square-foot room. As like as not there would be no job for us to do, except for signing a paper every now and then, drinking tea and coffee while waiting for the boss to leave, and then sneaking out afterwards. There were no serious practices to learn from; only a bunch of small offices, which at best would need a draughtsman. There was no scope for design or improvement: the cake had already been sliced up and allocated to the waiting jaws.

We were so detached from reality that no one among the staff cared to enlighten us. How could they explain to us that none of what we were learning was ever going to see the light of day? How could they tell us that we should forget all about architecture and design once we graduated, either to be employed in some corrupt governmental administrative sector or to enter into some unsatisfactory contract with a union, where our only mission would be to negotiate over the ‘leftovers’? Simply put, there was no place for dreams, work or dedication; there was only a mob collaborating to make business from the streets, infrastructure and buildings of the city, by monitoring, controlling and directing their endeavours in the most greedy and tasteless manner.

Nothing mattered to these people except profit. The whole destiny of the built environment, and consequently of people’s lives, was sucked up to the very last drop. A young enthusiast with architectural fantasies had no place at all in such a system. Watching your predecessors, you felt like a droplet of water in a river taking the journey of your life towards the blue sea, only to hear a waterfall getting louder and louder, and to feel the current getting stronger and faster, until you reached the edge where your friends had gone ahead of you, dropping on the knife-sharp rocks and shattering into spray. My senior friends took this ride: some left the country for the Gulf, where they complained bitterly of loneliness and homesickness, longing for the day when they had saved enough money to return to the place that had rejected them.

After graduation I officially became an architect. I had no illusions of being the next Zaha Hadid, or even of trying to make my city a better place. Nevertheless, hope is blind and always manages to find its way to the human heart, mine included. The Syrian government automatically signs up new graduates of certain specialities at its institutions. The graduates then have the freedom to either accept or decline, though in fact very few decline such an offer, unless they are leaving the country, and even then they might still find a way to ‘save their seat’ just in case.

As an architect – and one who had not exploited any influential contacts or paid any bribes – I was assigned to a miserable office, where I did nothing all day, along with others doing nothing all day: just dozing, eating, then hurrying back home. I started to bring in a book to read, though that made me look weird.

After a while I applied to be moved to the architectural office at the administrative headquarters of the city university. Although its name suggests that the office was related to architecture, the reality was that there was very little architectural practice in evidence there. Feverishly I watched the hours and minutes of my day go by, captive to this non-existent job. I wanted to quit, but my husband urged me to stay a few more months and make the most of the experience. His advice was not to leave something until I was aware of all of its dimensions: with all the downs there must be ups, he reckoned, and I should stay until I figured them out. So I stayed on and meanwhile applied to study for a Master’s degree.

While most of the senior employees at the institution formed closed inner circles conspiring to sew up deals with independent businessmen and influential public figures or officials, I spent the long hours waiting for someone to assign me a job. Finally my boss, who was a professor of civil engineering and trying to introduce whatever reforms he thought were possible, gave me the task of designing furniture for some offices and dormitories at the university. I was thrilled to be given this opportunity. I pored over sketches and drafts the minute I arrived at my workplace, though that made me the monkey in the zoo performing for the curious visitors. Indeed, my employers – whose daily routine was to check in, have a ‘divine’ cup of coffee that no one would dare to interrupt, chat for an hour or so, do some of the accumulated paperwork and then find a way to go home early – started to circle around my desk with unconcealed amazement on their faces, asking me curiously what I was doin...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• About the author
• Other titles of interest
• Contents
• Foreword by Roger Scruton
• Preface to the new edition by Marwa al-Sabouni
• Introduction by Marwa al-Sabouni
• 1 The Battle for Freedom
• 2 The Battle of Old Homs
• 3 The Battle of Mortar
• 4 The Battle of Baba Amr
• 5 The Battle for a Home
• 6 The Battle for Continuity
• Notes
• Timeline
• Discussion Guide for Reading Groups
• Acknowledgments
• Copyright